Hey everybody! How are you doing? We’re back here on The Slanted Lens. We got two new cameras to introduce to you, the Sony a7R 5 versus the Canon R5. Really, creative departments, couldn’t come up with another number? All right, anyway let’s move ahead. I’ve got Alliyah here with me. Hi guys! She’s going to help us take a look at these two cameras. We’ve got a very similar camera price range wise, but some very different specs here. We’ve got a 61 megapixel on the Sony a7R V which is the same sensor as the a7R IV, but it has a brand new autofocus. On the Canon we got a 45 megapixel sensor.It’s got a good autofocus. But I want to see how the autofocus compares with these two cameras. This is a fascinating step forward for really Sony because it’s an autofocus that everyone’s saying we really need that in the A1. And for Canon, this Canon is coming to kind of come into its own. Because as consumers are trying to switch over to RF lenses and the mirrorless this becomes a great choice. Let’s see if a 61 megapixel sensor gives us better picture quality than a 45 megapixel sensor. That is 16 megapixels and that’s almost half of a 24.
Let’s see, so let’s talk about the specs of these two cameras. They are similar in many ways, very similar in price within a couple hundred dollars of each other. They’re very similar in weight. They almost weigh exactly the same. I found them very similar to handle and to use. I mean, there are things about them we’re going to talk about that are a little different. But basically speaking, these are cameras at the market both these manufacturers are really marketing after the same people. And that is someone who wants a larger megapixel sensor camera. But as far as their bit depth and their video capabilities they’ve got 14-bit depth, H.265 4.2.2 10 bit. They have also your mechanical shutter, 1/8000 of a second to 30 seconds. You have your monitors are very similar. I mean one is two million the other is two million one hundred thousand. I mean, well 195 anyway. They’re almost exactly the same.
But there are some places where they diverge from one another. And I think those are pretty important to look at and to understand. The first one for me is frames per second. Because even though you’re going to choose this camera because you want a larger megapixel image which is great for shooting any kinds of people things and portraits and landscapes and so many different things. But you still want a decent frame per second. And so the way these lay out is that the Sony a7R V is 10 frames per second at 61 megapixels. But that’s up to 583 raw images or a thousand jpeg images. So that’s pretty amazing. The Canon is 12 frames per second up to 180 frames.
When it comes to electronic shutter they’re very different. The Sony gives you seven frames per second at 61 megapixels. Whereas a Canon gives you 20 frames per second at 45 megapixels. So there’s quite a difference there. If you’re shooting any kind of action, if you want any kind of animals or wildlife that makes a big difference. That difference right there.
Even though their monitors are very similar in size, their electronic viewfinders are much different. And for me that is significant because I look through the electronic viewfinder all of the time to really see what I’ve got. And so on the Sony you’ve got almost a nine and a half million dot EVF whereas on the Canon it’s more like 5 million seven hundred sixty thousand. So that gives you a much more significant view of your image in the EVF in the Canon or in the Sony a7R V.
So when it comes to using these cameras the one upgrade that the Sony a7R V has given us that we don’t have in the Canon is this right here. It’s a tilt up screen which it’s always had with the a7R IV. But it’s also a swing out screen. So you now have the both of best worlds. You can flip it up if you want to look down. You can flip it out if you want to be able to use it in other applications. You can rotate this all the way around. It’s like, I mean it just gives you all of the best of those two worlds. Which I think is a great upgrade for the Sony a7R V.
Okay so there’s some basic features of these two cameras. But for me, other than that flip out screen and the frames per second a little bit, I think the most important thing to me is picture quality and autofocus. And this is an area that we really want to focus on, and that is autofocus. Let’s focus on the focus. So let’s quickly look at the image quality and let’s look at that autofocus.
We have a bit of a challenge when we do these kinds of new cameras because the Sony a7R V is not upgraded yet in Camera Raw. So we had to go to Sony’s raw conversion which is okay. But I don’t think it’s robust or as robust or as good as Camera Raw. So we did as best we could to give us a clean look at these two images. And remember color in these cases has become such an easy fix in camera raw or in any kind of imaging software, Lightroom or whatever. It’s just very easy to fix them.
So when I look at these two images they are both tack, tack sharp. When I punch in on the eye on each one of these you’d be hard-pressed to tell me which one was a 45 megapixel and which one was a 61 megapixel image. That 45 megapixel sensor is a beautiful sensor. It gives you a ton of information. When you do have 61MP it does mean you can crop into this at least a third. And that is beneficial if you’re shooting any kinds of sports or animals where that cropping in is a huge factor.
I mean it’s interesting, the second image we did, the Canon’s a little on the yellowish side and the Sony is a little on the red side. But again such an easy fix. And just, you get beautiful, falls out of focus. The images are extremely sharp. The eyelashes just pop. It’s just beautiful images. So I don’t think you can go wrong with either one of these cameras when it comes to image quality. I think they’re pretty well. Both of them are pretty amazing.
