It’s actually pretty cold out here, and I’m parked at the Sulva Basin Wildlife Reserve waiting on sunrise—nothing “spectacular,” but yesterday it looked really cool, and I wanted a familiar spot to test something I noticed on recent sunrise shoots. I’m running the Canon R5 II and I’ve got one of my Pentax 50mm radioactive lenses on it, because that glass usually gives me gobs of color. I’m also filming a time lapse, the moon’s still hanging out, and the fog is building over the field while the goats are out there doing the weed-control job better than any tractor. This whole morning is really about dynamic range and what the R5 II can actually give me when I keep my histograms way down and plan to pull shadows hard in post. I’ll be honest—normally I can tell from the back screen what I’ve got, because I’ve shot the R50, R7, R5, R3 (and more), but I’m still deciding if this body does what I want. I even saw a bit of rolling shutter on hummingbirds yesterday, and if I’m paying this much, part of me would rather have the functionality of an R3. I also walk through a quick processing reminder: set a lens profile (Pentax 50 if you’ve got it, otherwise Canon 50 to get close), and I’m using a variable ND to keep highlights under control so nothing blows out.