Canon EOS-1D X Mark II Studio Tests

[Stu_bert]

I think it's fair to say that this beginning of their 1DX2 review shows in the least a sloppiness in framing these consumer choices, which happens to leave the impression the 1DX2 is less of a camera than it is. I also think it is eyebrow raising that the review does seem to have inverted the importance of low- versus high- ISO performance corresponding precisely with Canon and Nikon having swapped their own design priorities in their respective refreshes. One of our number here on CR actually (jokingly) suggested before-hand that DPR would do this if Canon ever went to on-chip circuitry to provide better low-ISO noise reduction.

I'd doesn't have the inverted importance because the 1D-X II only shows an improvement relative to already underperforming Canons. It's still well behind the best the competition offer, and we DID emphasize it beats its only real peer, the Nikon D5 significantly. What more would you have us say? Lie and say it now matched the D810 or a7R II? Because it doesn't.

I suspect that there is no real motive to be biased, but that - like someone who likes Chevy over Ford, etc. - one has to justify to oneself why after reviewing a competing brand one still prefers the favorite brand. That dialog in one's mind winds up focusing on negatives of the thing being reviewed. This is why DPR needs a few more people who primarily own the Canon system.

In sum, no, I don't think the impressions of bias are meritless. But, no, I really doubt this is deliberate. I bet with guys like Rishi and Barney doing this, they get better and better.

What it comes down to is this. Not everyone has an excellent command of the English language for whatever reason. There are many, including ESL, limited education, disinterest in language as opposed to technology and so forth. Such people probably are incapable of discerning the nuances that contribute to the bias they present. From previous statements by the author I believe there is a sincere desire to be unbiased but that doesn't mean there is no bias.

Yes there has been a flip, now that Canon has improved DR in low ISO, and DR continues to get way too much emphasis.

Jack

Well, I'm sure that's not racist or anything, but it does seem to avert the fact that Barney actually learned proper English in England and is quite a writer, and as an American born citizen myself, I resent the ESL implication, and the 'lack of secondary education' implication concidering English is my first language. Nevermind your comments re: education, considering we both went to gradute studies, and I myself graduated from two Ivy League schools.

Really fun and productive place to be around, these forums, I'm beginning to see. Would a second Princton degree help? If so perhaps I'll consider one. Oh the horror of spending time with some of the most brilliant people on the world.

Rishi Sanyal, Ph.D
Technical Editor, dpreview.com

Rishi, I was told by my English friend that Americans speak much better English than Englanders. He said we (Americans) tend to pronounce every syllable where they tend to remove syllables that should be there. That they've butchered their own language. The context was me telling him that Americans automatically consider the English to be more intelligent simply due to the accent. He balked at that idea very strongly.

In fact, he stated that what we Americans call "ebonics" is actually a south London dialect.

Lets not even get started with people saying, "Canon have, or Sony have" done this or that.

Lol, as an Englishman I don't think I have any more (or less) rights to represent my country, but doubt I would be able to present all views. I do agree with your friend that diction doesn't equate to intelligence. Nor does English (any dialect) as a primary or secondary language indicate intelligence fortunately.

I much prefer the terms Canadian English, American English, U.K. English etc, although regional dialects mean that such terminology is an over-simplification

Back to the thread - it would be useful to know how the previous generation of Nikon and Sony cameras fair in these comparisons, so the A7R and D4/d4s, to give an indication of the difference between generations.

 

[CaptureWhatYouSee]

Regarding the bias of DPR. The titles of the recent reviews for the 80D and 1DXII are BS:

"The Canon that Can." for the 80D

"Canon Catching Up?" for the 1DXII

What do these imply?

 

[Loswr]

Regarding the bias of DPR. The titles of the recent reviews for the 80D and 1DXII are BS:

"The Canon that Can." for the 80D

"Canon Catching Up?" for the 1DXII

What do these imply?

Blatant bias. I wonder if they'll even bother to fully review the 1D X II...

 

[traveller]

Comparing (the much slated) DXO mark "Sports usage case" (for them this means the highest ISO rating, for which the SNR is 30dB and maintaining a DR of 9 stops with a color depth of 18 bits):

Sony A7R II - 3434
Canon 1Dx - 2786

Looks very favourable on the Sony, but wait: "A difference in low-light ISO of 25% represents 1/3 EV and is only slightly noticeable." (http://www.dxomark.com/About/Sensor-scores/Use-Case-Scores)

Let's do the maths: 3434/2786 = 1.23, i.e. 23% -which probably explains why everyone is arguing, it's difficult to make clear judgments at this level of difference.

