Canon R 5 C - video set up - please help

I made the blunder of my life

10 days prior to going to Africa for a month long safari - I purchased a canon R5C thinking that I can use the best of both worlds in one camera and get wonderful videos! I have Canon R5/R3 and have no issues with them.

I consider myself an advanced amateur in still photography but I am a novice when it comes to videography with dSLRs or MILC.

For the life of me can not figure out the settings for wildlife videography-  forget the "best settings", I can not even set up the AF to work at all! I watched all the You Tube  videos - read the manual -there are not much on you tube on wildlife video with R5 C anyway ! But when I check in the field- everything falls apart - I can not even keep the moving subject focused or acquire focus on a moving subject - even if the subject is a human being 30 feet away !

I know the problem is with me - not with the camera! Please teach me how to set it up. I am leaving on Aug. 1st and need to have some confidence before I leave,  in shooting videos with this otherwise wonderful camera.

P.S. the still photography part is absolutely fine. No issues

Thanks in advance

Dholai12 wrote:

I made the blunder of my life

10 days prior to going to Africa for a month long safari - I purchased a canon R5C thinking that I can use the best of both worlds in one camera and get wonderful videos! I have Canon R5/R3 and have no issues with them.

I consider myself an advanced amateur in still photography but I am a novice when it comes to videography with dSLRs or MILC.

For the life of me can not figure out the settings for wildlife videography- forget the "best settings", I can not even set up the AF to work at all! I watched all the You Tube videos - read the manual -there are not much on you tube on wildlife video with R5 C anyway ! But when I check in the field- everything falls apart - I can not even keep the moving subject focused or acquire focus on a moving subject - even if the subject is a human being 30 feet away !

I know the problem is with me - not with the camera! Please teach me how to set it up. I am leaving on Aug. 1st and need to have some confidence before I leave, in shooting videos with this otherwise wonderful camera.

P.S. the still photography part is absolutely fine. No issues

Thanks in advance

What do you find lacking in the R5 for video or for stills?

The R5 video and stills are great; it is a hybrid, while the R5C is not. The AF on the R5 is better than that of the R5C. And the battery life of the R5C is also way worse than that of the R5. The R5C has no in-body stabilization - it is not good for handheld video. You cannot switch between stills and video quickly as you can with the R5.

Please, again, tell us exactly why you think the R5C is a better choice for shooting stills and video than the R5. As you can surmise, I do not think so.

You should not take the R5C, given you are a novice with it and given its limitations.

I don’t have the C model, just the R5, but what I understand is that the C model has completely separate settings for stills and video, which I think is a Very Good Thing.

When you switch it to Video mode, have you set it for Servo Focus? That’s the very first thing. On safari, you’ll want to set the AF for Servo and also Eye Detection - Animals, and again, set separately than in the Stills mode. (You have to set it twice).

Will that help?

Dholai12 wrote:

Markr041,

Thank you for your reply. Appreciate it.

I will admit- I bought the R5C more on an impulse than anything else. I was wondering what to do with the video part as I plan to keep my R5s dedicated to stills and also because of the heat issue with the R5 while recording video.. Read some very good reviews of R5C and got swayed.

The reasons I thought R 5 C would be better

1) Choices of video recording formats

2) No heat issue

3) No recoding limit ( not important any way for this trip)

4) Not keeping one of my R5s for video as they will be with different lenses than the ones I want to use for videography

5) I can always use it for stills as I am comfortable with R5 still settings and all of them will have same settings

Honestly, I am not regretting it though ! I still think it will be a good addition as I can use it for dedicated video but switch to stills if needed. Since my post, I have learnt some more and getting a little more confident about how to use it . I WILL learn it - only thing is now I do not have time but

I will take it to Africa but I am prepared to keep it by the sideline if I can not use it properly. My daughter will be the main video shooter and I plann to use an RF 100-500 and an RF 28-80 F2 for the video. If she can not handle it - we will fall back to a Sony 4K camcorder she is very familiar with .

Thank you once again for your time and valuable input . Appreciate it

Just two follow-ups.

With the new firmware, the Canon R5 does NOT overheat - that is, it will not shut down, as it did before (in fact, it never "overheated" Canon just had the firmware shut the camera down when it reached an arbitrary temperature level). And the resumption time out was totally unrelated to heat. No more shut downs, and tests indicate that heating is not an issue (the camera does get hot, which is what it should if it is wicking out internal heat)

Users of the R5c report battery life is really short. This seems a serious issue for day-long outings in the bush. You really need to test battery life yourself before leaving with a camera on a once-in-a lifetime trip. At a minimum you need to acquire a lot of batteries. I also considered getting the R5c, and my research, and the new R5 firmware, convinced me the R5c was not worth it for my non-studio shooting.

