Dynamic Range - Try it for yourself, conclude for yourself: 5D III vs. A7r

[tapanit]

Interestingly, I don't really see any significant difference between them, even in the +5 ones (calling the 5D3 one "falling apart" is totally ridiculous, it's a perfectly usable picture). Admittedly my eyes are old and I'm looking at the pictures with a relatively lowly monitor, but that's what I'd mostly do anyway. I guess it means the DR difference isn't a good reason to go for Sony, *for me* - your mileage may vary.

Well, you must be blind, then. Sorry, but the difference is night and day obvious with the +5 stop pushes.

I'm not quite blind, yet. I didn't say I can't see any difference, just not a significant one. Not when viewed on screen without magnifying or deliberately pixel-peeping. And I'm pretty sure most non-photographers would agree.

The 5D III is completely and utterly unusable, period.

That would depend on the intended use, I should think. Even and indeed especially professionals should be able to adjust their standards depending on client's needs.

 

[TeT]

All of the DR talk has helped my photography; but I am light years behind most of you in technique + the fact that my eye for composition sucks...

Thanks for all the back n forth, it has been amusing always and educational at times..

Observations...

Calling the 5Diii unusable is a joke.

Saying that capturing images with the A7 in certain situations is easier with better results would be fair and accurate.

PPl who post comparison pictures to prove a point about camera capabilities remind me of my aunt millie who used to weigh herself on saturdays with her left hand touching the towel bar.

 

[mjbehnke]

You mentioned the UI and button layout. Also you mentioned how turned off you are about the EVF. How is the build quality? As compared to the 5DIII? Is it about the same, better, worse? I have a 6D on my list for landscape shooting, but with an EF adaptor, it's something to think about.

Thanks
Matthew

 

[Loswr]

Warning: Humor Alert

PPl who post comparison pictures to prove a point about camera capabilities remind me of my aunt millie who used to weigh herself on saturdays with her left hand touching the towel bar.

Yeah, but have you tried taking a picture of that 'event', exposing for the bright sunlight streaming through the window to capture the detail of the backlit white lace curtains, then tried to push the shadow exposure to bring up the fabric detail in your Aunt Millie's black dress?

 

[jrista]

Interestingly, I don't really see any significant difference between them, even in the +5 ones (calling the 5D3 one "falling apart" is totally ridiculous, it's a perfectly usable picture). Admittedly my eyes are old and I'm looking at the pictures with a relatively lowly monitor, but that's what I'd mostly do anyway. I guess it means the DR difference isn't a good reason to go for Sony, *for me* - your mileage may vary.

Well, you must be blind, then. Sorry, but the difference is night and day obvious with the +5 stop pushes.

I'm not quite blind, yet. I didn't say I can't see any difference, just not a significant one. Not when viewed on screen without magnifying or deliberately pixel-peeping. And I'm pretty sure most non-photographers would agree.

The 5D III is completely and utterly unusable, period.

That would depend on the intended use, I should think. Even and indeed especially professionals should be able to adjust their standards depending on client's needs.

If you haven't downloaded the RAWs and taken a look at them, then I encourage you to. Lifting the shadows a couple stops doesn't render the 5D III image unuable, however it does exhibit banding before you even lift three stops. The "utterly unusable" image is the +5 stop 5D III image. Maybe it's not as obvious in the small JPEGs I shared in the first post...but when you see the RAW, I think you will understand.

The difference between the A7r and 5D III is night and day. Whether that matters to you or not is something I won't judge, but just from a simple empirical standpoint, the +5 stop 5D III image is....really poor.

Calling the 5Diii unusable is a joke.

That is not what I said. I said the +5 stop pushed 5D III image of my living room was entirely unusable. Again, I encourage you to download the RAWs and compare them. I'm not calling the 5D III an "unusable camera"...I never have, I never will. I am simply calling the result of a +5 stop push with a 5D III RAW image "utterly unusable." I would honestly be surprised if anyone disagreed with that assessment after playing with the RAWs themselves...however if you insist the image could be usable after seeing the RAWs for yourself....well, to each his own, I guess.

 

[Don Haines]

Re: The Sony A7r - High DR, high resolution companion to a Canon kit?

Thanks for the review!

 

[Lee Jay]

If you haven't downloaded the RAWs and taken a look at them, then I encourage you to.

I finally did, and your 5D3 has more red channel and fixed pattern noise than even my T2i pushed just about as hard. Fiddling with 70D raws doesn't seem to look anything like that.

 

[jd7]

Wanted to add my thanks to jrista for taking the time and effort to post these examples. Very interesting to get a chance to play with an a7r raw file.

