Canon EOS R5/R6 user experience

[ntblowz]

Seems like all other thread is about overheating I thought about starting a thread about actual user experience on shoot.

 

While patiently waiting for S5 I actually just bought a used R5 which sells for few hundred dollars cheaper than new.. and only one month old, the previous owner got 2 R5 and use it for trackside ( horse racing etc) and found out they don't really need use the 2nd one at all after all the overheating blow out on the internet.

 

I will be using it for motorsport racing which we are contracted to cover for a team, the next race is in early Oct, after done our first race on c200 and c100 with 150-600 last week I found it is quite hard as AF only work up to 300mm and from 300-600 its all manual focus .

I also bought 600mm f11 to see how it fair, I was using f11 on 150-600 anyway so I could get car in focus more when I pan accross or focus pull when the car coming in.

By the way anyone  got tips on covering motorsport?

 

 

 

[noone]

Not car racing but i think the same would apply as bike racing and years ago even a little with harness racing  and greyhound racing.

If possible, I would get on the exit side of a corner and facing them as they come out of it.

That way they are going slower and it also means you can use a shorter lens, then walk back a bit and do the same with a longer lens like your 600.     Closer to the corner will be almost head on.

Good luck with it!

What do you think of the 600?   

[ntblowz]

16 minutes ago, noone said:

Not car racing but i think the same would apply as bike racing.

If possible, I would get on the exit side of a corner and facing them as they come out of it.

That way they are going slower and it also means you can use a shorter lens, then walk back a bit and do the same with a longer lens like your 600.     Closer to the corner will be almost head on.

Good luck with it!

What do you think of the 600?   

Thanks! I also use the 70-300 for wider shoot which is much easier because of AF working perfectly and less tight.

 

Yeah I mainly wait around the corners as on straightline they are really fast..

 

I haven't have the chance to use 600 yet but the lens it is so bloody light vs 150-600, the 150-600 is quite a beast for impression but the AF issue and VC constantly jumping is pain the bum! I was moving around the track through out the day and run back to pit when the cars are in (they give me 10 min notice so I have chance to run back in time), carry the 150-600 on c100/200 and big tripod and running around is quite tough. This R5 with 600mm will be much lighter! Though will still use the same big tripod for stability.

 

[Video Hummus]

@ntblowz what’s your impression of the R5? How is the AF in 4K120p? If you have newer EF glass, is the AF essentially the same as running RF on it?

I’m seriously thinking about picking up an R5 despite the artificial timer. Im still going to wait for firmware update to see if they add another c-log and lower bitrates in 8K. They’ve hinted the lower bitrates will maybe improve recording times, ie they adjust the timer. 😒

And for to see if Apple Silicon macs will make a difference in editing 8K and 4K all-I. 

Would really like to see dynamic range closer to S1H levels for a real upgrade over GH5S.

[ntblowz]

On 9/29/2020 at 5:07 PM, Video Hummus said:

@ntblowz what’s your impression of the R5? How is the AF in 4K120p? If you have newer EF glass, is the AF essentially the same as running RF on it?

I’m seriously thinking about picking up an R5 despite the artificial timer. Im still going to wait for firmware update to see if they add another c-log and lower bitrates in 8K. They’ve hinted the lower bitrates will maybe improve recording times, ie they adjust the timer. 😒

And for to see if Apple Silicon macs will make a difference in editing 8K and 4K all-I. 

Would really like to see dynamic range closer to S1H levels for a real upgrade over GH5S.

 

Will let you know after the race this weekend.  My EF lens running pretty good on R, R5 should be even better.

DR wise I feel my S5 will trump R5 until clog3 update.

[herein2020]

10 hours ago, ntblowz said:

 

Will let you know after the race this weekend.  My EF lens running pretty good on R, R5 should be even better.

DR wise I feel my S5 will trump R5 until clog3 update.

I have to ask....is this for video or photos and if for video you don't have any overheating concerns?  I would think the new C70/C50 would be great for this type of work (clearly that's what Canon thinks too which is why they crippled the R5). After all of the discussions I still don't know if there are any 4K modes in the R5 that never overheat.