This next area, autofocus, is where these two cameras really are very, very different. I have struggled a little bit with Canon. It’s always been very good. But it’s never been quite as good as Sony in a lot of the tests that we’ve done. So, as I have two tests here from Canon, you look at these and you’ll think, “wow, those are amazing”. One of them hardly misses an image. She goes behind the tree. She goes in the sunlight, out of the sunlight. She turns around and we get almost every image in focus. The second one we maybe missed two or three images. The problem is I shot this 10 times to get this. Eight of those ten times fell completely out of focus. It was one, I mean it never picked her up after she went behind the tree. And it was like I would have to get her turn her face towards me more. I have to do several things to get her to get it to stick on her when she came behind the tree. With the Sony, and look at these images, it was this good or better every single time. And it’s staying right on her as she goes by the tree. It misses one or two right around the tree as it’s re-emerged around the tree. But then picks her up again as she turns and moves towards us. We see that it stays with her all the way to the front. It just sticks with her all the way. I’ve done this test with this tree with Sony cameras, Canon cameras with all of them. I’ve never gotten the camera to do as well as the a7R V did on this tree test. Every time we’ve done it we’ve finally aborted and just had the person walk straight towards us, every single time. This is the first time I’ve had a camera that I can actually say succeeds with that test and it did. The Sony a7R V succeeded extremely well. The Canon, not so much.
So let’s look at this dynamic range test. Because there’s two different softwares here we didn’t have Camera Raw for the Sony a7R V. We just did a single image, same meter reading for both of them. Both of them are just set for the skin tone of the person. And we let the range fall where the range is going to fall. So you look at these and the Sony’s obviously holding better into the highlights and a little more into the Shadows. The Canon is not holding quite as well in the highlights or quite as well in the shadows. But I mean, the Sony does feel like it looks like it has an edge here. But before I could really talk intelligently about dynamic range I want to see all these images taken into the same Adobe Raw and I can process them and then we can look at that. Maybe that’s what we can do in the future. So I think they’re very similar in dynamic range. Maybe the Sony has an edge, but inconclusive.
All right, let’s look at the ISO test. When we start at 200 ISO on these images, I see noise starting to build in the background. Which is more noise? This is a very dark image in the background. So we’re seeing a little bit of noise in those shadows. But we see pretty clean on her skin. We go from 200 to 400 ISO. Again we see great detail. We’re not seeing a lot of noise on her face. The shadow transition from highlights into shadows is still pretty clean. When we go up to 800 ISO here I start seeing more. I mean, you see that, you see it in her kind of underneath her eyelids. You see the shadows starting to build. You start to see a little bit of color kind of color crossover as you go from the shadows the highlight that starts to build just a little bit. Go to 1600 ISO and we certainly see it in 1600 ISO. Look at this background at 1600 ISO. It’s already pretty grainy. We see it in her face. The Sony seems to me like it’s cleaner. When we go to 3200 ISO we see a lot of grain in that Canon. This grain is much nicer in the Sony. When we go up to 6400 ISO major grain all around. My word, look at the Canon. Yeah, Sony is starting to build as well. But it’s not near as bad as the Canon. I mean, look at the background on those two. And of course when you go past that I just think it’s almost ridiculous. But we have one more here which is 12,800 ISO. Canon is just completely, it’s a stencil, it’s a pixel and the color is shifted. You’re getting weird crossovers in both of them. I think the Sony comes out a little bit ahead on this. I think it holds the ground a little bit better. But take a look at the images again and see what you think.
So the Sony has an AI based real tracking autofocus system. So it’s an all new AI based. It’s trying to track the figure, the motion, the structure of the body. And it’s trying to keep that as a way to track it. It will focus and track on a single subject and stay with your subject as others come into the frame. It just gives you improved in all areas, human, animal, bird, you know insect, trains. Trains, planes and automobiles! It’s got them all. It just really gives you the ability to focus on the different things. You select exactly what you’re after. It’s got that new Bionic XR processing engine which is eight times faster. It’s going to give you faster performance compared to previous sensors. It’s going to give you greater processing. It’s going to give you greater autofocus capabilities. It’s an excellent system and I can’t say enough about it.
For me, these cameras, because they are similar in so many different ways, really diverge in some of the most important ways. The Sony has much better autofocus which for me is extremely important. I think autofocus is continuing to LEAP ahead. I think this is a major leap ahead. You know, it’s interesting because we’re starting to look at autofocus like you look at perfection or something, you know. Do you get enough out of the Canon R5 to give you great wedding images? Absolutely! You know, not everyone is chasing sports and running 100 miles an hour and taking, you know, 100 frames a second. You know, it’s going to be a really solid workhorse kind of camera. But having said that, the Sony just seems to outperform a little bit in that area and it gives you just great performance. So there you have it, a look at the two cameras and just exactly how they perform. Leave us a comment below and make sure you subscribe to the channel and keep those cameras rollin’ keep on clickin’!
