5D Mark III (or other) Followup

[Loswr]

This thread is about the 5DIII, that's what I was talking about. The 5DII is almost 4 years old, it would be foolish of Canon not to improve the high ISO performance and dynamic range. It just seems like those changes are inevitable. There have been a flood of people on CR in the last week because of these posts, it's annoying going through pages and pages of nonsense.

Has Canon never done anything foolish? Honestly, I've heard lots of complaints about the 5DII...and almost none about it's sensor. Excepting the new 1D X (no data yet), the 5DII has the least ISO noise and is effectively tied for the best DR. Is it a huge stretch to think they'll just re-use that sensor? I don't think so. They might make slight improvements, maybe gapless microlenses, etc., but if it ain't broke... Plus a re-use would save a lot of R&D costs...

 

[mkln]

This thread is about the 5DIII, that's what I was talking about. The 5DII is almost 4 years old, it would be foolish of Canon not to improve the high ISO performance and dynamic range. It just seems like those changes are inevitable. There have been a flood of people on CR in the last week because of these posts, it's annoying going through pages and pages of nonsense.

Has Canon never done anything foolish? Honestly, I've heard lots of complaints about the 5DII...and almost none about it's sensor. Excepting the new 1D X (no data yet), the 5DII has the least ISO noise and is effectively tied for the best DR. Is it a huge stretch to think they'll just re-use that sensor? I don't think so. They might make slight improvements, maybe gapless microlenses, etc., but if it ain't broke... Plus a re-use would save a lot of R&D costs...

the sensor on the 5d is outdated in all respects compared to the competition.
tied for the best DR? where? there are tens of cameras out there with 13+ stops of DR vs the 5D2's 11.9

 

[Hesbehindyou]

It's gotta be full frame, not APS-C

I appreciate that most already presume it's full frame. For anyone still undecided:

If we take a look at the pic above he's zoomed all the way in and the bird's head only just fills the screen. With hot weather, APS-C and a 600mm lens it's not often you're focal length limited with a relatively big bird - heat haze makes it undesirable to shoot with the intention of cropping and becomes the dominating factor.

It's also possible the bird is both long-legged and on stilts and he wanted to capture the whole creature, or that it was early in the morning.

 

[Loswr]

the sensor on the 5d is outdated in all respects compared to the competition.
tied for the best DR? where? there are tens of cameras out there with 13+ stops of DR vs the 5D2's 11.9

Should have specified relative to Canon's lineup. Canon has been behind the competition in DR/ISO for years, and so far (until the 1D X) has shown no inclination to change that. The competition, of course, was behind on resolution. You pick your horse and lay down your bet...

 

[mkln]

This thread is about the 5DIII, that's what I was talking about. The 5DII is almost 4 years old, it would be foolish of Canon not to improve the high ISO performance and dynamic range. It just seems like those changes are inevitable. There have been a flood of people on CR in the last week because of these posts, it's annoying going through pages and pages of nonsense.

Has Canon never done anything foolish? Honestly, I've heard lots of complaints about the 5DII...and almost none about it's sensor. Excepting the new 1D X (no data yet), the 5DII has the least ISO noise and is effectively tied for the best DR. Is it a huge stretch to think they'll just re-use that sensor? I don't think so. They might make slight improvements, maybe gapless microlenses, etc., but if it ain't broke... Plus a re-use would save a lot of R&D costs...

well of course not. Canon makes incremental upgrades.
back in 2008 the 5D2 could be criticized because of its poor AF performance, sure. The sensor was the best in class.
but this does not mean that things haven't changed since.
The 5D2 has always had pattern-noise (banding) that basically make postproduction less flexible especially at ISO 800 or higher.
Sure, the quantity of noise is very good up to ISO 3200. But the quality is just not that good.
Now when the 5D2 had no competitors in terms of resolution and overall features of the sensor (considering that better sensors on a per-pixel basis had significantly lower resolution i.e. 12mp) then of course nobody complained about the sensor.

