A couple of EOS R cameras that can be considered “pro” are in the pipeline [CR1]

Sadly after 10 years with Canon I'm now exploring other options. I'm stalling because of a major investment with EF glass. If I do make a switch, I will miss Canon ergonomics. Their bodies fit my hand perfectly.
After 13 years I made my first non Canon purchase, the Panasonic S1. I am blown away by the quality of its straight out of the camera jpgs. Video quality is outstanding of course; it's what Panasonic is known for. And it always made me wonder how Panasonic managed to retain so much detail in their videos compared to the dull videos out my Canons. Now it's clear. It's not just video. Panasonic's image processing/image compression technology is on another level and outstanding video is a result of that.

I am not getting rid of my Canon gear though, at least not the 7d2. There will just be no more Canon purchases.
 
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slclick

EOS 3
Dec 17, 2013
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All this chatter of mirrorless and FF 7D series.... the 7D is neither and the 5D is at least closer being FF. Basically you want a higher fps R series with files usable far over 6400 iso. Sounds like that and a higher rez for lanscape/studio work is coming. I think with time, we will all get what we want except those who never get what they want.
 
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unfocused

Photos/Photo Book Reviews: www.thecuriouseye.com
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All this chatter of mirrorless and FF 7D series.... the 7D is neither and the 5D is at least closer being FF.

This is exactly right. Plus, if it is less resolution than the R, then it is also not a 7D equivalent (once you consider crop factor).
 
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dtaylor

Canon 5Ds
Jul 26, 2011
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The 7D brought the newer User Interface and Ergonomics that the 5DIII had. Although it only had 19 AF points...It paved the way for the later 61 point AF system. It's only weakness was the very poor sensor.

"Very poor"...it was better than the competition when it was released. People bang on it in retrospect because soon after its release Nikon released new APS-C cameras that legitimately did do better at high ISO and of course had better DR(oning). But for the time and sensor size the 7D wasn't bad at either. And low ISO detail was very, very good.

On the day of its release though it was better than Nikon's offerings in all respects.
 
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dtaylor

Canon 5Ds
Jul 26, 2011
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The EOS R is grossly overpriced for what it is and these cameras will no doubt continue the trend. For 2 or 3 other manufacturers you can get great dynamic range, IBIS, excellent video features, dual card slots (in 2), fast FPS and more for £1600-£2000. The EOS R gives you none of that for £2350.

It gives you great dynamic range and excellent video features. Claiming otherwise is living in denial.
 
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dtaylor

Canon 5Ds
Jul 26, 2011
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After 13 years I made my first non Canon purchase, the Panasonic S1. I am blown away by the quality of its straight out of the camera jpgs.

It's better than the 5D3 in this respect (ooc JPEG) but not better than the 5D4 or R.

Video quality is outstanding of course; it's what Panasonic is known for.

Can't argue with that.
 
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navastronia

R6 x2 (work) + 5D Classic (fun)
Aug 31, 2018
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After 13 years I made my first non Canon purchase, the Panasonic S1. I am blown away by the quality of its straight out of the camera jpgs. Video quality is outstanding of course; it's what Panasonic is known for. And it always made me wonder how Panasonic managed to retain so much detail in their videos compared to the dull videos out my Canons. Now it's clear. It's not just video. Panasonic's image processing/image compression technology is on another level and outstanding video is a result of that.

I am not getting rid of my Canon gear though, at least not the 7d2. There will just be no more Canon purchases.
But how’s the autofocus?
 
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I picked the one with the white ferry, I went full-screen. I went to 100% and saw how the trees smoshed into a green oil-painting mess with no detail. I closed the tab.

I did the same with the one of the Harbour Air Turbo-Otter landing. The aircraft itself is blurred due to motion. A sellable shot would be a shutter speed of around 1/60 to 1/80 and pan with the aircraft to give a nice blurred background for dramatic speed. Try that on the smartphone.

Generally they are nice compositions and well-exposed. But shooting on a tiny sensor with a 2mm plastic lens is throwing away your artistic skill. You deserve better outputs than that.

