colonelpurple
Offline
•
Upload & Sell: Off
|
I am an amateur, so apologies in advance for no pro photos. I love taking photos, and a bit of the technical side too. My camera comes with me to work everyday, and I will often go for walks at lunch or after work. I mostly take street and travel, with some landscapes and occasional portraits.
I have been shooting manual focus, mostly Leica M, for decades, trying many different AF systems over the years, but always returning to M cameras. It is so fast to manually focus on what I want and let the scene evolve. AF is fidgety, and if the shooting finger slips and re-applys, the focus could jump to an unintended person or foreground object.
AF has to be lighteningly quick. MF is fine for its environment. In between, e.g. focus hunting AF doesn't work for me. In the last year or so I have decided to seriously look at investing in an AF system, as AF has improved so much. The other thing important is a quiet shutter. Leaf shutters on fixed lens cameras are quiet (e.g. X100VI, Q3, etc.), but generally I like the idea of no shutter. Recently shutter readout speeds have gotten to the point where you can ignore the shutter.
Funnily enough, the first camera that showed me the way was the Sigma BF. It jumps down to 12bit, and then only gets down to 20ms, but I have never had noticeable rolling shutting with it and the photos are beautiful. Since then I have tried the Z8, A7V and S1R ii. All are awesome cameras, and the photographer is the limitation.
In some ways the Sony A9iii or A1 ii could also be the answer, but everyone has to have a budget limit, and the R5 mark ii was already pushing the envelope. There are many advantages to the R5, and I don't want to get into a detailed comparison, but at least I can utilise my CFexpress B card collection!
As the Canon is the most expensive of the four cameras I have tested, it should be the best, however it manages to combine the good points of all of them in a single package.
One of my fave cameras of all time was the 5D. Even today, the photos it takes are beautiful. This camera converted me to photography as a hobby. I did briefly try the original R and R8 when they came out, but the lenses at the time weren’t to my liking and certain things about the cameras didn’t work for me.
When the R5 mark ii came out it was the specification that convinced me to have a look. Fast enough readout speed to never need a mechanical shutter, class leading AF, lovely ergonomics, light; relatively compact to hold; Canon colours, which I have always loved and did I mention, my CFexpress B cards!
What held me back with the RF series in the past was not having my most used lens, a light and sharp f2.8 mid-range zoom. What converted me were the 28-70mm f2.8 and 20-50mm f4. Although the 20-50mm is a slightly nicer build, I just have to have f2.8, and this is a large weight saving from the 24-70mm f2.8.
In terms of lens performance, I couldn’t ask for sharper in the centre and mid-range. Canon has always been known for sharp zooms, and it is nice to see it continue to capitalise on this capability. It is also lightweight , great build quality and a quality texture to hold.
Although the Canon R5 mark ii is not the prettiest of cameras, it feels comfortable in the hand, and has a high quality feel. The plastics enclosing the magnesium are tactical and expensive feeling. Canon has managed to achieve a great selection of switch gear, with clear distinction between different functions by feel, and also the default setup, at least for me, is well thought through. It feels premium, but again for the price it should.
Basically my settings are aperture priority, single shot, continuous focus, exposure compensation, and flicking between spot focus and area focus, face detect and no face detect. With the help of the Q button, I can pretty much do all of this without changing the default, although over time I will evolve to single key presses.
I only use electronic shutter and the sensor is excellent, but compared to a 44mp BSI sensor, like the Sony IMX366 in the S1R ii, it is a bit more noisy. I don't notice any difference in DR, but theoretically there is some.
Being inside a closed garden of Canon lenses does feel a bit like the Apple world. You feel closeted, everything will work together seemlessly, but choice is reduced. Since the closed garden has the lenses I need, it doesn't make much difference. My next lens will be the RF 35mm f1.4 VCM and then probably the RF 24mm f1.4 and maybe the 135mm f1.8 or the new macro which is just about to come out.
The AF is excellent, altmost instant. The face detect is class leading. I did try to train the eye detect sensor in 5 mins whilst walking, but didn't have much success, will try again later.
There is some room for improvement. If you assign the custom lens ring to aperture on the 28-70mm f2.8 it won’t work in aperture priority mode !! There is apparently a trick where you can swap the function of the main dial and back dial, due to the main dial being aperture dominant. This could be fixed in a software update. The other thing is that although the dials are reassuring metal, I wish all the buttons and selectors were also. Coming from Leica I am just not a fan of plastic switch gear. Otherwise, it is difficult to find anything wrong.
As most of the industry is using Sony fabed sensors, it is nice to use something a bit different, made by Canon in-house in its Hiratsuka fab.
I am really enjoying the camera, and have a few lenses on order, all L unfortunately. It is a classy product and feels great when using, and the results knocking it out of the park. The overall speed of the system and the process flow are providing an unsually high percentage of keepers, which is always a good sign.
|
