Article on F-Stoppers; R5 falling apart?

[David Pavlich]

I just read an article on F-Stoppers about problems with the R5. I've had mine for about 1.5 years and haven't had an issue, including the dreaded freeze up. How about you R5 owners? Is your camera good or is it being less than expected?

David

 

[AlanF]

If they were in general "falling apart", you would have read about it here as so many of us have one or more of them.

 

[David Pavlich]

Yep! That's why I posted about the article. I knew that if there were a myriad problems, they'd show up here.

David

 

[EricN]

Besides not seeing posts similar to her problems here, I wondered why an award winning photographer in USA wouldn't have bought a backup and/or paid for the Canon Care PAK.

 

[Loswr]

If you have a platform from which to post, it's always fun to stir up the masses with your bad luck story. Hope she doesn't ever google "[his car make/model] transmission problems," else she may not sleep.

 

[Frodo]

The article got me when it refered to the mirror failing and needed replacing!
Sure, the author had a bad experience with her camera and I understand she is p!ssed off. But to extrapolate that to the R5 generally, well...
Perhaps we should do a poll: age, shutter actuations, working conditions (outside in rain etc, vs studio), and any problems.

 

[Loswr]

The article got me when it refered to the mirror failing and needed replacing!

Good catch. From the article:

After collecting the requested data, I sent the testimonials with the users' full names and additional information to Canon. Here are two of many examples I provided.

Photographer 2: He works in the studio as a fashion photographer and his camera is around 105k actuations. It happens when he is shooting normally (not live view). The mirror gets stuck and frozen and the camera displays error 20 and this cycle repeats itself. He brought it in for repair, it was 600 euros to swap a new shutter and mirror. This cycle has started happening again. The mirror gets stuck. The camera says 'error 20'. He doesn't know why.

The R5 is a mirrorless camera. I'd love to see the bill from the repair shop saying they replaced the mirror. Geez. If you're going to grind an axe, try not to make a fool of yourself while doing so. If this was among the collected feedback sent to Canon, and they ignored it, big shock. I tend to dismiss the conclusions of idiots, as well.

 

[AlanF]

I tend to dismiss the conclusions of idiots, as well.

Really?

 

[Loswr]

Really?

Somehow, I don’t think you’re surprised.

 

[AlanF]

The article got me when it refered to the mirror failing and needed replacing!
Sure, the author had a bad experience with her camera and I understand she is p!ssed off. But to extrapolate that to the R5 generally, well...
Perhaps we should do a poll: age, shutter actuations, working conditions (outside in rain etc, vs studio), and any problems.

I did a poll in Oct 2020 at the height of the reports of freezes before the firmware upgrades that sorted out the problems. Only 7% had frequent freezes then. Mine hasn't frozen since then in over 100,000 shots. https://www.canonrumors.com/forum/threads/how-frequently-does-your-r5-freeze-lock-up.39462/

 

[danfaz]

Good catch. From the article:

After collecting the requested data, I sent the testimonials with the users' full names and additional information to Canon. Here are two of many examples I provided.


The R5 is a mirrorless camera. I'd love to see the bill from the repair shop saying they replaced the mirror. Geez. If you're going to grind an axe, try not to make a fool of yourself while doing so. If this was among the collected feedback sent to Canon, and they ignored it, big shock. I tend to dismiss the conclusions of idiots, as well.

What's interesting is anytime someone brings that to her attention in the comments, she completely ignores that point and just thanks people for their feedback.

 

[unfocused]

My wife and I have had six R series cameras – the original R, the R3, two R5s and now two R7s. Only the original R never had a freeze issue. All of the others have frozen at various times. I'll share my highly personal opinion.

1) People who post on this forum that "they" have never had a freeze issue are not helpful. That's like telling someone who has cancer that you smoke two packs of cigarettes a day and don't have cancer. It's irrelevant and, frankly, kinda rude as it can easily be read that someone else's bad fortune is their own fault. Not cool.

2) It is true that with each firmware update the freezes seem to get a little less frequent. For us, they've gone from a real concern to a minor inconvenience, most of the time. Except of course when you spot an incredible bird and you push the shutter button and nothing happens.

3) I've been very sympathetic to Canon once they finally acknowledged the issue (at least, sort of acknowledged it). Initially Canon seemed to be in denial, but with firmware updates they have at least tacitly admitted it is a problem. It is clearly a complex problem that appears to have multiple factors that contribute to it. Anyone who has ever tried to solve any technical glitch knows that the more random the problem is and the more complex the technology is, the harder it is to nail down the cause. The freezes are random and cannot be linked to a single cause or even one or two causes. I am confident that Canon will keep working to narrow down the issue and may eventually figure it out.

4) As for the author's other complaints and the general tone of the article, I kind of think she's full of crap. If the flip screens were prone to coming apart, I am sure we would have seen multiple posts and threads in this forum. Similarly, with her complaint about the flash shoe. How come we aren't hearing about these if they were a real issue. It's a sharp contrast to the freeze issue, which has been discussed many times on this forum as well as on other forums. That makes me doubt that her experience is anywhere near common.

5) In terms of durability. Well, I have dropped my R5 at least twice. Both times I got confused as to which camera I had hanging from my neck and let go of the wrong body. Once, it landed on a hard marble floor in the state capitol while I was on a job. The second time was just last week when it made a soft landing on grass. I take good care of my cameras, but they still get a fair amount of banging about. Last summer I lost my balance while getting up and came crashing into some rocks. The only damages to the cameras was a broken eyecup on the R3 which Canon replaced at no charge when I sent the body in for a clean and check (Yay CPS Platinum!) It's just a fact of life that when you do sports and event photography and when you take trips to photograph birds and wildlife the cameras get knocked about. I've found all the R bodies to be at least as durable as Canon's DSLRs.