TODAY, however, there are higher resolution sensors that perform better even on a per-pixel basis.
Or anyway there are sensor with a lower resolution (but definitely more than 12mp) that perform way better in terms of DR and noise quality (some also in terms of noise quantity).
so TODAY I expect canon to deliver an outstanding sensor, just as the 5d2 sensor was originally.

The problem that I see is that Canon does not seem to care about DR that much, given that their top performing DSLR has an effective DR of 12 compared to Nikon, Pentax, Sony, Fujifilm, all with sensors well above 13 stops of DR.

Instead, given what Nikon has done with the D7000, if their D800 is as good an FF as the D7000 is an APS-C, Canon will not be a leader anymore.

I'm sure the 5D X will be an improvement (duh!), but my question is how much.

 

[EYEONE]

the sensor on the 5d is outdated in all respects compared to the competition.
tied for the best DR? where? there are tens of cameras out there with 13+ stops of DR vs the 5D2's 11.9

Should have specified relative to Canon's lineup. Canon has been behind the competition in DR/ISO for years, and so far (until the 1D X) has shown no inclination to change that. The competition, of course, was behind on resolution. You pick your horse and lay down your bet...

I'm wondering what most people would more be able to recognize in a ordinary photography (not a test setup): 8 more MPs of resolution or ~1 stop of dynamic range?

 

[CarebbianTraveler]

Has Canon never done anything foolish? Honestly, I've heard lots of complaints about the 5DII...and almost none about it's sensor. Excepting the new 1D X (no data yet), the 5DII has the least ISO noise and is effectively tied for the best DR. Is it a huge stretch to think they'll just re-use that sensor? I don't think so. They might make slight improvements, maybe gapless microlenses, etc., but if it ain't broke... Plus a re-use would save a lot of R&D costs...

The 5D2's sensor is nearly 5 years old, first used in the 1DsIII. When they want to save development coasts, they adapt the one from the 1D X. But I don't believe in just a slight improvement. They will go bigger after 5 years.
On the other hand, this old sensor is still one of the best and competitors only have reached about an equal quality. This might be a hint why the mark III is not announced yet. There's no need for it yet. And yes, I would also prefer other improvements than the sensor.

 

[mkln]

the sensor on the 5d is outdated in all respects compared to the competition.
tied for the best DR? where? there are tens of cameras out there with 13+ stops of DR vs the 5D2's 11.9

Should have specified relative to Canon's lineup. Canon has been behind the competition in DR/ISO for years, and so far (until the 1D X) has shown no inclination to change that. The competition, of course, was behind on resolution. You pick your horse and lay down your bet...

Yes, you're right, but the gap between Canon and the competition on DR was not that large.
D700 gives 12.2, not a big deal compared to the 5d2.
the gap has widened though.
0.3 stops between the D700 and the 5D2, 2.4 stops between the D7000 and the 60D (sensor size difference not significant to explain this difference).
and while there is a 9mp difference between the D700 and the 5D2, there is a mere 2mp difference between D7000 and 60D.

I'll be happy with 13.5 stops for the new 5d

the sensor on the 5d is outdated in all respects compared to the competition.
tied for the best DR? where? there are tens of cameras out there with 13+ stops of DR vs the 5D2's 11.9

Should have specified relative to Canon's lineup. Canon has been behind the competition in DR/ISO for years, and so far (until the 1D X) has shown no inclination to change that. The competition, of course, was behind on resolution. You pick your horse and lay down your bet...

I'm wondering what most people would more be able to recognize in a ordinary photography (not a test setup): 8 more MPs of resolution or ~1 stop of dynamic range?

I think the 2 are equivalent. but as shown above, we're not talking about a 1stop difference anymore.

 

[Loswr]

I'm wondering what most people would more be able to recognize in a ordinary photography (not a test setup): 8 more MPs of resolution or ~1 stop of dynamic range?

I think the 2 are equivalent. but as shown above, we're not talking about a 1stop difference anymore.

Honestly, I don't think 'most people' would recognize either! But I can tell you which would sound better as a marketing strategy...

 

[CarebbianTraveler]

I'm wondering what most people would more be able to recognize in a ordinary photography (not a test setup): 8 more MPs of resolution or ~1 stop of dynamic range?