Leaving aside the issue of how useful it is in practical application, the IQ the a7r retains when the exposure is pushed certainly seems impressive to me. That said, there is something about the 5D3 image I still like too - something about the light/tone it shows. And looking at the detail of what you can see through the windows, especially the right hand window, i am wondering if the 5D3 has actually done better there. I will have to play with the a7r image some more tho, to see if it's a pp thin thing.

 

[jrista]

The A7r files were exposed at a cooler temperature...4100 something. In my comparisons, I always normalized the white balance to 5200. When you do that, the A7r gets a lot warmer, and the color channels align more like the 5D III.

 

[dtaylor]

That's not the argument. That's what it sounds you would like the argument to be, but it's not the argument.

The argument is simply that the OOC IQ is better on an Exmor. That's it.

As is apparent from the responses to these many threads, that's not what most people care about or wish to discuss. Especially when only one aspect is better, and then only in extreme shooting/processing conditions at low ISO, and everyone concurs on that point any way.

People seem far more interested in relevance. What is the practical end result when they print or show photos on screen? I would contend that it's not all that relevant because 99% of the time either both cameras are OK or both really need HDR. I do not deny that sometimes, however, the Exmor can produce a single frame where the Canon might need two.

 

[dtaylor]

Try not. Do...or do not. There is no try.

Always with him what cannot be done with Canon. Hear he nothing that we say?

(How frightening is it that I didn't have to look that up??? )

 

[TeT]

Calling the 5Diii unusable is a joke.

That is not what I said.

I have no idea who made the statement, and am not going to go search it out... I was responding to that particular comment though not to your initial post...

 

[steliosk]

in terms of dynamic range this is interesting too

http://www.rossharvey.com/reviews/nikon-d750-review

my wish? May Canon use Sony sensors in the next models

 

[emko]

in terms of dynamic range this is interesting too

http://www.rossharvey.com/reviews/nikon-d750-review

my wish? May Canon use Sony sensors in the next models

that or they make something equal to or better then the Sony sensor but at this rate i don't see Canon beating Sony.

 

[Deleted member 91053]

Re: The Sony A7r - High DR, high resolution companion to a Canon kit?

Some very interesting observations!
I can see many liking this camera and I was looking at it for myself. Unfortunately it is completely useless for my uses - pity as I quite fancied the A7 version - ah well it will have to be a 6D or 5D3, bulky and heavy but they do have reasonably quick AF and viewfinders (optical).

 

[Aglet]

Saying "it depends on what they shoot" works both ways. The list of photographers I made represents an extremely diverse range of shooting conditions, subjects and styles. Their work is out there for anyone to see. The work of antonymous sensor critics on the internet is ... not as visible. So claiming to having higher image quality standards than some of the best photographers on Earth is pretty dubious.

Image quality is, to me, not very subjective. I'm only considering the results produced by the hardware used.
I'm not alone here with very high quality standards in that regard.
If you haven't run into such hardware limitations you're staying within your handicap. If you're using various workarounds "that have been around for a century" then you're accepting a compromise or exercising an artistic choice to work within those limitations.
Some of us have artistic choices that require better hardware with less limitations to fulfill. That's how progress happens.

No doubt some of those photographers have complained about things they wish to be improved, and yet they still shoot Canon. Perhaps they know more about image quality than anonymous critics on the internet.

pure speculation

No one said that Canon is perfect and no one says "how dare you not declare so and so brand to be perfect". Describing people as getting defensive or agitated about "how dare you not declare so and so brand to be perfect" is just a big, fat, empty straw man of an argument, just a deliberate misrepresentation of what people are actually saying in this thread.

I think he was paraphrasing.

Some people here react to this debate far too emotionally, with lots of passion and only a few facts.
The OP has not only shown examples, he's also provided his raw data and used a lot of his personal time and resources to do so, only to receive insult on top of (literal) injury.
Some of us have bolstered his findings with more examples.
Point is, these are facts, not opinions, about sensor system capabilities of Canon vs Sony.
It can be summarized as such:
- Canon is good enough
- Exmor is excellent
... in the one sensor metric where they differ substantially, low iso SNR and FPN.

 

[Aglet]

But I did just that a few pages ago with a 5DII - dig!c 4.

And thank-you for doing so.
You provided me with the opportunity to see that at least some 5d2s could perform fairly well in this manner.
Tho without having the actual file to play with and not knowing the exact processing parameters it doesn't address all doubts that's it's as good as a pre-Digic 4 bodies for base ISO FPN.

In my experience the Dig!c 4 cameras do have more FPN that both the earlier and later versions but it is buried so deep that it is just irrelevant 99.9% of the time to 99.9% of people.

