Article: The 5 Reasons Why I Switched Back to Canon From Sony

gmon750 said:
CanoKnight said:
There's real panic at Canon over the A7 III and that's why you will see more of these Canon sponsored articles in the coming weeks and months. Their $3500 prosumer full frame pricing model is getting bust.

Stop making stuff up. There's no "panic".

You could argue that "panic" is too strong a word, but the Canon team would have to be brain dead not to take notice of the A7 III
 
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Jul 21, 2010
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Etienne said:
neuroanatomist said:
CanoKnight said:
There's real panic at Canon over the A7 III and that's why you will see more of these Canon sponsored articles in the coming weeks and months. Their $3500 prosumer full frame pricing model is getting bust.

There's real panic at Sony because Canon still totally dominates the FF ILC market, and the A7III seems to be doing nothing to change that situation. That's why you'll see more FF MILC releases from Sony on an even faster pace as they try desperately to make inroads into Canon's market share.

See, I can make stuff up, too. Well, except for the part about Canon dominating the FF ILC market share, that is fact.

The perennial "market share" argument has always been bogus. DPR puts it to rest here: https://www.dpreview.com/opinion/0088028249/why-brand-market-share-shouldnt-matter-to-you

DPR is bogus. :p

I will point out (yet again) that I’m not now and never have claimed that more market share means ‘better’ cameras. People should choose the camera system that best meets their needs. It just so happens that more people have chosen Canon ILCs for well over a decade.

But when someone makes comments such as, “...the massive Canon-to-Sony hemorrhaging that is bordering on avalanche status,” the actual data on market share is a very relevant response.
 
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May 11, 2017
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Etienne said:
gmon750 said:
CanoKnight said:
There's real panic at Canon over the A7 III and that's why you will see more of these Canon sponsored articles in the coming weeks and months. Their $3500 prosumer full frame pricing model is getting bust.

Stop making stuff up. There's no "panic".

You could argue that "panic" is too strong a word, but the Canon team would have to be brain dead not to take notice of the A7 III

If the Canon team is sitting around waiting to see what Sony comes up with next, then they are in trouble. But I don't think that is the way it works. The key decisions are made years upstream, and play out over time. Did the public announcement of the A7III lead to any significant changes in Canon thinking? Most likely we will never know, but they probably recognized a while ago that Sony might eventually decide that it might make sense to come up with a fullframe camera that could be sold for less than $3000.
 
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Talys

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LDS said:
ecqns said:
The big reason for us is the dynamic range by far. It has flat out transformed my on set and post production workflow.

Ah, it's the DR matter....

I would like to see the sets that have so much dynamic range that the difference between 13 and 14.x is workflow-changing.

I'm not being an ass here; I just can't imagine what it is that's being photographed or videoed and what type of lighting setup there is that where extra DR would change workflow.
 
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Talys said:
I would like to see the sets that have so much dynamic range that the difference between 13 and 14.x is workflow-changing.
I'm not being an ass here; I just can't imagine what it is that's being photographed or videoed and what type of lighting setup there is that where extra DR would change workflow.

I'm not going to get into this again and again - I was asked what are the reasons I switched (used Canon digital since 20D until 1Dx2 and 6D) and I answered DR being the #1 reason. In architecture and interiors, not having to over bracket and capture the necessary tones in a scene in even one exposure sometimes is invaluable. If you have to bracket you might get a great person walking through your shot you want to use but it might not be usable if it's in one of your really dark or really light frames. I've even made a mistake recently and way overexposed a shot but I was able to save it no problem (as I was working quickly and I had the LCD set incorrectly in bright sunlight). I do not do HDR or any auto software. If you don't believe me or don't care that's fine, I do what's best for me (and I don't disparage those who use different gear). If Canon somehow beat Sony on Mpix and DR in the future I'd probably go back or wait for Sony's response, but I would miss certain features I mentioned earlier.
 
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Jun 20, 2013
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ecqns said:
Talys said:
I would like to see the sets that have so much dynamic range that the difference between 13 and 14.x is workflow-changing.
I'm not being an ass here; I just can't imagine what it is that's being photographed or videoed and what type of lighting setup there is that where extra DR would change workflow.

