Just moved from 5D4 to R5; What pitfalls do I need to be aware of?

So, one of the sensors on my 5D4 went south on vacation to Wyoming last month. So, I spoke with my camera guy here in Dallas at Competitive Camera and purchased three R5s. If you look at my gallery, you will see that I mainly (should say exclusively) landscape and wildlife. All of this is for fun. I do not sell my shots. I only print them locally and either decorate our home with them or give them as gifts.

That being said, what are some pitfalls that I need to be aware of in moving to the R5? I have purchased a couple of R5 books (the Canon guide is a little difficult for these old eyes to read).

I mainly shoot a few hundred shots in a day between all bodies and then go back to the RV to move them to my laptop (LRC) and a backup hard drive. Then I start over clean the next day. I don't do flash, although I have a couple of 600s just in case. You can find my gear list in my profile and I use almost everything in the bag with the 5D4s.

I look forward to hearing from 5D4 users that went to R5s and what the learning curve was and where they with they had concentrated more.

Any and all guidance is appreciated.

Wishing everyone a happy and safe 4th!

Scott
Allen, TX

In the general case the R5 drains the battery faster than a 5D4 so carry extras. You may want to set the R5 so it turns off things like the rear panel display & viewfinder in the shortest time to save battery.

I switched from a 5D IV to an R6II rather than an R5, but the R6 and R5 are similar, so I think the issues are similar.

I don't find the battery drain to be too big a deal, but the R5, with a denser sensor, may drain it faster. I carry a spare battery but rarely have to use it.

My main caution is that the camera's controls differ more from the 5D IV than you might expect. For example, there are three dials rather than two, the Q menu works somewhat differently, the AF is of course tremendously different, etc. So my advice is just use it a lot for a few weeks when you don't care about the results, just to get a feel for it and to give yourself time for things to start becoming automatic.

There are also some new features that require (or required for me) some tinkering before I got comfortable with them--e.g., the automated focus bracketing.

HannahsDad wrote in post #19537037
=Hannah'sDad;19537037]​So, one of the sensors on my 5D4 went south on vacation to Wyoming last month. So, I spoke with my camera guy here in Dallas at Competitive Camera and purchased three R5s. If you look at my gallery, you will see that I mainly (should say exclusively) landscape and wildlife. All of this is for fun. I do not sell my shots. I only print them locally and either decorate our home with them or give them as gifts.

That being said, what are some pitfalls that I need to be aware of in moving to the R5? I have purchased a couple of R5 books (the Canon guide is a little difficult for these old eyes to read).

I mainly shoot a few hundred shots in a day between all bodies and then go back to the RV to move them to my laptop (LRC) and a backup hard drive. Then I start over clean the next day. I don't do flash, although I have a couple of 600s just in case. You can find my gear list in my profile and I use almost everything in the bag with the 5D4s.

I look forward to hearing from 5D4 users that went to R5s and what the learning curve was and where they with they had concentrated more.

Any and all guidance is appreciated.

Wishing everyone a happy and safe 4th!

Scott
Allen, TX

Battery drain is much higher. Will want to go set a shorter time for the LCD to shut off and possibly program a button to do it, as well. I set my SET button for this in order to help keep it from thinking it needed to be On all the time.

Set Wireless into Standby unless you're actively using a wireless/BT connection. That radio, also, drains a TON of battery.

AF system is a lot more sensitive, and your usual shooting techniques may need to be adjusted...This is one of the biggest changes for me, since I had been used to the set AF point locations in dSLRs. Having the camera able to focus in (basically) any portion of the frame makes things easier but I had to retrain myself to stop using the standard workarounds, like focus/recompose, Back-button AF, etc.

You can customize your shooting settings a LOT more with this body and some of the customizations are a bit hidden. For example, if you normally have Back-button AF enabled, you can now specify the TYPE and characteristics of it, separately from the AF set to the AF button. If you go in to the custom settings menu, selected the button you want to customize your AF for (this can only be done for a couple of specific buttons, primarily the AF-ON button), if you press the Info button, it will give you the option to set your focus type (One Shot/SERVO), method (Face detect, Single Point, Area, etc) and Case (1-4).

There are settings for refresh rate, etc on the EVF to smooth things out, reduce a bit of the lag and generally make that experience nicer. Again, at the expense of battery, but the tradeoffs have been well worth it to me in this case.

I went from 5D4 to R6, but the potential gotcha I'm adding applies to the R5 too (not to mention other mirrorless bodies). It's this: remember that there can be a small but noticeable degradation in bokeh smoothness under the following conditions:

- wide aperture
- fast shutter speed
- EFCS shutter mode

Under these conditions you may wish to switch to full mechanical shutter (or fully electronic?) to sidestep the phenomenon. This likely wouldn't have been an issue with your 5D4 as it shoots full mechanical whenever you're using the viewfinder.

Those are all GREAT ideas. I knew the battery drained faster from the folks where I purchased it and suspected as much when I looked at the specs for the "new" battery vs. the old. But, throttling things back that aren't required is a great idea. I appreciate all the thoughts and ideas. Now a couple of questions.

I have 10-12 batteries for my 5D4s (LP-E6, I think). I know that they have about 85% of the capacity of the newer batteries, but since I do not shoot for extended periods, will these work without harming the camera? And is there any functionality that I would lose by using them?

