ahsanford said:
Talys said:
1. Autofocus effectively in poor light.
Sure, agree -- but I am also intrigued to amplify light with an EVF and use any AF lens as an MF lens with focus peaking in really dark environments.
That could
possibly net in-focus shots that an OVF without a focusing screen (i.e. the vast majority of our SLRs) could not reel in, like -5 EV or worse. Have any mirrorless owners tried something like this before?
Don't get me wrong, it wouldn't be quick, reliable or fun to do. But it could reel in some shots an SLR could not.
- A
Oh, there are plenty of things to love about mirrorless too; don't get me wrong.
I think focus magnification is at the top of my list of likes. It makes manual focus, and even supported autofocus very accurate.
I have mixed feelings about light amplification. It looks and works great when the room is dim, but frankly, I can see with an OVF anyways, and autofocus with an AF illuminator works perfectly from a DSLR. Things like focus peaking work much worse without good light, by the way. Right about when I'd start to really want light amplification, image is extremely grainy and not very easy to focus. Plus, focus peaking works only on the very highest contrast edges. Again, I prefer to use a flash illuminator.
I don't have any significant experience with a mirrorless other than the Sony. On the Sony, there is ONE AF illuminator that actually lights up a traditional cross pattern. The other ones, including first party flashes, do not light, except the camera has a red light that pretty much everyone agrees does more harm than good). The cross pattern will actually light up for as long as it takes for the lens to autofocus. The caveat, however, is that it still takes
forever for the lens to autofocus in dim/dark.
My suspicion is that the way mirrorless autofocus using the main sensor is simply different from the AF sensor in DSLRs, so they can't take advantage of quickly autofocusing on the projected pattern as do DSLRs. I don't know the science of it.
Now, I expect that this will improve over time. When mirrorless autofocus works better with flash photography in dark conditions from a practical perspective (strip away cool tech; I just want to take photos that are composed right and in-focus), I will be much more receptive.
neuroanatomist said:
The only utility I see for that is if lighting a nearly-black scene with flash in the absense of an on-board AF assist lamp (e.g. using Canon's RT system with an ST-E3-RT in the hotshoe – and in that case, I'd put a 600EX-RT on the camera for the AF assist, without the flash firing if I wanted all the light to come from off-camera strobes).
Just use the Yongnuo E3-RT
It has an AF illuminator, and it works with first-party Canon flashes
I'm up to owing FOUR of those controllers, now, lol.