This works both ways, such as the person that claims the 1Dx Mk.II is 1.5 stops better than the 5D Mk.III, which would require the former to 'score' something in the order of 4500 -probably quite unlikely given the results from DPR's test shots versus the original 1Dx and the A7R II.

Nikon appear to have gone all out on high ISO for the D5 (and traded off low ISO DR to achieve it); will it breach the ISO4000 barrier on DXO Mark? We probably won't have to wait too long to find out. Nevertheless, I think we are getting to the point of diminishing returns with current technology. Maybe the new Panasonic/Fuji Organic Photoconductive Film sensor technology will shake things up a bit.

 

[9VIII]

...Nevertheless, I think we are getting to the point of diminishing returns with current technology. Maybe the new Panasonic/Fuji Organic Photoconductive Film sensor technology will shake things up a bit.

That's the main point I'm coming away with right now.
My biggest regret at this moment is not buying a 6D back in 2013. High ISO noise has not significantly improved. Yes, newer bodies can do higher ISO without completely destrying the image, but at ISO 12800 pretty much everything on the market is on a level playing field, and the lack of improvement at less excessive high ISO means that recent bodies still demand a premium.

 

[3kramd5]

Nikon appear to have gone all out on high ISO for the D5 (and traded off low ISO DR to achieve it)

Can you explain why you think they traded low ISO DR for high ISO performance? I don't understand how that would work physically.

I suspect that, if anything, they traded framerate for noise. Higher framerate -> higher frequency processors which likely produce more heat -> more noise -> lower dynamic range.

 

[ritholtz]

Regarding the bias of DPR. The titles of the recent reviews for the 80D and 1DXII are BS:

"The Canon that Can." for the 80D

"Canon Catching Up?" for the 1DXII

What do these imply?

Blatant bias. I wonder if they'll even bother to fully review the 1D X II...

In 1DXII case, they are referring to low ISO DR. With the same consistency, they should title D5 as, Nikon sliding down. It is not that 80D better than a6300, but they clearly stressed that D7200 and 80D are starting to look bit old fashioned compared to to the current crop of 4K-capable mirrorless APS-C cameras, like the Sony a6300. And also mentioned 80D may look completely inferior to the a6300 on paper. Let us see how much they are going to say about superior video specs of 1DX2 compared to D5. I am hoping for Canon to catch up with D500 high iso performance in their next iteration. Or Sony to upgrade their kit lens and make some crop lens.

 

[9VIII]

I preferred to keep my 7D at 800 or less, my 5DII at 3200 or less. I use my 1D X (not MkII) up to 25600 with DxO Prime NR.

DxO... It shocked me that you are using software from this scam company... i hereby sentence you to a whole year of only photographing with the DxO One !!! According to DxO you will not lose anything, but to me that is a very very hard sentence....

You know, if Metabones would make an EF mount iPhone adapter, it might not be a horrible idea.

Actually DxO One isn't a horrible idea on paper, it's just a horrible implementation.
I really think Canon and Nikon should have been making 4G enabled cameras a long time ago, but at this point it might make more sense to just to turn your camera into an iPhone peripheral in order to re-capture the point and shoot market.

 

[sebasan]

I have two messages deleted from this thread. Neither of them was aggresive or disrespectful, but it seems that somebody have some problem with them. If you have a message deleted it would be good that you could know why, even by private message.

 

[StudentOfLight]

So Rishi, still no comment on why the 1DX-II was being compared to the A7R-II.

With DPReview's A7R-II review, the A7R-II was never compared it to the high-speed sports cameras (1D-X or the D4S)

i.e. No mention of the A7R-II's:
a) pedestrian continuous burst rate relative the CaNikon sports cameras
b) pathetic buffer performance relative to the CaNikon sports cameras
c) 12bit files limitation in continuous shooting relative to the CaNikon sports cameras

So why now compare the A7R-II to the CaNikon high-speed sports cameras? To me it seems like the Canon and Nikon Sports cameras have not caught up to the Sony A7R-II because they were always ahead.

 

[rishi_sanyal]

Regarding the bias of DPR. The titles of the recent reviews for the 80D and 1DXII are BS:

"The Canon that Can." for the 80D

"Canon Catching Up?" for the 1DXII

What do these imply?

Blatant bias. I wonder if they'll even bother to fully review the 1D X II...

In 1DXII case, they are referring to low ISO DR. With the same consistency, they should title D5 as, Nikon sliding down.

