It's my hope that this discussion stick to the collection of information of specs and tech for the 5D4. One can hope...
The 5D4 appears to be a collection of 3 notable things:
1) A set of very nice upgraded features, such as a long-needed improved shutter action, intervalometer, DLO, the little thumb switchy thing, and perhaps a dozen other such niceties, which are easy to dismiss until you've grown accustomed to them in another recent camera.
2) Pretty significant sensor improvements that have been soaked up primarily by A- a 50 percent increase in pixels and B- some low-ISO dynamic range improvements. This means that those who hoped to get a 4.5 year tech leap in high ISO, low-light shooting were left behind. You can't get both that and 30 mp today, apparently. This remains an area we'll know more about quickly, once some cameras make it out to people willing to shoot RAW and shoot some side-by-side comparisons. As usual, provided JPEGs are about as useful in making conclusions on this as, say, an artist's charcoal rendition of what they believe the sensor might be able to output.
3) A stealthy Dual Pixel Raw file set of features that remain more mysterious than one would expect upon the launch of the technology. The main Canon launch materials were pretty poor at describing what these were, but eventually some videos surfaces of before-and-after versions of pictures exploiting the technology. In my opinion, it's pretty cool, although certainly limited to an edge effect, with the minuscule parallax provided by the dual pixels not allowing for much adjustment in post. But, again, in my opinion, this is a bonafide magical surprise.
Key Upgrades:
- Low ISO dynamic range is said to have gained. Explorers of Light have been eager to tout the increased ability to raise shadows in their shots. This sounds a lot like the 1DX2's pattern where on-chip ADC allowed them to push more stops on the low-ISO end.
- 50 percent megapixels upgrade
- Dual pixel
- 1 more fps
- Wifi & NFC
- GPS
- 4k
- Touchy-feely display
- Improved metering
- A bit bigger AF point coverage, and more cross-types
- Various software features, including DLO, diffraction correction, intervalometer, etc.
- Various hardware features, including slicker shutter, a thumb button, bringing the weather sealing up to the 7D2 snuff
Not Upgrades:
- There has been no mention of the linking between metering and focus point, a 1-series longtime favorite. You'll have to pony up another $3k to own that small subroutine in software.
- High ISO low light hasn't been touted as a big gain. This may indicate that it is not better or is only very slightly better, as the 1DX2 proved to be.
Former Areas of Mystery:
- Dual Pixel Raw tricks: lots of speculation here, and now we know that most of it was true, only not terribly large in its effect. Pick your bokeh position; sharpen your point of focus by what looks like the equivalent of a +3 MFA adjustment; reduce ghosting by perhaps 30 percent. But (big but) you need to use Canon's software to do these tricks (Wah, wah, wahhhhh).
Current Areas of Mystery:
- High ISO, low light performance. There were some nice (JPG) pictures at about 10,000 ISO that didn't show objectionable grain, but it's impossible to know what the actual light values were when they were taken. I expect RAWs will leak out within a week, as they have in the past, and we'll know.
- The degree to which the Dual Pixel Raw tricks are effective, and - especially - the frequency with which the tricks can come to bear to make much of a difference on an average shot.
- The likelihood of Adobe being able to digest Dual Pixel Raws and do something useful with them in Lightroom eventually.
That's my first impression from what we've been told and shown in the past 24 hours. Would be very happy for people to fill in the holes or correct any misimpressions.