Again, thanks for all the great comments. It's unfortunate that we have already taken our summer vacation or else I would be out there in northwest Wyoming firing away!

Scott

HannahsDad wrote in post #19537120
=Hannah'sDad;19537120]​Those are all GREAT ideas. I knew the battery drained faster from the folks where I purchased it and suspected as much when I looked at the specs for the "new" battery vs. the old. But, throttling things back that aren't required is a great idea. I appreciate all the thoughts and ideas. Now a couple of questions.

I have 10-12 batteries for my 5D4s (LP-E6, I think). I know that they have about 85% of the capacity of the newer batteries, but since I do not shoot for extended periods, will these work without harming the camera? And is there any functionality that I would lose by using them?

Again, thanks for all the great comments. It's unfortunate that we have already taken our summer vacation or else I would be out there in northwest Wyoming firing away!

Scott

Depending on the battery you may lose the fastest "High Speed Continuous+" (note the plus sign) shutter speeds. See page 911 of the R5 manual or search "high speed continuous" in it.

dangermoney wrote in post #19537130
Depending on the battery you may lose the fastest "High Speed Continuous+" (note the plus sign) shutter speeds. See page 911 of the R5 manual or search "high speed continuous" in it.

Thanks for the detailed reply. It is much appreciated!

With the regular LP-E6 you may also lose the in-camera charging ability. For the R7 at least, that and the reduced burst speed are the two downgrades that I know of when using the LP-E6 rather than the LP-E6NH. IIRC I can get in-camera charging with the LP-E6N, but the full H+ speed needs the NH.

If you have a lot of batteries it's not going to be an issue, but in-camera charging can be a lifesaver if things go wrong on a trip.

Can't speak for "pitfalls" per say, but there are far, far more configurations, and customizations than in any previous DSLR's.

Fortunately, there are an enormous number of online tutorials, & videos to ease the pain, and many on this, forum will be glad to point you to them

Ok, so I shoot the 5D4 and not the R5, but one of the things that keep coming to my mind when I'm thinking about upgrading to the R5 are file size and frame rate. Not necessarily pitfalls, but that seems to me to be significant differences that you have to be prepared for. The 5D4 max frame rate is (I believe) 7 fps at 30.4 MP per frame whereas the R5, in mirrorless mode, is 20 fps at 45 MP per frame.

Tim

Thanks to all who responded. Great comments and many ideas to consider. Work has been hectic, so I haven't even managed to get a single shot off since I purchased them last week! Once I have something to post, I certainly will.

Scott

Orogeny wrote in post #19537275
Ok, so I shoot the 5D4 and not the R5, but one of the things that keep coming to my mind when I'm thinking about upgrading to the R5 are file size and frame rate. Not necessarily pitfalls, but that seems to me to be significant differences that you have to be prepared for. The 5D4 max frame rate is (I believe) 7 fps at 30.4 MP per frame whereas the R5, in mirrorless mode, is 20 fps at 45 MP per frame.

Tim

A valid concern, but two things:

1) I have 70K+ of photos (jpg+raw) on my PC now and only take up 2 TB of space

2) I have 12 TB of Internal SSD storage and 24 TB of External fireproof/waterproof storage

So, from a size perspective, I think I plenty of room. I think it is more likely that one of my backups will fail before I run out of room (and yes, the backup drives are redundant).

Thanks again to everyone for the great responses.

Scott

Orogeny wrote in post #19537275
Not necessarily pitfalls, but that seems to me to be significant differences that you have to be prepared for. The 5D4 max frame rate is (I believe) 7 fps at 30.4 MP per frame whereas the R5, in mirrorless mode, is 20 fps at 45 MP per frame.

7 * 30.4 = 212.8MB every second during burst shooting
20 * 45 = 900MB every second during burst shooting

Over FOUR times the volume of data in the same period of time.

HannahsDad wrote in post #19540065
=Hannah'sDad;19540065]
A valid concern, but ... from a size perspective, I think I plenty of room. I think it is more likely that one of my backups will fail before I run out of room (and yes, the backup drives are redundant).

Capacity is not the only consideration

• It will take over four times as much time to copy the same duration period of burst rate photos from memory card to wherever. Whether making a backup copy of data or simply sending the photos to your chosen photo editor, it will take more time.
  
• Your camera buffer is a consideration and the camera's ability to write that data from buffer to memory card...how many frames can be taken consecutively before the buffer fills and you cannot take another photo on old camera vs. new camera?

Wilt wrote in post #19540355
7 * 30.4 = 212.8MB every second during burst shooting
20 * 45 = 900MB every second during burst shooting

Over FOUR times the volume of data in the same period of time.

Capacity is not the only consideration

• It will take over four times as much time to copy the same duration period of burst rate photos from memory card to wherever. Whether making a backup copy of data or simply sending the photos to your chosen photo editor, it will take more time.
  
• Your camera buffer is a consideration and the camera's ability to write that data from buffer to memory card...how many frames can be taken consecutively before the buffer fills and you cannot take another photo on old camera vs. new camera?

All good considerstions. But, this is the way photography is going, so I thought I would max out my PC speed, RAM and storage for that very reason.

Scott