I’ve been a Canon fan boy for well over 15 years now, so it would be so inconvenient and frustrating for me to switch to Sony after all of these years of brand loyalty and familiarity.
I was one of the first people to have purchased the EOS R, Canon’s original mirrorless option. I loved it from the beginning and never looked back. So it was a no-brainer for me to switch to the EOS R5ii since it was time for some upgrades to my equipment.
Trouble in Paradise
This switch up came with a major caveat. I’ve switched to doing primarily studio photography now and as I was shooting I noticed immediately that I had to wait 30, sometimes even 40 seconds to see an image preview. This was slowing my sessions down in such an unproductive way.
Session after session, I couldn’t figure out why this kept happening. I tried different cards, I tried CRAW, I tried JPG, nothing seemed to fix the issue with the speed. To be clear, I really don’t mind the actual buffer, since I’m not shooting things that require me to “freeze” motion. I just need my preview image.
After hours upon hours of research and trying everything. I eventually discovered on a session that this was only happening when using a flash. I do use Godox lights, so I’m not exactly sure if this affects the Canon flash systems. This is still unacceptable, so I kept digging. I even upgraded my flash trigger after a series of failed firmware updates. Which made me also realize that the update process for Godox/Flashpoint is complete garbage and needs to be reinvented, particularly for Mac users.
So, What’s the Fix?
It took over a month of having this camera before I found the fix. However, it was frustratingly simple. Canon has a “digital lens optimization” setting alongside it’s lens correction options. Whatever is happening when set to the highest setting, was causing the issue. I didn’t notice it when turning it down to the lowest setting, but I ended up turning it off to be safe.
A love/hate relationship
The image quality and focusing on this camera is incredible but I can’t begin to understand why it starts to give the overheating warnings in photo mode. I don’t shoot video, this shouldn’t be something I fight. I ended up returning the original battery grip that I purchased with the camera and bought the version that had the cooling fan + ethernet. Only to discover that it doesn’t have buttons on the grip for when you turn the camera into a portrait orientation. Most of my work is in portrait considering the tight space I work in.