Re: Here Are Some Claimed Specifications For One of the Prototype Canon Full Frame Mirrorless Camera
Woody said:
Talys said:
... It's the same reason (some) people love TTL flashes, versus bouncing off some surface or reflector and manually adjusting exposure. It's easier.
... For example, I've noticed that many professionals or serious enthusiasts who have tried Sony A7R3 say that one the features that they love most is focus magnification with manual focus, and I agree.
Why bother with manual focus when there's autofocus which makes the job easier? Yes, there are situations when manual focusing is needed, but that is not something the majority needs, unlike nailing the right exposure.
Also, all DSLRs can do live view these days... So nailing scenes with tricky exposure or making the manual focus job easier can both be accomplished by DSLRs too. At least, that's why I got myself the 77D. It offers an optical viewfinder which doesn't draw precious battery power... and I can activate live view when there's a need. The way I see it, we get the best of both worlds.
Don't knock magnified manual focus until you've tried it. When I was using the A7R3, I programmed the button on the lens barrel to manual focus while pressed, and the body to automatically go into 6.3x zoom during MF. I would use back button (only) continuous autofocus.
So what I'd do is autofocus on my subject, then immediately press the lens barrel button. The focus point then goes into 6.3x maginfication, and I could use the manual focus ring to slightly adjust it. As soon as I released, it would bounce back into 1x magnification.
The issue isn't really, "Is autofocus accurate", but more so, often, the camera is autofocusing on slightly the wrong feature, especially on wide open, large aperture lenses like 70-200/2.8, but even sometimes on apertures up to 5.6. To take the simplest example, if I'm photographing a duck that's facing me, there could be a huge difference between focusing on the head of the duck and the duck's body.
To flip it around, though, on a Canon, using Spot AF, I can actually get the duck's head at least 3/4 of the time. Using an A7R3, God only knows what I'll get, because the smallest spot focus is quite large; and the super fine tune autofocus only uses Contrast Detect AF and is so slow that the duck is long gone. So, it's a more valuable tool on the Sony because the spot AF has less precision. But still, it is a great feature.
When I'm taking bird portraits on a tripod with a Canon, I will almost always flip it to live view, magnify, and make sure that I'm focusing on the right part of the bird (or just to take AF out of the equation). There's no point in getting all setup just to have soft eyes. But realistically, live view mangify handheld with even the 100-400LII is pretty hard to do. In both cases, it's a lost cause on moving objects.
Don't get me wrong, though. I'm a huge fan of the optical viewfinder, and I wouldn't trade my pentaprism for an EVF, even with focus magnification. The (HUGE) battery power draw that you cite is one factor, the quality of the viewfinder in dim light is another. A third is the "blackout" -- it isn't powered when it's not against your eye, which means that as you draw your camera close, the viewfinder isn't showing anything until you're pressed right up to it.
Related, the PDAF autofocus from the Canon or Nikon is also much quicker to acquire focus than Sony's Hybrid AF. I don't know exactly why that is, since Sony uses PDAF too, so it may not have anything to do with EVF/OVF.
ahsanford said:
Why mirrorless intrigues me (though I still shoot everything on my 5D3):
Unless you own a 1-seres camera (or a 7D2, I think?), no latest model of Canon SLR offers manual focusing screens any more. So if I want to try some exciting Zeiss / Samyang / rando kickstarter company manual lens while shooting handheld, I'm SOL. An EVF and decently implemented peaking setup solves that for me. LiveView is a simple fail here as I'm referring to 50 primes, 85 primes, 135 primes, etc. shot at large apertures with little latitude for focusing error. I'm not going to try that with LiveView handheld -- no way.
Exactly that. Shallow depth of field makes focus very important, and now that we don't have MF screens, getting MF right can be hard. It can look perfect in the VF at 1x; it might even look good in preview on the LCD. Then, in post, you find out, it's slightly soft because the AF point was just off.
It's very nice in macro, too.