I'm not going to get into this again and again - I was asked what are the reasons I switched (used Canon digital since 20D until 1Dx2 and 6D) and I answered DR being the #1 reason. In architecture and interiors, not having to over bracket and capture the necessary tones in a scene in even one exposure sometimes is invaluable. If you have to bracket you might get a great person walking through your shot you want to use but it might not be usable if it's in one of your really dark or really light frames. I've even made a mistake recently and way overexposed a shot but I was able to save it no problem (as I was working quickly and I had the LCD set incorrectly in bright sunlight). I do not do HDR or any auto software. If you don't believe me or don't care that's fine, I do what's best for me (and I don't disparage those who use different gear). If Canon somehow beat Sony on Mpix and DR in the future I'd probably go back or wait for Sony's response, but I would miss certain features I mentioned earlier.

seems you didn't' read the question or comment too well.

a 1DX 2 or 5D Mark IV would hardly require any more bracketing than a top model A7R,etc.

in other words, if you needed to bracket on a 5D Mark IV, odds are you would need to bracket on a A7RIII as well.

having people in the scene is another issue, and to be honest, most photographers will shoot a burst or bracket so they can remove people from the scene. that's a pretty common technique.

So i agree with the comment really, where's the large workflow change from a 5D Mark IV DR to an A7RII or A7RIII workflow?

all of them basically have the same DR. DR complaints are basically a dead issue.

http://photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm#Canon%20EOS%205D%20Mark%20IV,Sony%20ILCE-7RM2,Sony%20ILCE-7RM3

4afd2c66d0ebec73263b596ab0ad7122.png
 
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rrcphoto said:
all of them basically have the same DR.

http://photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm#Canon%20EOS%205D%20Mark%20IV,Sony%20ILCE-7RM2,Sony%20ILCE-7RM3

4afd2c66d0ebec73263b596ab0ad7122.png

Not in the 1Dx2s I used. But for my purposes the extra pixels are just as important too, so the 5Ds is a better camera to compare to. Sometimes I need to make a big image transformation and crop out a lot of image. I went to Sony just after the 5Ds was announced.
 
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Jun 20, 2013
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Etienne said:
neuroanatomist said:
CanoKnight said:
There's real panic at Canon over the A7 III and that's why you will see more of these Canon sponsored articles in the coming weeks and months. Their $3500 prosumer full frame pricing model is getting bust.

There's real panic at Sony because Canon still totally dominates the FF ILC market, and the A7III seems to be doing nothing to change that situation. That's why you'll see more FF MILC releases from Sony on an even faster pace as they try desperately to make inroads into Canon's market share.

See, I can make stuff up, too. Well, except for the part about Canon dominating the FF ILC market share, that is fact.

The perennial "market share" argument has always been bogus. DPR puts it to rest here: https://www.dpreview.com/opinion/0088028249/why-brand-market-share-shouldnt-matter-to-you

dpreview didn't.

Since when is dpreview the defacto commentary on all things camera related?

their comments and assumption that canon is a market leader simply because of inertia is a commentary not based upon any factual statement other than their own opinion.

marketshare is certainly a valid response to the hysteria and fake commentary about panic, people leaving in droves,etc.

it's only bogus if you want to project a narrative based upon little information outside of your own desires.
 
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Jun 20, 2013
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BillB said:
Etienne said:
gmon750 said:
CanoKnight said:
There's real panic at Canon over the A7 III and that's why you will see more of these Canon sponsored articles in the coming weeks and months. Their $3500 prosumer full frame pricing model is getting bust.

Stop making stuff up. There's no "panic".

You could argue that "panic" is too strong a word, but the Canon team would have to be brain dead not to take notice of the A7 III

If the Canon team is sitting around waiting to see what Sony comes up with next, then they are in trouble. But I don't think that is the way it works. The key decisions are made years upstream, and play out over time. Did the public announcement of the A7III lead to any significant changes in Canon thinking? Most likely we will never know, but they probably recognized a while ago that Sony might eventually decide that it might make sense to come up with a fullframe camera that could be sold for less than $3000.

the A7 was always priced around $2000. why is the A7 III any different?
 
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Talys

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@ecqns -

There is nothing wrong with preferring a Sony. I'm happy that you like your camera and that it works for you.

