Canon to release a 100mp EOS R system camera next year [CR2]

Michael Clark

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Apr 5, 2016
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1) He's saying the opposite. The ability to back and crop will give him a different image. That's why he is considering such a camera.

2) He's right. Its elemental optical knowledge. As you move away from the subject (using the same lens) more of the subject moves into the focus plane. With enough pixels you can afterwards crop in to get the magnification you need. I do not do macro myself, but can see how this could be an advantage as much macro work has a very shallow focal plane to work with. Try imagining a gigapixel camera with a hypothetical lens to match. You take a garden shot - and afterwards you could crop down to a bee sitting on one of the flowers. And all of the bee would in perfect focus.

Except when you crop you increase the magnification ratio (from image size on the sensor to image at a particular display size) which decreases depth-of-field. It's just like increasing the display size of the exact same image decreases the depth-of-field when viewed from the same distance. Anytime you increase magnification, some blur that looked in focus before will become perceivable as blur.
 
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koenkooi

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1) He's saying the opposite. The ability to back and crop will give him a different image. That's why he is considering such a camera.

2) He's right. Its elemental optical knowledge. As you move away from the subject (using the same lens) more of the subject moves into the focus plane. With enough pixels you can afterwards crop in to get the magnification you need. I do not do macro myself, but can see how this could be an advantage as much macro work has a very shallow focal plane to work with. Try imagining a gigapixel camera with a hypothetical lens to match. You take a garden shot - and afterwards you could crop down to a bee sitting on one of the flowers. And all of the bee would in perfect focus.

My sarcasm alarm is out for maintenance, so I'm not sure if you're serious or not. With the M6II and R5 I'm already starting to suspect I've reached the point where the lens needs to be sharper for better details, not more megapixels on the sensor.
For the subjects I'm photographing this time of the year I use the MP-E at 1x-2x magnification and F/10-ish. That's already in diffraction territory:

What I can see 100MP being useful for is subjects 'far' away where you can get away with F/4, like butterflies with their wings closed:

That one was at F/8 because I couldn't place the tripod where the sensor would be parallel to the wing, but with better placement F/4 would've worked.

So I'm more interested in a sharper 180mm macro (with IS and less slow AF) and a sharper MP-E than I'm interested in a 100MP body. And I bet those 2 lenses combined would cost much less than the body as well :)
 
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Mar 17, 2020
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Some people who tend to be the loudest gearheads have much higher expectations for some forms of media, such as movies/TV programming and home theater screens.

The vast majority of people have made it exceedingly clear by their recent purchasing habits that they are more than happy with the quality of photos they get from their smart phones.

My sarcasm alarm is out for maintenance
It certainly is. I was not referring to any specific use case. Only giving a general comment on optical effect of increasing DOF by backing up. ;) (Can see I also have Michael Clack's previous comment quoted - not sure why, but I am only answering koenkooi here)
 
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Mar 17, 2020
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Some people who tend to be the loudest gearheads have much higher expectations for some forms of media, such as movies/TV programming and home theater screens.

The vast majority of people have made it exceedingly clear by their recent purchasing habits that they are more than happy with the quality of photos they get from their smart phones.

Except when you crop you increase the magnification ratio (from image size on the sensor to image at a particular display size) which decreases depth-of-field. It's just like increasing the display size of the exact same image decreases the depth-of-field when viewed from the same distance. Anytime you increase magnification, some blur that looked in focus before will become perceivable as blur.
Not sure what you are trying to say, but I can tell its irrelevant to my comment. (Also do not know how the double quotes popped up once again - only commenting on the last part?)
 
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dtaylor

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Not even equal lenses. FF lenses need to be significantly sharper to get the same final resolution at the same display size.

I basically said this: assuming equal lenses a larger sensor will yield a sharper image ooc. But there are examples of 35mm lenses that are good enough to match the sharpness you might find with an equivalent Pentax or Fuji MF sensor/lens combo.

To get the same final image height resolution at the same display size, a FF lens needs to be able to resolve 87.5 lp/mm to match a 645 lens that can do 50 lp/mm.

With good lenses in their optimum aperture ranges digital resolution is capped by Nyquist. Even at 50mp on 35mm there are a number of lens/aperture combos that will put the recorded extinction resolution at the Nyquist limit. You can still see differences between better/worse lenses, and could do so even on a 2003 6mp camera, because the contrast of detail (sharpness) will be better with better lenses. But if you're just measuring how much detail will be recorded, it's not hard to match a 50mp MF sensor with a 50mp 35mm sensor. (It's harder to match with the same contrast or sharpness.)

