Sunlight, dearest sunlight, I am calling you across the old room. Sunlight, dearest sunlight, I would like to come out of the womb. Something in me. Feels like all of me and we dance All of... Come on in Open my heart To this world Open my heart Hey there!
I got the brand new Canon R5 Mark II. It just shipped out and I got it in this morning. I quickly set it up and I'm out here trying to get some test footage so I can share with all of you.
Also give my first impressions and thoughts on the camera. Of course I will be doing my deep dive testing but I just I wanted to see what the camera was capable of and get some images with the camera. It's been four years since the R5 Mark I came out and I think a lot of you out there and myself included have been really anticipating the release of the R5 Mark II.
So like I said, I'm just out here trying to get a little bit of test footage so I can see what this camera was capable of and the weather hasn't really been cooperating that much. It's been pretty cloudy, but I'll do my best and try to share some footage with you. This world, this world, I'll- The city is in love Something in me feels like home See, it is in my... Something in me... Feels like a whole world to me...
Open my heart... To this world... So hopefully you enjoyed the footage in the opening sequence.
I had a lot of fun out shooting that. Now, a couple of disclaimers right off the bat here. First of all, this is a first impressions video.
This is not a review whatsoever. At the time of recording this, I've only had the camera for 24 hours. I also don't want to mention that this video is not sponsored whatsoever. I don't have a relationship with Canon. I paid for the R5 II with my own money.
So obviously the opinion about the camera and everything I'm about to say is completely my own. Now, if you are new to the channel, welcome. My name is Josh and on this channel, I do review a lot of camera stuff. I do deep dives.
I also do tutorials and user guides. I focus specifically on video. So if you're into that kind of stuff, then you're in the right place. And like I said before, this video does not have a sponsor.
So if you'd like to support the channel, there are affiliate links in the description for the R5 too, especially, but all the gear that I use on a regular basis. So I would really appreciate if you check that out. Now, all the footage that you saw at the beginning of this video was all shot in the 4K 24 fine mode.
That's the... oversampled 8K to 4K. I shot everything in C-Log2, which is new for the R5 Mark II, in the XF EVC, which is the H.265 codec in long op and all at the base ISO of 800. Now, there are a lot of recording modes in this camera, and I will definitely be covering those in depth in future videos.
But when I had to make the decision to go out and shoot, I think that this is probably the most common codec and style that people are going to be shooting in. So that's... So I decided to shoot with and like I said I will be testing all our stuff in later videos in terms of the gear that I used I shot it on two different lenses the 24 to 70 RF lens and the RF 100 to 500 These are some of my favorite lenses if you're wondering why this lens is black. It's usually wet It's because I have a skin on it from a company called Alpha guard So I just to protect it also in terms of ND filters I use the DC true color 1 to 5 stop variable ND filter I use this filter all the time and a lot of people are asking me for recommendations for variable NDs.
This one is my favorite. And of course, this will be linked down in the description if you want to try to pick one up. Okay.
First thing, of course, is to talk about the image quality. The colors, in my opinion, are just amazing. And it's exactly what you'd expect from Canon.
The oversampled image is crispy with a lot of details, but overall, the way I would describe it is that the image looks accurate, clean, very pleasant, and punchy with a lot of life. I know some of this can definitely be credited to the lenses, of course. of course the RF 24 to 70 and 100 to 500 are fantastic lenses, but overall I just don't have any complaints about the image quality. It just looks really nice right out of camera with very little grading.
It's produces a really nice image. Okay. Let's talk about log and dynamic range. C log two, C log two, C log two. This is probably the biggest upgrade and thing that I was most excited about with the R5 Mark II.
Now, Having tested pretty much every Canon camera in the last few years, the R3, the R5, the R6 Mark II, the R7, and so on, C70, R5C, all those cameras, it's just really cool for me to see C-Log2 in a mirrorless camera. Even the R5C, which is labeled as a cinema camera, does not have C-Log2. So very, very cool.