===

THANK YOU! You're the FIRST PERSON to ever give an actual critique of the photos which are ALL TAKEN WITH A SMARTPHONE from a Sony xPeria-2, an Asus Zenfone-2, a Nokia Windows-8 1520, a Samsung Note from 5+ years ago, a sub-$100 smartphone, a 1987-era Betacam SP 720 x 480 pixel Analog Video Frame Grab, and even a child's V-tech 1280 x 720 pixel toy camera!

So the point of this missive is to FORGET about actual gear the you may or may not yet have when you have a camera ALREADY in your hands....sooooooooo....start taking pictures! AS MANY as your system can handle!

Some will be GREAT! Many will not....BUT who cares....KEEP TAKING PHOTOS be it with a sub-$100 camera or a Canon1Dx Mk2 or a 100 megapixel Leica --- JUST KEEP TAKING PICTURES !!!! One of them just might win you an award or a figure in a national or global new story!
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I usually use either the Canon 1Dc's and C700's for video or a 1Dx Mk2 for stills --- it depends of the industrial imaging assignments I usually get to support our corporate parent which is a much larger aerospace-oriented firm.
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AND FINALLY, the piece of gear that will EVENTUALLY take over modern imaging will be the APS-C sensor smartphone because that sensor type CAN be put on a smartphone with a lens barrel extender that would actually be able to fit inside of a typical 7 to 12 mm thick smartphone to allow for proper focusing on the sensor-plane.
I still think a 2/3rds inch sensor will be the most common size on upcoming large-sensor smartphone, but APS-C is STILL DOABLE !!!

A full frame sensor would require a minimum 15 mm thick smartphone with an up-to 45 mm extending lens barrel depending upon the spherical or aspherical shape of the sensor's onboard photosite-sized micro-lenses! (i.e. when using Sony's now patent-expired Hyper-HAD technology!)
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When larger sensors get into smartphones, THEN the world of imaging will change and there WILL NOT BE a Sony AR3 or A6500 or Canon 6D/7D/M-50 since those lower-end interchangeable lens cameras will simply NOT be needed! Canon, Sony, Nikon will have to go high end into medium format OR go into super-rugged big-sensor smartphones and right now SONY has the edge in that it can simply increase the thickness of its pro-level xPeria 4K smartphones (i.e. by putting in a BIGGER BATTERY!) to allow for an interior cutout which can fit a 2/3rds inch or APS-C sensor!

The Euro-centric rumour mill has bandied about that Canon IS doing tests on Android-powered smartphones with at least 2/3rds inch sensors BUT will they be crippled from the outside? If they cripple the camera features or locks-down the phone, Sony ABSOLUTELY WILL introduce a full-feature-set xPeria with a 4K/8K sensor 2/3rds inch smartphone since it ALREADY has the sensors which are now used in it's shoulder mount and camcorder 4K+ video cameras! It just needs to repurpose those chips!
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Jan 28, 2019
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Canon is obviously trying to move upmarket with their recent pricing direction. The problem is, they may think rich people are mindless followers who will throw money at them simply for being the more expensive option, but the truth is wealthy people tend to make informed decisions. This is why if you look at almost every marketplace out there, be it cars, trucks, computers, etc. the only brands and models that drive innovation and introduce new features are the brands and models that cater to wealthy people.

Canon wants to play in a higher price bracket, but they also want to play games with their camera features. While Sony is offering cameras with video that beats anything from Canon, Canon still chooses to play games with their video feature set in the R.

While Nikon has been offering Camera's with 14-15 stops of DR Canon is acting like the R is good enough with the sensor from the old 5D IV. They want you to go spend 3 grand on the 85 f/1.2 and put it on an R camera that has an obsolete sensor even by Canon's behind the curve standards.

So if they're trying to sell to WEALTHY people, who tend to make informed purchases, why would they buy a camera with objectively worse performance/features?
 
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It gives you great dynamic range and excellent video features. Claiming otherwise is living in denial.

The problem with your statement is that it's not an absolute world. The guy who finished second to Usain Bolt is still excellent, he's also objectively the worse option if you're a betting man.
 
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dtaylor

Canon 5Ds
Jul 26, 2011
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Canon wants to play in a higher price bracket, but they also want to play games with their camera features. While Sony is offering cameras with video that beats anything from Canon, Canon still chooses to play games with their video feature set in the R.

