Hey everyone what’s going on welcome back to a new video today we are revisiting talking about one of my favorite cameras that I picked up as of late and that is the canon eos r5 now I’ve already made a video about this camera back in 2020 and I picked this camera up quite a while ago I’ve had it for actually almost a full year and I figured it’d be a great time to revisit and talk about the things that I enjoy and the things that I don’t enjoy as much about using this camera.
so when I look at a working camera I really want it to work flawlessly without really any sort of weird technical issues going on I just want it to work you know and I think canon is definitely known for that in the professional world as cameras that just work flawlessly they don’t break down they don’t you know have random technical issues while you’re shooting and you can really rely on their cameras to get the job done and make sure that you get things done correctly and efficiently and for me, the r5 is just that it never slips up not even once I’ve taken easily tens of thousands of images on this camera now and it works every single time I honestly have very few complaints in that department when it comes to this camera I really think it is important to say that I think this is one of the best if not the best mirrorless camera that I’ve ever used when it comes to still photography and let me explain.
why first of all I do think it’s annoying that every single canon camera that comes out there’s always a wave of people rushing to figure out what’s wrong with it and focus on that and that’s the reasoning for not picking it up for this camera it was definitely probably the video side of things when in reality for someone like me I’m not really focused on this camera as much for like a hybrid still and video camera we have a separate camera for that the canon c70 and it does a beautiful job of shooting video for this youtube channel when it does come to stills though I do think this camera is phenomenal and I think people need to start kind of remembering how incredible these cameras actually are I myself definitely get caught up in you know lust for better gear constantly and it’s really not the camera that’s most likely limiting your photography or filmmaking ability it’s you.
so if you feel like that is actually the case maybe it’s time to go learn something new and stop worrying about picking up that extra piece of equipment so right off the bat some things that I love about this camera are the 45-megapixel sensor I think that’s right about the sweet spot for me when it comes to a full-frame camera I’ve used medium format cameras in the past that are well over 45 megapixels and I really enjoyed that experience I think for me this is the perfect harmony between being able to shoot really quickly but also having really nice large files to work with after you’re done shooting this camera does shoot 20 frames per second with a mechanical and electronic shutter so there’s really not a lot of things that this camera can’t do it’s great for shooting quick and also longer burst mode sequences so if you’re shooting any sort of action or anything with a lot of movement most likely this camera is going to be able to keep up.
so when it comes to autofocus I do think the r5 is one of the best that canon has ever made it’s absolutely incredible how well this camera keeps up with a wide variety of different shooting scenarios especially with the face detect autofocus I really find this camera messing up really at first sometimes you need to actually tap on the screen and allow the camera to kind of track the fact that you’re looking for but after that, it does an incredible job of kind of sticking with your subject and making sure that it stays in constant focus I feel like with a DSLR properly focusing using autofocus was much more of a skill and with all these brand new mirrorless cameras coming out it makes it so easy to just make sure that everything is in focus constantly I think we take that for granted I remember back in the day when I was using older canon DSLRs you really had to kind of know what you were doing to actually allow yourself to make sure that the photos were in focus consistently.
sometimes you’d miss focus it would misfire and with all these brand new mirrorless cameras coming out that doesn’t really happen anymore and the r5 is no different so another thing that I do love is the dual card slot capabilities here and as you can see there’s a cf express card slot here and also an sd card slot and why I love this is the cf express cards are just so incredibly reliable and fast they’re way faster than any card I’ve ever used with a read and write speed of around 1700 megabytes per second which you obviously need if you’re shooting the kind of very large video frame rates and resolutions on this camera.
but when it comes to stills you can literally press and hold for hundreds of photos and it’s never going to lag or stop once and that’s how fast these cards are when it comes to a professional scenario i do think dual card slots are pretty much essential when it comes to just relying on the actual camera system usually i will write raw files to both cards with the primary card being the cf express and then the backup card being the sd i could also see this being valuable for even writing jpegs to the backup card or something like that if you want just a lower resolution and you don’t want to have the sd card lag behind the cf express but overall the cfxpress is a great implementation into the r5 when it comes to the rf lens selection for the rf system canon has done a phenomenal job with making really fast incredible lenses i know they’re super expensive and that’s definitely probably a deterrent for a lot of people but for someone like myself i really do think that investing in the best gear that you can afford is really important and it’s something that you should do for example this is the canon 28-70 f2 and the reality of it is this is an incredibly expensive lens.
it’s so heavy and with a constant f2 aperture it’s pretty pricey but the reality of it is you got to invest in nice equipment and the rf lens selection that canon offers is amazing i use the 28 to 70 in tandem with the 15 to 35 that we’re filming on right now and in the future i definitely want to pick up a 70 to 200 and potentially an 85 mil or a 50 mil prime as well but for now i’m really happy with this lens choice for the most part the canon 28-70 gets the job done in pretty much any scenario that i need so i know that probably one of the most common lenses that you probably own personally is going to be a canon ef mount lens which is the version before rf and you can obviously mount them onto the r5 or any other rf mount system but the reality of it is the autofocus isn’t nearly as fast or consistent as the rf mount lenses and also i think using adapters in general doesn’t necessarily provide the best possible outcome when it comes to image sharpness and also autofocus capabilities also for the most part pretty much every single rf lens that i’ve looked at purchasing has image stabilization built in which is definitely something that the ef lenses did not have in the past you’d have to buy an f4 version of an f 2.8 lens in order to get that image stabilization and especially when we’re shooting.