And so the biggest question I've had when I heard the announcement of the R5 Mark II, and probably a lot of you are wondering as well, is dynamic range. Now, there has been a lot of discussion online about the dynamic range for photo. And personally, like I said earlier, I don't do any photography.
I just mainly focus on video. So I'm going to be talking about video in this because that's what I do and that's what's important to me. So just keep that in mind that there's other people testing out photography and I recommend you check out that stuff.
But I really just am going to comment on the dynamic range from what I saw in shooting video. So there's a couple of shots I want to take a look at. I think this shot of the field is a great example to see how much dynamic range we have going on in this camera. Look at the sky. There is so much detail in the highlights there both in the sky and also on the grass.
And if you look at the shadows in the foreground and also the darker parts in the background in the trees, you can see there's a lot of detail there. The other thing is the highlight roll-off. If you look at the sky and also the grass, you can see that it's very smooth. You don't see a lot of those like white sort of clippy bits that you might see on other mirrorless cameras.
I was really impressed by that. And another thing is just how much detail is in the highlights. This is something that Canon mirrorless cameras have not been very good at.
And I see it's really good here. You got great highlight roll off, a lot of dynamic range and a lot of highlight detail. Now in this clip here, it's more of the same. I specifically, if you look at the grass there, it doesn't just blow out, it looks smooth and the highlight roll off is nice.
And there's just a lot of detail in the highlights. And to me, having analyzed a lot of different Canon cameras, you know, I don't see this all the time. And at the same time, if you look into the darker parts of the image, you definitely have detail in the shadows.
It's able to capture a lot of dynamic range in one shot. A lot of this has to do with C-Log2, but I think also with the sensor. And in another clip here to look at, you can see deep into the shadows.
And if you look at the brighter parts, like on the bark of the trees or in the field behind the trees, you can see that the highlights look really pleasant and hold onto detail. So I also wanna mention that when I was out shooting these high dynamic range scenes, Of course, besides the ones where I was literally just pointing the camera directly at the sun during those sunset shots, because I was basically shooting directly at the sun, I could actually keep all of the information inside of the histogram and waveform without clipping highlights or crushing shadows. And what I mean by this is that when I'm out shooting a scene like that, generally what I do is I expose as high as I possibly can, and it just starts to clip, and then I lower the exposure just a little bit to protect the highlights. Now, often when I'm shooting on Canon mirrorless cameras, especially in C-Log3, it's going to be...
When you do that, you wind up crushing out some of the shadows and you lose some of that information because it can only capture so much dynamic range. But when I was out shooting, it was all contained within the histogram and waveform. And when I got home to look at it in post, of course, besides those sunset shots where the sun was clipping a little bit, nothing was clipped and the highlights or the shadows. So I was really impressed by that. Now, again, this is a preliminary test.
Just looking at some sample footage. I will definitely be doing my normal deep dive dynamic range testing soon and comparing with other cameras. But I'm very hopeful about the dynamic range coming out of this camera. And the big part of it, I think, is the new sensor design here. But also having C-Log2 is just absolutely fantastic.
Now, if you haven't used C-Log2 before, it is very flat coming out of the camera. But it grades really, really easily. Because it has so much latitude. Now, when I was grading all these clips, I just used a few color space transforms in Resolve. And I did some light work with exposure, contrast, and saturation.
But what I found, which is common with a lot of other Canon cameras, is it doesn't require a lot of color work right out of camera to get that sort of look. Now, Canon cameras have a look just like Sony cameras or Lumix cameras or Leica or RED or whatever. It's a look that you may or may not like.
right out of camera, in my opinion, it does have a pretty pleasing image and it did capture a lot of dynamic range. Of course, I'll have to get more nerdy about this, but preliminary results, I think the dynamic range looked pretty good. All right, next I want to talk about autofocus and stabilization.
So most of the footage that I showed you, I was using manual focus like I usually do, but I did try out autofocus on some of the birds. Now I was in a spot where I don't usually go birding, so I didn't have a lot of luck finding birds and a lot of them were little and those are much harder to get shots of. In my opinion, the animal autofocus worked similarly to the R3 from what I recall.
