Canon EOS 5D Mark IV Being Tested by Photographers

[scyrene]

Based on what they have learned it will be a failed "mirrorslapper" that has somewhere between 20 and 45 mp.; between 3-18 fps, will shoot either 1080 HD, or 4K or 8K or 16K (or might not have any video at all because some people resent "paying" for video); either will or won't have a tilt screen, touch screen, wifi or gps; might have better dynamic range at base ISO; might have DPAF; is likely to have an autofocus system; and will have slots for memory cards.

One wonders if AvTvM has no mirrors in their house at all...

- A

Of course not! He slapped them all and they broke.

 

[neuroanatomist]

What are we thinking about price? any indication as to where this will sit compared to the 5ds/5dr?

I don't know why I have $3499 in my head, but I do. I have nothing to back that up other than that was original asking price of the 5D3.

- A

The 1Dxii had a lower starting cost than the mki so I'd expect starting price to be slightly less for the 5DIV than the III. My best guess is $3100-3300.

..and then there's the notion that the 5D4 will sit side by side (prestige-wise, pecking-order-wise) with the 5DS rigs, which came in at $3699/3899 depending on which version you got.

I'm not sure the price will necessarily decline over prior model, especially if it's the only 4K FF SLR on the market when it is announced.

- A

Well, it's not the only FF 4K SLR on the market.

Wait, are the 1D X II and D5 actually SLRs? Dilbert previously told us the 1D C isn't really a dSLR, so we can leave that one off the list.

 

[ahsanford]

Well, it's not the only FF 4K SLR on the market.

Ugh. Thx.

I meant non-gripped, sub $6k, etc.

i.e. Canon could mark up the 5D4 as the cheapest way to shoot FF stills and 4K on the same rig without leaving the larger CaNikon tent.

- A

 

[romanr74]

no tilty-flippy please...

+1 !!!

I've gone around and around on this, but I'm leaning towards wanting one. Principal reasons I've changed my mind towards tilty-flippy for the 5D4 market:

1) Video.

2) Crowded (wedding, concerts, events) or dangerous (protests, war correspondents, etc.) shooting environments. Get under a car or behind a wall and keep shooting, reach over the crowd with a wide shot, etc.

3) Pretty damn handy for low to ground tripod + liveview work -- landscapes, macro, etc.

4) If you don't like it, you don't have to use it. Though there is an added expense with all this that you won't use, take a number on that front -- I don't shoot video at all on my 5D3 and I sure as hell paid for it.

(#3 is the only one that really matters to me, but I see 1,2,3 fitting the 5D4 crowd pretty well)

But the only way to truly end the discussion on this is for Canon to either offer two models (one with tilty-flippy and one without) or for canon to make the LCD a rigidly-mountable/sealed module that can be changed out as needs change. Shooting in a hellish environment? Go vanilla/rigid. Need a tilty-flippy? Slap in the screen module you need. (That would also allow 3rd parties to offer specialized snap-in modules for different needs.)

And again, I'm not certain the 5D4 will get a tilty-flippy -- I'm just arguing that there's value even for that demanding professional crowd.

- A

I particularly disagree with point 4. It makes my camera bulky, more likely to break and ugly like hell...

 

[neuroanatomist]

I don't shoot video at all on my 5D3 and I sure as hell paid for it

Did you? Or did the inclusion of a few features, mostly firmware, expand the market for the camera leading to more projected unit sales and thus a lower planned selling price?

 

[ahsanford]

24MP on a 2016 flagship body?!!!! I sincerely hope they do better than that.

I rarely need more than 24MP but that doesn't mean I shouldn't have the option. 24MP on 2016 is just lame.

I agree. IMO Canon will see people leave the 5DIV on the shelf if it just ends up being a 5D Mark III v2.

As stated in this thread and others like it the 5D III is so very capable ..... Its going to take WOW factor to get new people to jump in, and it sounds like it'll also take WOW factor to get 5D3 owners to switch.

Big New Features, Best at most things, and a very competitive sticker price... that would be a winning combo.

Now compare the 5D3 to the 5D2. It only offered the 1DX AF system (easily its biggest upgrade), +1 more MP, +2 more fps, a headphone jack, a silent shutter, HDR mode and a number of video features I candidly don't understand/appreciate. Other than AF upgrade, that's a fairly modest upgrade over the 5D2 -- you could call the 5D3 the 5D2 v2 using your logic.

