Canon EOS R5 Mark II Sample Pictures

Do you photograph in the rain?

While rain may not be as comfortable or enjoyable to shoot in as a dry day, the quality of captured-in-the-rain images sometimes surpasses that of those captured on a pleasant weather day. That is fortunate as it rained nearly every day for over two weeks in Alaska.

While a too-heavy rain (and the fog that often accompanies it) reduces visibility, making wildlife difficult (or impossible) to see, wetness darkens and saturates colors, such as this ram's horns. In addition, clouds create a soft, shadowless light at any time of the day and often add a moodiness that can differentiate an image, such as the background in this one.

High-quality waterproof exterior layers, including a hood and boots, are the key to staying dry. A waterproof uninsulated shell jacket and pants enable the use of layers for temperature adjustment, including to avoid sweating, which makes you wet from the inside. Use a rain cover on your backpack to keep your gear and extra clothes dry.

While the Canon EOS R5 Mark II and RF 100-500mm F4.5-7.1 L IS Lens are weather sealed (and they were wet at times), I opt for a camera rain cover when the rain becomes steady.

When packing the day before the trip, the rain cover for this lens was nowhere to be found. Fortunately, B&H impressively shipped a new one to AK faster than I could get there.

Notice the 1/60 shutter speed used for this image. This speed is usually too long for wildlife photography, and even an eyeball movement can create motion blur. However, insurance shots were on the card, and getting even lower noise results became the objective. The R5 II and RF 100-500 image stabilization had no problem delivering sharp 500mm 1/60 results in adverse conditions while the ram was motionless.

Dall sheep are awesome, and it was a privilege to spend hours with these creatures, including this huge ram, in Denali National Park.

For a wildlife photo adventure with many miles of hiking expected and a wide range of focal lengths on the requirements list, the Canon RF 100-500mm F4.5-7.1 L IS USM Lens often gets the call. This lens performs extraordinarily well, consistently delivering outstanding sharp image quality.

This moose moment resulted in a series of images to select from. Unfortunately, those enormous antlers impeded view of the bull's eye in many, reducing their impact. The image selected to share here combines good eye visibility, the legs positioned with separation and optimal forward body height, and the bull's left antler framed in the clearing behind it.

Bonus points are awarded for the alert ears forward, but I'm not sure how the tongue impacts the rating. Perhaps that is too much cuteness for such a massive beast.

The little green heron's strike happens extremely fast and infrequently. Thus, photographing this bird in action involves lots of waiting with occasional sudden lightning-fast action. A few minutes into waiting for a strike, attention deficit kicks in, and one's mind begins to think about other matters. Of course, the sudden action we have been waiting for happens while our minds are adrift, and we miss the shot.

That is not the case with the Canon EOS R5 Mark II. Mind drift is no longer an issue with the R5 II's game-changing pre-continuous shooting feature because we can seemingly capture images from the past.

Without being especially alert while half-pressing the shutter release, I still captured this heron's surprise full strike and recoil. This image is the second in the 20-fps sequence to have the tadpole fully out of the water. The tadpole's alignment with the shadow behind it, along with a nice stream of water falling from the catch, made this selection optimal.

While the general area of tadpole attack could be estimated, the specific prey location was unknown. Thus, framing slightly wide to account for whatever happened made sense, and this image is cropped by just over 10% in both dimensions. Because of the R5's ultra-high resolution, the final image still measures 4830 x 7241 pixels, about 35 megapixels.

This Denali National Park landscape image combines three seasons. Denali summers are short, and despite the late summer date, fall foliage and wintery snow were available.

The morning featured thick fog and uncooperative animals. However, the landscape was especially appealing. While I was stopped to photograph the lightly snow-dusted black spruce trees in the fog, the fog began to dissipate, revealing snow-capped mountains in the background and allowing sunlight to illuminate the fall foliage in the foreground.

Wildlife photography was the primary photo objective, but this image is one of my favorites from the trip. The compact Canon RF 24-105mm F4 L IS USM Lens, featuring professional-grade build and optical quality, is made for moments like this. When photographing wildlife, I usually have this lens in the pack, often on a second body for fast access.

This bull was significantly obstructed and facing away as it thrashed an alder, providing poor photo opportunities. So, planning for its next move became the priority.