Now, I haven't shot on the camera in a little bit, and of course, I don't have them to compare them side by side. But just from memory recall, it worked about the same. It was really quick.
Like when you hit the AF on button, it snapped to focus really quickly. So maybe the same, maybe just slightly better, but it was already really good in the R3. Now, I did test out the autofocus quickly in my driveway, just filming myself with, you know, a human. subject detection and it seemed very snappy, quick, accurate, didn't really hunt, maybe almost too quick.
I might have to dial back the speed and sensitivity a little bit so it looks a little bit more natural, but yeah, very very sticky. I think it's gonna work really well for focusing on people. Now the stabilization seems similar to me with the R3, maybe just slightly better and the reason why I'm bringing up the R3 because in my opinion after testing all these Canon cameras, the R3 has the best autofocus and stay about of all the cameras before the R5 II and the R1, which I haven't tried either.
Now, all the footage that you saw in the opening sequence was shot handheld. I did stabilize one shot in post, but the rest of them, I just wanted to leave it as is and show you what it looked like right out of camera. Of course, like I said, I was shooting on the RF 24 to 70 and RF 100 to 500, which both have image stabilization, but I didn't have any of the digital stabilization turned on. So autofocus and stab, I'd say is probably on par with the R3, or maybe just slightly better for my initial testing that I did earlier on.
Next, let's talk about the ergonomics, the build quality, and the usability of the R5 Mark II. So here I have it next to the R5C to give you a sense of the size and design and all that sort of stuff. I'd say that the main design of the body is very similar to the R5C and probably also to the R5 Mark I. As you can see, the sort of main shape of the camera is very similar minus the fan bump on the back of the R5C. But overall, I'd say they are very, very similar both in terms of the design, the size.
the grips, all that sort of stuff. They look very, very similar and have a similar feel to me personally. Specifically about the R5 II, I really enjoyed the EVF.
This is the EVF, I believe it's out of the R3, which was one of my favorites to date. So I really liked that. You can see how big it is and easy to see through. Also, it just looks great and it's easy to see outside. Of course, we have a really nice Canon LCD flip screen, which I believe is the same on the R5 Mark I. No complaints about that.
And also the R5C. Like I said, the grip feels really good. It's nice and deep. It's comfortable.
It's grippy. Sort of what you'd expect with a Canon camera. And one thing about this camera when I got it, it just made me really want to go and shoot with it because it feels really good in the hand. A couple of things I want to point out. This is awesome, guys.
Finally, Canon has a full-size HDMI port in their camera. It actually looks funny to me after shooting on so many of their other mirrorless cameras to see a full-size HDMI port, but it does have that. Now, a couple other things to point out. I really do like the on-off switch we've seen on some of the other cameras right here, because when you're holding the camera in your hand, you can easily flip it on and off without having to move your hand too much.
I like that. There have been some complaints about the photo video switch being on the left-hand side. For me personally, I don't do a lot of photography, but if you do have it up to your eye and you're focusing or zooming, you have to take your hand off the lens, switch it, go back.
So, you know, that is something that I've heard some people complain about. For me, not really a big deal. It has this new hot shoe cover that's really tough to get off, but it does seem very protective.
In terms of the cards, it has one CFexpress B and one SD card. And I do wish that it had two CFexpress B cards, but it only has one. These are my cards I've been using lately. These Angelbird Pro SEs. They're fairly inexpensive.
They've been very reliable. The only thing I have to mention is a little plastic has been breaking off the bottom. I've been meaning to reach out to Angelbird about that, but yep. And these are the SD cards. I like these pro grade V90 256 gigabytes.
Again, links down in the description. If you want to pick either of these up in terms of the battery life, this does have the new LPE 6P battery. And I didn't really notice a huge difference between this and say like an R6 Mark II or R5 Mark I. The first part of the shoot when I was out shooting on the field was walking around for probably three hours, but I was turning the camera on and off quite a bit and it got through that whole shoot. So I don't have... run times yet.