The side-by-side pic with the GH5 is fascinating I don't think anyone else has posted that. I didn't realize the R5 is actually that small.

For the AF issues since you are outside you couldn't just MF and stop down to F11 or something like that and focus at the 50% distance mark?

[herein2020]

Ok, so I couldn't just keep sitting here thinking the R6 might work for what I need and the C70 was overkill so I came up with the perfect plan that ended up with me owning an R6. I have the C70 on pre-order but it won't ship until Nov. The R6 was available at a local retailer and the retailer lets you return the R6 for up to 30 days after purchase with a 15% restocking fee. So this sounds perfect to me, I get to "rent" the R6 for a fraction of the price of a normal rental house for 29 days which gives me time to cancel my C70 pre-order if the R6 is perfect for my needs, or I can take it back before the 30 days is up and still be on the list for the C70.

Anyway, I've now had it less than 4 hours and there are already some things I don't like about it that I thought I would be able to live with, and some other surprises that no one on YouTube mentioned

• Overheating - yes it really is a thing. It was 78F today and the remaining available time on the timer hovered around the 10min mark for most of the day.  I was doing a lot in the menus, taking a few images, and shooting a few clips and had had it set to CLOG and 4K60FPS which is my normal shooting setup on the GH5. I never hit the overheating limit but staring at the timer completely ruined the shooting experience for me.  I can't imagine being on a paid shoot and all I can think about is if it will overheat. It shipped with FW version 1.1.0 and I upgraded it to version 1.1.1 after shooting during the day so I will test some more over the weekend to see if it gets any better. For everything I liked about the camera, the overheating was just this huge problem that overshadowed the whole experience.
• Electronic Level - I am a bit of a fanatic about having a perfectly level horizon so I didn't think anything of it when the electronic level came on in video mode as expected. What I truly can't understand however is why it turns off when you start recording. This completely blew my mind.....while recording is the main time I need to know if it is staying level.  Also, a lot of other useful information leaves the screen as well. I like to verify right after pressing the record button that all of the settings are set properly....well a lot of them disappear from the screen while recording, things like frame rate, color space, etc...things I like to glance at while recording in live view.
• XLR Audio - I tried to tell myself this wasn't that big of a deal but I literally have a weekend of shoots lined up and all of them require audio. I'm already trying to think how I will handle it for the weekend. With the GH5 I just throw on the adapter, put a wireless lav on the client and we are set. 
• Editing - Just like everyone else stated, editing these files are a nightmare. You will need to transcode. I have a 14 core CPU, RTX2080Ti video card, Davinci Resolve Studio, and NVME storage....doesn't matter, DR couldn't play the files until I created proxies.
• Dedicated Buttons - I found myself really missing the dedicated ISO button from my 5DIV and especially the MF switch on the lens. I know you can remap buttons but I don't like doing that, I like to keep everything default and use the Favorites menu. I also miss the flip switch that immediately got you into video mode or photo mode on the 5DIV instead of rotating the dial past all of the other presets that I'll never use.
• Build Quality - The build quality is also lower than I expected. I expected it to be on par with the GH5.......its not, let alone the 5DIV. For the price I paid the build quality is a disappointment.

The video image quality does look amazing, I'm sure I didn't expose properly and I didn't have a Canon CLOG to REC709 LUT so I did some quick hand grading; oh and I had the crappy RF 24-105 F4-F7.1 kit lens, but what came out of the camera despite all of this was nothing short of incredible.  I also took some quick images with it and of course they were what I expected from a 1DX sensor, so no complaints there. Speaking of photography that side of the house is rock solid. No complaints there, and thanks to this camera I am finally sold on using an EVF for photography. The EOS R had noticeable lag when panning and just didn't look right to me; the R6's EVF had no noticeable lag and felt a lot more natural.

I truly do not know what I will do yet,  I can say without hesitation that with my very limited testing the R6's video quality blows the GH5 out of the water....but there's so many compromises in so many other areas especially with the overheating that I don't know if it is worth it.  Lets not even talk about the fact that it does not do dual slot video recording and still has a 30min recording limit. It also seems like even after all of the discussions about overheating I still don't understand....from a cold start the R6 only shows 15min of recording time for 4K60FPS. I did test it and the overheat warning came on at 20min but it kept going until it hit the 30min mark. After turning it back on it refused to let me start recording again and did not return to 15min available until about an hr later.

