Messages

1

EOS-M / Re: To buy M or not to buy M?

« on: December 15, 2012, 08:50:24 AM »

In my opinion Sony and Olympus have a very good future, Sony has not bought Olympus but it is interested in its medical division. Olympus in exchange got a sony sensor on the OM-D M5 and the new PEN

You are going into a new lens system, so it does not matter if you buy Olympus, canon or sony as you will need new lenses and/or adapters. The only thing you can borrow on the EOS-M from its big brothers are flashes

I do not think it has AF micro adjustment because itr does not have a AF module. It focuses through the sensor

2

EOS-M / Re: To buy M or not to buy M?

« on: December 15, 2012, 05:11:10 AM »

I know this is a Canon users site but in my opinion the EOS-M is an overpriced mirrorless with poor features.

I would suggest getting a NEX-5N instead, you can get the kit with 18-55 and flash very cheap (around 450$)
I you do not need the lens/flash you can sell it for 150$+ and you have a very cheap mirrorless.


There are NEX-EF adapter on ebay for around 250$, the electronic one can use aperture and IS and some of them offer AF capabilities. I am going to use my MP-E and a EF-S 60mm macro on my NEX-5N with one of them

NEX-5N vs EOS-M

- Better sensor (better DR and lower noise)
- Better AF (Af is fast on the NEX)
- Much longer battery life (twice us much)
- Half the price

Lense choice for the NEX system is better than for EOS-M

You have the cheap sigma 19/2.8 and 30/2.8 which are tack sharp, 150$ on BHphoto
The new 35/1.8 OSS gives you a 50mm standard with IS, a bit expensive though 400$


The 22/2 canon is sexy though ;-)

3

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: Canon EOS 6D Rating by DXOMark

« on: December 14, 2012, 09:17:27 PM »

Not all Canon users.  But again, while their Measurements are useful, their Scores are not, because they are biased (only considering base ISO for some parameters) and not fully disclosed (weighted formulae but what weightings?).

Bill Claff's data are also quite good (and mirror DxO in many regards, but give some additional insights - worth a look if you haven't seen them.

Again you are right, not all but many. Anyway, most complains (99.9%) about DXOmark results come from canon users, M4/3 users could complain a lot also but they do not as they seem to know the limits of their systems

I do not care about DXOmark scores, thay are a bit weird(although they use the same system for every camera). What I look at is at the measurements and by my own experience those are right.

 It is very easy for anyone to compare noise or DR,comparing things like color depth and color sensivitty are way more tricky (I guess you need some special software and gear)

Thank you for Bill Claff´s I remember seeing this site once but lost the link. His findings are pretty much the same as those of DXOmark (He must be another nikon troll  ;-)  5D mkII and mkIII are about the same and D800 and D600 are superior at all ISOs

I also tried those Dpreview RAWS at ISO 3200, same as before; all images resampled to 26mpx so they have same size.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8305/7905637706_e4a2461353_o.jpg

1º B Nikon D800 2º C Canon 5D mkIII 3º A Canon 5D mkII 4º F Sony NEX-5N 5º E Canon 60D 6º D Pentax K5

The reason I think K5 is the worst is because it "cooks" its RAWS from ISO 3200; but in real world situation all FF samples look about the same and all APS-C samples look the same; it would be very difficult to tell the difference. At base ISO those differences are way bigger

4

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: Only 1 lens

« on: December 14, 2012, 09:11:15 PM »

I would keep the EOS 5D mkII if you can afford it, sell the rest. Second hand value of the 5D mkII is going down very fast, you have camera for years and for your photography needs neither 6D or 5D mkIII offer you much benefit (AF precission for portraits only)

For landscape I would buy a second hand Sigma 24-60 2.8; it is an amaizing little lens for the price (around 250$ second hand), if you need wider than that a canon 20-35 can be found cheap and might do the job until you can afford something better

For portraits I would buy a Contax/Yashica 50mm f1.4 and a C/Y-EOS AF confirm adapter (around 80$); in my opinion it is better quality than the Canon 50/1.4 at a fraction of the cost if you can live with manual focus/aperture


If you can not afford kto keep the 5D mkII and want to go APS-C I would go for a Nikon D7000 or D5200 and something like a tokina 12-24 and a 50/1.8 manual nikon. I do not recomend canon APS-C for landscape because of its poor DR

5

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: Canon EOS 6D Rating by DXOMark

« on: December 14, 2012, 08:56:54 PM »

This is not the case at all; in fact Canon's actual sensor is on par with anything that Sony makes.  One thing that you can easily see from the DxO data (if you know how to interpret it) is that the sensor itself is very quiet.  The inherent noise of the sensor itself is as low as anything Sony or Nikon have ever produced.  The trouble is the ADC architecture they have chosen to read the sensor data which appears to have a DR of around 12.5 bits (or stops).

Your stament is absolutely right, I did not use the right expresion. As you say the problem has to do with A/D Conversion and I guess it can not change without Canon going into patents issues with Sony.