I am very worried the R5C is not a camera meant for ad hoc shooting, but for video setups in a studio.

Dholai12 wrote:

MarshallG,

Thank you for your response.

AFAIK- R5C does not have any options for

a) AI Servo focus- they have tracking

b) Animal detection

c) Animal head / eye detection

I am getting a hang of it slowly. Lets see what I can do

They took all that out?  Wow! You’d think that would be a big deal.

Dholai12 wrote:

MarshallG,

Thank you for your response.

AFAIK- R5C does not have any options for

a) AI Servo focus- they have tracking

b) Animal detection

c) Animal head / eye detection

I am getting a hang of it slowly. Lets see what I can do

Are they missing in stills mode too? I understand them not being available in cinema OS because at this point it just looks like a lift and shift from their cinema line of bodies

I am going to try one more time - the R5C is just about the worst choice for a once-in-a- lifetime safari trip for shooting wildlife in video. Especially for someone who admits to being a novice videographer.

R5C: Terrible battery life - 30 minutes at best for shooting video. AF that precisely lacks the wildlife features one has in many other cameras. No IBIS for handheld shooting. Here is what an actual pro user reports on the R5C:

"LP-E6NH give me on average about 30-35 minutes of actual record time with occasional waveform and false color usage, 4K XF-AFC, Continuous AF, Lens IS." from EOSHD (no link here allowed).

The R5 is now fine for any kind of shooting - it has good battery life, no overheating anymore, and better AF than the R5C.

But, almost everyone agrees that a crop (APS-C) camera is best for shooting wildlife - it gives you more reach for the same focal length range.

Consider the Canon R7 as a safari camera. It has an AF that is better than the R5 and, of course, the R5C (the AF on the R7 is as good as the Canon R3). Oversampled 4K from the full 7K sensor, and a great 4K 60p in crop mode that gives you almost 3X increase in reach relative to FF with no loss of resolution in 4K. Perfect for shooting moving wildlife at a distance.

Dholai12 wrote:

Yes they did!

I think it is geared towards studio or controlled environment shooting of people video!

Now that I have it- will try to get the best of it .

Thanks

Dholai

The important thing is to have a wonderful trip. Your experiences of seeing those beautiful animals will be greater than any photo you could bring back. Have fun!

Markr041 wrote:

Dholai12 wrote:

Markr041,

Thank you for your reply. Appreciate it.

I will admit- I bought the R5C more on an impulse than anything else. I was wondering what to do with the video part as I plan to keep my R5s dedicated to stills and also because of the heat issue with the R5 while recording video.. Read some very good reviews of R5C and got swayed.

The reasons I thought R 5 C would be better

1) Choices of video recording formats

2) No heat issue

3) No recoding limit ( not important any way for this trip)

4) Not keeping one of my R5s for video as they will be with different lenses than the ones I want to use for videography

5) I can always use it for stills as I am comfortable with R5 still settings and all of them will have same settings

Honestly, I am not regretting it though ! I still think it will be a good addition as I can use it for dedicated video but switch to stills if needed. Since my post, I have learnt some more and getting a little more confident about how to use it . I WILL learn it - only thing is now I do not have time but

I will take it to Africa but I am prepared to keep it by the sideline if I can not use it properly. My daughter will be the main video shooter and I plann to use an RF 100-500 and an RF 28-80 F2 for the video. If she can not handle it - we will fall back to a Sony 4K camcorder she is very familiar with .

Thank you once again for your time and valuable input . Appreciate it

Just two follow-ups.

With the new firmware, the Canon R5 does NOT overheat - that is, it will not shut down, as it did before (in fact, it never "overheated" Canon just had the firmware shut the camera down when it reached an arbitrary temperature level). And the resumption time out was totally unrelated to heat. No more shut downs, and tests indicate that heating is not an issue (the camera does get hot, which is what it should if it is wicking out internal heat)

Users of the R5c report battery life is really short. This seems a serious issue for day-long outings in the bush. You really need to test battery life yourself before leaving with a camera on a once-in-a lifetime trip. At a minimum you need to acquire a lot of batteries. I also considered getting the R5c, and my research, and the new R5 firmware, convinced me the R5c was not worth it for my non-studio shooting.

I am very worried the R5C is not a camera meant for ad hoc shooting, but for video setups in a studio.

I will second what Mark said because I actually went through this scenario. My acquisition of the R5c turned out to be a huge mistake. I found the camera clunky and not pleasurable to use at all. The incredible battery drain didn’t help either, as a minimum of 3 spare batteries was necessary for even a moderate day’s use. Granted the PQ was excellent, but so is the R5’s RAW

The end result was my selling the camera after a relatively short period. Fortunately I got back almost everything I paid for it. The new R5 firmware really obviates the need for the R5c for most people.