Canon EOS R5 & EOS R5 Mark ii AI focusing issues

[Jeff E]

I am a Canon Professional Service member and own 1 R5 version 1 and R5 Mark II, as well as 4 other Canon bodies and multiple lenses. This May I went to Magee Marsh near Toledo Ohio to photograph the Warbler Migration. In the marsh you are photographing from a board walk into a jungle like environment of trees, bushes, vines and weeds. This is the most challenging environment in which to shoot. The AI in my 2 R5 Mark IIs and my friends Mark ii continually failed to focus on the warblers. if the warbler was in plain view but a small vine was near the bird, these cameras would always focus on the vine. there were other people there with Sony and Nikon cameras who could focus on birds where our cameras would not focus. I had one instance where a Indigo Bunting was standing on the blacktop parking and I fired 100shots and each time the camera focused on the eye or head and there wasn't one usable sharply focused image. this was one of hundreds of similar instances of failure to focus or focus sharply. I believe that Canon's AI is faulty. Ai is suppose to be able to recognize a bird even if there are distracting things near the bird, but in my and my friends experience it doesn't work like other manufacturer's cameras A1. Sony & Nikon Cameras were focusing many time better that the R5 Mark iis. I believe part of the problem is that Canon unlike other manufacturers lump birds in with all other animals. All birds have a generally unique shape with a tail and a bill along with wings. Most Manufacturer's have an AI category for just birds, but Canon does not. I have sent my cameras in for repair and I have been told they work as designed.

If you take the R5 Mark II into a lest congested environment the work reasonably well, but not perfect. for example I was focusing on a blue Jay on a tree stump and the first thing it focused on was the stump. That is not the way AI (artificial Intelligence) is suppose to work. I just talked to my friend in Asheville, NC who was photographing bird out his wind on a fence rail. If he tried to focus on the bird first it would not focus until he focused on the rail first. The R5 version one work better but not nearly as good as Sony or Nikon cameras with AI. I am asking people with Canon cameras to start complaining to Canon about their bad AI. If enough people complain then maybe we can get a firmware update that will fix the problem.

I am a30 year Canon User and have only their best equipment. People pay me to set up their cameras for what they want to shoot, because I understand most of the settings in the cameras menus.