  For a finite field $\mathbf{F}_{q^r}$ with fixed $q$ and $r$ sufficiently
large, we prove the existence of a primitive element outside of a set of $r$
many affine hyperplanes for $q=4$ and $q=5$. This complements earlier results
by Fernandes and Reis for $q\ge 7$. For $q=3$ the analogous result can be
derived from a very recent bound on character sums of Iyer and Shparlinski. For
$q=2$ the set consists only of a single element, and such a result is thus not
possible.
