My new Canon R5 Mark II arrived on August 20, 2024. I have been a happy user of the original Canon R5. I wanted to share my initial impressions.
The body feels very similar to the original R5, which I think is good.
The on/off switch is now on the right instead of the left. On the left, there is now a toggle to switch from stills to video. I am not used to this yet and I keep switching to video when I want to turn the body on or off. I am sure I will get used to this.
The viewfinder on the Mark II is much bigger. I love this. The new viewfinder is also clear and sharp to my eye. I thought the original viewfinder was nice. The new viewfinder feels like a welcome luxury.
The camera is very fast. I set up the camera to rely solely on the electronic shutter. From what I have read there is almost no rolling shutter. I’m not sure that I need to use the mechanical shutter.
The autofocus finds the eyes of people really fast even if the eye is far away and therefore small. It’s a big step up.
The R5 Mark II can be set play a realistic shutter sound when it’s using electronic shutter. I find this useful; the sound can be pretty low.
When you enable pre-continuous shooting, the camera starts recording images when you half-press the shutter button, but it keeps the images in its buffer and doesn’t record them to your memory card until you fully press the shutter button. This allows you to take up 15 shots (in RAW) before pressing the shutter button, which improves the chances of capturing the right moment. A symbol in the viewfinder tells you when this is on and counts down the shots.
However, if you enable pre-continuous shooting, Automatic Exposure Bracketing (AEB) is grayed out and there is no explanation of why it’s grayed out in the menu or the camera manual. This was frustrating. When a function is grayed out, I think there ought to be an explanation of why it’s grayed out. Canon is usually pretty good about providing such explanations and I hope this will be addressed in a firmware update. I use AEB in difficult lighting situations. I need to find a quick way to turn pre-continuous shooting on and off so I can use AEB when I need it.
I have yet to test high ISO performance but found this post by Canon Ambassador Helen Bartlett helpful.
I made the portraits in this post using the Canon R5 Mark II at a StreetMeetDC event.
Awesome insight David!
Thank you!