Wife & I saw a Cybertruck last Friday at Costco Santa Cruz CA. Had the paper new car plate on it.
All I can say is that it's "unique"...

Nope, doesn't matter. But I would only have 1 card in the camera, not both CF & SDHC. And the FIR file needs to be in the root directory of the card. I use SDHC since my computer has a built in SDHC slot and don't have to attach the CF reader (and it gives me a reason to still have SDHC cards)...

Glenn

I just updated my R5 to 1.90 from 1.8.1 via an SDHC card with no issues, and no text on the camera to delete the old firmware version...

Glenn

You've got some great DSLR equipment listed. But, in my opinion, there is no need to keep any of it as 'backup'. Best to either sell or give away so someone else may use and enjoy them. Only keep the EF lenses you still use and don't have an RF copy of. That's what I have been doing slowly over the past year...

Glenn

I have 2, both ASUS ProArt, a 24" PA246 1080P and a 32" PA329C 4K. Excellent color gamut on both. Highly recommend the brand...

Glenn

I've been there, last time in mid-December 2017, but more than a couple of times before, and can verify the Skagit River has eagles. The best way to view and capture images is with a guide on a float boat. But you can find many from the road. But the colder it gets, the more lethargic they become.

There are various places in the Lummi Nation where the eagles hang out. Chuckanut and Samish areas also.

If you bring your passport, the Fraser River just across the Canadian border has a decent number of eagles as well...

Dale, group is an AF setting, not an exposure setting. Matrix, Center-weighted, Spot and Highlight-weighted are the exposure modes. Most wildlife shooters use Spot metering with exposure compensation. However, Matrix is easiest, and most used, but can be problematic if the subject is either a lot darker or lighter than the rest of the frame. That's why most become proficient in using spot and exposure compensation. I personally always try to correctly expose the subject and will sacrifice exposure in the rest of the frame. I don't want a pretty landscape with a white or black blob in it.

In Kenya, most shots will be out in the open with even lighting, so spot metering will be fine, as will matrix. Practice using exposure compensation on subjects before you go (like the bird you just shot). That is a great skill to develop.

The other area I recommend getting some practice on is what a few others, like Paul (CHG_CANON), mentioned. Using a shutter speed faster than you need, or a small aperture, will cause the ISO to spike high when using Auto-ISO. High ISO equals more noise, even with the D850. You can see a little bit of noise in the image you uploaded.
F8 or F11 is sufficient for environmental wildlife shots, and more wide open (F4 or whatever lower number you have) in portraiture style shots. Sitting or slow moving animals will be fine at 1/500 with your zoom lens. Only speed it up for running animals, flying birds or other action shots. Again, practice this a lot before you go to Africa. You may find that you need a faster shutter speed to get sharp images with your camera/lens/hand combo.

Have a great time in Africa...

Glenn

You need to change the exposure metering mode (button on the middle/right of the top dial). If AF is set to spot. and the exposure mode is set to spot as well, the D850 uses the AF spot to set the exposure. That's why the bird seems appropriately exposed, but all the rest of the image is over exposed. The camera is working as designed. The alternative is to leave both at spot but use exposure compensation (+/-) to decrease when the subject is darker than the surrounding parts of the image.

Nikon has a great online manual for the D850. The D850 is a great body, and once you master the settings, you won't be sorry...

Glenn

We got to 81% coverage here in the SF Bay area. Playing around with some older equipment and caught some flares...

For the 5D, it depends upon the size of the memory cards you are going to use. As I remember, you are limited to 8gb cards with 1.0.1

Here's the important caveat from another Canon forum site:

If the newer FW doesn't have a specific feature or upgrade that you need, you do not need to do it. As a matter of fact if you have a perfectly running 5D, I would not under any circumstances chance a FW upgrade. On the chance, albeit slim chance, it goes wrong you will have a brick and Canon can no longer unbrick it for you.

So I would recommend the same advice unless you need to use a larger memory card.

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So, in case you do want to move forward with a Firmware update:

I would add that unless you have some experience performing a firmware update, really take care and read how to do it before you try. It's not hard, but there are a couple of important steps on all updates.

You can Google it and you will get a number of websites. I just tried one (https://eoscard.pel.hu/) and successfully created the FW 1.1.1 fir file. Let me know if you'd like me to send the fir file to you. I have not used the file, so I take no responsibility for it. I just created it from the download site.

Let me know...

Glenn

The internal 512gb SSD in my 2 year old Dell just failed last month. This is my travel laptop for photography. I've installed a new drive and will get an adapter today so that I can reinstall Windows 11. Much less expensive than a new laptop. My images are always on external SSD drives (multiple), so I didn't lose anything I can't reinstall. Learned a lot...

No quick answer. It's really dependent on how much noise you can accept from your camera. And the settings will be different than you use to shoot the Milky Way. My data from Iceland last October:

5 seconds at F4 (EF11-24 with RF adapter) and ISO 1250 on my Canon R5
and 1 second at F2.8 (RF15-35) ISO 8000 on my Canon R3

For me, I prefer shorter exposure times so that the Northern Lights are not mushy and you can see the structure in them. 5 seconds is max for me. Both lenses are sharp wide open, so I adjust the ISO to whatever level is needed for a properly exposed image when used wide open, then deal with noise in post processing. The R3 handles noise better than the R5 so that's why the higher ISO and shorter exposure time on it.

For those traveling with me, I suggest practicing some night work before they go, quarter to half moon images, to make sure you can get sharp nighttime star images using manual focus (a must for the Northern Lights). They can also check to see how much noise their camera has at higher ISOs and if it can be acceptably dealt with in post.

Good luck in December. There's a lot of nighttime then. Dress warm...

The RF 100-500 is at F5 wide open at 200MM. That's just a little over 1/2 stop of light less than the RF 70-200 F4 at 200mm. Both lenses have excellent AF performance with fair to great light. But not with poor light. The F2.8 performs better in poor light conditions.

So if 200MM is long enough, and you're have low light AF performance issues, the F2.8 will perform better.

All of the 3 lenses above have excellent image quality. Weight and price are the usual tradeoffs in the F2.8 vs the F4...

Glenn

To answer your question - Don't wait.

Quick story. I made the transition years ago to the original R model. Currently using R5 & R3. I had a friend thinking he wasn't getting sharp images with his DSLR and wanted to take simultaneous images with me to see if it was him or the camera. To make a fair comparison I brought my 5D4. An absolutely wonderful piece of equipment, still today.

Sentiment aside, that will be the last time I shoot with that body. For me, using the R bodies have become second nature with their advantages and the using 5D4 one last time reinforced that. My 2 cents.

And my friend's camera was not the issue...