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On the R5, I use the electronic shutter the most, but if I see any kind of recognizable structure in the backgrounds, I go back to mechanical. On the R7, I use electronic 1st curtain the most, but switch to electronic for stationary subjects and focus stacking. I try to avoid full mechanical on that camera because of shutter slap. I recently borrowed the R3 from Canon and only used the electronic shutter and it was so nice to not have to think about these issues. As have said this before, but I will say it again: I will not buy another camera from Canon that has rolling shutter. So they better bring the tech to the R5M2 (my preferred next body) and/or the R1 (this would be overkill be me, and it is too expensive for who I am - not a pro, so don't have pro needs, but I like good images above all else). Thanks for the video.

Thank you for the clear explanation and for the link to the read-out speed comparison chart. Excellent.

Thanks for this great explanation.....extremely helpful!

Wonderfully explained. Thank you so much

Very informative Fabian. Thank you for posting this video. It answered many questions I had while shooting with my R6 and R5 cameras.

I’m learning a lot, thanks!

Thank you so much Fabian for the helpful and informative video! God bless and good luck! ❤🙏

thank you for the information it's helpful 🤝👍

great job explaining

Great review thank you

I’m a bit late with my comment but this is an excellent explanation. I’ve just purchased an R7 to replace an ancient 7d Mark I for bird photography and the learning curve is fairly steep. Definitely going to give electronic first curtain a try. Thanks!

I'm shooting on the R7 and have mostly relied on electronic and mechanical. After watching your video, I will experiment more with electronic first curtain.

Personally I would defo recommend electronic shutter for low-light portrait photography with Sony Alpha series if you don’t have a flash - the camera will already be struggling to get enough light, so you want to minimize shutter shock to at least get maximum sharpness in those challenging conditions. I do prefer mechanical in general and in daylight and feel it does give a certain depth and naturalness to images, but electronic shutter gets me such good sharpness, it’s usually my default. Also make sure to double-tap and zoom in on your LCD screen every once in a while to check focus is tight. I’m sure opinions wildly differ on this, but I think shutter type is defo worthy of consideration and reconsideration to get the best shots we can. Such a great video, thanks for sharing!

Thanks for a nice review. On my R7, the shutter shock with mechanical shutter can be quite dramatic, with noticeable image softening. I therefore rely on either electronic first curtain or electronic shutter. The ES is used to avoid noise or take advantage of the faster frame rates (30 fps) and shutter speeds (1/16000s). Canon has recently acknowledged issues with focus acquisition on the R7 at faster frame rates, due to its slower read out speed. Since I am generally happy with 7-15 fps, I don't feel limited with the EFCS, though I still prefer the quieter sound of the ES. And for birds, I do like the "pre-capture" feature that uses the ES.

I’m using ES for almost everything, and EFCS when using a flash. I have no lenses that fit on RF faster than f/1.8, so I don’t care about the bokeh clipping issue EFCS could be causing. You can check the PDR charts at photonstophotos to see the ISO vs DR relation. On the R5 the DR converges for all modes at ISO800, on the R6II/R8 around ISO3600. That means I rarely have bit-depth FOMO when using the R5 😊

For the R5, the bit depth is decreased to 13-bit when you’re shooting in H+ mode for both mechanical and efcs.

I had no idea using EFC shutter reduces the bit depth on the R5! Is this definitely the case? Thanks for the info!

RogerZoul and Fabian, thanks for your advice. I recently upgraded to the R7 for birds. From my limited experience so far, it seems i am getting some shutter shock softening of images when i use the electronic first curtain. Is that possible? I find the shutter shock with the mechanical shutter significant enough that i hesitate to ever use it. Do you have a sense of practically, just how much dynamic range we are giving up if/when we use first curtain and electronic shutter modes?…Enough to see when editing (pulling shadows up and highlights down)? I too have been really put off of considering future Canons due to my experience with the R7.

Seems like a parallel read of the sensor versus a serial read would get rid of the rolling shutter and wonder what the technical difficulty would be with that?

Awesome video bro I really learned something from that, I have a R6mii I’m a bit of a newbie think I’ll use electronic shutter as I don’t do a lot of fast stuff mainly real estate stuff, equestrian and video of my bands usually in quite low light, will electronic shutter be good for all that.?

Hi Fabian, I would like to use the electronic shutter on my R6 but I miss the shutter sound that I've taken the photo. How do you experience that? Greetz Ab

The sharpness and the detail I get from the electronic shutter on my R7 is unmatched by any other camera at this price range and even if you extend your budget above and beyond as far as I know. The pixel per inch ratio of it is 2.6 times higher than the R5 the 45 megapixel monster and it's equivalent to like 86 megapixels if R5 had the same pixel density in it's sensor. Of course there are high iso noise issues because of the crop factor and rolling shutter distortion way more so than in the R5 however with good lighting and not so fast moving subjects. I find the electronic shutter on the R7 the sharpest shutter in every Canon R camera due to the incredible pixel density of that sensor. I never kinda use the mechanical shutter because of the low frame rate and almost extreme shutter shock you get. I don't know why but it's so much worse than the DSLR's despite them having a moving mirror. It's just not a good mechanical shutter. It's almost as if it doesn't even exist. And the electronic first curtain shutter, I use it sometimes but again the slight shutter shock will ruin most of the photos in the 15 or 8 fps modes even if the shutter curtain closes after the image is taken, still the next image will feel the shock and reduce my keeper rate. I find the best compromise with the R7 for wildlife is to use the electronic shutter mostly at 30 fps and delete the distorted images. With the electronic shutter, even after removing all the distorted images, I end up with more usable images and all of them are slightly sharper than the sharpest I can get with the Electronic first curtain. Therefore I only use the Electronic first curtain for like panning a big object like a car or a plane so I don't get the rolling shutter and because of the subjects aren't animals, they don't make unpredictable movements therefore it's not too hard to get sharp images on moving cars if you're panning with it.

In buying used cameras we have often looked at shutter actuations as a measure of camera use. Obviously the amount of wear and tear that occurs in the various types of shutters you are describing can be quite different. Is there any way to distinguish between the number of images shot and output shutter actuations in mechanical, first curtain electronic, and fully electronic mides? Two cameras reporting the same image count could have vastly different amounts of shutter wear and tear. Imagine if car odometers showed miles travelled whether the car was driving on the road or being transported by ship or train.

Should I use an electric 20 or electric curtain for aviation photography? Canon R5 with Sigma 60-600mm. Recently, after Canon released new firmware 2.0, all of the pictures came blurry.

I shoot mainly basketball and I use 1st currten all the time. I have no problems with rolling sutter on the R6 Mark ii

I only use mechanical on R5... Any experience for sports and electronical ahutter? I mostely shoot dirtbike racing.i could use more fps

If anyone can comment on this question it would be appreciated - I was watching a Content Creator who was doing a review on the Canon R7. They made a statement that they have clearly found there was a slight increase in sharpness quality when running in Electronic Shutter vs. Electronic 1st Curtain on shots where NO rolling shutter was present. Has anyone else found this to actually be true?

Bokeh clipping ? This is new to me. In the last few months, I have been shooting sports and action a lot using my R5 + RF 85mm F1.2 @ F1.2, in sunshine, at 8000th, iso 50 to 200. Looks beautiful, super creamy oof bokeh, whilst being tack sharp on the eye. Can some one give me more information on this phenomenon?

sir did you try a9iii?

More like portraits and stills, r6mkii - mechanical shutter