Analysis of RAW samples at Fred Miranda show weak DR

[Khalai]

The majority of Canon's ILC lineup seems dedicated at consumers and not business photographers who earn money with their photography.

When you see the number of professional photographers using Canon and that this is more than all of the other brands combined, you get a feeling for what the value of that statement is worth. But do those professionals make more for Canon than all of the consumers? Better question. Think also about how much effort (and cost!) Canon puts into supporting Olympics, etc.

At local promo of 6D II, the Canon rep showed us a pie-chart, where he demonstrated that 60% of their customers who buys FF cameras (mind you, FF only, not ILC altogether) are non-professional and another 31% are only part-time professionals. Only 9% of all FF cameras sold are used full-time professionally. Don't ask me, where they got their numbers, because I honestly don't know. But if there is any merit to those numbers, it makes you think...

 

[Loswr]

The majority of Canon's ILC lineup seems dedicated at consumers and not business photographers who earn money with their photography.

Yeah, so few pros using Canon at the Super Bowl and other major sporting events.

Yeah, I made a poor statement there. From my perspective, the 7D, 5D and 1D series are the only one aiming at mostly professional customers, whereas the rest of the lineup (Which consits of more than 3 cameras and is therefore the majority) is mostly aimed at people who do photography as a hobby, like myself. My point was that those people might be less rational and more emotional, as consumers are often. But that alone doesn't make their opinion irrelevant for me, like the post I quoted suggested. Is that something you disagree on?

Now I get your point, and it makes perfect sense. Certainly by unit sales, consumers (as opposed to pros) comprise far and away the largest chunk.

I don't think anyone here is bashing posters for wanting more, or for stating their desires. But some go beyond that.

"I wish the 6DII had more low ISO DR."
"I'm not buying the 6DII because it doesn't offer enough low ISO DR for me."

"The 6DII has poor low ISO DR."

"The 6DII has poor low ISO DR, Canon really screwed this one up."
"Because of the 6DII's poor low ISO DR, everyone should/will buy a D750."
"Because of the 6DII's poor low ISO DR, Canon is doomed."

The first two statements are perfectly reasonable. The third statement is a value judgement (the 6DII's low ISO DR is better than cameras from a few years ago, for example), and will likely draw some criticism. The last three statements are similar to what some will say, and that will draw ire. Many such statements were made about the 5DIII, for example...yet it was a very popular camera that outsold the competitor models by a significant margin. It's worth noting (again) that compared to the 5DII, the 5DIII dod not offer significant sensor IQ improvements, but improved many other main features (frame rate, AF, metering, etc.). The 6D vs. 6DII seems quite analogous.

Time will tell whether or not the 6DII will sell well. But it's clear that Canon has a very good track record of making cameras that sell very well.

 

[Joules]

The first two statements are perfectly reasonable. The third statement is a value judgement (the 6DII's low ISO DR is better than cameras from a few years ago, for example), and will likely draw some criticism. The last three statements are similar to what some will say, and that will draw ire. Many such statements were made about the 5DIII, for example...yet it was a very popular camera that outsold the competitor models by a significant margin. It's worth noting (again) that compared to the 5DII, the 5DIII dod not offer significant sensor IQ improvements, but improved many other main features (frame rate, AF, metering, etc.). The 6D vs. 6DII seems quite analogous.

I agree 100% with you on that (And most everything else that I've read from you in the years I've been following this forum), it is essetially what I was trying to say with my own line:

[quote author=Joules]
It only becomes objectionable if that person thinks their needs are the same as everybody elses and therefore the camera is objectively bad or perfect.
[/quote]
I'm not a native speaker (Obviously) and not as well informed of market shares and fine technical details as I would like to be, so sorry if I didn't make that clear or used some wrong assumptions to back up my point.

Anyway, back to the 6DII: If it is truly equipped with a less intense AA filter, at what point could one hope to get confirmation of that? Someone mentioned that the DPR quality charts are scaled to to the same resolution, so it shouldn't be possible to draw any proper conclusions from that right? And a teardown coming sometimes in the future might only indicate the presens or absense of such a filter, right?

I'm simply interested in it since I tried to estimate the difference the loss of the T3i corp factor might have on my macro work. Larger pixels means less diffraction, but larger sensor means more cropping to get the same Insect-to-image-size-ratio, right? Sharpness vs. Moiré might be interesting with bugs aswell, as I see moiré popping up in a lot of my T3i images already...

 

[zim]

My 6D is gone and most likely there will be a 6D2 before spring for this sucker and folks will look upon me with scorn, and I, in aglet like fashion will relish it.