Nearly all displays have 8bit per channel and maximum 4MP. The contrast of the printers depends on the paper, but is definitely not better than a display. But there's a chance to see a difference between a 12 and a 20MP print, when it's at least A3.

But having a display with 16bits and a high contrast would be great, because my eyes are better than the standard 8 bits ;-)

 

[marius]

Canon has been behind the competition in DR/ISO for years, and so far (until the 1D X)

"until" 1DX?! Where is the proof that 1DX has better DR as the competition?

The competition, of course, was behind on resolution.

Of, course since 2008 we have Nikon D3X with 24 MP and Sony Alpha A900, too.

 

[marius]

I'm wondering what most people would more be able to recognize in a ordinary photography (not a test setup): 8 more MPs of resolution or ~1 stop of dynamic range?

The photographic tehnique, of course 8)

 

[Loswr]

Canon has been behind the competition in DR/ISO for years, and so far (until the 1D X)

"until" 1DX?! Where is the proof that 1DX has better DR as the competition?

Please don't exerpt in such a way that the meaning of the quote is altered. What I stated was:

Canon has been behind the competition in DR/ISO for years, and so far (until the 1D X) has shown no inclination to change that.

...meaning that with the 1D X, Canon has now apparently shown an inclination to tackle the issues of ISO noise and DR. I didn't say that they've succeeded - we won't have any idea of how effective their efforts were until we see 1D X RAW files.

Then again, maybe they haven't shown that...perhaps the 1D X has less MP than the 5DII only so Canon could deliver a higher frame rate.

 

[EYEONE]

I'm wondering what most people would more be able to recognize in a ordinary photography (not a test setup): 8 more MPs of resolution or ~1 stop of dynamic range?

The photographic tehnique, of course 8)

Well, true if we were discussing the merits of a good photograph.

Which we weren't.

 

[CarebbianTraveler]

Then again, maybe they haven't shown that...perhaps the 1D X has less MP than the 5DII only so Canon could deliver a higher frame rate.

I can't find the article, but that's basically what a canon employee said: The problem is the pixel reset time. The bigger the sensor and the more pixels it has, the longer it takes. When the pixels aren't reset properly, artifacts may appear.

 

[LetTheRightLensIn]

It doesn't make any sense for Canon to develop a another full frame sensor in addition to the 18MP sensor of the 1D X. Using the same sensor as the 1D X is the only thing that makes sense from a cost point of view. Canon is not a charity, they are in the market to make money.

To all who are thinking that the next 5D will inevitable have the same sensor, since everything else will be canons ruin:
None of the 5D sensors have ever been the same as those from the 1Ds line.

• The 5d had 12.8MP while the 1DsMK2 had 16.6MP.
• The 5dMK2 has a similar sensor like the 1DsMK3, but not the same: DPReview says:

  21.1 megapixel full frame CMOS sensor
  The EOS 5D Mark II delivers an 8.3 megapixel jump in pixel count from the original 5D. This new sensor is said to be based on that of the EOS-1Ds Mark III (indeed it has exactly the same pixel count) but has several small changes, the hint being that it's actually slightly better.

So, alltogether, history convinces me more that the 5dMKwhatever will have a different sensor.

What, to be honest, I never understood within canons policy was the 7D. The 3rd cropped line sharing the same sensor. I'd hve awited that canon would bring a 7D with 1.3 crop back then, but they didn't. Now I don't understand what the xxD-Line is good for. But hey, canon knows how to make money

5D2 and 1Ds3 had same sensor itself but the 1Ds3 bonded the filters and stuff on in a better and fancier way and the color filters appear to be different and maybe some of the late stage read electronics, so taken all together not the same, but the actual light detecting sensor sensor part of it same

it had worse pattern noise, but a trace less photon noise since the filter array was a bit more color-blind

 

[LetTheRightLensIn]

ATTENTION: I'm tired of reading through pages and pages of wish lists, "oh if it has better dynamic range and better high ISO performance I'm getting it." That's pretty much the stupidest and most obvious thing you could hope for in this camera (or any upcoming camera). Of course EVERYTHING that Canon is releasing is going to have better dynamic range and lower noise at high ISO, that's just a given and it's a waste of bandwidth to even mention inevitable upgrades such as these.