I will do that when I test out overheating and stuff, but it seemed to work pretty well. Definitely better than the R5C, but I don't know exactly in terms of run times. I will have to test that out. Now, there's a couple of things about the menus that I want to talk about. So I'm not going to do a full menu walkthrough or anything like that here.
I just want to give you a couple of first impressions about it. I'll probably eventually make a full menu setup video and maybe an advanced user guide for this camera after I've used it for a little while. But it's really interesting because I remember watching some of the marketing videos that came out and they were saying there's some of the language and stuff from the cinema operating system that will make its way into this camera. And it was really interesting to see how that's implemented here because if you're used to prior Canon mirrorless cameras, you know that the video menu is very similar to the photo menu, but they changed a few things. They have these tabs in here.
But one of the biggest things to me, which is super interesting, especially after shooting on the R5C so much in the last few years, is the custom picture. And this is how you choose your different log modes and stuff. So... When you come in here, you have the custom picture files, which is how it is in the cinema operating system. So very different than it was before.
And you can come in here and select Canon 709, C-Log2, C-Log3, and so on. And you can add in look files as custom LUTs, and you can edit these and all that kind of stuff. And this is, like I said, how it is in the Canon cinema operating system. So it was just interesting to see how some of that stuff was implemented. And I can't wait to dive more into the menu and share that all with you.
In terms of overheating, I didn't have any issues out shooting yesterday. It wasn't a super demanding situation. I was shooting an oversampled 4K fine mode, but I was turning the camera on and off between shots. It was about 80 degrees Fahrenheit and the sun was in and out of the clouds. But again, it wasn't super demanding, but I didn't see any overheat warning or issue or anything like that.
Now I did pick up the cooling grip and I will test this out. So I'm curious how this will affect or help out with longer runtimes, especially for interviews and long form and stuff like that. So I will be testing this out and making videos about this.
So keep an eye out for that. Now, as I said, I didn't have any issues with overheating, but I did have a few other issues that I want to mention. First of all, this happened to me two times where the screen just showed this like green stripes all over the screen.
And it happened to me one time when I was shooting during the day and one time when I was shooting at sunset. I have no idea what's going on. I turned the camera off.
I turned it back on and it was gone. I didn't have any other issues with the camera whatsoever, but I just want to bring this everyone's attention. In case you're having this issue, make sure you let me know down in the comments, reach out to Canon or whatever retailer that you bought it from and let them know about it. I did email my technical contact at Canon and they're looking into it. I did buy my camera from B&H and they did say they would replace the camera for me.
I'm not really convinced it's a hardware issue. I have a feeling it's a software issue. I'm sure they'll address it in a firmware update soon.
So I have reported to Canon, so hopefully they are looking into it, but I just want to report it and just be, you know, transparent with all of you. Now there's a couple things in the camera that I want to mention that are kind of bothersome, some that you probably know about, but let me show you one other thing in the camera. The first thing has to do with the crop mode. And this is just something to be aware of if you're going in and out of crop mode, like I often do, especially when I'm doing wildlife.
So when I'm shooting, like I said earlier in that 4k 24 fine mode, If I, you can see here that I'm in 4K UHD 24 fine. If I go into crop mode here, crop mode enabled, it says 4K UHD here, but it's not fine because I think there is only one option in the crop mode. It is oversampled.
But when I go here and I switch back to non-crop mode, you can see that I'm not in fine mode. So it puts you back in the line skipped mode just by default because that's just how the camera is set up. So.
Caught me off guard where I was going in out of crop mode and I wanted to be in 4k fine Just keep in mind if you do that, then you have to go back in and put it in fine mode It's a it's a weird thing, but I just wanted to report that it kind of was bothering me The other thing was the view assist in the camera. So if you're shooting in C log 2 or C log 3 I didn't really like the view assist. I don't think it gave you enough contrast and saturation It looked really washed out to me and it was kind of hard to judge color and stuff both on the LCD and the EVF now The other thing to mention here is that it looked kind of like it blew out on the screen before it actually blew out in terms of like the actual light and exposure. So I was looking and it looked a little blown out, but I looked down and the histogram was fine.
