EOS 5D Mark IV review--from the trenches

[Viggo]

The thing that caught my attention was, "+1 stop in Lr" I mean why? I have friends who "neeeeeeds" a Sony because they keep shooting two-three stops under. I pull down my images about -0,4 in Lr or leave them at zero, I don't shoot under, yet I have no problems getting accurate exposure in camera and no pushing or lifting in post.

My 85 f1.8 underexposes compared to my 35 and 200, so when shooting normal exposed images I use +1 EC plus the +6/8 my 0 ev already offset to, yet still the histograms are just a tad to the right.

What bothers me is that people I know push every singel image and yet complain about the sensor or "Canon" in general. If you don't want to expose correctly, why blame the camera, sensor or entire brand?

And now this, a pro photographer just admits like it's nothing he pushes a image a full stop in post? wow...

/rant over/

 

[Andy Davison]

Hi there - as the author of this short review, just a quick reply to Viggo's observations about correcting exposure in post-production. It may well be a weakness in my technique that I'm not able to guarantee spot-on exposures when working largely candidly for 14 hours in constantly changing and usually far less-than-ideal light on wedding days but I'm always grateful to be able to have the flex to bring back some highlight or shadow detail when I've not managed to nail things in-camera. Sometimes it's just a tweak, sometimes it can be a stop or 2 but the joy of modern cameras is that we have that flex when we need it. Clearly, when you have control of light and subject placement, such flexibility is rarely needed but it can be a life-saver for a candid wedding photographer. I wish I had Viggo's capacity to correctly expose every image but I'm simply not that good and having the technology to now be able to deliver an image to the bride and groom that perhaps previously would have been unrecoverable is wonderful.

 

[Viggo]

Hi there - as the author of this short review, just a quick reply to Viggo's observations about correcting exposure in post-production. It may well be a weakness in my technique that I'm not able to guarantee spot-on exposures when working largely candidly for 14 hours in constantly changing and usually far less-than-ideal light on wedding days but I'm always grateful to be able to have the flex to bring back some highlight or shadow detail when I've not managed to nail things in-camera. Sometimes it's just a tweak, sometimes it can be a stop or 2 but the joy of modern cameras is that we have that flex when we need it. Clearly, when you have control of light and subject placement, such flexibility is rarely needed but it can be a life-saver for a candid wedding photographer. I wish I had Viggo's capacity to correctly expose every image but I'm simply not that good and having the technology to now be able to deliver an image to the bride and groom that perhaps previously would have been unrecoverable is wonderful.

Thanks for taking time to address my "rant". First off, I don't at all don't understand why all cameras underexpose so much by default. And as far as I know, the 1-series are the only camera where you can offset 0 ev in camera to solve the issue BEFORE shooting. And this is what I mean, I don't take especially great care in exposing correctly, I have done that within a day of getting my new camera, I simply shoot a grey card and bracket until I see 50,50,50 values with the eyedropper in Lr, I then add around 0,5-1.0 stop default to that. I turn down the screen brightness to where it doesn't look very bright when it really isn't. I also dial down one point on the contrast slider at my Picture Style. I turn off all in camera adjustments such as DLO and all of that. Although I never shoot jpeg, all of this is to help me getting the best possible preview in the field, for what the exposure will look like in Lightroom.

When that is adjusted at home when I have the time, I shoot, and hardly chimp, but do check the histogram with the first couple of shots in any given situation. I shoot Av with auto iso and limit my shutter speed to whatever suits. I shoot and get to know the camera with where clipped is clipped. I realized back in the day when I ALWAYS had to add a stop in post that I didn't want that, and tried my best to solve it on a permanant basis.

Andy, this is nothing personal and I appriciate your review and your shots are superb! Again thanks, for your reply.

 

[Andy Davison]

Hi Viggo - no offence taken at all and thank you for the kind words. Like everyone else, I'm still learning and enjoying the journey. Thanks for the really interesting insight into how you set up your cameras, I'll certainly give some of your process a go and see if I can get something more representative of the final image displayed in-camera. Thanks for taking the time to share how you work, really informative. Andy

 

[YuengLinger]

Hi there - as the author of this short review, just a quick reply to Viggo's observations about correcting exposure in post-production. It may well be a weakness in my technique that I'm not able to guarantee spot-on exposures when working largely candidly for 14 hours in constantly changing and usually far less-than-ideal light on wedding days but I'm always grateful to be able to have the flex to bring back some highlight or shadow detail when I've not managed to nail things in-camera. Sometimes it's just a tweak, sometimes it can be a stop or 2 but the joy of modern cameras is that we have that flex when we need it. Clearly, when you have control of light and subject placement, such flexibility is rarely needed but it can be a life-saver for a candid wedding photographer. I wish I had Viggo's capacity to correctly expose every image but I'm simply not that good and having the technology to now be able to deliver an image to the bride and groom that perhaps previously would have been unrecoverable is wonderful.

