Messages

211

EOS Bodies / Re: The Canon High End [CR2]

« on: December 17, 2010, 06:27:01 AM »

Would the 5D3 be to high end to add a swivel screen to?

Swivel screens don't work well if you want the camera to be rugged and weather-proof. So it is not likely that swivel screens will be used on any high end camera meant for professional outdoor use.

212

Canon General / Re: Camera Body Breakdown [CR1]

« on: December 10, 2010, 04:32:48 AM »

Canon is receiving quite a lot of bashing for not having the same low light performance as Nikon, and not so much appreciation for having higher resolution.

If you're a landscape photographer or studio photographer it seems to me that low ISO performance is key, and then resolution is an important factor. Some use medium format just for the resolution.

For my personal photo style, I'd rather go for higher resolution at low ISO and slightly worse high ISO performance. Needing large DOF and therefore often working around f/8 - f/11 which makes resolution generally diffraction limited I'd still could use as much as ~50 megapixels on a full frame sensor before additional pixels does not give significant value.

The exceptionally low noise at ISO100 in the sensor of Nikon's new D7000 shows that low noise (at low ISO) is indeed possible with small pixels.

However, if you need to shoot in non-ideal lighting conditions with short shutter speeds, then good high ISO performance is necessary of course. I don't really think that these conflicting goals can be combined into a single camera body today. Either you optimize for high res at low ISO, or low noise at high ISO. It's unfortunate that 35mm camera bodies are not modular as larger formats, then you could have two digital backs, one for high res and one for high ISO (and you could actually upgrade a body instead of having to buy yet a new magnesium alloy body).

Anyway, for me personally, I'm not particularly worried about the rumors of 5Dmk3 having as much as 32 megapixels, rather the opposite, it seems quite attractive to me. Closing in on medium format.

I also think the view on resolution will change in the coming years. Current resolution guidelines is based on more or less obsolete film and print standards. DOF calculators use acceptable resolution as 30 microns - meaning 1 megapixel. Saying that is a sharp image is like saying 8 bit audio is clear. In some circumstances yes it is true. However, not too many years from now we'll probably have monitors with 9000x6000 pixels rather than 1920x1200.

213

EOS Bodies / Re: Design Your Own Canon Body

« on: November 16, 2010, 06:24:54 AM »

It shall be interesting to see what the sensors will be like in the coming future. Many seems to like the pixel count reduced to increase S/N ratio, much like Nikon's philosophy. However, ideal pixel size is not really easy to state. Large pixels are indeed less noisy on high ISO, but you cannot trust as much on averaging as you can with higher resolution either. I personally believe that high resolution is a valuable feature, ideally I'd like optics and airy disc be the limiting factor on resolution, not image sensor -- assuming there's not too much compromising with noise and dynamic range. With postprocessing algorithms like lens correction, perspective correction, sharpening etc it's great to have a capture at or beyond optics limits so postprocessing is possible without reducing actual resolution.

I'd like to see new techniques with having multiple simultaneous readouts. If electronic shutters could be made better one could get several shutter times at once, great expanding dynamic range, like bracketing but in one shot. With multiple amplifiers one could read out at low ISO and high ISO simultaneously, and mix them to get lower shadow noise in low ISO images (where read noise tends to be higher than corresponding high ISO readout darkened to the same light level as the low ISO readout). With these techniques combined the RAW files would get extremely large though. DSLRs are quite large though, so I think the size should be used to pack in high performance electronics, large memory buffers etc.

Oversized ram buffer, and option to write to two CF cards simultaneously would be great, to maintain full RAW speed for many seconds. Design the camera so that you are not tempted to use JPEG to get more performance - RAW should be fast enough to be possible to use in all situations. Actually, I think it would be cool with a RAW-only camera too, or at least be able to turn off all JPEG-related features and settings to clean up the user interface.

And yes, radio flash controller should be standard by now. IR/flash triggering feels really really low tech.

It also like to see some new ideas on how to make photo inspection better, something more/smarter than histograms. I'm not sure what, but it feels a bit limited currently, at least for I as an amateur, still it happens that mistakes are not discovered until I look at the photos on a computer screen.

Oh, better remote triggering too. It should be standard to be able to modify ISO, aperture, shutter speed from the remote, in these days of HDR...