When you say set, post-production, and workflow, that sure sounded like an artificial scene to me, where you control lighting and direction, whether it's for photography or video.

That said, I'm totally with rrcphoto, and while there were some great features on the A7R3, I was thoroughly unimpressed with the vaunted dynamic range. You couldn't crush overexposed whites even a tiny bit more, and the ability to lift shadows compared to any Canon full frame camera is, at best, dubious. More accurately, it was different meaning that some colors and types of shadows recovered better, while others worse. I find the recovered shadows on Sony at even medium ISOs (up to 1000) to have unpleasing grain, and unpleasing color saturation, but this is simply my preference and opinion. I posted some eagle shots of Canon vs Sony in another thread to highlight what I mean.

But at the end of the day, every poorly exposed photo was still a poorly exposed photo.

ecqns said:
rrcphoto said:
so now you're changing the goalposts.

What do you mean? 40-50 mpix vs 30 is a big difference. Playing around with that chart shows that the 5Ds is almost 2 stops worst and the 5D4 is about one stop worst than the a7r3.

The biggest difference between 42 megapixels and 30 megapixels is somewhat bigger files. In practice, you are always much better served by using the right focal length or moving than you are to cropping more deeply.

I'm not saying that most of us don't prefer more megapixels to less. But very rarely does anyone ever finish with work anywhere near 30 megapixels.
 
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ecqns said:
rrcphoto said:
so now you're changing the goalposts.

the 5D4 is about one stop worst than the a7r3.

it's .8 EV.

if you can't get it on a 5D Mark IV in one exposure, you're not going to on a A7RIII.

also a A7RIII will be more heavily influenced on DR by how long you use the camera because it's a mirrorless camera, and the warmer the sensor the less DR it will have.
 
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Talys said:
The biggest difference between 42 megapixels and 30 megapixels is somewhat bigger files. In practice, you are always much better served by using the right focal length or moving than you are to cropping more deeply.

Well of course but in real life situations, you don't always have that luxury. Like shooting a building from across a narrow street - if I can't get it on a ladder with the 17mm TS-E either in one shot or stitched I have to use the 11-24 and point the camera up, transform and crop (which I hate doing). So in those situations I would lose about half my file. And I can get so much highlight recovery, besides spectral highlights which are fine blowing out. Maybe I'll post an example sometime. About shadow recovery, I only shoot up to 400 ISO.
 
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Talys

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Feb 16, 2017
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ecqns said:
Talys said:
The biggest difference between 42 megapixels and 30 megapixels is somewhat bigger files. In practice, you are always much better served by using the right focal length or moving than you are to cropping more deeply.

Well of course but in real life situations, you don't always have that luxury. Like shooting a building from across a narrow street - if I can't get it on a ladder with the 17mm TS-E either in one shot or stitched I have to use the 11-24 and point the camera up, transform and crop (which I hate doing). So in those situations I would lose about half my file. And I can get so much highlight recovery, besides spectral highlights which are fine blowing out. Maybe I'll post an example sometime. About shadow recovery, I only shoot up to 400 ISO.

I agree with you about not having the luxury -- or ability -- to get closer in (which is what we're talking about, right?). It happens.

Having used an A7R3, 5DIV, and 6D2, though, the difference was surprisingly small to me.

I genuinely expected to be able to crop more out of a picture, for bird photography. Is there a difference? Yes, a tiny bit. But it's really tiny. A bird that takes up 1/8 of the frame will still not be good enough to keep. A bird that takes up 1/3 of the frame will be a great shot either way. Somewhere in between, there are some photos on the A7R3 that will crop out a little nicer, but at some point with photography, I went to just wanting more photos, to wanting better photos, and all those "a little nicer" scenarios are ultimately photos that make the first cull but get discarded because they really aren't good enough to share with anyone else.

Highlight recovery between the 5D4 and the A7R3 are practically exactly the same, which is to say, very little. You can't even get 2 stops out of either. Shadow recovery on from the Sony is a little more. There was that video that demonstrated it to be 1 stop more. It could well be that this is measurably the case. However, in practice, I find that it's a little different, as the colors on recovered shadows on Canon look different than the recovered shadows on Sony.