Jack

Jack, you do realise that I (i.e. half the interweb) look upon you with gear envy to be able to make decisions like that. ;D

 

[Aglet]

If I can follow Aglet's reasoning, he is talking about DR hopes dashed, rather that Canon promises broken.

You may interpret it like that, but Aglet was quite clear. He accused Canon of 'bait and switch' and they have 'lots of practice'.
Canon talked about the quality of the 6D2 matching the newer cameras but did not talk about technology - and given that omitting reference to on-chip DAC raised a lot of discussion Canon were hardly being deceptive.

When a person believe that DR(at base ISO) = IQ, what he/she says is irrelevant

Bill understood me correctly
Mike did not
and ur completely off-target and heading for trolldom

 

[Aglet]

You mean exactly what Aglet has been doing all this time?

Yeah, pretty much. Although he reads like an up and down. At times he has me at the "Switch to ABC" side, and then he's going over the top and giving Neuro the fodder to bring me back to the "Canon can't go wrong" side. This forum is pretty heated at times, as far as I can tell from reading it way too much. That's why I wanted to point out one aspect that fuels it mor than necessary in my opinion. That topic is pretty off though.

Too bad renting stuff is so expensive, I'd love to get a grip on the differences between Canon and ABC IQ myself.

renting IS spendy and not worth it, IMO, unless you're writing it off as a biz.
if you can afford the outlay, buy a used ABC, use it for a month or 4 and really see what it does in comparison.
If you like it, keep it.
If not you can resell with less cost than renting for a week in most cases.
It may give you the information you seek, maybe to try a different ABC for different feature set but still the same low noise raw files vs Canon's weaker offerings.
D600/610 is cheap used or refurb.
Even an Olympus MFT body like the lowly EM10 from a few years would give you some files to think about.
Good luck on your journey of learning.

 

[Don Haines]

My 6D is gone and most likely there will be a 6D2 before spring for this sucker and folks will look upon me with scorn, and I, in aglet like fashion will relish it.

Jack

Jack, you do realise that I (i.e. half the interweb) look upon you with gear envy to be able to make decisions like that. ;D

I too shall look upon you with the scorn and derision that you deserve, and when you post pictures taken with that lowly camera I shall use words like "cool", "nice", and "beautiful" as I criticize you....

Unless I get one too..... then I shall be the recipient of such criticism.....

 

[Joules]

if you can afford the outlay, buy a used ABC, use it for a month or 4 and really see what it does in comparison.
If you like it, keep it.

Silly of me, but it's actually an option that I've never considered. I know nobody who uses Nikon or Sony gear, just Canon and Panasonic shooters. So I've checked rental prices in my area and found them pretty high and I don't feel like enough of a douchebag to buy two bodies from Amazon just to send one back if i don't enjoy it (In Germany, online stores have to take back any items until 14 days after they were bought and a lot of people abuse that). Thanks for bringing a third option to my attention. I usually don't buy anything used that i can get through other means, so it didn't come to me on my own.

 

[Sporgon]

@ sporgon: I fully agree, it seems silly. That's why I said earlier that Aglets post don't feel too convincing to me when he's going over the top with the weight he put's on some issues. But his opinion isn't irrelevant to me, at least it's part of the reason for me to finally get an account here and get some proper input on why the 6DII isn't as disapointing as some perspectives might make it out to be. So, his negativity has driven me to better evaluate the situation and therefore made me still consider the 6DII as the upgrade for my old T3i.

If I'm not getting anything proper accros here, it's fine, I'll better give up before getting stumped by neuro

If you are someone who has the unfortunate inability to expose correctly for even a flat lit scene, a perpensity to under expose unnecessarily by two stops or more, and total lack of taste reflected in a desire to produce cartoon-like images, Aglet's posts make a lot of sense

The question is would you see an improvement in your image quality when moving from a T3i to a 6DII. (Ignoring all the other advantages of the 6DII). If you're viewing your images as small prints then undoubtably not. But if you like viewing them zoomed in on a good screen, or printed large - that's bigger than A3, or shooting in more challenging light situations when you need to brave it as much as you dare on the highlights and lift the shadows - then I'd say definitely yes.

But would you see the difference between the original 6D and the mark 2 in pure 'IQ' ? Despite the fact that the II appears to have the same or even slightly less low ISO DR than the 6D I suspect that if you're in the challenging light situation I described above you could find the 6DII has more malleable data, and once you have reduced the output size down to the same 20 mp as the 6D the II may be better. This is why I say DR doesn't equal IQ.

 

[Khalai]

Okay. A little rant, or vent, call it whatever you wish.

I'm not pissed about Canon's lack of low ISO DR in 6D II for technical reasons. I'm just disappointed that they have the means of producing FF sensor, that perfoms almost as good as competition (we've seen that in 80D, 5D IV or 1DX II), but choose not to in 6D II.