Some people are also saying that canon has chosen to get good high iso instead of good base ISO, I do not think this is true. 

The S/N ratio on 5D mkIII vs D800 is the same on all ISOs as is Tonal Range; DR is the same at high ISO but at base ISO is far superior on the D800, color sensivity is superior on the D800 at all ISOs and that is with a much higher pixel count.

The S/N ratio on 6D vs D600 is superior on the D600 up to ISO 12.800; DR is way better o the D600 up to ISO 400, about the same up to ISO 3200 and better on the 6D from that on, color sensivity is superior on the D600
6D is superior at ISO 25.600

And if you compare the 7d vs NEX-7 the 24mpx sony sensor is better at everything despite of the higher pixel count, specialy at DR and color sensivity.

So, in my opinion Canon sensors are way behind. OK, if you need best possible output at ISO 25.600 then get a 1DX or a D4, again the nikon will have best base ISO


If canon used a similar A/D conversion as Sony it would probably have the best sensors, or at least on par; but this will not hapen until they find a way of doing so without going into patent issues with Sony

All this started because it´s become normal for canon users to refer to DXOmark results as false; for camera reviews there are many different sites, but for sensor readings DXOmark is the only one I trust.

6

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: Canon EOS 6D Rating by DXOMark

« on: December 14, 2012, 11:52:30 AM »

Fujifilm X100. It's score is just a travesty. A great sensor, very good on lowlight. According to DXOMark it's not that good in lowlight. I used it and was pleasently surprised about the noise.

I also owned the X100 for a while, its ISO values are off by 2/3 EV. Is about the same as other APS-C cameras in high ISO

Well how come the 5n is about as good as the 7d sensor wise?

The EOS 5N is not as good and 7D , it is way better at base iso. At high ISO all APS-C cameras are about the same, is a base ISO were you see the biggest difference
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8038/7905600204_90e8ededef_o.jpg
 B- Canon 60D   
 F- Sony NEX-5N

The difference in DR is huge in my opinion

Yes, the D800 has a great sensor but how do you extrapolate that to EVERY sensor and EVERY camera from a certain manufacturer? The new Nikons other than the D800 are not nearly as good.

Pentax K5 is still best APS-C sensor(Sony nex-5N and nikon D7000 are close by), nikon D600 sensor is as good as D800 sensor, NEX-7 and nikon D5200 have very good sensor despite their high pixel count.

Canon has been using same "old" 7D sensor in 60D, 550D, 600D, 650D and EOS-M. Why? because it is so good? No, because they can not do better right now

As I said before Canon sensor tecnology is old by todays (Sony) standards; how can you explain Sony APS-C sensors have better DR than any FF canon camera? Again, I talk about base ISO

7

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: [crop + 35L] versus [FF + 50 f/1.4]

« on: December 13, 2012, 09:57:17 PM »

If you are mainly interested in street photography I would suggest moving to other system.
I would suggest two option:

Fuji  XE-1/ x-pro1 + 351.4
NEX-6 + 35 1.8 OSS

Image quality of both would be higher than on the 7D and the cameras are more discrete so subjects would not reats in the same way to the camera

I like the nex option because the quality of the sensor is very high and the 35mm f1.8 has IS
The fuji quality is on par with FF cameras because of lack of A filter on the sensor, still 3rd party RAW software does not fully support it

I would not use a reflex for street photography but that is only an opinion

8

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: What's the advantage of shooting with dslr equipment?

« on: December 13, 2012, 09:33:36 PM »

Well, I would not compare DSLR to compact cameras but to mirrorless cameras.

The Reflex cameras advantage.
-Superior AF
-Better balance on hand with big lenses and/or flashes
-Bright optical viewfinder


Mirrorless advantage
-Very light system
-On par output quality
-Discrete cameras, good for street photography, journalism

In my opinion Reflex cameras are better when you need fast AF and use tele lenses  (Weeding, Sports, fashion)
Mirrorless cameras are better for street photography and perfect for travel photography (Travel, trekking, Street photography)

Mirroless cameras are one or two generation away of surpassing reflex cameras in some areas
A future FF NEX with improved AF would be much better for some kinds of photography than any reflex; same as Leica today but with more affordable price

9

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: Canon EOS 6D Rating by DXOMark

« on: December 13, 2012, 09:10:47 PM »

@ neuroanatomists: You are right, there is lots of things that make a camera, but DXOmark only reviews sensors and this is what I am talking about here. In film days people would choose to use Kodachrome, velvia or whichever film they would like. Todays film are sensors, and Sony sensors (nikon, pentax even olympus now) are the best

I never saw anyone at Dxomark saying canon cameras are bad, they only talk about sensors and what they say is that canon sensor technology has a problem at base ISO. At high ISO all this cameras are about the same (I mean the full frame cameras, 5D mkII, 5D mkIII and D800) but at base ISO the difference in my opinion is huge

In my opinion Canon makes very good cameras and lenses, but very bad sensors

@jocau: One of the only advantages film still has over Digital sensors is Latitude (aka DR), today Sony sensors offer a very high latitude (still a bit far from best film results). I remember seeing an example of almost 20EV film shot (Backlight shot with shadow recovery).  One advantage of film also is that DR is high even at high ISO, with digital at high ISOs DR tends to be low

Resolution wise and for High ISO film has been surpased by digital long ago.