Thanks for taking time to address my "rant". First off, I don't at all don't understand why all cameras underexpose so much by default. And as far as I know, the 1-series are the only camera where you can offset 0 ev in camera to solve the issue BEFORE shooting. And this is what I mean, I don't take especially great care in exposing correctly, I have done that within a day of getting my new camera, I simply shoot a grey card and bracket until I see 50,50,50 values with the eyedropper in Lr, I then add around 0,5-1.0 stop default to that. I turn down the screen brightness to where it doesn't look very bright when it really isn't. I also dial down one point on the contrast slider at my Picture Style. I turn off all in camera adjustments such as DLO and all of that. Although I never shoot jpeg, all of this is to help me getting the best possible preview in the field, for what the exposure will look like in Lightroom.

When that is adjusted at home when I have the time, I shoot, and hardly chimp, but do check the histogram with the first couple of shots in any given situation. I shoot Av with auto iso and limit my shutter speed to whatever suits. I shoot and get to know the camera with where clipped is clipped. I realized back in the day when I ALWAYS had to add a stop in post that I didn't want that, and tried my best to solve it on a permanant basis.

Andy, this is nothing personal and I appriciate your review and your shots are superb! Again thanks, for your reply.

Viggo, I too thank you for sharing your approach to preparing ahead of time for best exposures! And also for acknowledging, and reminding many of us, that in camera meters can change a bit from lens to lens. I first noticed that with my 135mm f/2--and it is a great practice to check the histogram especially after switching lenses.

 

[Viggo]

Hi there - as the author of this short review, just a quick reply to Viggo's observations about correcting exposure in post-production. It may well be a weakness in my technique that I'm not able to guarantee spot-on exposures when working largely candidly for 14 hours in constantly changing and usually far less-than-ideal light on wedding days but I'm always grateful to be able to have the flex to bring back some highlight or shadow detail when I've not managed to nail things in-camera. Sometimes it's just a tweak, sometimes it can be a stop or 2 but the joy of modern cameras is that we have that flex when we need it. Clearly, when you have control of light and subject placement, such flexibility is rarely needed but it can be a life-saver for a candid wedding photographer. I wish I had Viggo's capacity to correctly expose every image but I'm simply not that good and having the technology to now be able to deliver an image to the bride and groom that perhaps previously would have been unrecoverable is wonderful.

Thanks for taking time to address my "rant". First off, I don't at all don't understand why all cameras underexpose so much by default. And as far as I know, the 1-series are the only camera where you can offset 0 ev in camera to solve the issue BEFORE shooting. And this is what I mean, I don't take especially great care in exposing correctly, I have done that within a day of getting my new camera, I simply shoot a grey card and bracket until I see 50,50,50 values with the eyedropper in Lr, I then add around 0,5-1.0 stop default to that. I turn down the screen brightness to where it doesn't look very bright when it really isn't. I also dial down one point on the contrast slider at my Picture Style. I turn off all in camera adjustments such as DLO and all of that. Although I never shoot jpeg, all of this is to help me getting the best possible preview in the field, for what the exposure will look like in Lightroom.

When that is adjusted at home when I have the time, I shoot, and hardly chimp, but do check the histogram with the first couple of shots in any given situation. I shoot Av with auto iso and limit my shutter speed to whatever suits. I shoot and get to know the camera with where clipped is clipped. I realized back in the day when I ALWAYS had to add a stop in post that I didn't want that, and tried my best to solve it on a permanant basis.

Andy, this is nothing personal and I appriciate your review and your shots are superb! Again thanks, for your reply.

Viggo, I too thank you for sharing your approach to preparing ahead of time for best exposures! And also for acknowledging, and reminding many of us, that in camera meters can change a bit from lens to lens. I first noticed that with my 135mm f/2--and it is a great practice to check the histogram especially after switching lenses.

Glad to be of help! I'm just here to learn and enjoy photography myself, and I learn something eeeevery day.

On a sidenote I just started using the Expodisc for wb, and it changed my photography for ever. I spent 90% of my editing time trying to get proper wb, and being colorblind, failed miserably. Auto WB sucks bigtime, and now I can also use the Expodisc as a lightmeter for my B1, even in HSS, where no lightmeter works

 

[JoeDavid]

Thanks for taking time to address my "rant". First off, I don't at all don't understand why all cameras underexpose so much by default. And as far as I know, the 1-series are the only camera where you can offset 0 ev in camera to solve the issue BEFORE shooting.