I'm sure that 6D II will be popular camera, it will take amazing pictures (just like 6D is capable of) and it will sell in good numbers. But I feel that something has been intentionally left out and it's a pity. So in the end, it's not about that they cannot do something. It's about that they can, but they won't. And that just bothers me. Okay. End of rant, but I just needed to say it out loud.

 

[ahsanford]

Okay. A little rant, or vent, call it whatever you wish.

I'm not pissed about Canon's lack of low ISO DR in 6D II for technical reasons. I'm just disappointed that they have the means of producing FF sensor, that perfoms almost as good as competition (we've seen that in 80D, 5D IV or 1DX II), but choose not to in 6D II.

It's a fair rant, I must admit.

PetaPixel just brought the piranha to the table on this DR finding by giving it wide internet exposure, and here's one interesting comment from that link:

“[Canon] shouldn’t have developed a new sensor for this camera,” he continues. “They should have just used the 5D Mark IV sensor. Simple as that. They already do the same thing with their APS-C cameras, using the same 24MP with on-sensor ADC [analog- to-digital converter] in everything from the $550 200D to the $1,100 80D. That’s a 2x price difference, less than the ~1.7x price difference between the 5D Mark IV and the 6D Mark II.”

So blowing right past the notion that Canon was never going to put a 5D4 sensor in a $2k camera for a minute, can we give any merit to the blue passage re: the widespread use of ADC in general?

I didn't know we had tear-down level info on the SL2 yet to confirm that the 24MP sensor it is getting is in fact the 80D sensor. Is that true? If so, that might imply this was less about saving dollars and more about withholding performance. (Granted, even if true, the 6D2 sensor @ 26 MP has to be new where a hand-me-down 24 MP sensor gets some economies of scale to justify its inclusion in a lower price point rig.)

While I'm at it, did the M5/M6 get the 80D sensor as well? The 77D? Just curious.

- A

 

[Khalai]

Okay. A little rant, or vent, call it whatever you wish.

I'm not pissed about Canon's lack of low ISO DR in 6D II for technical reasons. I'm just disappointed that they have the means of producing FF sensor, that perfoms almost as good as competition (we've seen that in 80D, 5D IV or 1DX II), but choose not to in 6D II.

It's a fair rant, I must admit.

PetaPixel just brought the piranha to the table on this DR finding by giving it wide internet exposure, and here's one interesting comment from that link:

“[Canon] shouldn’t have developed a new sensor for this camera,” he continues. “They should have just used the 5D Mark IV sensor. Simple as that. They already do the same thing with their APS-C cameras, using the same 24MP with on-sensor ADC [analog- to-digital converter] in everything from the $550 200D to the $1,100 80D. That’s a 2x price difference, less than the ~1.7x price difference between the 5D Mark IV and the 6D Mark II.”

So blowing right past the notion that Canon was never going to put a 5D4 sensor in a $2k camera for a minute, can we give any merit to the blue passage re: the widespread use of ADC in general?

I didn't know we had tear-down level info on the SL2 yet to confirm that the 24MP sensor it is getting is in fact the 80D sensor. Is that true?

- A

Well, that would be rather hilarious, wouldn't it? One of the Canon's cheapert bodies would get that DR boost, while four times more expensive body would not? Considering they are launched together, if that's indeed the case, that would leave even worse aftertaste, right? :

Oh dear, the interwebs are going to explode

 

[Sporgon]

Okay. A little rant, or vent, call it whatever you wish.

I'm not pissed about Canon's lack of low ISO DR in 6D II for technical reasons. I'm just disappointed that they have the means of producing FF sensor, that perfoms almost as good as competition (we've seen that in 80D, 5D IV or 1DX II), but choose not to in 6D II.

I'm sure that 6D II will be popular camera, it will take amazing pictures (just like 6D is capable of) and it will sell in good numbers. But I feel that something has been intentionally left out and it's a pity. So in the end, it's not about that they cannot do something. It's about that they can, but they won't. And that just bothers me. Okay. End of rant, but I just needed to say it out loud.

Canon do this. I don't like it one little bit, but I don't blame them for product differentiation and optimising their market segments.

Take the rear command wheel on the 60D and 6D. Basically identical, except the 60D is smooth, "well oiled" and clicky. The 6D feels like it should be on a child's cheap toy. Horrible in comparison, and has been done purposely to make it feel inferior to the 5DIII. Worked on me; I hated it. Others won't be bothered.

 

[Don Haines]

Well, that would be rather hilarious, wouldn't it? One of the Canon's cheapert bodies would get that DR boost, while four times more expensive body would not? Considering they are launched together, if that's indeed the case, that would leave even worse aftertaste, right? :

Oh dear, the interwebs are going to explode

It's even worse than that......

