Either most Canon EOS R5 owners aren’t as observant as they like to think they are or this might not be as common an issue as some may believe. But at least one EOS R5 owner, who goes by the name juanmaasecas, has spotted what he believes is a bug with the in-body image stabilisation system in the Canon EOS R5. He posted a video showing how the bug appears and has confirmed that others can reproduce it. Essentially, the issue is that the IBIS has a slight shift as the photo is being taken, causing it to become blurred. Subsequent images in a continuous sequence of shots show a stable, sharp clean image. But that first one always has blur, according to the video. At least one person commenting on the video reports that the same happens with his EOS R6.
The bug appears to be pretty consistent and reproducable happening with both electronic and ELCF shutter modes when IBIS is set to Always On. He even took his camera to Canon’s service centre in Hong Kong to try and get it fixed, believing there was just an issue with his camera, yet they experienced the same issue with other cameras there. According to the video description…
He also posted on the DPReview forums, trying to nail down the cause of the issue and to see how widespread it may be. The usual suspects such as using 3rd party lenses seems to have been ruled out as another user reported that it happens with Canon’s own EF 50mm f/1.2 lens using Canon’s EF to RF adapter. When IBIS is always ON, the sensor will twist after the first picture is taken, giving noticeably blurry pictures (specially seen at slow shutter speeds). If you keep the shutter button half-pressed and take more pictures, the rest of them will be fine. Also if IBIS is set to for shot only, the issue does not exist. This happens with both EF and RF lenses with NO Optical Image Stabilisation. If the lens has built-in OIs, this is not a problem either. It happens in firmware version 1.2.0, 1.3.0 and 1.3.1. I hope Canon fixes this soon. And it’s obviously not the lens stabilisation as it happens with lenses that don’t have built-in stabilisation. Plus, lens stabilisation wouldn’t physically rotate the image hitting the sensor, even if it rotated the elements. That being said, it only seems to happen with non-stabilised lenses from what I could make out. It also doesn’t seem to be an issue related to just adapted lenses, as the folks at the Canon service centre in Hong Kong were also able to reproduce the issue using a native Canon RF 50mm f/1.8 – an experience confirmed by others with the same lens, as well as the RF 85mm f/1.2 and RF 50mm f/1.2 lenses. The simple solution, for now, seems to be don’t use IBIS in Always On mode with the EOS R5 (and maybe the EOS R6), even if you’re using a native lens, unless you’re planning to shoot in bursts and aren’t worried if the first image in each sequence isn’t usable. Whatever the cause, it seems to be affecting a significant enough portion of the EOS R5 owning population, whether most of them notice it or not. Chances are, many who experience it might not even notice that slight softness in a random image. Or, if they do, they’ll just assume it’s their technique or some random lens softness and that’s as good as it gets. It does seem like a software bug, as it only happens during a certain IBIS mode. If so, it’s one that Canon needs to get fixed rather quickly. [via Canon Rumors]