Actually raised up the exposure even higher because it still wasn't clipping in the histogram. And then when I brought into the computer, it was totally fine. So I really don't like the implementation of the view assist. So just be careful with that when you're out shooting. I just want to bring that to your attention.
Make sure you're trusting your meters. Now in terms of meters, what's really cool about this camera is that it has histogram, which all the other cameras have before, but also has waveform, which is awesome. So probably most of you know, if you shot video on a camera mirrorless camera and you're using the histogram is that when you press record, the histogram goes away. But the cool thing here is that if you come in here and you turn on the waveform, which is actually a more accurate way of monitoring the exposure, you can see the waveform there. When you hit record, It stays on the screen.
So probably recommend using waveform over histogram because it's a little more accurate, but also it stays on the screen when you record, because of course we want to know what our exposure is while, when we're recording. The other thing I have to mention, which you probably already heard about is this camera does have false color, but you actually can't use it when you're using view assist. So you actually have to turn view assist off before you turn false color on. I really wish when you hit false color on it, just disabled view assist automatically. It's like a two-step process.
It's kind of annoying. All right, so what are my overall thoughts? Let me try to wrap this up a little bit. Keep in mind, I've had the camera for 24 hours. This is not a review.
These are just my preliminary first impressions. But like I was saying earlier on with the image quality and dynamic range, I'm really impressed with the camera so far. I'm hopeful. And I think that this camera produces a really strong image.
And I think them, Canon, coming out and saying this camera has 16 plus stops, I think was a big statement. And I'm seeing that there is a lot of dynamic range in the camera, but of course. I'll have to do my nerdy testing to really verify that.
Now, there's two things I want you to keep in mind about the R5 Mark II. This is a photo hybrid camera. This is not a cinema camera. This is not a dedicated video camera.
There are cameras that can do that stuff better than this camera. I think there will be limitations for overheating and runtimes and stuff like that. And the other thing is this is an expensive camera. At the time of release, this camera is $4,300, which is a lot of money, especially when you factor in buying new LPE 6P batteries. and maybe also buying a cooling grip.
This puts it up to almost a $5,000 purchase. And when you get up to that point, if you're thinking video cameras, you might be thinking about a cheaper R5C, which you can get used, or maybe a C70, which you can also buy used for less money than that. So just keep in mind, this is a pretty expensive camera.
This is a camera that I've been, like I said earlier on, very much looking forward to for many years. I'm gonna be using this to make content about on YouTube, but I'm also gonna try to put this to use in any of the client work that I have coming up in the next few weeks and few months. So I will be putting this camera to work as a video camera.
Now I will be doing a lot of videos and deep dives into this camera, dynamic range, low light overheating, the raw capabilities, especially that new 4K SRAW, et cetera. I'll also be making tutorials and guides. So if you're looking for any of that information, please hit subscribe down below so you don't miss that. I will definitely be comparing this to the R5C and making an in-depth comparison because I am personally really interested in how they stack up against each other.
And I'm sure a lot of you out there are as well. I don't own a lot of cameras right now, so it's going to be hard for you to make a lot of those comparison videos. But as I can get my hands on cameras, I will do that. I know a lot of people request comparisons, but I just don't have access to all these cameras.
I'd like to test this out against the C70 and maybe the OG R5 as well, if I can borrow those from some friends of mine. And I know a lot of you have questions about the R5 too. So stay tuned. I will be methodically going through the camera, making a lot of videos. and I'll be sharing that with all of you.
So it's going to be a lot of fun. If you have any questions or any topics that you'd like to see me cover, please let me know in the description down below and I will get those out as soon as I can. Thanks so much for watching and we'll see you in the next one.