The bull had moved away from a cow to threaten an opponent, so, logically, it would go back to the cow. If that option was chosen, the bull would most likely come through a specific opening, and positioning for a supporting background behind that opening became the plan. That optimal position included getting low to ensure most of the close, in-focus foreground was out of the frame, that the mountains were prominently included, and that the catchlight in the bull's eye was enlarged (reflecting more sky).

As predicted, the bull came into the opening, and better than expected, it stopped to provide a variety of poses.

The Canon EOS R5 Mark II and RF 100-500mm F4.5-7.1 L IS USM Lens are an outstanding combination for on-the-move wildlife photography.

The viewer's eye is drawn to contrast, which is lacking in a strongly blurred portion of the image. Thus, blurring the non-subject area aids in drawing the viewer's eye to the sharp-focused subject.

For this image, the telephoto compression and long distance beyond the subject create the background blur, and getting down into some close rocks takes the foreground out of focus, eliminating those distractions.

While I love the use of blur in photography, I rarely like foreground blur covering the subject's face.

Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan–ATLAS was in the sky, so, of course, it had to be photographed.

While single-exposure images of this comet looked nice, my upgraded tracking mount, a Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer GTi, was still in the box and longing for use.

This image is the result of stacking sixteen 30-second exposures using Deep Sky Stacker (DSS) software (it's free).

After aligning the mount and establishing the Canon EOS R5 Mark II settings, the shutter release button on a simple Vello Wired Remote Release was locked down (push down and slide forward), and the R5 II's continuous shooting mode captured about 45 minutes of images while I did something else. The middle 8 minutes of frames had the darkest sky and were selected for processing.

The Canon RF 70-200mm F2.8 L IS USM Lens was chosen because it had the desired focal length, it creates extremely sharp stars, and it has a rotating collar to add the rotation direction natively missing on the mount. It proved an outstanding choice.

This is one of my favorite images from a recent photo trip to Denali National Park. The picture does not convey the significant time and effort involved in its capture, but images such as this one make it all worthwhile.

Dall sheep are awesome animals, and I counted on the also-awesome Canon EOS R5 II and RF 100-500mm F4.5-7.1 L IS Lens to bring home the images.

The incredible performance of the latest mirrorless cameras has moved some of the challenges from capture to selection. Which of the great images should I delete, and which few should I share?

I recently shared a Blurred Frame Dall Sheep Ram. The subject and its colorful surroundings made it one of my favorite images from a photo trip. However, the Canon EOS R5 Mark II was set to 20 fps, and it nailed focus on essentially every shot, resulting in numerous situation-similar images to choose from.

Dealing with the new dilemma involves raising the keeper bar, deleting some images we like, and buying more storage. Still, final decisions are challenging, and in this case, the ram's slight head position changes tripped up final selection.

A single image is needed for a project, so I thought I'd crowd-source the final answer.

Which image do you like best? The slightly edgy angled head with a big eye shown here? Or the pleasant, inquisitive, straight-on symmetrical look? Head over to Flickr, Facebook, or Instagram to let me know your choice, helping with my final selection!

As I said in the previous image mentioned:

The viewer's eye is drawn to contrast, which is lacking in a strongly blurred portion of the image. Thus, blurring the non-subject area aids in drawing the viewer's eye to the sharp-focused subject.

For this image, the telephoto compression and long distance beyond the subject create the background blur, and getting down into some close rocks takes the foreground out of focus, eliminating those distractions.

Note that, while I love the use of blur in photography, I rarely like foreground blur covering the subject's face.

With the Canon EOS R5 Mark II in hand, it is time to find subjects, and few are cuter than whitetail fawns.

This one cooperatively posed in front of a distant background, which the Canon EOS R5 Mark II and RF 600mm F4 L IS USM Lens turned into a strong blur. Your eye sees nothing but deer (and a few raindrops).

In this meeting of the minds, the two bucks were not seeing eye to eye, and it was an all-out brawl. There was blood, saliva, breath steam, and dust. The raging battle of the bucks lasted for over 8 minutes. I was blessed with a ring-side seat, and over 1,900 images were the spoils of this war.