In some cases I like Canon better, and in other cases, Sony. But ultimately, there are zero photos that are amazing photos in my collection where I've had to recover 3 or 4 stops of shadows. Sure, sometimes a little more definition or color in the shadows improves the photo, but never by 3+ stops. Usually, the reason I need to recover some shadows is because I've increased contrast, where I've lost some of those shadows.
 
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Talys said:
Highlight recovery between the 5D4 and the A7R3 are practically exactly the same, which is to say, very little. You can't even get 2 stops out of either. Shadow recovery on from the Sony is a little more. There was that video that demonstrated it to be 1 stop more. It could well be that this is measurably the case. However, in practice, I find that it's a little different, as the colors on recovered shadows on Canon look different than the recovered shadows on Sony.

Here's an example of a terrible exposure being corrected to save a photo. Here I went with a -0.7 exposure and +53 in highlights in Capture One with the a7r2. I'd say that's a pretty decent recovery job:
 

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Talys

Canon R5
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Feb 16, 2017
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ecqns said:
Here's an example of a terrible exposure being corrected to save a photo. Here I went with a -0.7 exposure and +53 in highlights in Capture One with the a7r2. I'd say that's a pretty decent recovery job:

Cool photo. I don't think you'd have a problem with that with a 5D4, either, though. I mean, it's clearly overexposed, but not so horribly so that everything is just blown out white.

As an aside, using the A7R3 at the moment, one of my complaints is that I don't trust its metering, though often it's a problem of under rather than over exposure (which is a lot more correctible). I think Canon's evaluative metering or Nikon's matrix metering is just better. On the other hand, I have learned to trust that WYSIWYG viewfinder and use the thumb dial to manually adjust a lot of photos.
 
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Hflm

Gear: 5div, A7riii, A9 ...
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Talys said:
@ecqns -

There is nothing wrong with preferring a Sony. I'm happy that you like your camera and that it works for you.

When you say set, post-production, and workflow, that sure sounded like an artificial scene to me, where you control lighting and direction, whether it's for photography or video.

That said, I'm totally with rrcphoto, and while there were some great features on the A7R3, I was thoroughly unimpressed with the vaunted dynamic range. You couldn't crush overexposed whites even a tiny bit more, and the ability to lift shadows compared to any Canon full frame camera is, at best, dubious. More accurately, it was different meaning that some colors and types of shadows recovered better, while others worse. I find the recovered shadows on Sony at even medium ISOs (up to 1000) to have unpleasing grain, and unpleasing color saturation, but this is simply my preference and opinion. I posted some eagle shots of Canon vs Sony in another thread to highlight what I mean.

But at the end of the day, every poorly exposed photo was still a poorly exposed photo.

ecqns said:
rrcphoto said:
so now you're changing the goalposts.

What do you mean? 40-50 mpix vs 30 is a big difference. Playing around with that chart shows that the 5Ds is almost 2 stops worst and the 5D4 is about one stop worst than the a7r3.

The biggest difference between 42 megapixels and 30 megapixels is somewhat bigger files. In practice, you are always much better served by using the right focal length or moving than you are to cropping more deeply.

I'm not saying that most of us don't prefer more megapixels to less. But very rarely does anyone ever finish with work anywhere near 30 megapixels.
In my personal use I see a clear advantage in the Sony files, which grows even more when downsizing to 30MP, giving me extra headroom in using NR if necessary. Although the PDR measures only 0.8ev less at base ISO, the biggest advantage for me is that after the first gain change (iso640) the A7riii is practically isoless until iso25600. At events I can protect highlights by underexposing deliberately with no penalty of whether I use a higher iso directly or push in post. Not so with my 5div. Photonstophotos shows that nicely in their PDR shadow improvement vs. iso settings measurements.

But the 5div performance regarding dr and iso is at a level, where it is usable for the huge majority of things you throw it at. A great camera. I like the 5divs. But I like the A9 and A7riii more, to be honest. That could change with the new Canon FF mirrorless which I certainly will buy to replace the 5divs, since I mostly use DPAF anyway to avoid AF fine tuning issues in different lighting conditions, at different distances or when using my lenses wide open when not using the center focus point. With the A9/A7riii I hardly have a single misfocused image after a wedding day at all.
 
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