You are fabricating the chips on a line that allows you to put the ADC on chip..... that is cheaper to do than to put it off chip. If this is true, then the combination of 6D2 sensor and A/D will be MORE expensive than on the 5D4. Canon would have to had spent extra money to make it worse!

 

[Loswr]

You are fabricating the chips on a line that allows you to put the ADC on chip..... that is cheaper to do than to put it off chip. If this is true, then the combination of 6D2 sensor and A/D will be MORE expensive than on the 5D4. Canon would have to had spent extra money to make it worse!

But what if you have an older fab line that doesn't allow on-chip ADC, a line for which capital was not designeted to upgrade, a line that would otherwise sit unused? And what if your lines that allow you to put the ADC on chip are already running at capacity, so you have to choose which product you're going to short for a given period of time if you produce everything on those lines? Would off-chip ADC be more expensive, then?

Point is, there are a lot of what if's at this point...

 

[Don Haines]

You are fabricating the chips on a line that allows you to put the ADC on chip..... that is cheaper to do than to put it off chip. If this is true, then the combination of 6D2 sensor and A/D will be MORE expensive than on the 5D4. Canon would have to had spent extra money to make it worse!

But what if you have an older fab line that doesn't allow on-chip ADC, a line for which capital was not designeted to upgrade, a line that would otherwise sit unused? And what if your lines that allow you to put the ADC on chip are already running at capacity, so you have to choose which product you're going to short for a given period of time if you produce everything on those lines? Would off-chip ADC be more expensive, then?

Point is, there are a lot of what if's at this point...

Yes, there is a lot that we do not know.... but one thing is certain, the 6D2, in competent hands, will take great pictures.

To my mind, a lot of these numbers and comparisons ring thrown around do not make sense. I am waiting for dedicated testing from retail units before I make any decision on if to buy or not....

 

[ahsanford]

To my mind, a lot of these numbers and comparisons ring thrown around do not make sense. I am waiting for dedicated testing from retail units before I make any decision on if to buy or not....

I think that ship is quickly sailing, Don, but who knows. Perhaps Bill at PtP was unknowingly sent a pre-production file. Perhaps the guys at The Camera Store TV were given a pre-production unit. But both claimed they received production output or a final/production body.

The only issues remaining on the sensor for me are:

• Noise and the pattern / quality of it, how well it can be tamed in post, etc.
  
  
• The overall picture of how high you can push the ISO on this rig between the DR and the noise. Tests and charts are fine and all, but we all have our own levels of acceptability here.

- A

 

[jeffa4444]

Neuro it is not unreasonable to have thought that the 6D MKII would improve upon the DR provided by the 6D given the five year gap. In the context of just about everything else technically we buy were used to improvements and advancement in key features and the sensor is a key feature of any camera.
Will it stop me buying the 6D MKII? No because Ive practically worn out my 6D and it's a direct replacement & second camera but I cannot say I'm not slightly disappointed by the lack of advancement in DR I am. However it's one of many features and in most other areas the camera has seen improvement and I'm used to working within the DR provided. Mix in the system and going to Sony et al. is not an option

 

[unfocused]

You are fabricating the chips on a line that allows you to put the ADC on chip..... that is cheaper to do than to put it off chip. If this is true, then the combination of 6D2 sensor and A/D will be MORE expensive than on the 5D4. Canon would have to had spent extra money to make it worse!

But what if you have an older fab line that doesn't allow on-chip ADC, a line for which capital was not designeted to upgrade, a line that would otherwise sit unused? And what if your lines that allow you to put the ADC on chip are already running at capacity, so you have to choose which product you're going to short for a given period of time if you produce everything on those lines? Would off-chip ADC be more expensive, then?

Point is, there are a lot of what if's at this point...

There are a lot of "what ifs," and one of them is whether on-chip or off-chip is even a factor. The people who are "analyzing" these files are making the assumption that because they don't look like on-chip files they can't be. But, that's not a given. It is only speculation. Only after someone disassembles the camera, will it be known for sure and even then, it's not really relevant. Arm chair sensor engineers are equating a specific technology with performance expectations, but we really don't know if the two are connected or not.

All we really know is that Canon said the sensor on the 6D may not have as much dynamic range and resolution as the 5D IV. That appears to be the case. Why that is, is pure speculation at this point.

 

[bclaff]

I think that ship is quickly sailing, Don, but who knows. Perhaps Bill at PtP was unknowingly sent a pre-production file.

I wouldn't matter anyway.
At this level of testing I have never found a measurable difference between pre-production and production cameras.