The same day I got the camera, I actually needed to film a concert, but that is not where anything surprised me and something that would be worth talking about. I used it on a tripod so no fun cinematography happened. Two days later I had to take photos of a classical chamber music concert in a venue which is not one of my favorites. It's an old building with fancy halls, but the issue is that the light quality is poor and the floors are of wood and tend to be very squeaky, which makes moving around very tricky, especially in an acoustic concert such as this. First of all, I have to say how the mechanical shutter took me by awe because of how silent it is. It's really subtle compared to the R. Nevertheless, in such a concert, only when music gets louder, it’s possible to shoot with the mechanical shutter, but even then, if I'm near the audience, some may still hear that sound. I try to avoid this situation at all costs, because I do not want to become a distraction and simply do my job as discreetly as possible. Besides, the National Public Radio was recording the performance. In the past I would use camera muffler enclosures for the dSLR's, but it seems like those will become a thing of the past. The only issue with the electronic shutter is that if there are flickering lights, I have to sync up with those, which means I have to shoot with a shutter speed of 1/40. I believe it can be slightly different for other camera manufacturers. Obviously there are potential problems with that. One being that if I'm not steady enough, the images will be blurry and even if I am steady, the subject may move and I'm out of luck once again. There is no going around it, but to shoot in burst and then hope for the best. I would then check on the spot if I have the shot, because I don't want to do bursts if I already got it. With the R5, the issue with me being more steady is not such a big deal, since the cameras' IBIS is great. At least some help in that regard. As far as I know all mirrorless cameras struggle with the flickering problem. The good news is that when I shoot with the mechanical shutter, I can turn on the antiflicker mode and all is good, but that option is unavailable when shooting silent. Now, all of this is old news to me, but the one thing that did caught me by surprise was the speed of the shutter. This was a 2 hour long concert and I shot some stuff before, during the intermission and after the concert. Obviously the concert itself as well :) After I had shot 608 photos and it was barely half way into the first half of the concert, I realized that I need to change some things. I had already set the burst mode into it's slowest setting. On top of that, I was thinking of the amount of data I was capturing. This is a 45Mpix camera, so based on my facts, a photo shot at ISO 100-1600, would roughly be about 45MB. The space was…well…not the best to say the least for taking photos, so when bumping up the ISO to 2000, it makes the files even larger, 50MB and up. I quickly made the decision to switch to cRAW, which is the new format Canon has introduced into the R5. The reason for my confident switching was that I've read quite a bit about how this new format maintains all the benefits of the regular RAW file, but cuts the size roughly by two times. Now, that is remarkable! Later in post I didn't see any differences, because I took some sample shots to make sure I'm not loosing any quality. The files are smaller than what I would get out of my R!!! In the long run this means lower costs for storing and backing up images. I still have to get used to those crazy burst modes. I know that at times I will be happy I have them, but this simply was not the case. Don't get me wrong, this is not a complaint by any means. Who wouldn't want more frames per second, it's only my finger that has to learn to let go of the button much sooner than it had to with the 5D and the R :) One thing that I have to be careful during these shoots is that both cameras have the fully articulating screens which I love, but in the circumstance where both cameras are dangling on the sides of me, that's a potential hazard and I don't want to break the screens if I leave them flipped out. That's where the Sony system with the tilting screen would be more beneficial, but then again, I wouldn't trade for that, because flip out screens let's me view an undistorted perspective of the image when I'm holding the camera at waist height close to my body. It's such a benefit to shoot like this, because it's a slightly different shooting angle and I don't have to hold the camera higher up, which is easier on my back which in turn makes me a happier person in general :) Of course, I also use the option of completely flipping the screen and using it the old fashioned way before the times of fully articulating screens. It's great to see the joystick once again on the back of the R5 as opposed to having the multi touch bar. I've configured it for changing the focus point. I guess I was one of the few people who were using the touch bar. To me it seemed silly not to use it, because there are only so many knobs and buttons on a camera to begin with, so if I can utilize something to my benefit, why not. When shooting, I used it for adjusting ISO, but when viewing images - the rating function. I'll admit that I had to be a bit careful of my thumb placement so that I don't mess with the ISO, but to be honest, it was fine. Very few times did I by accident adjust the ISO and when I did, it was by very little and I would catch on to that very quickly. Anyhow, long live the R5!!! :)
- janisphoto