Life is filled with second chances, even if we all say that first impressions are final. With the life I’ve lived, I’m all about second chances, and it’s time we gave the Canon EOS R5 Mark II a second look, and possibly a chance to make a second, first impression.
What’s Changed Since Our Initial Review
Since our first look at the Canon EOS R5 II, there have been two firmware updates, 1.0.2 and 1.0.3. The first addressed a number of FTP and connectivity-related issues, and one potential issue that affected third-party accessories in pre-continuous shooting (namely, strobes and remote triggers). In our original review, we (thankfully) didn’t encounter any issues with the hotshoe or our ability to use strobes or TTL triggers.
In firmware version 1.0.3, Canon addressed the following:
1. Optimizes the timing of the camera’s display of its internal camera temperature warning indicator.
2. Fixes an issue that may interfere with the camera’s ability to focus properly when using AF (autofocus) in certain zoom ranges.
The latter of the two fixes was something that was coming up in forums and rumor sites, though we did not encounter it in our testing. That being said, just how does the autofocus system work in “certain zoom ranges.”
Autofocusing and the Canon R5 Mark II
As part of this review update, I used the Canon EOS R5 Mark II as the sole camera on a job capturing a high school graduation. For the graduation ceremony, I used the Canon EOS R5 II and the Canon RF70- 200 mm F2.8 L IS UCM Z, shooting across the entirety of the zoom range. During my testing, I found the combination to be solid, quickly locking focus and finding my intended subject. Even in the rather terrible lighting of the event space, the Canon R5 II not only managed to acquire focus easily, but it was also able to hold focus even with a moving subject at a distance.
Additionally, my clients on this assignment are people of color; in our initial review, we found that the EOS R5 II at times struggled with focusing on more melanated subjects, and I’m pleased to find that this time around, the R5 II performed better. Throughout my test period, I found that the R5 II got a lot more keepers than not. That’s saying something after a really bad experience with the much pricier R1.
A New Bug?
While I haven’t been able to find this potential issue anywhere else, and the issue didn’t happen consistently enough for me to reproduce, I did encounter situations where the camera would simply lock up when writing to a card. During my review of the EOS R5 Mark II, I did not use a CFExpress card and only used the SD card slot. When initially testing the Canon R5 II, I was using a SanDisk Extreme Pro card rated for 280mb/s write speeds. This should not have had issues, but lo and behold, the camera locked up on two separate occasions. I have trust issues when it comes to technology, and I immediately took a drive to the nearest Best Buy in hopes of picking up another card, just in case. After swapping cards, the issue seemed to have been resolved.
This stood out to me for two reasons: the replacement card, a SanDisk Extreme Plus, has a slower write speed, 190mb/s, than the Extreme Pro. When I returned home, I tried yet another card, an unformatted Fujifilm Elite II Performance card (258mb/s write speed). Both cards performed without any hiccups, though the original Extreme Pro also never caused the camera to lock up again.
Does the Latest Firmware Change Our Minds?
In short, the latest firmware makes the R5 Mark II a more stable camera, but many of the initial issues we had with it remain. Canon (and every major manufacturer these days) has decided that “hybrid photography” is the only kind of photography that matters anymore, and this makes me sad and angry all at once. While the updates make the R5 II a more reliable workhorse camera, it still straddles the fence too much for this stills-only photographer. I’m glad that Canon has addressed various issues but many of the fixes in the subsequent updates only impacted videographers. Maybe the next big firmware update brings back RAW files to multiple exposure shooting.