At 100mp I imagine fewer lenses will be able to do this, and there will be more examples where a 100mp 35mm sensor doesn't hit Nyquist while the 100mp MF sensor does. But there will still be lenses that can pull it off.
 
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dtaylor

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Except when you crop you increase the magnification ratio (from image size on the sensor to image at a particular display size) which decreases depth-of-field. It's just like increasing the display size of the exact same image decreases the depth-of-field when viewed from the same distance. Anytime you increase magnification, some blur that looked in focus before will become perceivable as blur.

He is correct even taking that into account. Quoting Bob Atkins: "If you use the same lens on a Canon APS-C crop sensor camera and a 35mm full frame body, then shoot from different distances so that the view is the same, the Canon APS-C crop sensor camera image will have 1.6x MORE DOF then the full frame image."


You can confirm by playing around with an online DoF calculator like this one, which takes the required circle of confusion for enlargement into account: http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

However, you may end up forced to choose between more DoF or less diffraction.
 
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Sporgon

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Anyone who shoots a 5Ds as their primary body for weddings is a masochist. Maybe for the posed portraits with proper photographic lighting. But for everything else... pure masochism!
What do you mean, "shoots a 5Ds" ? I've got two of them !
 
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Sporgon

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I’m still on a 6s, which I got secondhand, it has had 4 screens and two replacement batteries and costs a few dollars to repair each time.
Wish it was a few dollars over here. I think the last battery cost me about £70 along with the fitting at an iPhone shop. Lasted about nine months and now it's not holding charge very well. Proper screen replacement about £90. But yes I agree it's a lot cheaper than buying a new one which is no better than the old (old) one !
 
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Sporgon

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However, I think all Pentax users don't like him... all 2 of them ;)

Don't knock Pentax, their new $2000 APS-c DSLR is going to change the face of photography as we know it.
(Seriously the IQ from that camera will be really excellent for a crop sensor, assuming you get the subject in focus).
 
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Wish it was a few dollars over here. I think the last battery cost me about £70 along with the fitting at an iPhone shop. Lasted about nine months and now it's not holding charge very well. Proper screen replacement about £90. But yes I agree it's a lot cheaper than buying a new one which is no better than the old (old) one !
I get everything from iFixit and do it myself, the battery with tools is $24.99 and a screen is $59.99. The guide shows you step by step how to do it all and nothing is particularly complicated.
 
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usern4cr

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Not only that, but the radius of curvature would need to be different for each focal length...
Interesting thought. That's wouldn't be a problem for primes which could be designed with that in mind, but it would probably be a disaster for zooms which have wide ranges of focal length. Without zooms, you'd be left with a non-removable prime lens (probably for a cheap camera) which would limit customer appeal. But I wonder if they could design zooms to alter the radius of curvature as they zoom? (sounds like a lot of lens design nightmare for the benefit of switching to a curved sensor, which in itself it a design & manufacturing difficulty).
 
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Sporgon

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I get everything from iFixit and do it myself, the battery with tools is $24.99 and a screen is $59.99. The guide shows you step by step how to do it all and nothing is particularly complicated.
You haven’t seen my DIY. When I wire a plug I have bits left over......
Thanks for info though I’ll try that next time. Actually my wife has cracked the screen on her iPhone 8 so maybe I can practice on hers ;)
 
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stevelee

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Wish it was a few dollars over here. I think the last battery cost me about £70 along with the fitting at an iPhone shop. Lasted about nine months and now it's not holding charge very well. Proper screen replacement about £90. But yes I agree it's a lot cheaper than buying a new one which is no better than the old (old) one !
Since Apple paid me a trade-in for my 6S, perhaps they will sell it as a refurb, perhaps in a distant land. It still looked like new and worked perfectly. Or maybe they just recycle the rare elements from the inside and eat the loss as a promotion to sell stuff. At the moment, the will give me $180 as a trade-in for my old iPad, which I got my money’s worth out of many years ago. (It has been to 10 or so countries in that time and saved me from needing to own a laptop.)

When I visited a friend in the Los Angeles area 3 years ago, he had got a new iPhone and needed to send the old one in. But the screen was cracked. We went to a mall and he dropped the phone off at a kiosk where a guy was installing new screens. We shopped around a bit, and picked up the phone on our way out. I don’t recall the price, but it was very small.
 
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Sporgon

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The 24 month Sony cycle is certainly a good thing for Sony owners who upgrade every new model considering the shutter life of the α7 III.

