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Yesterday morning I made my first birding trip with my new R5. It was a bit of a bummer because after a long drive I only found two birds that made good test subjects, both of them Bald Eagles, and I never did have a decent chance with a bird in flight. But I did get preliminary answers to several of my many questions.<\/p>\n
I put off buying the R5 for about 18 months because of several concerns I had, including but not limited to the following:<\/p>\n
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- Would I be able to adjust to the electronic viewfinder and its several quirks, including a short lag before it turns on after you half-depress the shutter button and the extra drain on the battery?<\/li>\n
- What would the image quality\/sharpness look like when matched with my favorite lens, the Canon EF500 f\/4, and a 1.4 teleconverter?<\/li>\n
- The image file size is huge (45 MP), much larger than I prefer, but the R5 allows shooting in compressed RAW which reduces the file size to about 27 MP. Would the compression affect image quality? Research tells me it doesn’t but I wanted my own proof, or at least evidence.<\/li>\n
- With most full frame cameras like the R5 I’d lose the optical reach of the cropped frame sensor I’ve always used but the R5 offers a cropped frame option in the settings and besides, the large file size helps to make up for the loss of optical reach. Would I be happy with how the cropped frame option works and the results?<\/li>\n
- Would I have any unexpected issues using the required adapter with the R5 when it’s matched to an EF lens?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/bald-eagle-0296-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/p>\n1\/2000, f\/5.6, ISO 500, Canon R5<\/em>, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n
Yesterday morning this adult Bald Eagle provided preliminary answers to some of my questions. ‘He’ was perched on a rocky outcrop on a cliff above me and he was tolerant of my presence so I had time to fumble-fart around with at least some of the camera buttons and dials that I’m still largely unfamiliar with. For this shot I was shooting compressed RAW in 1.6 crop mode with my teleconverter attached so it gave me the same effective reach (1120mm) I get with my old cropped frame Canon 7D Mark II attached to the same gear.<\/p>\n
I’m more than happy with the results related to image quality, even though I may still have some tweaks to make in the color profile and elsewhere. The photos I took of both eagles were tack sharp, so sharp I had to reduce by half the amount of sharpening I usually do in post processing.<\/p>\n
I’d prefer not to have the brief viewfinder lag when I half-depress the shutter button but I can largely work around it by developing the habit of half-depressing my shutter button as I lift my camera to my eye. The extra battery drain, especially while sitting on a bird with the viewfinder active while waiting for action, will always be a problem but having extra batteries and a battery pack makes it an issue I’m pretty sure I can live with.<\/p>\n
I can see no loss of image quality when shooting in compressed RAW, none at all – that’s some amazing technology. I’ve noticed no problems using the adapter. Since there’s no mirror box on the R5 the overall length and weight of my combined camera and lens seems the same as it was before. It still fits into my lens caddy<\/a><\/span><\/span> without alterations (as long as I don’t have the battery pack attached.)<\/p>\n
I still haven’t tested the R5 with birds in flight and that may be a good thing because I also don’t have the incredibly complicated and convoluted autofocus settings figured out and set to my liking. I’m anxious to test the animal\/eye detection in particular.<\/p>\n
But yesterday morning was a start and so far I’m very happy with the results.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
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Note: I’m sure some of my regular readers noticed that my copyright watermark is missing from this image. The watermark is one of the Custom Shapes of Photoshop but I still haven’t been able to import it into PS on my new computer (it’s more complicated than you might think.) I’ll add the watermark to the image at a later time, if I remember…<\/em><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The first real test of my new camera, the Canon R5.<\/p>\n