And the 5D3 sold just fine. Again, 5D3 sales are only presumed based on Amazon top table sales and some circumstantial evidence (we see them everywhere in the field, the body-specific accessory ecosystem for the 5D3 is galactically big, etc.), but I haven't seen any indicators to say it didn't sell well. It has retained its price much better than other Canon SLRs over its lifespan.

- A

 

[PureClassA]

I don't shoot video at all on my 5D3 and I sure as hell paid for it

Did you? Or did the inclusion of a few features, mostly firmware, expand the market for the camera leading to more projected unit sales and thus a lower planned selling price?

Bingo on that one. Picking up a piece of that indie/student film market helps stills folks. The rumored inclusion of 120FPS on the 5D4 will be a welsome feature for me. Though I haven't shot video with a DSLR yet, I will likely put it to use with the dancers I do a lot of stills for. Making a simple promo video is another business outlet for me with them, and having a high speed FPS ability is what has kept from doing it with Canon DSLRs up to this point. My only regret was not having the time this weekend to play with the video on the 1DX2 while I had it.

 

[Jopa]

Please wake me up when it's available for preorder.

 

[CanonGuy]

24MP on a 2016 flagship body?!!!! I sincerely hope they do better than that.

I rarely need more than 24MP but that doesn't mean I shouldn't have the option. 24MP on 2016 is just lame.

I agree. IMO Canon will see people leave the 5DIV on the shelf if it just ends up being a 5D Mark III v2.

As stated in this thread and others like it the 5D III is so very capable ..... Its going to take WOW factor to get new people to jump in, and it sounds like it'll also take WOW factor to get 5D3 owners to switch.

Big New Features, Best at most things, and a very competitive sticker price... that would be a winning combo.

Now compare the 5D3 to the 5D2. It only offered the 1DX AF system (easily its biggest upgrade), +1 more MP, +2 more fps, a headphone jack, a silent shutter, HDR mode and a number of video features I candidly don't understand/appreciate. Other than AF upgrade, that's a fairly modest upgrade over the 5D2 -- you could call the 5D3 the 5D2 v2 using your logic.

And the 5D3 sold just fine. Again, 5D3 sales are only presumed based on Amazon top table sales and some circumstantial evidence (we see them everywhere in the field, the body-specific accessory ecosystem for the 5D3 is galactically big, etc.), but I haven't seen any indicators to say it didn't sell well. It has retained its price much better than other Canon SLRs over its lifespan.

- A

No one was on Canon's butt like today when they released 5D iii. The scenario is a little different now. and I'm afraid, if canon stays slow and meh like this for next few years, it might be interesting down the road

 

[neuroanatomist]

No one was on Canon's butt like today when they released 5D iii. The scenario is a little different now. and I'm afraid, if canon stays slow and meh like this for next few years, it might be interesting down the road

When the 5DIII came out, Canon had a smaller lead over Nikon in market share – Nikon has lost a bit since then, especially recently. Sony has gained slightly since then, but still has a very small share of the ILC market relative to Canon. Canon's market share has increased. Do facts offend you to the point that you ignore them, or have you two simply never been properly introduced?

YAPODFC. :

 

[ahsanford]

No one was on Canon's butt like today when they released 5D iii. The scenario is a little different now. and I'm afraid, if canon stays slow and meh like this for next few years, it might be interesting down the road

Again, "on Canon's butt" would imply that they've lost market share. They haven't.

Perhaps -- just perhaps -- Canon has some market research that says that their users in this market class of an all-around camera favor DR/Higher ISO performance over resolution.

Consider: the Nikon D750 was met with an unqualified 'Hallelujah!' from working photographers who were stuck between a 12 MP D700, an feature-underweight/enthusiast D600 and a pricey/overkill 36 MP D800 option. The 'porridge was just right' with that camera -- shockingly, not unlike a 5D3.

I'm not saying that Canon will stay at 22-24 MP forever in this do-everything class of camera -- I just think that they (correctly) think that users at this point in time would rather have more DR & better high ISO performance than a little more detail.

