The headshot photo of the lady as part of the official 5DS samples is pretty incredible. It is NEAR medium format quality. Real close in IQ, and for a lot of uses - I can see this camera being a poor man's medium format. Except, better AF, portability and other features. But those samples were at ISO 100 under absolute perfect conditions - which is studio conditions carefully setup by experienced pros. Hence, S for Studio. This is as good as that camera will ever get because that is what Canon themselves has chosen to be as images to show case what the camera is capable of.
However, the still life at higher ISO. Not so good. These aren't exactly envelope pushing ISO's here. And that was a shot done as a setup and in a deliberate way. Might not be absolutely ideal like the Canon samples, but it is a setup shot.
As far as noise is concerned - it does look pretty noisy. I don't care what it is, a brand new camera with new sensor of that price range being part of a pro or semi-pro line should be cleaner over ISO 400 than that camera is. The hope was they sacrificed higher ISO for cleaner low ISO. Not the case here.
More detail is great, if you can use it. Unfortunately, most people can't use it. This thing is for creating posters, billboards and murals. Pixel peepers will love it, but it doesn't appear to have the dynamic range or low noise they also demand for their PC-only viewing appreciation of images.
Canon has created a high resolution camera for studio use only. If it doesn't have better DR, landscape shooters won't want it. You must figure, while it has great detail - most cannot use that detail. The 36MP of Nikon is plenty of detail with more DR and less noise. 810 does ISO 64 also. Landscape win goes to 810.
To make matters worse, Nikon has a real crop mode - making the 810 more useful for other kinds of shooting. 5DS is not good on noise, and can't truly crop down. This limits it too much.
I understand the idea Canon is going with is to create specialty cameras. But if this thing is only good at ISO 100 and 200 under studio conditions, that's probably too specialized to be successful. The market for this camera is too small.
Canon is fortunate that Nikon has aging pro lenses. If Nikon would update their key pro lenses to sharpness and quality levels of Canon - combined with their 36MP sensor, they're going to really pull ahead of Canon. Right now, Nikon's lenses aren't able to make the best use of their sensors. There's a lot of room for improvement there. Nikon has a sort of quality "equity" just waiting to be tapped into.
But I digress, to get back on track -
It is appearing, at least initially, that these characteristics of its image quality are such that it is too specialized to be successful. It's one thing to geared toward a certain type of photography, and a whole other thing to be USELESS for other types of photography. Well, not really useless but definitely useless at the price point.
I think someone who buys this thing will want better quality and function for other uses too.
But perhaps Canon doesn't mind? They essentially just jammed 50MP into a 5D3. It might be their quick and dirty way to get back into the megapixel race, satisfy a demand for a lower cost studio only DSLR and that's it. It isn't as if they engineered a new camera from scratch. They scaled up the 7D2 sensor in a 5D3 body. This also serves to act as filler, showing they're releasing newer bodies. The criticisms of Canon being slow to release new bodies was really piling up.
I don't believe this camera will be successful. Aside from some pros who will use it, the prosumer/consumer market does indeed subsidize the existence of many of these DSLR's or at least keeps them within some realm of affordability. It is this market I don't see buying into the 5DS. I don't think that many people will really care about having 50MP and that kind of detail. Better DR and Noise performance with higher ISO is more important for more shooters than all out megapixel. These shooters who buy these cameras and make the sales numbers high enough for companies like Canon to even develop and sell these cameras. Even the most fanatical, pixel peeping nerds who buy this gear will admit they can't use the detail since they aren't printing
Feed the 5DS perfect studio quality lighting and it is a champion of DSLR image quality. Go outside of that, and it is overpriced and mediocre.
One positive is that the 5DS leaves enough holes and gaps, that it almost necessitates that the 5D4 will NOT be a specialist camera, but will be a do-all, multi-purpose pro DSLR. It they don't, Canon has surely surrendered being a leader in camera bodies and intends on riding the quality of their lenses instead. That is a bad idea, as at some point, Nikon will wake up and put out higher resolution 24-70, 70-200 and others. Then there is no reason to own a Canon except for ergonomics, and at that point - I think a lot of people will be able to overcome that and switch over.
