So is the Canon R5 a bird photography body? (3 Viewers)

[colincurry]

Whilst I miss the reach of my 7D2, I shall just have to get used to it and refrain from snapping black dots in the sky. My 100-400ii and 1.4 tciii are quite effective. I am getting used to BIF shots and have some nice starlings whizzing by. I have looked at this video from Jan Wegener

and have concluded that the 100-500 RF is not for me. I do not sit in hides but just walk around. The 2 x tciii does not seem worth it. I have taken his advice and yesterday adjusted the aperture to F11 (not understanding the physics behind this) and we shall see what happens.
Like others, I am frustrated by the inability of the eye tracking to work only when there are no distractions whatsoever but it is starting to help with BIF the more I practice. No close hirundines in the sun yet but I did track distant swifts.
I am impressed by the depth of information in the CRaw files and the curative powers of Photoshop which helped me turn the second and third starling snaps into something a lot better

 

[Russ P]

Willow Warbler with a snack:
R5 + RF 100-500mm @ 500mm; f/7.1, ISO 320; 1/640s


Just lovin' this combo for walkabouts!

Russ

 

[Dave Williams]

As others have said here and elsewhere there are two drawbacks I have found with the R5. The time it takes to wake up and fire off a shot, and the ability to instantly lock on to a subject in a cluttered leaf bound situation. Once you have found your subject though I find there is a good chance to lock on when it moves using eye detect and using all the available focus points. My own preference is to use single point Af on the shutter button and eye detect AF on both rear buttons to avoid me fumbling for the button. If eye detect fails I revert to using the shutter button to refocus on either the subject or something at similar distance. I find it far easier to co-ordinate between forefinger and thumb than using my thumb to move between two back buttons set for different things. There is no need to disengage the shutter button from autofocus . The 45mp of the R5 allow for some big crops too.

 

[Dave Williams]

A couple of distant Swallows using the same technique.By know means prize winning shots due to the size of the crop and the poor light I had to work with to get a decent shutter speed but it does demonstrate to me that the AF works a lot better in this camera than any other Canon body I have owned which is most top end ones with the exception of the 1DX3

 

[stevo]

Do you have to dedicate a button to eye af,or can you enable it so it stays on all the time?

 

[Dave Williams]

Do you have to dedicate a button to eye af,or can you enable it so it stays on all the time?

You could have it enabled all the time but you wouldn't want to as it limits performance in other ways.

 

[Frank Anderson]

Not so sure about the low light performance advantage either

The problem with picking out a website that supports your claim, especially that website, is that you can search for anything on YouTube to back up what you believe. The trouble with Tony & Chelsea is I've seen so many times where they have, at best, miss represented something, at worse, blatantly lied. I think they and other famous YouTubers have become so hero worshiped, that so many people believe everything they say is as fact.

Have a look at another of their videos where they make the case where high megapixels can be a bad thing and make your images worse or that you can be getting in reality, only half of those megapixels in resolution. Without having to trawl through my YouTube history, I've seen at least two videos showing the R6 having better low noise than the R5.

The reality is, given the same generation of technology, a lower megapixel camera will, to some level, outperform a higher megapixel camera at higher ISO, it's just a case of to how much. That's just the nature of how the technology works. You don’t hear many people claiming 4/5 cameras can out perform full frame with lower noise. Same reason.

 

[Barred Wobbler]

Today

 

[Essex Tern]

The problem with picking out a website that supports your claim, especially that website, is that you can search for anything on YouTube to back up what you believe. The trouble with Tony & Chelsea is I've seen so many times where they have, at best, miss represented something, at worse, blatantly lied. I think they and other famous YouTubers have become so hero worshiped, that so many people believe everything they say is as fact.

Have a look at another of their videos where they make the case where high megapixels can be a bad thing and make your images worse or that you can be getting in reality, only half of those megapixels in resolution. Without having to trawl through my YouTube history, I've seen at least two videos showing the R6 having better low noise than the R5.

The reality is, given the same generation of technology, a lower megapixel camera will, to some level, outperform a higher megapixel camera at higher ISO, it's just a case of to how much. That's just the nature of how the technology works. You don’t hear many people claiming 4/5 cameras can out perform full frame with lower noise. Same reason.

I don’t disagree with what you say, other than that I was not making a “claim”, all I was doing was throwing out a recent video I had seen at the time (not searched for to make a point!) and I was throwing it in for discussion in case of interest to anyone.

I have seen and read many reviews of cameras, at times conflicting with eachother, so also would not hang on to one as gospel over others, especially if it conflicted with popular opinion.

 

[Barred Wobbler]

Not altogether easy with the R5, but almost impossible with the 7dii. They were shifting with a blustery wind.

I've photographed hirindines in flight with the old kit and although I binned a lot today, I would have been lucky to have kept any before, given the conditions.