How DID the Canon R1, Canon R5 MKII and new lenses REALLY do at the Olympics?

Before I flew out to Paris, I had a lot of you asking me for my feedback on the new Canon R1 and Canon R5 Mark II cameras. As I have always done in the past, I wanted to use the cameras for more than a couple of hours to give you a real world review of the products. It takes a decent amount of actual “in the field” use for me to determine what I like and don’t like about any new camera or lens. Actually, this is true for just about any new product I am using, whether it is a new phone, watch or even a car. 

Prior to the Olympics, I had very limited time with the new cameras and just didn’t feel like it was fair to share my opinion with you all. Now that I have basically lived with both the pre-production Canon R1 cameras (here) and a Canon R5 Mark II (here) camera for a month, I feel VERY qualified to share my opinions publicly.

Jeff Cable has shot many of the recent Olympics. He has amazing coverage of the Paris Olympics, and it is well worth tuning into his blog for up-to-date photos and stories, and gear thoughts.

The overall feel

The Canon R1 will be the flagship camera for Canon (when it comes out) and it feels a lot like the last top-end camera, the Canon R3. Both are solid cameras, fairly heavy, and are built like a tank.  They share the same batteries which is nice, and they feel similar in my hand. Most of the buttons are in familiar places, but Canon changed the power switch of the R1 so that it turns on and off in the opposite direction of the R3 and this took some getting used to. For the first 2 weeks of using the Canon R1, I kept trying to force the power switch in the wrong direction. The rest of the button changes were minor in my opinion.

For the Canon R5 Mark II, I found it very easy to use this camera right away. The battery has been upgraded, but the older batteries work (with some degraded features which I will probably never use). 

The menus of both cameras are also different from the previous models, in that there are new options for focus, eye-control, pre-continuous capture, people priority (on the R1) and many other new features.  But like trying any new Canon camera, I found it really easy to navigate and make changes to the menus.

Burst rate and Pre-Continuous shooting mode

There are certain features that I would rely on more heavily at the Olympics, like having a burst rate of up to 40 fps (frames per second). I really love that I can modify the maximum frame rate of the faster and medium speed burst modes. There were many times when I did not want 40fps, and I changed the fastest burst rate down to 30 (also lowering the next level down to 15 fps). These changes can be made to both the Canon R1 and Canon R5 Mark II.

I added the burst rate item to “My Menu” so that I could quickly change it. Even though I would usually shoot at 15 fps, whenever there was a shootout or some high action about to happen, I would quickly change the camera to 30fps. I then had to remember to change it back after. FYI – When Simone Biles was on the beam, I was shooting at 40fps to capture all the action! You can click on the video below to see this.

With pre-continuous capture turned on, the camera will capture a half second of photos prior to me hitting the shutter button (as long as I have it pressed halfway down). This is a really cool feature, but it is really important to know when to have it on and when to turn it off. There were certain sports (which I was not as familiar with) and I found myself missing key shots, but when enabling the pre-continuous mode, I was able to hit the shutter even after the key moment happened and still have that moment saved on my card. 

The first time I used the Canon R1 for a water polo game in Paris, I accidentally left the camera at 40fps (with pre-continuous shooting on) and racked up 5700 photos in a little over an hour of shooting. That was a big mistake, since I am under a tight deadline to go through all my images, find the best ones, and deliver to the team!! I captured way too many images and knew that this would not work for future events. 

After a while I did learn to use the burst modes and pre-continuous capture to my advantage, but that took some learning. 

FOCUS

If you are going to put emphasis on one section of this blog post, it should be this one. The focus system on the Canon R1 is absolutely AMAZING! The camera’s focus system is so fast and is so “sticky” that I was getting photos that I could never have gotten in the past. Let me give you an example. In the past when I tried to photograph women’s gymnastics at the Olympics, I found it VERY difficult to keep my focal point on the athlete. This is especially true for the uneven bars and during the vault when the women were turning, twisting and moving up, down, towards me and away from me. I would try as best I could to keep that focus point on the person or their face, but with all their movement in all directions, my take rate was maybe 15 percent. With the face and subject detection on the Canon R1, the camera would lock in on them and hold that focus even though their faces would only be showing part of the time. My take rate was something close to 90 percent. It was crazy! 

This is not to say that the camera was perfect in all conditions. I did find that when photographing water polo, the camera had a hard time holding focus on the athletes. I found that the focus would drift when another person would be in the frame or when the water would splash in front of my subject. My best guess is that, since most of the person is not visible (under water), and they are wearing caps, the camera has a harder time locking in on them as a subject.

But for just about every other sport where I could see the whole person (gymnastics, equestrian, fencing, taekwondo, breaking) it was breathtakingly awesome.

You may have noticed that towards the second half of the Olympics I was using the Canon R5 Mark II more often. I did this for a number of reasons. 

1. I was getting tired and appreciated the lighter weight of the Canon R5 Mark II vs the Canon R1

2. I found that the focus was comparable to that of the R1. With this level of trust, I leaned on the Canon R5 Mark II more and more. 

3. I really liked the increased resolution of the Canon R5 Mark II. I definitely took that camera for the sunset shot at the beach volleyball venue knowing that I would enlarge this photo for my house (which I have).

4. Adobe had support for opening RAW files on the Canon R5 Mark II during the Olympics, but had not yet added that support for the Canon R1. As of the latest release of Adobe Camera RAW, the R1 is now supported.