Some scenes may need 7EV DR and some others may need 14+ EV, so high DR capabities are always very wellcome. As an example I can asure you that the blacks I get from my 5D mkII have no texture information at all,  nothing I can extract from them


I am a macro photographer (working from 1:1 to 100:1); I work with focus stacking technique on tripod. Until now the only cameras I could use were Canon as they were the only cameras offering EFSC (Electronic first shutter curtain), a very important feature in macro photography. Now also the Sony NEX cameras offer this feature, also the nikon 1 system and panasonic G5 so I am not stuck with Canon anymore

 Af all the systems you can get today with EFSC sony nex offers the best base ISO with good DR, low noise and good colours I would qualify NEX 5N output image quality between EOS 5D and EOS 5d mkII with better DR than both but slightly lower resolution than EOS 5D mkII

Every photographer has different priorities and my priorities are as folows:

1- EFSC     Very important for working with continious light in macro
2- Good base ISO   Working on tripod I normally use ISO 100
3- EF compatibility   You can use EF lenses on NEX cameras via adapter, like the MP-E

AF, video, continious shotting, viewfinder, etc are all secondary to my needs but I understand a sports, landscape, wedding, fashion, etc.. photographer will have completely different needs than I do.

10

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: Canon EOS 6D Rating by DXOMark

« on: December 13, 2012, 09:13:40 AM »

I am fed up of all this people that say DXOmark results are fake, normally these tend to be Canon trolls.

Do yourself a favour; go to dpreview and download the raws from D600, D800, 5D mkIII and 6D (if available)

Then you can process those files yourself as I did and you will se the huge difference in DR, specially at base ISO

here http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8038/7905600204_90e8ededef_o.jpg you can see 100% crops of 6 cameras at iso 100 scaled to 25mpx (so they all have same size)

first row shows the original 100% crops and the second row shows  same area with +4EV exposure

In my opinion the ranking would be:
1º C  D800 2º A Pentax K5  3º F Sony NEX-5N 4º D Canon 5D mkIII 5º E 5D mkII 6º B Canon 60D

This test only shows DR at base ISO, and it proves DXOmark is right

By the way, I own a EOS 5DmkII and before that an EOS 5D, EOS 40D and EOS 1000D.
My second body now is an APS-C Sony NEX 5N as Canon APS-C sensors are a big piece of noisy crap

Regards
Javier

11

EOS Bodies / Re: Canon EOS 3D X [CR1]

« on: August 21, 2012, 10:14:08 AM »

Native ISO 50, software pulled ISO 25; sounds nice!!!
It is true that EOS 5D mkII becomes noisy if using Liveview for long periods, hope they fix this

12

EOS Bodies / Re: first pic of canon mirrorless?

« on: July 20, 2012, 02:44:36 PM »

That can't be a 22mm F2.0 lens for APS-C since the objective lens is too small. It looks like a 4/3rds lens.

The glass size is about the same as that on the 23/2 of the X100; I guess all people's measurements are wrong because no one is taking into account the change of perspective caused because of the sensor being around 40-50mm behind of the 43mm filter ring

The proportions are definetly 2:3 so I am possitive it is a canon standard APS-C sensor

13

EOS Bodies / Re: first pic of canon mirrorless?

« on: July 20, 2012, 10:50:34 AM »

If that new lens is real, you'll be happy to have another macro lens option! I wonder if what the Maximum Magnification ratio is?

That lens is not macro, it just says minimum focusing distance; magnification will be 1:5 or less

14

EOS Bodies / Re: first pic of canon mirrorless?

« on: July 20, 2012, 08:39:15 AM »

Well, from the new pictures it seems an APS-C sensor indeed
For me the omision of flash is great, I preffer no flash than a useless flash; anyway, there is the 270EX which is pretty good and very pocketeable. I guess they will release an even smaller one for trhese cameras

 If it does have a 3.5 shutter cable release and keeps the silent live view (I mainly shoot macro) I am in; it would be my second body for macro (first is 5D mkII) and would be the only camera I would take to the street when travelling

The only thing I fear is the sensor IQ is going to be well behind NEX cameras

15

EOS Bodies / Re: first pic of canon mirrorless?

« on: July 20, 2012, 06:57:20 AM »

As for the ugliness, it sure is, but there's no evidence either Canon or Nikon understand how much damage the ugliness of their cameras is doing to their businesses.

It does not look ugly to me, it looks like a modern camera should look
If you preffer a retro-like look for your cameras there is the Fuji X100; kind of camera that looks like a rangefinder but does not behave like that. Useless AF and even worst MF; I had it for a month and then sold it

Any rangefinder like camera should have rangefinder viewfinder and proper mechanical MF