Canon R5II

I had a pleasant photo walk with the Canon R5II and the Canon 50mm F1.4 VCM lens. In the video below you can see the walk itself and what I photographed. It was a gorgeous sunny winter day which felt almost like spring already. After so many weeks of darkness it was super nice to walk in bright sunshine and see the light doing what it does best, form shadows. Sharp shadows.

It was also very nice to shoot on a Canon for a change. As you probably know, I own Nikon, Panasonic and Sony cameras but no Canon. So, it was a real treat to me and I have to say huge thanks to Canon Finland for letting me borrow the setup.

I’m pretty familiar with Canon cameras but naturally not nearly as well as with the cameras that I own. Anyway, to start shooting on the Canon R5II was easy for me and it took only a few minutes for me to set the camera up. I only changed the dials so that the front controls the aperture, thumb dial controls the shutter and the back dial controls the ISO. That is the way I like it if the camera has three dials like the R5II has.

My exposure mode was either M or Av and auto ISO depending on the situation. For all the street photos I used the M which lets me choose the aperture and the shutter the way I want. The auto ISO takes care of the final exposure. Because I wanted to freeze the action in the scene my shutter speed was in the 1/320s – 1/1000s range and my aperture outside was generally at F8 for sufficient depth of field. Inside I opened up to about F4 to keep the ISO from climbing crazy high.

For some of the landscape shots where action stopping was not my priority I used the aperture priority (Av) mode. That way I could make sure the ISO stayed at the base 100 level and made sure the image quality is the best.

The new 50mm F1.4 VCM lens felt really nice and relatively compact too for what it is. Canon have started including an aperture ring to some of their new lenses which to me sounds great. I like aperture rings. However, the ring on the 50mm lens was a minor disappointment because there are no clicks on the ring. It obviously is designed for video where a smooth ring is better. For photography though clicks are essential, in my opinion. By counting the clicks it’s really convenient to change the shooting aperture without even looking at the camera. The clicks also prevent accidental changes on the shooting aperture.
Apart from the aperture ring the lens was a pleasure to use. My photos came out crisp and sharp. Also the AF performed flawlessly being ultra fast and reliable.

All in all the Canon combo was really nice and I had another pleasurable photo walk. Below you can see some of the photos from the walk.