The R does 4k @ 480 Mbps while the A73 does 4k @ 100 Mbps. For some people that 100 figure in the Sony specs is playing a game. I've seen comparison footage where the low light capability of 4k FF was evident, but also graded footage where the higher bitrates from the R and the X-T3 was clearly superior to the A73 despite the sensor size difference. Ironically this was most evident in the shadows so you would think the DRoners would be all over Sony for low video bitrates leading to reduced DR.

In all honesty either camera is more capable at video than most people could exploit. But if we're going to discuss the bleeding edge, let's discuss EVERY metric and issue before declaring Canon dead. Because paid professionals who do work at the bleeding edge seem to like the R.

While Nikon has been offering Camera's with 14-15 stops of DR Canon is acting like the R is good enough with the sensor from the old 5D IV.

I'm dying to know what you think 1ev of difference in a DxO score equates to in the real world. Seriously. Show me your real world high DR shot that you believe just couldn't have been made on an R. If you do you'll be the first person to ever answer that challenge from me. Typically I can't get anyone to match a 7D shot I like to post in DR discussions.

For all the talk about the importance of DR there is a surprising lack of high DR images.

They want you to go spend 3 grand on the 85 f/1.2 and put it on an R camera that has an obsolete sensor even by Canon's behind the curve standards.

The R is sharper and more detailed ooc than any of the 24mp cameras on the market, and that's with a relatively strong AA filter. It's amazing to me that people will hammer Canon on a DR "shortfall", which is only visible and exploitable in the most extreme and narrow of circumstances, then declare that more MPs are worthless when that impacts every shot taken.

And it's not a simple matter of printing big or cropping heavily. Improving the sensor sampling rate improves IQ across the board. In any optical system the final resolution is less than the weakest component, but improving any component improves the performance. That leads to counterintuitive things like a Coke bottle consumer zoom looking much better on a 5Ds than a 6D (Bob Atkins review) or the corners of a 17-40 f/4L @ f/4 looking better on a FF 5Ds than a crop 7D (my personal observation). So again, let's hammer Canon for improving a metic that improves every image taken while worshipping a metric no one seems able to exploit to the level I was exploiting an original 7D.

It's like I'm not dealing with people who actually look at sample images, but only DxO scores.

The problem with your statement is that it's not an absolute world. The guy who finished second to Usain Bolt is still excellent, he's also objectively the worse option if you're a betting man.

The problem with your statement is that the race was so close the judges were arguing into the night as to who finished first. But the audience didn't care because it wasn't Usain Bolt and #2, it was two Victoria's Secret models. And nobody in the entire world actually watched the race to see who would finish first.
 
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"Very poor"...it was better than the competition when it was released. People bang on it in retrospect because soon after its release Nikon released new APS-C cameras that legitimately did do better at high ISO and of course had better DR(oning). But for the time and sensor size the 7D wasn't bad at either. And low ISO detail was very, very good.

On the day of its release though it was better than Nikon's offerings in all respects.
Er....no it was a very poor sensor period. Regardless of what Nikon brought out. It was my impressios of my 7D the moment I got it out of the box and took it on a wild life photo shoot. I loved the new AF system, the live view integration was the best so far and the new ergonomics and menu system was way better than anything previous. But I could see iso noise in blue skies at 200 iso. The raw files (once adobe released it's converter for Lightroom) had less lattidude or push ability compared to my full frame 5DII (at the time) and certainly compared to my previous 1.6x crop cameras. The Aliasing filter seemed stronger and files were generally soft at 100%. They needed a higher degree of sharpening than any Canon DSLR I'd owned up to that point. I figured that Canon were trying to hide an inherently noisy sensor by reducing the default sharpening amount.
Like I said....a great camera that was let down by a poor sensor.
 
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As a portrait photographer I am not interested in video-capability. I hoped for a basic professional grade mirrorless camera with a good high-dynamic range sensor, two card-slots, and eventually eye-tracking autofocus. That's it. I need to upgrade my two 5d3 bodies now, and I find myself reading reviews of metabones- or sigma-adapters!! (the bottom line is that next week I will test a Pentax K1 with the 77 mm because of its sensor. pffffff). Sell all my canon-lenses... One bird in hand is better than ten birds on the tree/canon pipeline? Can somebody give me good advice please?
 
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