You mean like a few weeks ago when we titled the similar report on the D5: 'Nikon D5 has lowest base ISO dynamic range of any current FF Nikon DSLR'?

http://www.dpreview.com/news/9402203921/nikon-d5-shows-drop-in-dynamic-range

Maybe Nikon forgot to mail us their check that week?
-Rishi

 

[Loswr]

So Rishi, still no comment on why the 1DX-II was being compared to the A7R-II.

With DPReview's A7R-II review, the A7R-II was never compared it to the high-speed sports cameras (1D-X or the D4S)

i.e. No mention of the A7R-II's:
a) pedestrian continuous burst rate relative the CaNikon sports cameras
b) pathetic buffer performance relative to the CaNikon sports cameras
c) 12bit files limitation in continuous shooting relative to the CaNikon sports cameras

So why now compare the A7R-II to the CaNikon high-speed sports cameras? To me it seems like the Canon and Nikon Sports cameras have not caught up to the Sony A7R-II because they were always ahead.

What, you expect him to admit his bias? :

 

[3kramd5]

Rishi, I think that people could interpret for example "the Canon that can" as editorializing, suggesting that other canons can not, or likening it to a train from a children's story you can just barely get by by the skin of his teeth, as opposed to matter-of-fact nature of the D5 piece's title.

As in news articles, titles should largely be ignored.

 

[rishi_sanyal]

So Rishi, still no comment on why the 1DX-II was being compared to the A7R-II.

With DPReview's A7R-II review, the A7R-II was never compared it to the high-speed sports cameras (1D-X or the D4S)

i.e. No mention of the A7R-II's:
a) pedestrian continuous burst rate relative the CaNikon sports cameras
b) pathetic buffer performance relative to the CaNikon sports cameras
c) 12bit files limitation in continuous shooting relative to the CaNikon sports cameras

So why now compare the A7R-II to the CaNikon high-speed sports cameras? To me it seems like the Canon and Nikon Sports cameras have not caught up to the Sony A7R-II because they were always ahead.

I think you're unclear how the various parts of our reviews/assessment work.

First, yes it was compared: we had multiple pieces of content pointing out how the a7R II just didn't work for continuous shooting, and that you should turn to a Canon or Nikon DSLR for sports. There was even a piece by a 1D X shooter (our reviewer Jordan) who compared the a7R II at a football game in comparison to his 1D X experience for continuous AF and shooting.

Did you miss that?

Second, when we talk about a particular aspect of a camera, like image quality, we compare to the best of its peers in that respect. Which is why we compared the a7R II to a Pentax 645Z, hardly in exactly the same league. Why don't you complain about how we made that unfair comparison?

The 1DX and D4S did not provide class-leading performance to use as a comparison point for the a7R II in image quality, which is why they weren't used as a comparison point.

Finally, the cons you listed for the a7R II- we listed all those in the a7R II review up front, over and over again. You're wondering why we didn't list a7R II continuous shooting cons in a 1D-X II image quality article?

 

[ritholtz]

Regarding the bias of DPR. The titles of the recent reviews for the 80D and 1DXII are BS:

"The Canon that Can." for the 80D

"Canon Catching Up?" for the 1DXII

What do these imply?

Blatant bias. I wonder if they'll even bother to fully review the 1D X II...

In 1DXII case, they are referring to low ISO DR. With the same consistency, they should title D5 as, Nikon sliding down.

You mean like a few weeks ago when we titled the similar report on the D5: 'Nikon D5 has lowest base ISO dynamic range of any current FF Nikon DSLR'?

http://www.dpreview.com/news/9402203921/nikon-d5-shows-drop-in-dynamic-range

Maybe Nikon forgot to mail us their check that week?
-Rishi

I think, Canon forgot to mail you their check last week.
How about giving 1DX2 title as "Canon 1dx2 has highest base ISO dynamic range of any current FF Canon DSLR and Nikon D5".

 

[rishi_sanyal]

Because look at Neutral's crops here: the a7R II does have a very slight advantage (less blotchy noise) in the grey patch, and meanwhile the author conflates aliasing artifacts (moire) with 'poor rendering of low contrast areas'. No... That's moire due to the high res sensor and lack of AA filter.

Yes, Neutral's samples are specifically looking at a spot with some very high frequency data, none of the cameras render that well at high ISO.
If you look at other things, like the four main photographs of people's faces, it's obvious that the A7RII is crushing tons of detail. The D5 generally looks best but the original 1DX still pulls ahead in a few instances. Maybe that could be attributed to the random nature of high ISO noise but it's clear the two are performing very similarly, and much better than the A7RII.

