The Canon EOS R5 Mark II is Canon's best camera ever, but I'm not replacing my R5 – and the reason may surprise you
(Image credit: James Artaius)
After using it extensively, I can say two things about the Canon EOS R5 Mark II with absolute confidence: it is the best Canon camera I've ever used, but I will not be upgrading from my original EOS R5.
The latter is in no way intended as shade against the former. The R5 Mark II is an absolutely almighty camera; it's so good, in fact, that some people are questioning whether it's more deserving of the flagship moniker than the Canon EOS R1.
Again, this is a camera with a 45MP stacked sensor, 180MP in-camera upscaling, 8K 60p video, 30fps continuous burst shooting, 15 frames of pre-continuous shooting, Eye Control AF, utterly phenomenal predictive autofocus, supremely smooth 8.5-stop image stabilization… so why am I not upgrading my R5 for this beast?
It's simple: the Mark II is just too much camera for me.
Indeed, the OG R5 is probably too much camera for me. After all, it's still a 45MP monster with 8K 30p video, 20fps burst shooting, astounding autofocus and ludicrously good 8-stop image stabilization. Those specs are still crazy good.
One of the reasons I bought the R5 in 2020 is because it was ridiculously overpowered – and honestly, it's still ridiculously overpowered in 2024. And while the Mark II ups the ante to even more ridiculous levels, I barely used a fraction of the power of the original.
If I still shot as much basketball as I used to, buying the Canon EOS R5 Mark II would be a no-brainer (Image credit: James Artaius)
Frankly, I'm not good enough / my work isn't demanding enough for the extra grunt of the EOS R5 Mark II. I wish that they were, because I would love to own this camera – it really is jaw-droppingly good. But given that what I shoot these days is 90% portraiture, I just don't need it.
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I used to shoot a lot more sport, namely basketball – which actually benefits tremendously from the new Dual Pixel Intelligent AF, with its predictive Action Priority algorithms. And if I still shot it as much as I used to, then upgrading would be an absolute no-brainer; the improvements are so good that they would single-handedly justify the price of admission for me.
I would genuinely love to have Canon's in-camera Neural network Image Processing, because the ability to instantly upscale any image to 180MP (or crop into an image and then upscale it to rescue the lost resolution) is a game-changer, as is the ability to denoise an image by two stops.
But while those things would be nice to have, I don't need them.
If I didn't already own the OG R5, and I was upgrading from a lower-level camera, then absolutely I'd go for the new model and the extra firepower it possesses. As it stands, though, I've already got more firepower than I need. And it's okay to admit that!
James has 22 years experience as a journalist, serving as editor of Digital Camera World for 6 of them. He started working in the photography industry in 2014, product testing and shooting ad campaigns for Olympus, as well as clients like Aston Martin Racing, Elinchrom and L'Oréal. An Olympus / OM System, Canon and Hasselblad shooter, he has a wealth of knowledge on cameras of all makes – and he loves instant cameras, too.