ISO performance

Most of the time at the Olympics us photographers are not pushing the camera ISO above 3200. This is because the lighting at the Olympic venues is quite good. Much better than your typical high school gymnasium! I can tell you that a majority of the 85,000 images I took during the Games were taken between ISO 1000 and ISO 4000 (other than the outside venues where I was likely at ISO 160). This was not the case during the Opening Ceremony when the Team USA boat finally floated by me at 10pm and there were no lights on the river. I had to push the Canon R1 to ISO 10,000 to even have a chance at a photo. I was not happy! But the final results look very good, all things considered. (Image above)

Eye control

The Canon R3 had eye control (where the camera would track my pupil and focus on whomever I am looking at), but it did not work very well. Not only was it not accurate enough, but I hated the icon that would move around in the eyepiece distracting me from my work. I tried it for 30 minutes and turned it off for good. But that is all different with the Canon R1 and the Canon R5 Mark II. Now the eye control is incredibly accurate and there is an option to hide the icon. By turning off the icon, I now see nothing on the screen, but the focus point still goes right to the person I am looking at. I used this feature constantly in Paris, so much so that I now miss it. I just photographed an event on Saturday (using my Canon R3 and Canon R6 MKII) and kept looking at a subject waiting for the camera to lock focus on them. I am looking forward to getting my new cameras soon!

Battery life

If you have been following the blog for the last month, you know that I was shooting A LOT of images each day. There were days when I would capture more than 7000 images, and I never had one time where the battery died. This is true for both the Canon R1 and the Canon R5 Mark II. There was one time when I finished photographing gymnastics with the R1 (which has a larger battery than the R5II) and then had to go straight to the water polo venue to capture a game. If I remember correctly, I had taken more than 5000 photos at gymnastics. I was shocked when I got to the next venue and saw that the battery of the R1 was still showing full – even after taking 5000 photos! I sent a text message to one of my contacts at Canon to see if this was a “pre-production” error. But it was not. These batteries last WAY longer than the specs say they do.

Pre-registered people priority

The Canon R1 has a feature called “People priority” where you can take a photo of someone and tell the camera to prioritize that person over anyone else in view. I have to admit that I only tried this one time. I was photographing a runner (who was in a race with many other people) and I thought that this might be useful. I got great images of the runner, but honestly have no idea if that was the focus system, and the fact that I was using eye control to lock in on that runner, or if this feature was working. There is an icon that shows up (letting me know that people priority is in action) but I was concentrating so hard on getting the shot, that I have no idea if that icon was there. For this feature, I will have to say that it was not tested enough for me to give it a fair evaluation.

Memory card slots

With the Canon R3, I never liked the fact that this camera had a CFexpress card slot and an SD card slot. CFexpress cards are so much faster than the SD cards, and when writing the same files to both cards (which I always do), it slowed the camera down. Sometimes to the point when I would miss shots because the camera would stop shooting while trying to clear the buffer. The Canon R1 has two CFexpress card slots which means that both of them are running at high speed. I loved the fact that I could shoot endlessly without having to wait for the camera to clear the buffer. With the Canon R5 Mark II, this was not the case. This camera still has a combination of CFexpress and SD and I did have numerous times when I could not shoot anymore and had to wait for the buffer to clear.

Other things I noticed

I know that most of you are not going to be using 1.6TB memory cards in your cameras, but I love having a really large card in the second slot of the camera, basically acting as a built-in backup drive for all my photos. I had one of these large cards in the second slot of my Canon R1 and literally had EVERY image that I took in Paris on that card. In the first card slot I either had another 1.6TB card or an 800GB card. When there were thousands of images (or tens of thousands of images) on a card and I hit the playback button, it would take a long time for the camera to show me my image. This was frustrating when I would capture something cool and, during a quick break in the action, I would want to see if I got the shot.

Some new lenses and how they performed

The one new lens that I used more than any other at these Olympics was the Canon RF 100-300mm lens. Up until these Games, I had never put this lens to the test. Ever since the Summer Olympics in London (back in 2012) I had relied on the Canon EF 200-400mm lens as my primary long lens for every Olympics and so much more. That older lens has served me very well, but it was great to use the new RF 100-300mm for these reasons:

1. I could shoot at f/2.8 to get more separation between my subject and the background.

2. Also because of the f/2.8, I could shoot at lower ISOs. 

3. This new lens focuses so fast! 

4. I love the smaller size and lighter weight of the RF 100-300mm lens, and did handhold it a fair amount while in Paris.

When I was photographing the behind-the-scenes of the Canon CPS loaner area, I asked to borrow the newer RF 10-20mm lens so that I could take wide shots with little distortion.  I had never used this lens before, and it was love at first use. This lens is physically small, light in weight, and produces a beautiful image. I then borrowed that lens for future images like the wide shots I took in the Grande Palais. I will be ordering one of those soon.

Worth the upgrade?

For those of you asking whether the new cameras are worth the upgrade, my answer is “absolutely” but it really depends on what you are photographing. If you are just using your existing R5 or R6 camera to take pictures of the family, maybe not. But if you are serious about your photography, and out taking photos of things like sports or wildlife, then definitely! I have already ordered my Canon R5 Mark II cameras and will order the Canon R1 as soon as it comes out. This also means that soon you will see me selling my Canon R3, R5 and 200-400mm lens on the blog.

Speaking of gear….this was my last day in Paris when I went back to CPS to return all my loaner gear. They were packing everything up and I said, “Can’t you just send this case to my house instead?”