The Canon EOS R5 Mark II gets the credit for this shot. For evaluation and comparison purposes, I was switching between the R5 II and the EOS R1, and the R5 II happened to be in the hand this morning. That was an optimal choice for this event. The animals' pushing and rotating changed distance rapidly and frequently, and they were sometimes far enough away to warrant cropping, and the R5 II's higher resolution provides more pixels on subject.

The RF 400mm F2.8 L IS USM Lens was another integral piece of the kit. The f/2.8 aperture was critical for the dim early AM lighting, and this lens's ability to blur the background was also important at the framing distance required to keep the two animals in the frame.

Upon finding this whitetail buck eating berries, I knew the shot I wanted. Patience paid off, and he eventually chose to eat the overhead berries to check that box.

I frequently talk about the background of an image, and here the green lichens-covered tree trunks add color that is indicative of this park. The lens took care of blurring those trees and the rest of the background, making the deer and berries he was eating stand out.

I was alternating between the EOS R1 and the EOS R5 Mark II on this trip, looking for performance differentiators, especially in regard to AF. The two cameras' AF systems performed similarly, with little difference being realized.

In the recently shared Bull Elk Among the Pines image, I suggested that thinking like a landscape photographer should be a top priority, seeing and capturing the environmental wildlife photo option when the right scenario unfolds. Still, I can't resist the in-your-face shot when it is availed.

The Canon EOS R5 Mark II and RF 100-500mm F4.5-7.1 L IS USM Lens teamed for this image. The compact size and light weight of this combination made it ideal for the long hike required to get to this enormous bull, the focal length range enabled fast adjustment to quickly capture a wide range of compositions, and the delivered image quality is outstanding.

I can't think of anything that saturates the landscape like rain, which, in this case, exaggerated the fall foliage color. Fall foliage arrives during the summer in Denali National Park, but I suppose the meaning supersedes that technicality.

The big ram alone makes a great subject, but the background takes the image to the next level, making it stand out for selection over a vast number of alternative choices.

As often happens these days, the Canon EOS R5 Mark II and RF 100-500mm F4.5-7.1 L IS USM Lens made it in the pack, and this combination left no regrets.

As I mentioned before, I was blessed to photograph an all-out over-8-minute battle between two whitetail bucks in Shenandoah National Park. I'm sharing another moment from that fight.

As shared in the last battle shot, the Canon EOS R5 Mark II and RF 400mm F2.8 L IS USM Lens get credit for the photos.

To photograph a lunar eclipse, the sky must be clear. Historically, the Southwest has the USA's clearest winter skies, and going with the odds seemed the ideal decision. Death Valley National Park has the statistically optimal location and a long list of other photography opportunities, so it got the selection.

About 5 hours before the start of the eclipse, the selected Death Valley location, Stovepipe Wells, was getting an extreme storm. While there was little rain, the wind-blown dust and sand reduced visibility below 100 yards (meters) and blew fine sand through the edges of the solid hotel room door, coating everything in my room and creating little sand dunes just inside the door. It was crazy.

The forecast showed this storm coming, but much of the western US had the same or worse forecast. Forecasted clear skies were a flight away, and that option wasn't in play.

Miraculously, a slot of mostly clear sky opened up overhead just before the start of the lunar eclipse and closed just after the full moon reappeared. Heavy clouds were visible to both sides during much of that time, but the moon remained between them.

The primary goal for this trip was to capture the shots needed to create the lunar version of this 2024 Total Lunar Eclipse Phase Progression image. Goal met. #blessed

While the lunar eclipse was a top goal for this trip, most of the time was spent photographing the landscape, including many hiking miles carrying gear. The most solid tripod available is the optimal choice for photographing the dark total eclipse with a big, long-focal-length lens and long exposure, but a lighter model (that could still manage strong winds) was needed for landscape use.

Flying with more than one significant tripod impacts available storage, but this support need was solidly met by the Really Right Stuff TVC-32G Versa Mk2 Ground Carbon Fiber Tripod. A review of the TVC-32G Versa Mk2 has been on the to-do list for ... years, but it is an outstanding choice when short height is sufficient for the need. A lower tripod is typically less impacted by vibrations, and I was sitting for the eclipse, so height wasn't needed in that regard.

A Wimberley WH-200-S Sidemount Head solidly held the RF 600mm F4 L IS USM Lens and a RF 1.4x Extender on a Canon EOS R5 Mark II for exposures reaching 0.5 seconds.