6) As someone who started as a journalist, I resent the phony equivalency that threads through this article. The author took a known issue (freezing) and conflated that with her unique experiences. She then concludes that Canon has a general durability problem, ignoring the fact that the only real and documented issue (freezing) has absolutely nothing to do with durability. She conveniently ignores the strong likelihood that the durability issues she experienced are much more likely to be the result of how she uses or misuses her cameras.

 

[David Pavlich]

On issue two, I get your point, however, I think it wise to let potential buyers know that it's not EVERY R5 that has the freeze issue. Maybe I'm lucky or maybe I haven't done whatever combination of action causes it.

David

 

[EricN]

On issue two, I get your point, however, I think it wise to let potential buyers know that it's not EVERY R5 that has the freeze issue. Maybe I'm lucky or maybe I haven't done whatever combination of action causes it.

David

I agree, it felt helpful for me to know that not everyone had experienced the problem when I was deciding to buy or not. I experienced it a few times, but discovered my particular issue was because the battery grip needed to be tightened. After retightening the grip, it's not had any problem since.

 

[AlanF]

1) People who post on this forum that "they" have never had a freeze issue are not helpful. That's like telling someone who has cancer that you smoke two packs of cigarettes a day and don't have cancer. It's irrelevant and, frankly, kinda rude as it can easily be read that someone else's bad fortune is their own fault. Not cool.
....
6) As someone who started as a journalist, I resent the phony equivalency that threads through this article.

Is the analogy between a freeze on a camera and cancer with its connotations phony equivalency?

 

[kaihp]

1) People who post on this forum that "they" have never had a freeze issue are not helpful. That's like telling someone who has cancer that you smoke two packs of cigarettes a day and don't have cancer. It's irrelevant and, frankly, kinda rude as it can easily be read that someone else's bad fortune is their own fault. Not cool.

How would you like people to chip in about the freezes (or whatever problem that could be under discussion), when they haven't had this problem?

After all, there should be value in understanding how widespread the problem is.

 

[koenkooi]

[...]
1) People who post on this forum that "they" have never had a freeze issue are not helpful. That's like telling someone who has cancer that you smoke two packs of cigarettes a day and don't have cancer. It's irrelevant and, frankly, kinda rude as it can easily be read that someone else's bad fortune is their own fault. Not cool.
[...]

There's a difference between "I haven't had a freeze (yet)" and "Unpossible! You're holding it wrong!". For me, it becomes annoying when people gang up and only post "Nope, no freezes", without any attempt at trying to understand the issue.
At my previous job I used the computer budget to buy a first gen Ryzen, the 1800x, to build our software locally. We had a massively parallel buildsystem, so that 8 core 1800x seemed to be a perfect fit. But the first batch of those CPUs had a bug where it would lockup under heavy parallel loads. It took a few weeks, but AMD sent me a hand picked replacement that was better, it took a few days to crash, not a few minutes.

But the online response was basically "Djeez, you are a weirdo for wanting to compile things, and doing it in parallel means you're a pervert as well. Go play a game on your PC like a normal person. Also there is no issue, you are a poopiehead.". That's paraphrased, the original comments used different words, less interpunction and lacked a spell check.

So I can imagine your frustration with the "mine works" responses!

 

[AlanF]

There's a difference between "I haven't had a freeze (yet)" and "Unpossible! You're holding it wrong!". For me, it becomes annoying when people gang up and only post "Nope, no freezes", without any attempt at trying to understand the issue.
At my previous job I used the computer budget to buy a first gen Ryzen, the 1800x, to build our software locally. We had a massively parallel buildsystem, so that 8 core 1800x seemed to be a perfect fit. But the first batch of those CPUs had a bug where it would lockup under heavy parallel loads. It took a few weeks, but AMD sent me a hand picked replacement that was better, it took a few days to crash, not a few minutes.

But the online response was basically "Djeez, you are a weirdo for wanting to compile things, and doing it in parallel means you're a pervert as well. Go play a game on your PC like a normal person. Also there is no issue, you are a poopiehead.". That's paraphrased, the original comments used different words, less interpunction and lacked a spell check.

So I can imagine your frustration with the "mine works" responses!

In the initial discussions here about the freeze there were attempts to work out why some froze and others didn't. The back and forth helped for example digigal as well as some others realise that they had overcustomised their menus and others it was the card they were using. Others who had frequent freezes under standard conditions had the knowledge that they were in a minority and sent theirs back to Canon. Knowledge about the experience of others is crucial. No one here is saying "you are a poopiehead", they are just telling you their experience so you can use it in your decisions.

 

[AlanF]

Which reminds me. My R7 increasingly this summer had freezes or notifications that the camera couldn't communicate with the card and I should remove the battery. It was arranged to be sent back to Canon when I recalled the earlier exchanges on freezes with the R5 so I changed the SD card to see if that was the cause. It's been fine ever since.

 

[unfocused]

I did not intend to reopen the Great Freeze Debate. I’ve participated in all the discussions here as well as an R3 discussion on an official Canon forum. Some of the “solutions” seemed to help, but not consistently. Others were more magical thinking.

As I said, Canon seems to be working its way toward a solution and I’m content to let the people who actually know something do that.

But focusing on the freeze issue misses my main criticism of the original article, which is that the author took this known problem and lumped in some issues that were unique to her experience and then wrote an article that basically claims that Canon’s mirrorless bodies lack durability.

Her premise is absurd because the known issue (freezing) has no connection to the durability of the cameras and the two problems she experienced seem to be unique to her.

It’s basically an unfair and misleading hit job on Canon.