Like Canon is going to forget to improve the dynamic range and iso performance if you don't mention it here on the boards, they are a multi-billion dollar company people where is the trust? Some of you guys act like Canon is just a group of retards that don't know what they are doing, they don't need your advice.

they haven't done a lot for usable DR in a long time

and even SNR has only crept up a bit (they got to a decent level much more quickly than Nikon/Sony but then haven't improved it by a ton, although it has gotten better)

 

[iP337]

I for one really like the idea of an APS-H sensor in a sub $2000 line like the 7D. I still love using my 5D2 and 7D, they have a lot of life left in them still so I'm not compelled to upgrade them anytime soon but at this point I'm looking for a new useful shooting option in an affordable package like an $1800 7Dmk2 to slot between my 5D2 and 7D to increase my shooting options without bankrupting me ;D (Was planning on a Panasonic Micro Four Thirds but rather have a Canon APS-H)

I think that's a 7DmkII in the pic cause it makes sense to release a 7DmkII right now; Nikon is rumored to announce the D800 soon so Canon may feel the need for something new as well, but the 1DX is about to release and announcing it's "affordable full frame alternative" now can only hurt 1DX pre-sales (Though Nikon seems to be doing just that with the D800 announcement just before their D4 release, lol.), also as mentioned here before it's a big sports year 2012 (but not a big studio year) and too many of the recent Canon models are competing with each other killing the x0D line (semi-pros go to 7D while consumers go with 600D, so what's the 60D for?! semi-consumers? no wait that's 1100D.)

Canon said starting with the 1DX they will be "cleaning up" their DSLR models, but they also claimed to have no intention of abandoning APS-H. Canon is in a great position to make the 7D line the "Sports"(APS-H)cameras, the 5D line the "Studio" camera and the 1DX into an "EVERYTHING" camera while giving the x0D line it's "Semi-Pros" back.

Also it would be interesting if Canon made a 16:9 APS-H sensor, since back in the film days APS-H (known as APS-High Definition) was 16:9 for landscape photography not 3:2 like APS-Classic or 135 Film. This could be a 16:9 LCD on the back of the “mystery body” to go with a 16:9 sensor. If they did make this, then the HDMI out with a 16:9 sensor wouldn’t have those pillar bars or crop marks that the current 7D’s HDMI out has due to it’s 3:2 sensor, this could be the “clean” HDMI out camera we’ve been waiting for! Nikon’s already doing a clean HDMI out with the D4 by cropping a 16:9 portion of their 3:2 so you know Canon has to do something and the current 7D almost already has it.

Aww, I just set myself up for a big let down later haven't I? That camera's probably just a 5DmkIII with a 16:9 LCD display that drops to 3:2 when you hit record :-\

 

[Loswr]

Yes, I think you've set yourself up for disappointment, mainly because we all see what we want to see. Allow me to humorously re-order your statements to what I think you really mean:

I think that's a 7DmkII in the pic cause...

I for one really like the idea of an APS-H sensor in a sub $2000 line like the 7D...I'm looking for a new useful shooting option in an affordable package like an $1800 7Dmk2.

I like the idea, too, but unfortunately, I think it's pretty unlikely.

 

[iP337]

Yes, I think you've set yourself up for disappointment, mainly because we all see what we want to see. Allow me to humorously re-order your statements to what I think you really mean:

I think that's a 7DmkII in the pic cause...

I for one really like the idea of an APS-H sensor in a sub $2000 line like the 7D...I'm looking for a new useful shooting option in an affordable package like an $1800 7Dmk2.

I like the idea, too, but unfortunately, I think it's pretty unlikely.

Lol, it's true, I have been fantasizing of adding an APS-H body to my bag but a 1Dmk4 is just a bit too much for me to rationalize the cost and I usually won't upgrade for a few extra MP or slightly increased DR, I was still happy shooting the D60 and 20D until the 5Dmk2 came out. (Well that's not really true, I desperately wanted a 5Dc and 40D but kept spending the money on my car, lol.)