I still have my 5D Mark III so I took all three bodies (5Dm3, 5Dm4, and 5DS) with me a couple of weeks ago to shoot a landscape scene. It was overcast so a relatively low contrast scene. To keep a little detail in the drab sky I used live view on all three cameras to adjust the exposure just keeping the highlights in range on the histogram. The odd thing is that it took a correction of -2/3EV on both the 5Dm3 and 5DS but only -1/3EV on the 5Dm4 (and, yes, I was using the same lens on each body). Given the same DPP and Photoshop processing, the 5Dm3 and 5DS yielded pretty much the same image, contrast and color, with the obvious resolution difference between the two. The 5Dm4 image had slightly less contrast and saturation but still the standard "Canon color". That was with using the "neutral" Picture style in DPP for all three.

 

[Viggo]

Thanks for taking time to address my "rant". First off, I don't at all don't understand why all cameras underexpose so much by default. And as far as I know, the 1-series are the only camera where you can offset 0 ev in camera to solve the issue BEFORE shooting.

I still have my 5D Mark III so I took all three bodies (5Dm3, 5Dm4, and 5DS) with me a couple of weeks ago to shoot a landscape scene. It was overcast so a relatively low contrast scene. To keep a little detail in the drab sky I used live view on all three cameras to adjust the exposure just keeping the highlights in range on the histogram. The odd thing is that it took a correction of -2/3EV on both the 5Dm3 and 5DS but only -1/3EV on the 5Dm4 (and, yes, I was using the same lens on each body). Given the same DPP and Photoshop processing, the 5Dm3 and 5DS yielded pretty much the same image, contrast and color, with the obvious resolution difference between the two. The 5Dm4 image had slightly less contrast and saturation but still the standard "Canon color".

I find that the only way to really solve the issue, shoot a gray card with spot meter in even light, and also good and low light. Then use the eye dropper to correct wb, and you'll see how low the actually expose.

It's always a balance when shooting something real. I don't expose for either the darkest shadows or the brightest highlights unless I intend to expose that correctly and it's my main subject. I expose for the midtones, and ETTR them. If I was always keeping ALL highlights correctly exposed all images would be 6-8 stops under. Expose what's important correctly, somethings in an image will always be clipped in each end.

Try to shoot underexposed keeping highlights and then push shadows and midtones and see what a noisy mess it is, compared to shooting over and pull exposure and highlights down and then lift shadows.

 

[Viggo]

Here's a superquick test.

The histogram is for the +7/8 shot at iso 800 and as you can see it's barley to the right, and one full stop over the camera default shot which was shot at iso 400. And even with a +0.45 push in Lr doesn't clip any of the whites.

 

[JoeDavid]

It's always a balance when shooting something real. I don't expose for either the darkest shadows or the brightest highlights unless I intend to expose that correctly and it's my main subject. I expose for the midtones, and ETTR them. If I was always keeping ALL highlights correctly exposed all images would be 6-8 stops under. Expose what's important correctly, somethings in an image will always be clipped in each end.

In reality I usually have plenty of memory cards with me, especially when on an extended photo trip, so I bracket RAW files to get the best overall exposure to work with in Photoshop. In most cases I can come up with a file that gives me the image I want without having to resort to HDR methods although I will use HDR if I have to. The thing is that with the mark IV the ability to pull up shadows is greatly improved over the earlier 5D bodies at low ISOs. For the landscape images I've shot with it so far it hasn't been anywhere near the problem it was with the mark III or 5DS. I haven't seen any banding or "ugly" false color in the amounts of correction that I've needed.

 

[Viggo]

It's always a balance when shooting something real. I don't expose for either the darkest shadows or the brightest highlights unless I intend to expose that correctly and it's my main subject. I expose for the midtones, and ETTR them. If I was always keeping ALL highlights correctly exposed all images would be 6-8 stops under. Expose what's important correctly, somethings in an image will always be clipped in each end.

In reality I usually have plenty of memory cards with me, especially when on an extended photo trip, so I bracket RAW files to get the best overall exposure to work with in Photoshop. In most cases I can come up with a file that gives me the image I want without having to resort to HDR methods although I will use HDR if I have to. The thing is that with the mark IV the ability to pull up shadows is greatly improved over the earlier 5D bodies at low ISOs. For the landscape images I've shot with it so far it hasn't been anywhere near the problem it was with the mark III or 5DS. I haven't seen any banding or "ugly" false color in the amounts of correction that I've needed.

I agree with you, I wouldn't hate more dynamic range either. But Landscape is 50% dark shadows and 50% very bright light, so that requires a different technique all together as you explain.

 

[Random Orbits]

The thing that caught my attention was, "+1 stop in Lr" I mean why? I have friends who "neeeeeeds" a Sony because they keep shooting two-three stops under. I pull down my images about -0,4 in Lr or leave them at zero, I don't shoot under, yet I have no problems getting accurate exposure in camera and no pushing or lifting in post.

