I just bought a used R5 with firmware 1.70 installed and I'm trying to update to the latest, which appears to be 1.8.1. I've done this before many times, but not with Canon. So: I download the firmware (1.8.1) from Canon's site and copy it to a formatted SD card. I put the card in the camera (set to P mode) and go the wrench menu, p. 6. It shows Ver. 1.70 I press Set I get a screen that says "update camera firmware as needed". I press Set and get a screen that says "Memory card containing firmware is required to update. It's as if it can't see that the card is there. I've tried several times, repeating the above. The camera functions normally, i.e., I can take a photo and see it in playback so it seems the card is not defective. I don't (yet) have a CF Express card, the SD is all I have. Is the camera looking for the update in the other card slot? Or am I missing something else? Thanks in advance.
Slot should not matter, in fact he examples online used the SD, when you downloaded the file did you download a zip and unpack it to get a .FIR and a folder with some PDFs? The .FIR was placed in the top directory of the SD card right? I like to do this on a fresh formatted card. A second question, did you try the method of connecting the camera to the computer using USB and the use the EOS utility to upgrade the firmware, that is also mentioned in your pdf file?
Thanks, that did it. I'm embarrassed to say that I had not extracted the .fir file from the zipped file. Oops. Installed now, thanks for your help.