- A

 

[LetTheRightLensIn]

... and the pixel count and video capability insanity seems to continue. If what many seem to wish for becomes reality I for one would be more disappointed than satisfied What I'd rather like to have is a better still picture-taking machine with outstanding autofocus. Use larger but fewer pixels and give each a higher dynamic range (16+ bit) with better signal to noise performance at higher ISO. This could do away with image stabilization thereby enabling simpler and faster lenses with higher IQ and allow for higher continuous shooting rates before saturating the data bus and hence improve utility for action and low-light photography. Far superior than extracting stills from 4k video. For video, I want a video camera. For stills, I want a still camera.

Going to lower MP won't help DR at all.

Only a very large difference n MP would make much of a noticeable difference at all for SNR and if they went full BSI, etc. than a reallly large difference.

The current cameras are already so good when it comes to SNR there isn't enough room left in physics to improve enough to make up for IS (and even if it got 3 stops better, why not take yet another 3 from IS?).

Personally I like video with the stills, costs way less than having to buy both and it's a lot less to lug around. Of course not everyone will care.

 

[unfocused]

No one was on Canon's butt like today when they released 5D iii. The scenario is a little different now. and I'm afraid, if canon stays slow and meh like this for next few years, it might be interesting down the road

When the 5DIII came out, Canon had a smaller lead over Nikon in market share – Nikon has lost a bit since then, especially recently. Sony has gained slightly since then, but still has a very small share of the ILC market relative to Canon. Canon's market share has increased...

Nope. ILC is too broad. They probably made the most camera models globally too. I'd be really intrigued if there was data demonstrating that the 5D3 sold just as well after the D810 came out, or after the 5DS/R came out.

Amazon best sellers as of 9:24 p.m. May 24, 2016: Canon 5D III No. 6; Nikon D810 No. 32. If you have better numbers than those, please share. For probably close to two years, the 6D was the number one full frame sales leader on Amazon. Interestingly, in the past six months or so the 5DIII has overtaken the 6D. Not bad for a four-year-old camera.

To A's point perhaps the 5D3 was an incremental upgrade of the 5D2 but there was room to refine the 5D2. Even then I remember people commenting that the IQ of the 5D3 was worse that the 5D2 (noise or something).

Selective memory. I remember a lot of wedding and event photographers proudly posting pictures on this forum taken with the 5DIII at high ISO and remarking about how incredible it was that they could take pictures in existing light and enlarge them to presentation sizes with no noise.


"Incremental upgrade" is in the eyes of the beholder. Prior to the release of the 5DIII, the big debate of the day was over the autofocus of the 5DII, with much wailing and whining when the 7D came out and had a significantly better autofocus.

 

[unfocused]

I've not looked at Amazon for numbers before ... Thought this was interesting "The Amazon Best Sellers calculation is based on Amazon.com sales and is updated hourly to reflect recent and historical sales of every item sold on Amazon.com."

Does that mean that sales of the 5D3 prior to the launch of the D810 and 5DS/R are considered?

If it is like most surveys they set a specific time period and then roll data in the front end and out the back end so that it is current, but does not swing wildly in response to a single event. It's the same technique used by major political campaigns (not the unreliable news media polls, but the ones the campaigns are actually paying for themselves).

In a political campaign you may pick a three-day rolling sample, go in the field every night and then each day you dump the data that is three days old and add in the newest data. It's a way to assure that your poll is accurate over time and isn't skewed by a single day's headlines.

I imagine Amazon guards it's specific criteria carefully, but I would expect they do something similar.

B&H has started doing something similar. Their "hot items/best sellers" places the 5DIII at number one. They only list the top 10. The D810 isn't on the list. Sony has a cyber shot in the No. 10 slot. Canon has the top five. Nikon's D7100 is No. 6.

This is something I've noticed over time. The best-selling cameras are often not the newest models. For years, the T3i was the number one seller on Amazon, long after much newer models had been released. We forget that only the handful of people who populate this forum tend to feel the need to acquire the newest models.

If you are desperate to find data that you think will prove a point, you can take some solace in knowing that at the end of 2015, Adorama did a blog post that included their top four highest selling professional DSLRs. The D750 was No. 1; the 6D was No. 2, the D810 was No. 3 and the 5DIII was No. 4.

 

[Machaon]

when the camera is being tested in the field, does that mean the hardware is basically done? That only the firmware is being tweeted?

