Canon R5 II Review: Maybe DON'T Upgrade!

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Tony &Chelsea Northrup review the new Canon R5 mark II against the original Canon R5 for landscapes, portraits, wildlife, sports and video. The new Canon R5 II has some real improvements - a faster sensor readout speed (which reduces rolling shutter), 30 FPS (up from 20), 8K/60 raw video, and generative AI upscaling… but it also has some drawbacks.

The original Canon R5 has better dynamic range, but the difference might not be as much as you think, and the Canon R5 Mark II is good enough for most situations. The original Canon R5 also has IBIS High-Resolution mode which produces 400 megapixel images, and we found that produced MUCh better results than the Canon R5 II’s generative AI upscaling.

0:00 Introduction
0:31 KEH Promo
0:53 Design
1:35 Eye-tracking autofocus
2:16 Portrait Photography
3:32 Dynamic Range
4:08 High-resolution modes
6:27 KEH Promo
7:20 Wildlife Photography
8:24 Sports Photography
9:33 Rolling Shutter
10:28 8K Raw video
11:15 Wi-fi Connectivity
13:00 GPS
13:26 Security
13:56 Lack of Internal Storage
14:23 Terrible User Interface
14:52 Summary

[TonyAndChelsea]

Get 5% BONUS for selling gear to KEH with coupon TNC24-SELL

[credos]

It's not a good T&C video if the sound doesn't saturate at some point 🥰

[pixelpaddy]

The key is to have patience to wait for the next camera to come out so you can buy the current one for a discount 😉

[DiabloMonk]

Love you guys, but you’re always clipping your mics here and in the studio.

[germanpoweractivated]

Ok the sound quality is awful.. sorry Tony.. every time you use these dji wireless microphones. It sounds like shit

[dbc]

Love you guys, but Chelsea let me down on this one! I've got about 20k shots on the Mark II. I thought I loved the original R5, but the Mark II autofocus blows it away! I photograph moving subjects in a crowd of other moving subjects and with the original I sometimes struggled to focus on my intended target (dual BBF). With the Mark II I am locked on to shots I'd never get with the original. You rightfully panned some of the "features", but hopefully nobody is buying this camera for the gimmicky generative AI, Eye Control AF, etc. I have not even tested the eye control focus. Why would I when I'm able to focus on exactly what I want so precisely? Some of the other fixes that I love are: I can use the electronic shutter now. It doesn't have rolling shutter (at least not in my use cases), I can adjust the frames per second and it makes as much or as little noise as I want it to. On the original I tested the electronic shutter once and for 4 years I only used mechanical shutter. I think I used the mechanical shutter on the Mark II about 10 times and don't see any reason to ever use it again. Great upgrade! C'mon Chelsea!!!

[benoittissier]

Audio is terrible. Did you saturate the mics (unlikely when they're on your chest) or mess your audio levels ?

[dingdong]

embarrassingly bad audio from "professionals"

[cryptofitnessandgaming-cfg]

8K for less than 2K. What a time to be alive.

[sdhweb]

I actually very recently upgraded from 5D IV to R5, and since I'm not a pro I think an R5 over an R5 II makes a lot of sense knowing it's half the price :-) Very happy with the R5.

[kennethlui]

After I watch this video, I don’t feel like buying the R5II. Luckily I bought it at launch. It is an excellent camera for wildlife photography. Menu is very easy to use. I don’t know what you are talking about. The “real” wildlife photographers love this camera.

[AMPATL]

NOTE -- 0:39 "Bargain" means _More than average use. May have dents, dings, or finish loss. Glass may have scratches, dust, and blemishes_

[LaveaFirmis]

Tony, please please stop recommending camera manufacturers start adding internal storage. The cons far out weigh the pros. You keep comparing cameras to phones (rightly so) but look at the way storage has gone in phones. Insane high pricing for the high storage options, the lowest cheapest storage option will be for marketing only and likely be pathetically too low to be that useful, it’s likely manufacturers will start removing the option for removable storage (like on phones) particularly on entry level cameras to ‘to reduce cost’. Finally for the same reason people want double card slots, the most likely thing on a camera to wear and fail is the storage, let’s not make a failure point permanently part of the camera.

Hasselblad etc get away with this because they are not main stream cameras this stuff doesn’t matter, most people will never have one of these, they aren’t getting the hammering a sports camera gets, they shoot slow etc etc you understand it’s a different demographic.

Companies can’t be trusted with this sort of thing and you know it, look at Apple, Samsung, Adobe when they start getting away with something they won’t stop. It’s not worth the slight speed increase, once we go down this path it will be too late. Please stop.

[anthonyc]

Chelsea's so SASSY today. Love it!

[Windsurfingaddict]

Wow what timing, Just bought a brand new R5, yes the R5ii looks nice with all its new features but it means the huge amount of money I’ve save can be spent on older EfL lens again saving a fortune, I only shoot for myself so not making any money off buying this kit so cheaper option is a must, what timing, who else noticed Chelsea giving the finger 🤣🤣love your videos 🥳🥳🥰🥰

[TechnoBabble]

The terrible audio has to just be engagement bait at this point, nearly every video has scuffed audio at some point.

[bozoc]

R5 pixel shift is useless as it's only outputs jpeg so you are limited to 8-bit. Really hope they add some king of better pixel shift support

[skesinis]

I’m glad I’ve got my R5 just after Christmas, and I’ve got it at a significantly reduced price, and if you take into account trading my 5D Mark IV, and Canon’s cash back, it ended up being half price. I was expecting the R5 Mark II to be announced around May, and it still was a no brainer for me to get the original R5. Judging by how incremental are usually Canon’s upgrades, especially at the high end cameras, I couldn’t justify paying almost double the price for the Mark II, when the original R5 was already a huge leap from my 5D Mark IV. I’m also not a professional photographer, so that’s another factor to take into account.

[sneakergearz]

Why is your audio peaking constantly. Could have just used the on board 32bit.

[IreneRudnyk]

I just came here to say that I love Chelsea ❤