[rdouthit]

Just want to throw in here that I just edited some 4k/30p R6 test footage today, and it edited just fine on a stock 2020 MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM and a Radeon Pro 5500M. That was over our 10GB/sec NAS in DaVinci Resolve without generating proxies. It wasn't 100% smooth 100% of the time, but it was perfectly fine to edit and review. 

[hyalinejim]

3 hours ago, herein2020 said:

R6's video quality blows the GH5 out of the water....

In what way is it superior?

[herein2020]

5 hours ago, rdouthit said:

Just want to throw in here that I just edited some 4k/30p R6 test footage today, and it edited just fine on a stock 2020 MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM and a Radeon Pro 5500M. That was over our 10GB/sec NAS in DaVinci Resolve without generating proxies. It wasn't 100% smooth 100% of the time, but it was perfectly fine to edit and review. 

Were you in CLOG on the R6? That makes a big difference, I've read it is 8 bit H.264 footage until you turn on CLOG. I didn't test 4K30FPS at all or non CLOG. H.264 should be fine because NVIDIA cards can HW decode but need the CPU for H.265, my CPU was hovering around 70% and DR was playing the footage at around 5FPS until I created proxies.  I do think Canon needs to add an option to use CLOG with H.264 like the C200, this would be the best of both worlds as long as you properly expose and WB on set.

Speaking of CLOG, it really needs CLOG3, my Canon CLOG3 to REC709 LUT did not work on this footage, it was way oversaturated and the colors shifted a bit as was expected, so now I'm hunting for a good Canon CLOG to Rec709 LUT.

 

3 hours ago, hyalinejim said:

In what way is it superior?

 

Even with my terrible setup (kit lens, probably not properly exposed, no proper CLOG to Rec709 LUT), the colors,  ease of grading,  final look, skin tones, and highlight roll-off, was better than anything I have gotten out of the GH5 except under perfect conditions.  Below is a quick screen grab from the shoot. For exposure I just turned on 95% zebras, watched the histogram, and dialed it down right below the zebras for the sky, the sun was setting in the background and in the display the sky looked blown out, on the WFM it shows clipping but I was able to bring back some of the details in the sky anyway. With the GH5 I'm pretty sure I would have lost the sky and it would have been difficult to match the skin tones. I wish I had a side by side but this was very quick and impromptu. 

 

The shot below was using CLOG, 4K60FPS, on a 1080P timeline cropped in by 60% in DR for framing, and the finishing LUT was from Noam Krolls LUT pack

[herein2020]

Well it is official for me, I'm going to return it. I probably won't even keep it past the weekend. The countdown timer is completely unbearable; shooting video with this camera feels like one of those outdoor shoots where it can rain any minute and ruin the shoot; except this is how it will be every time I use it. It can't replace my GH5, 5D4, or C200, and it can't even be a reliable C cam so it has no place in my gear bag. Just shooting BTS footage today with a mixture of clips and photos and I managed to get the overheat timer down to 5min. I tried changing the date and pulling the battery but the time remaining didn't change. To my touch the body was barely warm and the ambient temp was around 78F.

The only good news is that the overheat timer did seem to recover pretty quickly after the camera was turned off, it went back up to 10min within a few min of being turned off. This is with FW 1.1.1.  I think calling the R6 a hybrid is generous when its video features are less reliable than my 4yr old 5DIV.  Basically for me this camera will never pay for itself, and I will always need to bring something else as a backup if it is a true hybrid session so there's no point in keeping it.

 

I know this thread is supposed to be about the user experience and not the overheating but in real world hybrid use the overheating ruined the user experience for me.

[ntblowz]

On 10/2/2020 at 1:58 AM, herein2020 said:

I have to ask....is this for video or photos and if for video you don't have any overheating concerns?  I would think the new C70/C50 would be great for this type of work (clearly that's what Canon thinks too which is why they crippled the R5). After all of the discussions I still don't know if there are any 4K modes in the R5 that never overheat.

