Canon R5 Mark II Setup: Menu Settings to Change First

To set up your Canon EOS R5 Mark II, change five things first: check the Photo/Movie switch, pick your shutter type, choose a burst speed, set up autofocus, and put the right card in the right slot. Do that before your first shoot and the camera will behave the way you expect when you press the button.

The R5 Mark II is the newest camera in Canon's EOS 5 series, which started with the original EOS 5D in 2005. This guide walks you through the R5 Mark II in plain steps, using what reviewers found once they had the camera.

Before you open the menus

Find the Menu button

On the R5 Mark II, the Menu button and the rating button sit on the top-left of the camera's back, which is Canon's current standard spot. Press Menu and take a slow look around. You will not break anything by looking.

Learn the Photo/Movie switch

This little switch is the first thing to make friends with. The Digital Picture's reviewer pointed out that the new Photo/Movie switch has the same position and shape as the original R5's power switch. He wrote that he often left the camera in movie mode before packing it, then found his stills settings not working properly the next time he picked it up. He also noted this mistake can drain the battery.

Think of the switch like a light switch for two different rooms. Before every shoot, glance at it and make sure you are in the room you meant to walk into.

Practice removing the hot shoe cover at home

The hot shoe comes with a cover that has a locking pin. PetaPixel's reviewer called the design flawed and wrote that the cover was often nearly impossible to remove. If you plan to use a flash or a top-mounted microphone, practice getting the cover off at your kitchen table, not five minutes before a client arrives.

Start in A+ mode, then step out of it

The R5 Mark II keeps Canon's fully automatic Scene Intelligent Auto mode, marked A+. The Digital Picture describes it as a mode where a complete beginner can charge the battery, insert a card, and start shooting with point-and-shoot simplicity.

Using A+ on day one is not cheating. It is a good way to get a feel for the camera's weight, buttons and screen. When you are ready to take the wheel, three settings do the work:

• Aperture is like the pupil of your eye. A big opening lets in lots of light and makes the background soft. A small opening lets in less light and keeps more of the scene sharp.
• Shutter speed is like a door opening and closing. A quick door freezes a running dog. A slow door lets motion blur in.
• ISO is like turning up the volume on a quiet song. You hear it better, but you also hear more hiss. In a photo, that hiss looks like grain.

A good next step is aperture priority mode. You pick the pupil size, and the camera picks the door speed for you. If photos come out blurry, that is a clue, not a failure: the door was probably open too long, so try a faster shutter speed next time.

Pick your shutter type

The R5 Mark II gives you a choice of shutters. A mechanical shutter is a tiny real door. An electronic shutter has no moving door at all. The sensor simply starts and stops collecting light.

Here is the trade-off. The R5 Mark II can shoot up to 30 frames per second of full-resolution RAW images with autofocus, but only with the electronic shutter. DPReview's testing found that the electronic shutter mode comes with "an appreciable noise cost".

The numbers come from dynamic range testing by William Claff at Photons to Photos.

Shutter type	Peak dynamic range (Photons to Photos)	Top full-resolution burst
Mechanical	11.45 PDR	Not the fastest mode; 30 fps needs the electronic shutter
Electronic	10.92 PDR	Up to 30 fps

The Digital Picture's own electronic shutter tests found the noise and overexposed results indistinguishable from the mechanical shutter, with strongly underexposed high ISO shots slightly favoring the first-curtain shutter. In plain words, the difference mostly shows up when a dark photo has to be brightened a lot later.

A simple starting rule: use the mechanical shutter for portraits, landscapes and anything that holds still. Switch to the electronic shutter when you need speed, like a kid's soccer game or birds taking off. As a bonus, PetaPixel notes the viewfinder promises blackout-free shooting with the electronic shutter, so you can keep watching your subject during a burst.

Choose a burst speed that fits your subject

A burst is a quick string of photos taken while you hold the shutter button down. Faster is not always better, because the camera has a waiting room for photos called the buffer. PetaPixel lists the R5 Mark II's buffer at 150 RAW+JPEG frames.

In PetaPixel's first look, the camera sustained roughly 10 seconds of shooting at 12 fps, but slowed down after around three seconds at 30 fps. So for most moments, a medium speed gives you plenty of frames without filling the waiting room.

Turn on pre-capture for fast action

The R5 Mark II has a pre-capture burst mode, which Canon calls Pre-Burst. PetaPixel reports it captures the half-second right before you press the shutter, up to 15 frames. Think of it as the camera catching the ball even if your hand was a little late. Use it for wildlife and sports, and leave it off for slow subjects so you are not filling your card with extra frames.

Set up autofocus

The menu is simpler than older Canon cameras

PetaPixel's review found the R5 Mark II's autofocus menu far more simplified than the original R5's. Instead of many tuning options, Canon gives you a slider for how sticky or responsive tracking is. Sticky means the camera holds on to your subject even when something gets in the way. Responsive means it jumps quickly to a new subject.

