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.

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).