The side-by-side pic with the GH5 is fascinating I don't think anyone else has posted that. I didn't realize the R5 is actually that small.

For the AF issues since you are outside you couldn't just MF and stop down to F11 or something like that and focus at the 50% distance mark?

 

Just done the race, to answer your questions,

 

First the race im doing finishes in Nov, c70 will be released in mid dec here, which by that time most of my jobs already done. I can only film cats and dogs by then, I need camera right now.

R5 doesn't oveheat in LQ 4K25/30 so that all goods for interviews and stuff, and quality is sill much better than 1080p. 4k50/60 seems to shoot much more longer than R6? I done mixed of 4k100p, 4k50p and FHD50p from 9am to 5pm on the track. I always got 20 (crop)-30min (ff) 4k50p left, just 4k120p I got it down to 5 min by the end of the race but no overheating sign whatsoever. I got CFexpress 512gb and 128gb Sony m card inside the camera, temp is around 22c during the day

 

The DoF is quite thin when you zoom out a lot, there were still quite a bit of focusing to do at f11 at 600mm focla length.

 

[ntblowz]

The end shot is shot on crop mode on the 600mm F11, so that like 960mm?

Most of my shot is few seconds to a min at max. I probably spend half the time walking around the track through out the day. 

For c70 I will see how next year goes. 

[herein2020]

22 hours ago, ntblowz said:

 

Just done the race, to answer your questions,

 

First the race im doing finishes in Nov, c70 will be released in mid dec here, which by that time most of my jobs already done. I can only film cats and dogs by then, I need camera right now.

R5 doesn't oveheat in LQ 4K25/30 so that all goods for interviews and stuff, and quality is sill much better than 1080p. 4k50/60 seems to shoot much more longer than R6? I done mixed of 4k100p, 4k50p and FHD50p from 9am to 5pm on the track. I always got 20 (crop)-30min (ff) 4k50p left, just 4k120p I got it down to 5 min by the end of the race but no overheating sign whatsoever. I got CFexpress 512gb and 128gb Sony m card inside the camera, temp is around 22c during the day

 

The DoF is quite thin when you zoom out a lot, there were still quite a bit of focusing to do at f11 at 600mm focla length.

 

That is pretty cool, it seems like there is more than meets the eye when comparing the R5 and R6. I think if the R6 had even 1 4K mode that didn't overheat it would be far more useable. When the timer got down to 5min I tried switching out of CLOG thinking maybe H264 would add more time (no go), then I dropped down to 4K30 and it only added 2min.  I guess I just had to experience everything first hand to decide it wasn't for me. There's only so many reviews you can watch until you have to see for yourself.

 

Based on my R6 experience I cancelled my C70 preorder, am returning the R6 and ordered a Panasonic S5. For my particular use cases the S5 ticks every box (dual slot recording, XLR audio via adapter, no overheating, 4K60, H264 video files, useable photography features, etc.).

 

I think if the R5 offered dual slot video recording and Canon offered an XLR adapter for it along with the one mode that does not overheat that would have been enough to make me consider the R5. Video recording redundancy and audio is pretty big for me.  I have no doubt that I would have enjoyed the photography features.

[ntblowz]

1 hour ago, herein2020 said:

That is pretty cool, it seems like there is more than meets the eye when comparing the R5 and R6. I think if the R6 had even 1 4K mode that didn't overheat it would be far more useable. When the timer got down to 5min I tried switching out of CLOG thinking maybe H264 would add more time (no go), then I dropped down to 4K30 and it only added 2min.  I guess I just had to experience everything first hand to decide it wasn't for me. There's only so many reviews you can watch until you have to see for yourself.

Based on my R6 experience I cancelled my C70 preorder, am returning the R6 and ordered a Panasonic S5. For my particular use cases the S5 ticks every box (dual slot recording, XLR audio via adapter, no overheating, 4K60, H264 video files, useable photography features, etc.).