The same review reports that animal and bird detection are now combined into one Animal mode, and eye detection mostly lives under the People detection mode. PetaPixel noted the R5 Mark II uses the same simplified autofocus menu as the EOS R1, and that it takes some getting used to. If it feels strange at first, that is normal.

Pick a subject to detect

Subject detection tells the camera what to look for. PetaPixel lists four specific animal subjects on the R5 Mark II: dogs, cats, birds and horses. The camera also has eye detection that works alongside the animal detection.

Set it to People for portraits and family photos. Set it to Animals for pets and wildlife. In PetaPixel's underwater testing, the camera could hold focus on a chosen subject even when another object briefly passed in front of it. That is the sticky side of the slider at work, so start near the middle and nudge it toward sticky if your subject keeps getting lost behind things.

Try Eye Control AF, and do not worry if it fails

Eye Control AF lets you look at a spot in the viewfinder and have the camera focus there, once it is calibrated to your eye. PetaPixel called it intuitive and effective for moving subjects.

It does not work for everyone. In PetaPixel's review, guest photographer Mike Drew could not get it to calibrate, PetaPixel's Jordan could not get it working either, and a few other people reported failures. If calibration does not work for you, it is not your fault. You can still move your focus point the regular way with the AF joystick.

Cards, file settings and image size

Put the right card in the right slot

The R5 Mark II has a CFexpress Type B slot and a UHS-II SD card slot. The CFexpress slot uses CFexpress 2.0, not the newer 4.0 standard. Put your fastest card in the slot you will use for bursts and high-resolution video, and use the second slot as a backup copy.

Leave the aspect ratio at 3:2

The sensor's native shape is 3:2, with 1:1, 4:3 and 16:9 also available. Keep 3:2 when you start. It uses the whole sensor, and you can always crop to a square later.

Know what the crop and AI tools do

An APS-C crop, which is 1.6 times tighter, still gives you a 17.3-megapixel file. That is handy for distant animals, but leave it off for everyday shooting so you keep the full 45 megapixels.

The camera also has in-camera AI upscaling and denoising. PetaPixel reports the upscaling can push files up to 179 megapixels, and it only applies to JPEG files. On your first shoots, skip these tools and learn what the plain file looks like first.

Video settings for your first clip

Flip the Photo/Movie switch to Movie, and the camera becomes a serious video tool. The flip-out screen is a 3.2-inch tilt and swivel touchscreen that can face you while you record.

Pick a resolution and frame rate

PetaPixel's review reports the R5 Mark II can shoot up to 8K at 60 frames per second in RAW mode. For a first clip, 4K is easier on your cards and your computer. PetaPixel found that 4K is oversampled only up to 30p, while 4K 60p and 4K 120p are subsampled and image quality takes a hit. No crop is required in any 4K mode.

A calm starting point is 4K at 24p or 30p. Save 60p and 120p for slow motion.

Know how long it can record

Mode	Recording time in PetaPixel's review
8K 60p	Around 23 minutes at room temperature
4K 120p	A very similar time to 8K 60p
8K 24p	Over 50 minutes
4K 24p	74 minutes before the battery quit

The camera uses Canon's LP-E6P battery. For longer recording in demanding modes, Canon sells the CF-R20EP grip, which has a cooling fan and an Ethernet port but does not add battery power.

Turn on the helpers

The R5 Mark II has a waveform display for checking exposure and a tally lamp that shows the person on camera that you are recording. It also has a full-size HDMI port plus separate mic and headphone jacks.

When you are ready to color your footage later, the camera offers C-Log2, which PetaPixel says gives files decent dynamic range for grading. Log footage looks gray and washed out straight from the camera. That is on purpose, like raw dough before it goes in the oven. If you do not plan to edit color yet, a standard picture style is the easier place to start.

Your first-shoot checklist

Setting	Starting point	Why
Photo/Movie switch	Check it every time	Same spot and shape as the original R5's power switch
Shutter type	Mechanical for still subjects, electronic for action	30 fps needs the electronic shutter, which costs some dynamic range
Burst speed	Medium for most moments	30 fps slows after around three seconds
Pre-capture	On for sports and wildlife	Captures the half-second before you press
Subject detection	People or Animals	Animal mode covers birds too
Aspect ratio	3:2	The sensor's native shape
Video	4K 24p or 30p	4K is oversampled up to 30p

If you are still deciding whether this camera fits your work, read Canon R5 Mark II: Is It Actually Worth It?. For a broader walk through Canon menus, see the Canon Camera Menu Setup Guide.

Take it one setting at a time. Change one thing, take a few photos, and look at what happened. That is how the menus stop feeling like a maze. If you want more short lessons like this, the theCamera.School newsletter sends them straight to your inbox.