My 85 f1.8 underexposes compared to my 35 and 200, so when shooting normal exposed images I use +1 EC plus the +6/8 my 0 ev already offset to, yet still the histograms are just a tad to the right.

What bothers me is that people I know push every singel image and yet complain about the sensor or "Canon" in general. If you don't want to expose correctly, why blame the camera, sensor or entire brand?

And now this, a pro photographer just admits like it's nothing he pushes a image a full stop in post? wow...

/rant over/

When I'm shooting the kids' soccer games (in Av), there is one direction toward the treeline where the auto exposure goes wonky. In that direction, the background is dark and the camera (7DII or 5DIII) tries to compensate by pushing the exposure but the kids' skin and uniforms (if light gray) get blown out. Whenever I'm on this field, I set EC to -2/3, and that gets it closer in that direction. In post, I usually have to lift the shots away from that treeline about 2/3-1 stop, and maybe -2/3 to 0 for shots toward the treeline. Perhaps spot metering is the answer, but I've never tried a 1 series camera.

 

[Viggo]

The thing that caught my attention was, "+1 stop in Lr" I mean why? I have friends who "neeeeeeds" a Sony because they keep shooting two-three stops under. I pull down my images about -0,4 in Lr or leave them at zero, I don't shoot under, yet I have no problems getting accurate exposure in camera and no pushing or lifting in post.

My 85 f1.8 underexposes compared to my 35 and 200, so when shooting normal exposed images I use +1 EC plus the +6/8 my 0 ev already offset to, yet still the histograms are just a tad to the right.

What bothers me is that people I know push every singel image and yet complain about the sensor or "Canon" in general. If you don't want to expose correctly, why blame the camera, sensor or entire brand?

And now this, a pro photographer just admits like it's nothing he pushes a image a full stop in post? wow...

/rant over/

When I'm shooting the kids' soccer games (in Av), there is one direction toward the treeline where the auto exposure goes wonky. In that direction, the background is dark and the camera (7DII or 5DIII) tries to compensate by pushing the exposure but the kids' skin and uniforms (if light gray) get blown out. Whenever I'm on this field, I set EC to -2/3, and that gets it closer in that direction. In post, I usually have to lift the shots away from that treeline about 2/3-1 stop, and maybe -2/3 to 0 for shots toward the treeline. Perhaps spot metering is the answer, but I've never tried a 1 series camera.

I also shoot my sons soccer games, and they often play in fields where the sun comes in from the side, and the forrest surrounding the field, that is havoc for evaluative metering. When I switched to spot meter linked to AF the problem went away.

 

[Viggo]

Here's a typical example of the diffculties, and how I ETTR a shot. I care about exposing my son properly, and deal with the highlights and shadows later. I try to give myself the best possible starter and what results in best color and the least noise.

And it shows just how far you can go in ETTR.. The only thing blown here is the very top of his head, and the outline on his arm, and to expose that correctly would require HDR to not having the rest of the image suck big time.

 

[YuengLinger]

Here's a typical example of the diffculties, and how I ETTR a shot. I care about exposing my son properly, and deal with the highlights and shadows later. I try to give myself the best possible starter and what results in best color and the least noise.

And it shows just how far you can go in ETTR.. The only thing blown here is the very top of his head, and the outline on his arm, and to expose that correctly would require HDR to not having the rest of the image suck big time.

What more could you do in that sunlight? Looks like late morning or early afternoon. Seems like a good strategy.

 

[Refurb7]

That's a well done, in-depth review. With really good photos! I appreciate it.

I'm still super-happy with the 5D3 and have no immediate plans to buy a 5D4, but I have saved Andy's review for future reference.

 

[Alex_M]

Judging by the long shadows from the pole, it looks like the shot was taken during early morning or late afternoon time.The quality of light does look a bit unforgiving and harsh so ETTR was the perfect strategy. Good shot though.

Here's a typical example of the diffculties, and how I ETTR a shot. I care about exposing my son properly, and deal with the highlights and shadows later. I try to give myself the best possible starter and what results in best color and the least noise.

And it shows just how far you can go in ETTR.. The only thing blown here is the very top of his head, and the outline on his arm, and to expose that correctly would require HDR to not having the rest of the image suck big time.

What more could you do in that sunlight? Looks like late morning or early afternoon. Seems like a good strategy.

 

[ritholtz]

Looks like all Canon people who make money in photography, owns 24-70mm f2.8 II and Canon 35L f1.4 II.

 

[YuengLinger]

Looks like all Canon people who make money in photography, owns 24-70mm f2.8 II and Canon 35L f1.4 II.

And your comment is relevant to the discussion because ________________...

 

[privatebydesign]

Looks like all Canon people who make money in photography, owns 24-70mm f2.8 II and Canon 35L f1.4 II.

I don't, I have the 24-70 f2.8 MkI and the 35mm f2.0 IS.