Transitioning from DSLR to Mirrorless

Canon 5Ds to Canon R5 Mk II for Landscape Photography

Transitioning from DSLR to Mirrorless is not an insignificant step up for most people. I’m not of the opinion that every time Canon release a camera I have to buy it. I ran a studio in the UK for nearly a decade and only upgraded once, from the Canon 5D mk III to the 5Ds and latterly the Mk IV which I bought with video in mind (it supports 4k). If it’s good enough to do the job, then why upgrade?

The cost of cameras these days is also astronomical. As a purely commercial decision it makes no sense to upgrade in line with the manufacturer’s release schedule. They have numbers to meet, so do I but I won’t meet them by buying a new camera every couple of years.

I’ve been putting off the transition to mirrorless for so long that there is a second generation of mirrorless cameras available. I took the plunge at Xmas 2024, acquiring a Canon R7 which was reasonably priced at under £1000 including an RF-EF converter and took the same batteries as my 5D. I was pleased with what I found and in May, bought the Canon R5 mk II.

So what was I buying into?

Video

Comparison

I have chosen to compare the 5Ds with the R5 II because I used the 5Ds almost every day and so that was effectively the transition I was dealing with.

Interpreting the Spec

Stacked Sensor

So we lose 6 Mp on the sensor, but we gain a massive 44800 in ISO capability and the new Stacked CMOS sensor handles noise and speed without breaking sweat.

According to Canon, Stacked CMOS image sensors offer significant advantages over standard CMOS sensors, primarily in speed and processing power. This allows faster readout speeds, improved autofocus, and the ability to capture high-speed action with minimal distortion. Critically, stacked CMOS can lead to smaller sensor sizes and better integration with other hardware components. Note that stacked CMOS includes processing components as part of the “stack”.

It seems that the CMOS sensor in the 5Ds represented the ceiling of CMOS sensor capability.

Lens Mount

We have a new lens mount, RF, but the Canon adapter allows me to use my EF lenses seamlessly.

Fully Articulated LCD

The articulated screen is a real lifesaver in the field, at my age, stooping to look at a fixed screen on a camera that’s set a foot off the ground is a pain.

Cards

A completely new Storage type, necessitating a new card reader. Yes it’s incredibly fast, yes, it’s progress but it’s another sizeable expense. These cards cost €127 for 128 Gb, €205 for 512 Gb. So Four of them puts another €1000 on the price.

The camera also takes SD cards but write speed is woeful so great as storage for jpegs, pretty uselesss for anything else.

Batteries

Batteries – Don’t get me started. The R5 Mk II takes a new type of battery LP-E6P that looks just like the old type LP-E6NH but costs more and lasts approximately the same amount of time. Despite the manufacturers claims of extended battery life, I simply haven’t found that to be accurate at all.

Video

Video – The dry fact of supporting H.265 in the Format section disguises the fact that the R5 Mk II is a video monster. Overheating issues have been addressed with the addition of cooling vents and the availability of a body extension that houses a fan. Switching from camera to video is done at the flick of a switch or simply by pressing the video record button. This ease of use depends on setting up appropriate custom profiles as the camera will load the CP3 for video or photography automatically.

Custom Profiles

This is huge. The 5Ds was hopeless with video, basically supporting SD only. I never used it once for video but then I already had the 5D Mk IV which was better (4K support) so the profiles were simply a matter of storing convenient camera settings.

In the R5 Mk II, you can store three photography profiles eg (M, Tv and Av) plus three video profiles eg (Normal and Slow motion, Slower motion). Timelapse is another menu item. As somebody who normally shoots landscapes in manual or Av mode, custom profiles have never mattered to me, events in product and landscape photography don’t tend to move quickly enough to demand a preset.

However, the ability to switch seamlessly from photography to video is huge, the potential for my YouTube channel is unmissable.

First Impressions

Are lasting impressions and on this score the R5 comes across with charm by the bucketful. It is substantially lighter, easier to handle, there are all sorts of capabilities such as. eyeball tracking and setting focus points by looking that demand a rethink of my venerable back button focus setup. I’m leaning towards reprogramming three buttons on the back of the camera to include ordinary focus, eye movement focus and different metering setups. This sounds complex but I believe it will be fantastically convenient.

Autofocus

Incomparable. Fast? The R5 is lightning in a bottle. I haven’t yet plumbed the depths of all the possible configurations, but I plan to write another article when I have. These are the autofocus modes available – Eye Controlled, Phase Detect, Multi-area, Center, Selective single-point, Tracking, Single, Continuous, Touch, Face Detection and Live View.

I have never used a camera as good as this at autofocus and while I appreciate that some of these capabilities are wasted on me as a humble landscape photographer, I don’t see that as wasted functionality. It is an opportunity for me to broaden my portfolio!

RAW quality

I literally can’t fault the output of the R5. Despite the loss of 6Mp, these cr3 RAW files seem flawless, there is more detail, more recovery potential, they look clean and stylish and that’s before they have been processed.

Interestingly I have been able to pull more detail with greater subtlety out of these RAW files using DxO PhotoLab 8 than I have with Adobe Lightroom. This is huge for me, it enables me to process my images with greater subtlety in less time. I’m not saying I cant get the same results, but in a side by side test the quick edit done in PhotoLab is way better than one that took much longer in Lightroom. This is a subjective view of course, but. if you’re looking for a tiny hint of color in the evening sky PhotoLab delivers it, if you’re looking for seamless sharpening of fine detail in the foreground, PhotoLab delivers.

My gut feeling is I could get to this level of subtlety in Adobe software by using DxO PureRAW, Adobe Camera RAW and Lumenzia in Photoshop, bypassing Lightroom entirely but that’s another article altogether!

Pre-Capture

Pre-Capture is a fantastic innovation for wildlife photographers which buffers images for a short period (half a second typically) before the shutter button is fully pressed. This allows wildlife photographers in particular to capture moments that might be missed when the shutter is triggered a fraction of a second too late. 

This feature is activated by the user and works with electronic shutter and continuous drive mode. It makes a huge difference, for example capturing a bird taking off.

Stabilisation

The camera features on board stabilisation that works with any lens stabilisation to optimise the stabilisation applied. This has a dramatic benefit – you can shoot handheld at much slower shutter speeds. The picture below was shot at 1/15 second handheld and the detail is sharp. This was not possible with the old 5Ds.

Conclusion

I have been very impressed with this camera. In the near decade since the release of the Canon 5D mk IV, camera technology has accelerated and produced something that in my hands initially seems like a product of sorcery. The 5D mk IV was and remains, an incredible camera but the R5 is different league.

If you’re transitioning to mirrorless from DSLR, the R5 mk II is the state of the art camera to buy. It’s a big step up and the settings are a minefield but as I said to myself when I went back to Uni to study computing in the the late 1990’s, “other people are just human, they may brains the size of small planets but I can do this”. My point is don’t be a luddite, embrace it, it’s better. You can do it!

I suspect that upgrading from the R5 to the Mk II probably doesn’t yield a big enough advantage for the money, these cameras are eye wateringly expensive but it is by a distance, the best camera I’ve owned and if it lasts me as long as the 5D mk IV I’ll be thinking of it as significantly good investment.

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