@Zlatko: Your turning a general statement into a personal issue. THAT...right there...is the problem with these forums. Stop making it personal. It's not. There is absolutely zero reason to take issue with someone elses statement like that, because you are ASSUMING something about what they have said. Your creating mountains out of molehills, like so many others here.
This whole "Not everyone is like you" argument is really getting old. It is like it's intentionally making everything personal, which is exactly what we don't need. Sure, everyone is different. But everyone also falls into groups of like-minded individuals. No one ever has truly unique wants and needs. There isn't just one single person on the face of the planet who wants more DR in a Canon camera.
Canon sensors, from a technological and fundamental IQ standpoint,
are lacking. People don't seem to understand dynamic range, which is why they don't understand that statement. It isn't just a super-deep shadow thing, where there couldn't possibly exist usable data that could possibly matter to anyone who does "real" photography. :
Dynamic range represents the RANGE of clean signal, from a point in the darkest tones where noise reduces information to a level of unusability, to the brightest tones where the signal saturates (the clipping point). More dynamic range affects that entire range...not just the shadows.
Shadows are usually talked about most, because recent gains on the DR front have been achieved primarily by a reduction in read noise, which affects that noise floor, the point of unusable or minimally usable information...by making it lower. However that is not the sole means of improvements on the DR front. Dynamic range has been increased at every level by increasing quantum efficiency and by increasing charge capacity. Increased Q.E. leads to lower gain, which leads to improved color...at EVERY level...shadows, midtones, highlights...even deep shadows that would otherwise be useless mush in a Canon camera. Increased FWC also allows lower gain, which leads to further improved color...again, at EVERY level.
Canon sensors have lower Q.E. and often lower (and sometimes MUCH lower) FWC than competitors sensors. The only reason Canon sensors have decent SNR is because Canon weakened the CFA, resulting in more color crosstalk and color bleed between pixels. That's where the "waxy" and often "muddy" SOOC color that has become a hallmark of Canon cameras comes from...poor color purity at each pixel. Some people like the "warmer" tone...which ironically is in large part a consequence of high color noise which is biased to red. A loss in color purity can be dealt with...it's ultimately mathematical, so it can be corrected. It's just one more thing, though, that you wouldn't have to think about with better sensor technology.
Technologically, Canon sensors DO lag behind the rest. I personally consider Canon sensor technology to be dead last...and I spend a lot of time researching sensors and sensor technology. Canon is hardly mentioned, has hardly been mentioned in the fast-paced sensor world, for years. When they are mentioned, the mentions are rather lackluster. DPAF patents simply get that...a mention, no fanfare. There are some RADICAL and truly amazing innovations occurring in the sensor world...the cutting edge is so far out there compared to where Canon is, it's doubtful Canon could ever reach it, assuming they cared to try. This is a purely technical assessment...there is nothing personal here. It's just based on some simple facts about the core technology. You can choose to take offense at this, but that's your deal. I'm not here to purposely offend you...this is just the state of the technology (which is a rather sterile set of factors, and certainly not the sole factors that have an impact on the ultimate perception of IQ for each individual.)
The notion that
only Canon considers IQ as a whole is a fallacy. The Nikon D800 and D600 cameras have demonstrably better IQ, "as a whole", than Canon cameras do. There may be a few nuanced differences here and there, like warmer vs. neutral color tone or one by default preserves highlights more while the other preserves shadows more, that may cater to different preferences, but overall, Nikon cameras with Exmors in them have some of the best IQ and most flexible RAW images for DSLR cameras on the planet. Sony may be a different story...they chose to lossy-compress their "raw" images, so I don't know that the same statement can be applied to them specifically...but Canon is not the sole retainer of "considering image quality as a whole."
That statement is also suspect, given that they really seem to be considering image quality within a bubble of their own specifications, ignoring the gains that can be made in areas they are...apparently simply uninterested in. If Canon really cared about image quality as a whole, they wouldn't be ignoring low ISO IQ, where their sensors suffer the most, and by a very considerable margin. They wouldn't be ignoring similarly significant gains being made on the high ISO/low light front as well...the 2-stop DR advantage is no longer just a low ISO thing...it's an ultra high ISO thing as well. Canon (at least, the Canon alluded to by Maeda's comments) has tunnel vision...their idea of "image quality as a whole" seems to largely revolve around upper midtones and highlights (the areas where Canon sensor IQ is fine). I say upper midtones, because it is also very easy to demonstrate that Canon lower midtones also suffer from read noise intrusion. In the grand scheme of things, I think Canon's issue is again, a technological one. I don't think they have the fab capacity to manufacture APS-C and FF parts on their (technically very superior) 180nm process...and they don't have whatever is necessary...budget or business or shareholder signoff...to build another (very expensive) fab.
I could keep lopping off pieces of the "whole" pie here...but I'll stop.
DR isn't just about shadows, it's about the entire signal. It isn't just about unusable black pixel data that no one cares about...it's about improved color fidelity across the entire signal range. It's about cleaner, smoother falloff into shadows, even if you otherwise don't touch them. It isn't just about lifting shadows, it's more often about preserving highlights (where shadow lifting MAY simply become a consequence of that preservation.) Dynamic range is dynamic range...it doesn't exist in one area of the signal or another...it defines the range within which the signal can be created, shifted around in, and processed within...as well as to the richness of that signal.
Dynamic range affects the whole signal. If you look for the differences between images with more and images with less DR, differences are there, all over the place. Sometimes they are subtle, sometimes they are obvious. Sometimes subtle is exactly what you need (such as in the case of clean, smooth shadow falloff...I LOVE that myself...I would take that over the often "scratchy" shadow falloff I get with Canon sensors any day...and that doesn't involve any shadow pushing whatsoever.) Whether they matter to you or not is indeed a matter of personal preference...
but having more cannot possibly ever be a bad thing. At worst, it may simply be an unused thing, on average it will give you more flexibility in post, or reduce your workload by not requiring more complex or extreme editing procedures, and at best, it can allow you to do things in a single shot that cannot be done in a single shot when you have less DR, or allow you to do things that simply cannot be done with cameras that have less DR. It cannot possibly be a bad thing...so why take offense at comments made about DR, especially if it's something you simply don't care about?
If you don't care about DR, then just ignore those who do...and there won't be anything to take offense at. Unless
you get in someones face about your
assumptions about them, it's highly unlikely anyone actually cares that you don't care about the same things they do, so there is little reason to assume they are trying to force something on you that you don't want.
If you get up in peoples faces about their opinions, then sure...things are going to turn personal, and your previously mistaken assumptions will become actualized. At that point, your in a death trap. You've made your assumptions come true, so now you really do have something to take offense at, and thus things spiral endlessly.
(for a while... 
)