Nonsense. Rishi unbiasedly picked a small patch where the SNR of the a7RII is 1/2-stop better. :

Your comment appears to indicate a fundamental misunderstanding of how SNR analyses work. Biggest differences in ISO performance of similar-sized sensors tend to lie in midtones and darker tones, not bright tones where SNR is pretty much only determined by sensor size and efficiency, and where noise isn't as offensive to begin with.

You also can only analyze SNR for detail-less grey patches, but it's not clear you even know that.

So, I analyzed a patch one patch darker than 18% in my analysis, but if you want a proper analysis of a 'midtone' (18%), here it is:

Canon 1D-X II: 4.36
Sony a7R II: 4.97

... or a 14% SNR advantage for the a7R II, which is about 1/3 EV. As you go to brighter tones, the SNR advantage will go to 0, because it's all dependent on sensor size mostly.

Of course, I can actually admit that, because I don't have a bias to start with.

 

[rishi_sanyal]

Regarding the bias of DPR. The titles of the recent reviews for the 80D and 1DXII are BS:

"The Canon that Can." for the 80D

"Canon Catching Up?" for the 1DXII

What do these imply?

Blatant bias. I wonder if they'll even bother to fully review the 1D X II...

In 1DXII case, they are referring to low ISO DR. With the same consistency, they should title D5 as, Nikon sliding down.

You mean like a few weeks ago when we titled the similar report on the D5: 'Nikon D5 has lowest base ISO dynamic range of any current FF Nikon DSLR'?

http://www.dpreview.com/news/9402203921/nikon-d5-shows-drop-in-dynamic-range

Maybe Nikon forgot to mail us their check that week?
-Rishi

I think, Canon forgot to mail you their check last week.
Otherwise, we will be reading 1dx2 review title as "Canon 1dx2 has highest base ISO dynamic range of any current FF Canon DSLR and Nikon D5".

We already had that sort of a title: "Canon 5DS/R Sensor is highest ranked Canon sensor yet": http://www.dpreview.com/articles/3673531883/dxomark-eos-5ds-r-sensor-is-highest-ranked-canon-sensor-yet

Excuse us if we didn't feel like re-using the title.

Any more "But you didn't title it EXACTLY like I wanted it titled" posts we'd like to get out of the way?

Maybe we should've titled it 'Canon 1D-X II has highest base ISO DR* of any Canon DSLR** or sports-oriented Nikon DSLR that is not the D4 or D4S or D3X, or D7200 or D750 or D810 + battery grip if 7 fps is enough'.

* Something we're repeatedly told sports shooters don't give two hoots about.
** But only by less than a half stop compared to Canon's own 5DS.

 

[unfocused]

This discussion has gotten boring, redundant and reeks of tin-foil hat conspiracy theories.

Interestingly not one of the critics has provided any credible evidence that DPReview's findings are wrong. Instead it is all about little quibbles with the way reviews are written, with the conclusion that the reviews are not glowing enough to satisfy some Canonites.

It's time for everyone to just move on. DPReview is a privately owned site and they are entitled to test cameras in the way they feel is most productive. If you disagree, well...no one makes you go to their site. And, if you think you can design tests and report results in a more objective manner...well knock yourself out. No one is stopping you.

The only question I have is how much longer I will have to wait for the full 1dx review.

 

[tpatana]

Yea, I think Rishi has provided good extra info here although I also feel some of the choices on the review were bit interesting. Full review will probably give better insight anyway.

So less fighting, more picture taking.

 

[privatebydesign]

This discussion has gotten boring, redundant and reeks of tin-foil hat conspiracy theories.

Interestingly not one of the critics has provided any credible evidence that DPReview's findings are wrong. Instead it is all about little quibbles with the way reviews are written, with the conclusion that the reviews are not glowing enough to satisfy some Canonites.

It's time for everyone to just move on. DPReview is a privately owned site and they are entitled to test cameras in the way they feel is most productive. If you disagree, well...no one makes you go to their site. And, if you think you can design tests and report results in a more objective manner...well knock yourself out. No one is stopping you.

The only question I have is how much longer I will have to wait for the full 1dx review.

I have.

I have linked and posted the image Rishi took in the 5DS/R review that says that the camera couldn't take that image without showing banding and noise in the shadows. That is a lie.

I (and Sporgon) have also posted similar setup images that demonstrate it is a lie.