so much handheld video it makes it really really important that we have that image stabilization in the lens, unfortunately, this is probably one of the only lenses that canon offers now that doesn’t have uh image stabilization built-in but I mainly use this for stills so it’s not a super big deal for me but on the video side of things that’s definitely something to consider so on the flip side of that I’ve seen a lot of people mount vintage lenses on the r5 using an adapter again you’re probably not going to get the best performance versus a native mount lens but I have seen the character and the overall look and feel of the image to look quite a bit different than the rf lenses using anything from vintage contacts lenses to Zeiss lenses to Nikon lenses I’m very interested in trying this out so I will keep you guys posted.
if I do decide to go down that road so when it comes to actually edit these photos I do think the r5 files are honestly pretty great there’s a lot of dynamic range to work with and the colors are easy to manipulate I do think however fuji definitely takes the cake when it comes to ease of use when you’re editing you know the colors that you can pull out and the natural skin tones that are already kind of baked into the fuji raw files specifically the medium format gfx series it’s just a lot better if I’m being honest where I do think canon shines overall is just kind of with reliability and ease of use so for me that’s the reason I’m working with this one.
so I am shooting a few bigger commercial jobs in the next few months and again this is why I chose this camera it’s not exactly the most exciting camera per se but I do think it’s the most reliable and the easiest to use and you’re just going to get a great image every single time are you going to get something really interesting and unique not necessarily but again it all really comes down to what kind of artist you are and how creative you actually want to get with the tools that you have so I’ve been able to convince quite a few people who shoot on sony Leica and Nikon to switch over to the r5 system and they’ve all been extremely happy with it quite a few of my friends.
who shoot big commercial jobs here in la have switched over to the system again just because of that reliability and at the end of the day it does take great pictures and that’s really all that a lot of people need to switch over and choose a different camera system so on the video side of things i did want to make a quick note here that i have upgraded to the latest firmware which allows for c log 3 on the r5 which in my opinion is a pretty big deal the original c-log just wasn’t really that great there wasn’t a lot of color that you could pull out of it and it wasn’t flat enough of an image i think where you could actually work with it and add a really nice grade to it in post but now with c log 3 i do think it makes it a lot easier to actually use this somewhat as a video camera we use it a lot in tandem with the c70 as a b cam and it really allows for a pretty seamless transition between the two cameras especially when we’re recording an interview it just makes a lot of sense since that update c log 3 is just.
so much better in pretty much every single way with better dynamic range and you can pull colors out of this footage a lot easier than you used to and overall I’m pretty happy with that update I do think it really kind of opens the door for this camera in a lot of different ways when we do shoot on this camera we rarely shoot in the 8k option usually it’s just 4k standard or 4k hq again we’re just trying to match the c70 which shoots 4k 10 bit 422 and the closest that we can get to that with the r5 the better we don’t need to shoot at a different resolution it’s great that it offers 8k but in the reality of things why do you need to shoot 8k for an interview especially on a mirrorless camera so that’s kind of our reasoning behind that so overall I really do love this camera again it’s not exactly the sexiest camera ever made but it does what I needed to do and that’s enough for me I think when you think about this camera versus some of the other offerings from fuji specifically.
it’s a really tough decision for those of you who don’t know i used to have the fuji gfx100 and i did end up selling that camera for a number of different reasons and i really do miss shooting with that system ultimately the gfx100 just kind of didn’t tick all the boxes for me i did see the brand new gfx100s that just came out and i’m very interested in trying that out potentially to see if it’s a little bit more refined versus the original gfx 100 but we’ll have to wait and see i think if you’re looking at this camera as kind of a hybrid video stills camera it’s not exactly really what it’s made to do and i think that’s the problem with kind of people looking at this camera system and overall mirrorless cameras in general you know you have cameras from sony from fuji and from canon obviously that you know seemingly do it all right they’re jack of all trades but the reality of it is they’re not going to do everything perfectly and you kind of have to use these cameras for really what their strengths are not their weaknesses and i do think that this camera’s strength by far is in the stills department again it is one of the best if not the best canon stills camera that i’ve ever used.
I’m overall just really happy with it I do love the images everything is pretty easy to use and it’s really reliable the reality of it is if you want a killer stills camera with very few limitations technically speaking this camera is for you so all in all hopefully that kind of sheds some light on my experience with the r5 after owning it for the better part of a year if you guys have any questions feel free to leave them down below and thank you so much as always for watching we’ll see you guys next week before this video wraps up I did want to take a moment to thank today’s sponsor which is Squarespace for sponsoring today’s episode.
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