In October, I published a field review of the Canon EOS R5 Mark II, focusing on my work as a semi-professional nature and landscape photographer. I decided to revisit my review of the Canon EOS R5 based upon my experience having worked with at a professional event, using the camera in a wide variety of applications and lighting conditions. Honestly, this was the reason for having purchased the R5 II in the first place - dog shows. I don't know how many of you have been to a dog show before, but they are rarely as elegant as what you see on TV on Thanksgiving Day, or at the Westminster Dog Show. To the contrary, most indoor dog shows (at least those here in the North East) are photographed in terrible lighting conditions - usually harsh fluorescent light and in places that may also be doubling as a place where they have cattle. In short, excellent autofocus and the ability to photograph at high ISOs is a must. I made a huge investment in camera equipment (lenses and bodies) in 2024 for explicit purpose of bringing my dog show photography up a notch. This is not to say that I could not do my work with my old SLRs. I shot a nationals in 2022 with my Canon EOS 5DSr and did just fine, thank you. However, there is no question that the new camera bodies and lenses are a giant leap in terms of autofocus ability and sensor speed.

In October, I got my chance! I was the contracted official photographer for the 2024 Samoyed Nationals in Corpus Christi, Texas. For those of you who have never been to a dog show, much less a national one, these are a pretty big deal. In this case, there were over 300 Samoyed dogs, each vying to be the 'best Samoyed in the show.' As official photographer, I was responsible for photographing all of he sanctioned show events (except agility). The events I was responsible for included: FastCAT, the Weight Pull, Rally and Obedience and the official win photos (also called Conformation). My amazing assistant, Justin Crawford, and I also took thousands of candid images throughout the event, showcasing the amazing work that everyone put into making this show come together. My thanks to the Samoyed Club of America (SCA) for their faith in me. I am now contracted for the 2025 Nationals in Ohio in October 2025.

The very first event of the Nationals was something called FastCAT. Fast CAT is a moniker for Coursing Ability Test (CAT). It is a 100-yard dash where dogs chase a lure to see how fast they can run. I jokingly refer to the lure as a 'trash bag bunny." It is a safe way to let your dog go all out in a supervised fashion. The FastCAT was a really good test of the camera because these very white dogs were running directly into the sun - meaning that exposing for the dog and not having it look like a shadow and keeping the rest of the exposure from blowing was really tough. I am including a couple of samples here of dogs running in the FastCAT. I think it is fairly safe to say that given the harsh lighting conditions, that the images came our pretty...pretty...good. For this event, I went back and forth between my Canon RF 200-800 and my Canon 70-200 F2.8, both on different bodies. In October, when I wrote my first review on the R5II, I indicated that my personal experience was that the concerns about dynamic range with the sensor were over-blown (pardon the dynamic range pun). Having photographed the Sammy Nationals, I still maintain that up to ISO 800, and even 1600, that the Dynamic Range concerns that had been raised about the R5 II are mainly non issues (at least for me).

Photographing ring photos throughout the event, I was mainly pleased with the high ISO performance and dynamic range of the R5 II. To be clear, images are still not as clean as the original R5 Mark I, however, they are still more than usable all the way up to ISO 6400. As a matter of fact, I received several emails from clients telling me how amazed they were the the quality of the images that we provided them. /I am including some ring photos below.

During the ring photos, I really did tap into two significant issues with the camera. The first is the Eye controlled Autofocus. I brought up my dissatisfaction with the Eye Controlled AutoFocus in my article in October. My opionion here remains consistent with my original article. The R5 II's autofocus, WHEN IN WORKS, is a dream. However, there were multiple situations where I could not get this camera to focus on a subject. To be fair, the ring photos were all taken in low light and these are pretty terrible conditions to be photographing any moving object in.

The other area where the camera struggled had to do with the buffer of RAW images it could take without 'tapping out.' On the last day of the show, there must have been 50 or more Samoyeds going into the ring. When shooting a good movement photo, I frequently raise the camera's frames per second to a minimum of 12. One of the nice features of the R5 II is that it gives the ability to write simultaneously to two different media cards - one CF Express Type B card and one SD Card. However, the CF Express cards data throughout is significantly greater than the SD Cards (I believe that my Sandisk Extreme CF Express Type B card has a data write speed of about 1400 megabits per second as opposed to my SD Card's 190 megabits per second). As a result, while the CF Express Type B card was able to process the images without delay, the camera's dual card system failed me while I was shooting because the SD Card could not keep up with the RAW shooting speeds.