Pro Camera Body Vs Pro Lens: Which one makes the difference?
Is it more important to have a pro camera body or a pro camera lens? We know what you’re thinking, you want ‘both’! But what if you’ve got a low budget camera body and you want a pro lens to go with it? Is this going to be better than using a pro camera body with a budget lens? Well we’re putting this to the test here!
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The Equipment!
Here we have our pro camera body, the Canon R5. This camera body retails for around £4k (at the time of making this video) and we’ve paired it with the 18-45mm standard kit lens, which retails around £379 for the budget lens. We’re putting this against the Canon R100, (Canon’s £400 entry-level mirrorless body) with the pro Canon RF 85mm f.2 prime lens. This lens is geared towards macro and portraiture and retails for around £620 (which is very well-priced for a lens of this quality!).
The Canon R100 with the RF 85mm F2 lens
The Canon R5 with the RF 18-45mm lens
We’re putting these two camera and lens configurations against each other in an outdoor portrait shoot. Before we get to the test, a giant thankyou to Wex for supplying us with the camera gear for this video!
The Test!
So, here’s the shoot and the idea: We’ve come to the woodlands, we are shooting in the winter, in the rain. There’s no foliage but lots of silver birch trees rolling off into the distance. Our Model, Kanishk, is wearing an outfit that works well with the surrounding colour palette.
We’re shooting in the woodlands, using the natural surroundings to help with composition. To learn more about composition, check out our Beginner’s Photography Course.
To keep things fair, we’re going to be shooting in the same setting, with the same model and poses for each test. We’ll also be using a silver reflector to help bounce some of the light back at the model as the weather is quite overcast and the natural light is very diffused.
Portrait Photography Tips – Settings, Composition, Colour & Lighting
A reflector is a really handy bit of kit for redirecting the light you have in low light or highly diffused low-light situations.
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The Canon R5 with the 18-45mm kit lens
For this combination, we’re pairing Canon’s high-end, professional-grade mirrorless camera body, the Canon R5, with the standard 18-45mm lens. This lens is the standard kit lens that is usually paired with the entry-level models as a starter kit, it’s not intended to be for any specific type of photography, just a general all-rounder lens to get you started.
The Canon R5 with the RF 18-45mm standard kit lens.
Here are the settings:
Cloudy White Balance
Aperture Priority – As wide of an aperture as possible, f.4.5 or F6.3
Shutter Speed at 1/250th second or faster
Auto ISO
Eye Tracking
Canon R5 with the kit lens produces a perfectly fine headshot. There’s a bit of bokeh in the background and the image is quite crisp.
A further back headshot with the Canon R5 and the 18-45mm kit lens. To learn more about headshot photography, check out our course with Mark McGee here.
The bokeh on the 18-45mm lens isn’t very strong when you go wider with this lens.
The images look OK, the colours look quite nice together and the cloudy sky creates nice soft lighting. It’s nice and sharp and we’ve managed to achieve a good standard of image here.
Canon R100 with the RF 85mm f.2 Prime Lens
With this combination, we are using a prime lens, which means we can’t zoom in and out like we did with the standard kit lens. Also, using a focal length of 85mm means it is zoomed in further and paired with the fact that the Canon R100 is a crop sensor, means that we’re going to be even more zoomed in than what it would be on a full-frame camera. This, in turn, means we really need to be aware of camera shake. It’s also going to give us a very shallow depth of field.
The Canon R100 with the RF 85mm F2 Prime lens.
Here are the settings we’re using:
Aperture priority mode
f/2.8 to f/4 to get a shallow depth of field.
1/250th second shutter speed or higher.
Auto ISO
Cloudy white balance
Intense bokeh in the background - really showing the depth of field capabilities of the RF 85mm F2 lens!
Slightly wider headshot with the Canon R100 and the RF 85mm F2 pro lens.
Canon R100 with the RF 85mm F2 pro lens
The R100, whilst being nowhere near as responsive as the R5, it still does a fantastic job! The images from this set have the ‘WOW’ factor! It’s clear to see, the cheaper body with the expensive lens has much better results than the R5 with the kit lens.
Conclusion
Canon R100 with the RF85mm F2 Macro lens.
Canon R5 with the RF18-45mm kit lens.
Looking at the images, it’s obvious that if you’ve got a limited budget and you want to get the best image possible, you want to invest your budget into the lens. The Canon R5 may be the professional photographer’s go-to body, but the Canon R100 still hold its own very well when paired with a good prime lens!
You can find out more about us putting these two cameras to the test in our video here.
In our opinion the Canon R100, paired with the RF 85mm F2 lens has come out on top in all accounts - Tell us what which combination you prefer in the comments!
** All prices are accurate at the time of writing **
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