I am a landscaper first and foremost, and I'm with you guys all the way. I need 50 mp like I need a venereal disease. I 'm not a pro, but I'm sure they'll tell you that 24 to 28 good mp is more than enough for any high art or Nat Geo type commercial market. The 5Ds/r are niche cameras for the tiny handful of photographers who sell prints 24"x36" or larger. The reviews of these bodies match my initial expectations for them exactly: increased resolution, of course, and slightly better overall IQ than you would expect from a halving of pixel size. Like johnf3f I attribute this to next-generation noise-suppression algorithms (and the ability to downsample) rather than any fundamental design improvements in the sensor itself.
Sorry for the people who are tired of hearing about it, but what I need a whole lot more than megamegapixels is a camera that can capture a brilliant sunset without turning the framing groundscape into a banded silhouette. You know--more DR, less low-ISO banding. These super-mp cameras strike me as a desperate attempt to staunch Canon's bleeding in the landscape market, by doing what it can do (resolution) rather than what it needs to do--but apparently can't. Does anyone else find it telling that in spite of a doubling of resolution--something that would have been hailed as radical and revolutionary three or four years ago--there has been no attempt to promote these cameras as the next generation of the 5D in spite of the fact that the Mark 4 is now a year overdue and counting.
I'm one of the many people at 5D2 and holding, holding, holding. Yes, the 6D is a nice camera for the dollar, but as a landscape/portrait camera it's not a $2000 upgrade on a 5D2. Worse for Canon, I've now also stopped buying lenses. And that's too bad, because Canon is still at the top of that heap. The 24mm TS-E is a landscaper's dream, and 100-400 L II is perfect for my modest needs as an action/wildlife shooter. But electronics years are like dog years, and (to mix metaphors) I'd be hanging those spendy lenses off the front of a body that is now a Model A verging on a Model T.
The fanbois on this forum have declared Canon's banding and DR issues as off limits for discussion--too tired, too lame, and prima facie evidence of trolling. Heck, Canon's sensor problems are nothing that can't be worked around with a couple of pounds of Lee brackets and GND filters. With a little bit of imagination anybody can bracket a breaking wave.
Well, duh, of course a camera system is a lot more than its sensor, and of course, Canon's UI and lenses are still the industry standard. But for every fanboi whose tired of hearing about these issues, there's someone like me who's tired of fanbois talking about two stops of dynamic range as if it were something Canon can safely ignore: the insignificant difference between 58 and 60 miles per hour. It's a logarithmic scale folks, and two stops is the difference between 20 and 80 mph. And the fact is, when one area of performance becomes so glaringly deficient, it pulls the whole system down. I for one am too old to jump ship. But if I were 25 and getting into photography with my interests, I would probably make a different choice, and that can't be good news for Canon. You see things on this forum you never saw three or four years ago, including lengthy threads about the nuts and bolts of successfully adapting Canon lenses to Sony bodies.
I'm going on record as saying the 5D4 is now the pivot point in Canon's future as a manufacturer of high end camera bodies. The long delay in releasing the camera suggests that the company has, at least, finally acknowledged internally that it has a problem. One would hope that Canon keeps working on it's sensor problem, but if it can't figure it out, or can't beat Sony's patents, then it's time--like Nikon--to accept the inevitable and outsource it's sensors for the time being.