I think if the R5 offered dual slot video recording and Canon offered an XLR adapter for it along with the one mode that does not overheat that would have been enough to make me consider the R5. Video recording redundancy and audio is pretty big for me.  I have no doubt that I would have enjoyed the photography features.

 

Yeah the devil is in the detail!  R6 dont have reliable long session 4k is a huge bummer, the C70's AF apparently is just slightly better than C300 III but nowhere near the same as DPAF II on the R5/R6/1DXIII.

This race I was shooting in cinestyle instead of clog because of fast turnaround we need (due next morning), editor have no problem editing 4k50p on H.264, 4k100p is still quite laggy but we do not using too many of those as our is for TV segment while the main media team is the artsy stuff.

S5 should be really good for your use,  I got S5 myself cause it is quite good for the price you pay for the features and more for my side jobs (with anamorphic and stuff).  R5 is mainly for company work and some photography.  The main video guy for this race team is still on GH5.

 

Here is photo I took on R5 with the RF 600mm, the 600mm is pretty good for the price/size/weight.

[herein2020]

1 hour ago, ntblowz said:

 

Yeah the devil is in the detail!  R6 dont have reliable long session 4k is a huge bummer, the C70's AF apparently is just slightly better than C300 III but nowhere near the same as DPAF II on the R5/R6/1DXIII.

This race I was shooting in cinestyle instead of clog because of fast turnaround we need (due next morning), editor have no problem editing 4k50p on H.264, 4k100p is still quite laggy but we do not using too many of those as our is for TV segment while the main media team is the artsy stuff.

S5 should be really good for your use,  I got S5 myself cause it is quite good for the price you pay for the features and more for my side jobs (with anamorphic and stuff).  R5 is mainly for company work and some photography.  The main video guy for this race team is still on GH5.

 

Here is photo I took on R5 with the RF 600mm, the 600mm is pretty good for the price/size/weight.

 

Those are great shots, if I shot sports or fast moving objects the S5 definitely wouldn't have been my choice.  I look forward to seeing how you like the S5, I plan on using it as my GH5 gimbal cam replacement and as a b cam to my C200 on bigger shoots.  I'm even cautiously optimistic that it may serve as my A cam on smaller hybrid photo/video shoots. Never thought I would say that about anything other than a Canon camera but like @Andrew Reid stated....it seems like Panasonic is one of the few companies offering everything people want (except AF) and I don't use AF at all  for video.

Everyone raves about the Canon's AF but it was shockingly bad when trying to film a dance group this weekend with the R6. It kept getting lost when they did certain moves and would lock onto an audience member in the background until I tapped the screen. I switched to MF after the first take. I think good AF definitely has its place, but for most of my work every time I've tried it it fails.

[Simon Young]

From all the testing I’ve seen on YouTube (which is a lot) the R5’s oversampled aps-c mode in 4K is very good indeed, and doesn’t  seem to overheat. This should also be something worth considering with regards to the R5, especially if you tend to shoot on longer lenses.

Unfortunately my R5 is yet to be delivered but I feel this crop mode might turn out to be the mode I’ll use the most.

[plucas]

When they add the lower bitrate Canon RAW Lite to the R5, it would be great if they added it for the APSC mode (5.1K) and up to 60p. 

[gt3rs]

2 hours ago, plucas said:

When they add the lower bitrate Canon RAW Lite to the R5, it would be great if they added it for the APSC mode (5.1K) and up to 60p. 

Yes would be cool 5.1k RAW Lite.... but I doubt it will come like this

[ntblowz]

17 hours ago, Simon Young said:

From all the testing I’ve seen on YouTube (which is a lot) the R5’s oversampled aps-c mode in 4K is very good indeed, and doesn’t  seem to overheat. This should also be something worth considering with regards to the R5, especially if you tend to shoot on longer lenses.

Unfortunately my R5 is yet to be delivered but I feel this crop mode might turn out to be the mode I’ll use the most.

I got less time on S35 in 4K50P than FF 4K50p (20min vs 30min), FF 4K50p/60p is not oversampled.

 

4K Screengrab from R5, I think i can just grab stills from video.. much easier this way., rolling shutter is quite acceptable on R5.