Or can the camera be sent back to the design labs like the 200-400 was?

I'd say that the hardware is probably starting to roll off the assembly lines right now, to build up a pre-release inventory. I'd be surprised if anything but firmware could be modified in the short term.

Having said that, a large proportion of functionality is defined in software nowadays...

 

[Mikehit]

As stated in this thread and others like it the 5D III is so very capable ..... Its going to take WOW factor to get new people to jump in, and it sounds like it'll also take WOW factor to get 5D3 owners to switch.

Big New Features, Best at most things, and a very competitive sticker price... that would be a winning combo.

Well many are saying that there are no 'wow!' factors in the 1Dx2 over the 1Dx yet the accumulation of changes seem to have people moving over to the new model.
And one thing that the amateur market has over the professional market is the kudos of owning the latest and greatest.

But the biggest point is that the 5D4 is less about people selling the 5D3 to get the 5D4 but keeping the owners of xxD and 7D in the Canon fold and not have them jumping ship because Canon are seen to be falling behind.

 

[romanr74]

I dont really understand why people always reduce the upgrades represented in the 5D mkIII over the 5D mkII to the extra 1 MP. In my opinion the mkIII is much more camera than the mk II. This starts when you take the camera in your hands and includes upgrades like the following (from www.imaging-resource.com, www.photographylife.com, terrible memory):

- 41 vs. 9 cross-type AF pionts
- 0.12 vs 0.21 sec shutter lag
- Dual Card slots
- 61 vs 15 AF points (the AF of the mkII was crap)
- 60p and 24p vid
- 6.0 vs. 3.9 FPS
- 18 shots vs. 11 shots buffer
- 25600 vs. 6400 native ISO
- 100% viewfinder coverage
- Dual card slots (while I'd prefer dual CF over CF/SD
- Improved flash system
- Stronger build
- Bigger and improved LCD screen

I must have forgotten many...

 

[Tugela]

Highly unlikely that it is going to have superior hardware relative to the 1DXII, otherwise what would be the point of that camera? The 1DXII had dual Digic 6 processors using mjpeg for its 4K. The C300II uses dual Digic DV5 processors for its 4K (these are the video equivalents of the Digic 7), while the XC10 uses a single DV5. They need fans, and CFast slots for 4K (actually, these are not necessary, since UHS-II cards are quite capable of handling the bit rates used).

So I am not really seeing a 5D4 handling 4K in anything approaching competitive level. The Digic 7 will not outcompete it's video sibling for video, and going beyond that you would be in 1DXII territory, which would put a question marks on that cameras viability.

It is possible that a 5D4 might be able to shoot 4K in some limited form, but I suspect that video people will be disappointed by whatever it puts out. In the end hardware will determine what it can do, and we already know the limitations of the hardware available to Canon.

 

[scyrene]

24MP on a 2016 flagship body?!!!! I sincerely hope they do better than that.

I rarely need more than 24MP but that doesn't mean I shouldn't have the option. 24MP on 2016 is just lame.

OMG the 1DxII is only 20MP! And so is the D5! They are so lame :

 

[scyrene]

Although the flawed argument of "look, plenty are successfully using Canon, so it's not needed" will continue to be parroted, I hope to see Canon try to compete more with their sensors. In the long run, it's better for all of us, and better for Canon's viability in to the future. If they do start to slip in the market, new sensor technologies aren't going to hurt to have and better to be ready with them than caught even further behind technologically. Competition is good, but it hasn't really felt like Canon has been putting all their effort behind things when I look at their fear of having products overlap (potentially deliberately neutering some of them), and their slow pace of sensor advancement. Complacency is common when you're at the top, although I wouldn't say that extends to Canon's glass. Damn fine lenses they're putting out!

Mostly your post is reasonable, but I think your 'they need to compete' is at least as flawed as 'they don't need to innovate more because they're successful'. Companies compete for money - for customers, for sales - not for the opinions of internet forum users, or even reviews (so long as sales hold up). They can do this in a number of ways. One is roughly the Sony model - throw lots of money at it, being out substantially different models with new features quite quickly, and hope to force your way into the market, and one is the Canon model - only add new features a little at a time, because innovation is expensive and doesn't always bring financial benefits. Neither is *wrong*, but one company sells a lot more cameras than the other (and the other sells a lot more sensors).