arbitrage wrote: Douglas L wrote: Pius Sullivan wrote:
You did a fair evaluation on the BEAF between the R5 vs A1 then you proceeded to elaborate on other issues with the R5.
What are some of the pitfalls of the A1 or lets just say point of failure for the price range. I can think of a few so you must be more aware then I what they are.... (You can add to the list)
EVF blackouts whilst in sunny environments.
Battery drain is very fast.
IBIS issue. IBIS takes 5 second to stabilize when the camera is moved from hanging on its strap to pictures / video taking position.
Lens Release button...
arbitrage wrote:
The R5 is better at recognizing bird shapes, especially when the bird is not in a normal shape/pose. It will draw the body box when the bird's head is tucked away behind. It will draw a head box when the head is somewhat visible but still turned away. The A1 will just dance the dots in these situations...occasionally drawing some sort of body/head box.
However, once the bird gets into a proper pose with good head angle (ie any time you'd actually want to push the shutter) then I find the two systems are near identical in their effectiveness. I've had both systems struggle in complex surroundings. Getting confused by grass in foreground and background.
The A1 system is more versatile because you can define the "watch" zone for eye-AF from as small as S. Flex Spot all the way up to Wide. The R5 is more limiting because you only have the Single pt or Full frame to "look" from. The A1 gives a pre-display of bird eye-af working before AF is engaged in all modes. The R5 requires a very specific setup to show the white pre-frame and if you set it up that way you can't even get access to the Single point "watch" area. I found having the pre-frame indication very valuable as you know when the system is lost and can go to a non-eye AF mode to get the shot properly. The A1 also has the versatility to only look for the eye in the size of the AF area you are using but then you have the choice to switch to tracking and have the eye tracked over the entire frame or continue to only find it within the selected AF area (like say a Med Spot or Zone etc). This versatility makes the A1 my preferred system if I had to choose one or the other.
As far as showing eye-af indication for flight the R5 does do it more often. The Sony requires very good user technique with a very stable pan speed to have it show up. I've had it show on swallows in flight a number of times now with the A1 when I pan very smooth. The R5 will show eye-af indication with much poorer technique and as you found with the bird smaller in the frame. The thing is that in the end both cameras get the shots in focus and the A9/A1 underlying (non-eyeAF) system has always been uncanny at delivering sharp heads so that doesn't change.
As you discovered the R5 doesn't have any blackout when shooting in 20FPS ES nor 12FPS MS/EFCS. At 20FPS is also is fairly smooth while actively firing and panning. It falls apart if you let go of the shutter mid-burst and then want to keep panning with a BIF. When you let go it jumps back to live-EVF feed and for a fast bird that can be distracting enough to loose your way. Solution is not to let off the shutter during an active panning/burst. At 12FPS it is less smooth when panning as the EVF display is updated at 12FPS and not 20FPS (both use some form of frame insertion but obviously having that at 20 vs 12 is going to be smoother).
As to distortion....wing distortion isn't too common. Hummingbirds will certainly show it and some other very fast wingbeats where the bird also moves vertically in the frame. Of course the larger the bird is in the frame the more likely it will show it. Still I rarely had shots ruined from wing distortion. Where the R5 does show more issues is with leaning vertical lines like trees, grass and reeds in the background. This did ruin shots for me and if I knew I was in a situation where it could happen I'd switch to 12FPS ECFS instead.
The R5 doesn't really fall down for bird photography. IMO it is the best Canon camera ever made for bird photography to date. It would have to be either my #2 or #3 choice out of all cameras available to date for bird photography. And if the R3 is lower MP then for anyone not living in Florida it will likely remain the best Canon bird photography camera. Although the R3 will likely fix all the other small issues I have with the R5 compared to the A1 and then it will end up being a camera that people have to decide between higher MP for cropping of the R5 vs better features with the R3 (derived from the stacked sensor).
Some of my smaller issues with the R5 were too flush buttons making it hard to know which I was pushing, less button customization than I'd prefer, no toggle option for APS-C/FF, no way to vary the FPS in ES and poor IBIS/IS interaction for panning (requiring one to just turn off IBIS/IS all together).
On Sunday I shot 5843 pictures with my A1 at an airshow (spray and pray at its finest, ), the battery still showed 50% when I was done, no EVF blackout at all this time with the sun behind my shoulder, but it happened a dozen times a week ago when I was shooting hummingbirds, with the sun at similar position relative to me.
Curious as to what your PowerSave start time is set to? Also what refresh are you running the EVF at (60, 120, 240)?
I certainly can't get that many shots over an entire morning for the way I shoot. But I run my PowerSave at 5 or 30mins so it is rarely PowerSaving. I also do a lot of just sitting looking through the EVF, often with AF engaged, dancing dots, just waiting for things to happen so I bet shooting like that make my battery drain a lot worse than others may experience.
I brought two spare batteries with me so I was shocked the first battery still had 50% juice left after more than 5000 shots. I followed Laslo's suggestion to set the power saver at 10 seconds, the view finder is at Hi, not Hi+. For airshows, I only lift the camera to my eye when I see the plane/planes coming. basically there is no "looking through the EVF to wait for something to happy". Very little chimping also, the only time I chimp is to check if I got the vapor cone in the shot or if I capture the moment the two jets crossing each other, like the pictures below, other than these I wait until I unload the files to my computer.
Jun 22, 2021 at 02:27 PM
Previous versions of Douglas L's message #15630272 « Canon R5 vs Sony A1 for Birds »
(You can add to the list)
), the battery still showed 50% when I was done, no EVF blackout at all this time with the sun behind my shoulder, but it happened a dozen times a week ago when I was shooting hummingbirds, with the sun at similar position relative to me.