Yes once you look deeper into the Sony system it’s not quite the bed of roses that the sensor alone would have you believe. I’m really surprised to see how these cameras age / wear compared with Nikon and Canon, along with the very cheap fittings, failing shutters, delaminating screens, worn finish; they smack of “disposable” to be honest. This and the rapid replacement cycle is probably why the depreciation curve resembles the trajectory of a falling brick.
 
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AlanF

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My sarcasm alarm is out for maintenance, so I'm not sure if you're serious or not. With the M6II and R5 I'm already starting to suspect I've reached the point where the lens needs to be sharper for better details, not more megapixels on the sensor.
For the subjects I'm photographing this time of the year I use the MP-E at 1x-2x magnification and F/10-ish. That's already in diffraction territory:

What I can see 100MP being useful for is subjects 'far' away where you can get away with F/4, like butterflies with their wings closed:

That one was at F/8 because I couldn't place the tripod where the sensor would be parallel to the wing, but with better placement F/4 would've worked.

So I'm more interested in a sharper 180mm macro (with IS and less slow AF) and a sharper MP-E than I'm interested in a 100MP body. And I bet those 2 lenses combined would cost much less than the body as well :)
Love the Chalk Hill Blue butterfly!
 
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Michael Clark

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Not sure what you are trying to say, but I can tell its irrelevant to my comment. (Also do not know how the double quotes popped up once again - only commenting on the last part?)

It's totally relevant to your comment. When you crop and then enlarge, you give up the gain in Depth of field you got by backing up, just like you give it up if you increase focal length after backing up. In the end only two things matter for depth of field: total magnification and aperture. The following factors all affect total magnification: subject distance, focal length, enlargement ratio (sensor size to display size ratio), and viewing distance. If you crop, it's exactly the same as reducing the sensor size without changing your shooting distance.
 
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Michael Clark

Now we see through a glass, darkly...
Apr 5, 2016
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He is correct even taking that into account. Quoting Bob Atkins: "If you use the same lens on a Canon APS-C crop sensor camera and a 35mm full frame body, then shoot from different distances so that the view is the same, the Canon APS-C crop sensor camera image will have 1.6x MORE DOF then the full frame image."


You can confirm by playing around with an online DoF calculator like this one, which takes the required circle of confusion for enlargement into account: http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

However, you may end up forced to choose between more DoF or less diffraction.

You're applying what Bob said for one situation to what Fisher is saying for another scenario. When you crop, it's exactly the same thing as reducing the sensor size without changing your shooting distance. If you backed up without changing the focal length you gained DoF at the expense of magnification. When you then crop without changing that distance or focal length to increase the magnification, you give the vast majority of that gain right back.

Try Cambridge in Color's Flexible DoF calculator that allows you to press the 'show advanced' button and then enter all of the variables yourself instead of letting DOF Master assume them (often incorrectly) for you. Be sure to use macro shooting distances where the reproduction ratio will approach 1:1. That is, do not use subject distances longer than 4X the lens' nominal focal length.

Bob also says at the link you included:

"If you use the same lens on a Canon APS-C crop sensor camera and a 35mm full frame body and crop the full frame 35mm image to give the same view as the APS-C crop image, the depth of field is IDENTICAL." (Which is a bit misleading. The total DoF will be identical, but the distribution of that total DoF between front and rear DoF will be slightly different.)

And while Bob acknowledges that at hyperfocal distances the difference in DoF between the 1.6X sensor and the FF sensor increases well beyond 1.6X, he neglects to observe that as we approach unity (1:1), the opposite happens. The portion of Bob's article that you quoted above is not correct at macro distances where the reproduction ratio begins to approach 1:1, just as he acknowledges it is not correct at distances where the rear DoF includes infinity.

Update: Actually, Bob does acknowledge it much further down in the article:

"Again, this simple analysis only applies at "intermediate" distances, but we have to have that limitation if we want a "simple" formula. It only really breaks down when the lens is focused further than about halfway to the hyperfocal distance or when we get to magnifications near 1:1"


A little bit further he also says:

"I'm sure some people will say, OK, but what if you don't take angle of view into account. What's the relative DOF if you use the SAME lens on a Canon APS-C crop sensor camera and a 35mm full frame body?"

"Now you run into the problem of what you are comparing to what. The same lens on the two formats will give you different fields of view, so if you enlarge each image to the same size (say 8x12), you won't have the same print so you really can't compare DOFs. If you crop the 35mm negative to give you the same print as the digital image the answer is easy. The DOF in the cropped 35mm print and digital image print will be exactly the same. You're using the same lens and same size image (cropped 35mm or digital), so you get exactly the same DOF."
 
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