Well, with that admitted I can only add that I continue to suspect some Digic 4 bodies were better than others.
I know my 5d2 was a disappointing performer in this regard. I still got lots of good images from it but I could not use it for the kinds of shooting I expected to from a camera at that price point. Ironic since my much cheaper, older 40D was able to provide better files with respect to low ISO FPN.
When I did a quick test and found the 5d3 was really no better than my 5d2, disappointment continued.
A very stripey 7D did not improve my opinion of this aspect of their cameras.

Altho overall SNR has improved only slightly at base ISO for recent models like the 70D and 6D, I'm glad to see visible reductions in FPN over the previous couple generations. If Canon can at least keep the FPN out of the raw files, it makes a big difference even if overall SNR and DR are still below Exmor levels.

 

[tapanit]

If you haven't downloaded the RAWs and taken a look at them, then I encourage you to. Lifting the shadows a couple stops doesn't render the 5D III image unuable, however it does exhibit banding before you even lift three stops. The "utterly unusable" image is the +5 stop 5D III image. Maybe it's not as obvious in the small JPEGs I shared in the first post...but when you see the RAW, I think you will understand.

I think I do understand, but perhaps you don't get my point.

Whatever can be seen from the raw file doesn't matter to non-photographers.. Only the end result matters, in the context where it will be actually used. If it used as a small jpeg in the web, then that's what counts, nothing else.

just from a simple empirical standpoint, the +5 stop 5D III image is....really poor.

Well, if I could have gotten that good results pushing underexposed slide film even just two stops 20 years ago, I would have been ecstatic.

It may be poor in comparison with the state of art, but hardly "really poor", let alone unusable: much worse pictures have been used and are still being used, and are paid good money for. Even totally lost shadow details may not matter if the object of interest is not in the shadows. Most photos are not used to make big prints or anything with artistic intent: often it is enough that the object is recognizable.

 

[zlatko]

Saying "it depends on what they shoot" works both ways. The list of photographers I made represents an extremely diverse range of shooting conditions, subjects and styles. Their work is out there for anyone to see. The work of antonymous sensor critics on the internet is ... not as visible. So claiming to having higher image quality standards than some of the best photographers on Earth is pretty dubious.

Image quality is, to me, not very subjective. I'm only considering the results produced by the hardware used.
I'm not alone here with very high quality standards in that regard.
If you haven't run into such hardware limitations you're staying within your handicap. If you're using various workarounds "that have been around for a century" then you're accepting a compromise or exercising an artistic choice to work within those limitations.
Some of us have artistic choices that require better hardware with less limitations to fulfill. That's how progress happens.

No doubt some of those photographers have complained about things they wish to be improved, and yet they still shoot Canon. Perhaps they know more about image quality than anonymous critics on the internet.

pure speculation

No one said that Canon is perfect and no one says "how dare you not declare so and so brand to be perfect". Describing people as getting defensive or agitated about "how dare you not declare so and so brand to be perfect" is just a big, fat, empty straw man of an argument, just a deliberate misrepresentation of what people are actually saying in this thread.

I think he was paraphrasing.

Some people here react to this debate far too emotionally, with lots of passion and only a few facts.
The OP has not only shown examples, he's also provided his raw data and used a lot of his personal time and resources to do so, only to receive insult on top of (literal) injury.
Some of us have bolstered his findings with more examples.
Point is, these are facts, not opinions, about sensor system capabilities of Canon vs Sony.
It can be summarized as such:
- Canon is good enough
- Exmor is excellent
... in the one sensor metric where they differ substantially, low iso SNR and FPN.

Let me be sure I understand your point about "pure speculation". On the one side:

A) world-renowned photographers and masters of their craft with numerous years experience between them, all shooting Canon (despite any flaws or limitations) in extremely diverse conditions with diverse lighting and subject matter, and producing high quality work with their reputations at stake.

On the other side:

B) anonymous sensor critics whose photography is of unknown caliber and who seek near-black 4- or 5-stop underexposed frames in order to prove to Canon users that Sony sensors are superior for rescuing such photos from the trash assuming one's "artistic choices" require that contrast be addressed strictly by radical underexposure followed by software slider-pushing to the point that photos have virtually no black in them.

Which of those, A) or B), is likely to know more about photographic image quality? That's a tough choice , but I'm going to speculate and go with A).

As for the forum member you think was paraphrasing, he was paraphrasing no one.

 

[zlatko]

Even totally lost shadow details may not matter if the object of interest is not in the shadows. Most photos are not used to make big prints or anything with artistic intent: often it is enough that the object is recognizable.

I agree. I would add that shadows are one of the artist's most important tools. Look at the shadows in Steve McCurry's photos. Or look at the shadows in the work of famous painters. The idea that shadows must be massively pushable in brightness via software, despite no added lighting, is a very, very, very narrowly technical definition of "progress" having little to do with most of photography.