I just reviewed the Canon 5DSr - Canon's best sensor yet.

[AlanF]

The 5DSR is by far the best 5D for cropping (given all the usual caveats of getting the best out of a high megapixel sensor and having decent light etc). The absence of an AA filter is very important for the IQ, but can cause problems as there is the danger of Moire on feathers, which has hit some of my shots. If you need to crop greatly, it is usually when the bird is far away and there is no danger of Moire at longer distances, and the 5DSR rules. For close ups where you don't have to crop and there is a greater chance of Moire, the 5DIV is more suitable.

 

[Larsskv]

I have the 5Ds and the 1DXII. I find the resolution of the 5Ds to be overkill in most situations, but it is absolutely amazing for large prints and heavy cropping. If a good lens is used, you can crop away 2/3 of the picture, and still have a very usable file left.

The 5Ds has approximately the same pixel density as a 7DII. Cropping the 5Ds to APS-C size, will essentially give you a 7DII file.

I find that I am cropping a fair bit in certain situations. If I didn't I would probably replace my 5Ds with a 5DIV, because I think the file sizes from the 5Ds are too big.

 

[Maiaibing]

An age old question by now, however; when cropping out half an image so you have the tiny bird fill the frame, is the 5DSr with that massive 50mp sensor any good?
IQ can become degraded when cropping heavily with the 5DIII, so this question is to the owners.
I now have a 600L (mark 1) and a 1.4xIII but there are some locations where I still have to crop heavily, so I'm interested in the answer to this.
Thanks in advance.

5DS/R is the cropping king hands down (and I crop a lot).

Another thought. When I got my 5DSR I thought it would only be king of the DSRL MPIX hill for a few months before SONY delivered 60 or even 75 MPIX. Now its 2017 and no such SONY sensor in sight while Canon has a 120 MPIX sensor under development.

 

[tron]

Thanks for the review Chris.

There is one thing, though, that puzzles me. You write:

The 5D3 was good but imperfect in that I had a 12 shot raw only buffer which was ok but always seemed to fall short at the worst time. This was down to the write speed of the camera, fire a high speed burst on a 5D3 without cards and it keeps on shooting… and doesn’t stop. I wasn’t forever shooting in burst mode but I was always hitting the buffer.

What kind of memory cards and what type of situations are you running into this? I don't think I've ever run into the buffer limit, unless I was doing it to demonstrate it. FWIW, I'm also shooting RAW and I'm using Lexar 1000x CF cards which are pushing 95MB/s.

I use the 95mb/s cards, (SD) and 120mb/s CF cards.

It's stuff like confetti. I usually has a line that I walk back through and it fills up ever so quick. People on bouncy castles and so on. I guess I was limited in describing the limits I hit. But I also do corporate stuff and the 1DX gets used for high speed capture but the 5DSr tends to give me enough to be happy.

I still wouldn't use the 5DSr for corporate or events as the mp is WAY too high for run and gun. But the 5D4(x) - possibly.

I bought 5DsR for birding and I love it (better IQ than 7D2 at pixel level) despite some moire cases. However I cannot accept your verdict about buffer depth of 5D3. Even mentioning SD card shows not knowing about 5D3's SD controller. It is slow and cannot make use of fast SD cards. Regarding CF you still haven't used the maximum UDMA 7 with 150MB/sec speed. You have to use this type of CF cards with no SD cards (or at least to select ONLY the CF port) if you want to have satisfying buffer depth with 5D3.

 

[jolyonralph]

There's a handy table at http://www.everyothershot.com/pixel-pitch-canon-dslrs/ (disclaimer: I wrote it) which gives an APS-C equivalent megapixel rating for full frame cameras.

Essentially, if you were to use a full-frame camera to take photos of birds in flight, for example, what would be the advantage of using a full-frame camera over a crop camera assuming you're using the same lens and shooting parameters.

It all comes down to pixel pitch. the 5DSR has the same pixel pitch as the 7D Mark II, so purely in terms of resolution of the cropped area (if you ignore the low pass filter issue) the 5DSR gives no advantage over a 7D Mark II.

Interestingly, the 6D Mark 1 has an equivalent APS-C resolution of 7.8 megapixels, making it a poor choice for birds in flight etc (or anything else that's small and/or far away.)

 

[Maiaibing]

You have to use this type of CF cards with no SD cards (or at least to select ONLY the CF port) if you want to have satisfying buffer depth with 5D3.

I always laugh a little when people blow the horn of the 5DIII as a pro camera because it has 2 slots when you can hardly use both slots at the same same anyway for any serious (fast) pro work.

 

[Khalai]

You have to use this type of CF cards with no SD cards (or at least to select ONLY the CF port) if you want to have satisfying buffer depth with 5D3.

I always laugh a little when people blow the horn of the 5DIII as a pro camera because it has 2 slots when you can hardly use both slots at the same same anyway for any serious (fast) pro work.

And I always wonder, how pros could live in the days of 5D II, using it as a primary body with singular CF slot with no backup! Oh, the horror!

 

[Aglet]

As long as it has less or no fixed pattern noise when pushed, it's good. You cannot tell that in the low res images published in the review. No, I don't have time to download and play with his raw files. Someone else can do that. I don't need another Canon camera.
those little pixels will inherently have a wee bit of random noise but that's fine. Sure does provide a lot of rez for cropping options.
Nice to hear it has a mellow shutter. I really don't like noisy smackin mechanical shutters and harsh mirror-mechanisms! most older FF bodies suffered from that to some extent. Another benefit to mirrorless... one less flapping component to shake the system.

 

[tron]

You have to use this type of CF cards with no SD cards (or at least to select ONLY the CF port) if you want to have satisfying buffer depth with 5D3.

I always laugh a little when people blow the horn of the 5DIII as a pro camera because it has 2 slots when you can hardly use both slots at the same same anyway for any serious (fast) pro work.

Serious Pro and fast aren't necessarily the same. Wedding for example is pro but not fast. And sports photographers wouldn't chose 5d3 or 5DsR anyway...

 

[Maiaibing]

And I always wonder, how pros could live in the days of 5D II, using it as a primary body with singular CF slot with no backup! Oh, the horror!

That's why it was for us amateurs!

 

[AlanF]

There's a handy table at http://www.everyothershot.com/pixel-pitch-canon-dslrs/ (disclaimer: I wrote it) which gives an APS-C equivalent megapixel rating for full frame cameras.

Essentially, if you were to use a full-frame camera to take photos of birds in flight, for example, what would be the advantage of using a full-frame camera over a crop camera assuming you're using the same lens and shooting parameters.

It all comes down to pixel pitch. the 5DSR has the same pixel pitch as the 7D Mark II, so purely in terms of resolution of the cropped area (if you ignore the low pass filter issue) the 5DSR gives no advantage over a 7D Mark II.

Interestingly, the 6D Mark 1 has an equivalent APS-C resolution of 7.8 megapixels, making it a poor choice for birds in flight etc (or anything else that's small and/or far away.)

You can't ignore the AA filter. I have both the 7DII and 5DSR and can say the 5DSR is significantly ahead in terms of resolution and IQ.

 

[jolyonralph]

Of course, the AA filter (or lack of it) makes a significant difference. But that really just reinforces the point that the 5DSR is a really, really good camera.

What I should have written is "the 7D Mark II gives no advantage over the 5DSR!"

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

You have to use this type of CF cards with no SD cards (or at least to select ONLY the CF port) if you want to have satisfying buffer depth with 5D3.

I always laugh a little when people blow the horn of the 5DIII as a pro camera because it has 2 slots when you can hardly use both slots at the same same anyway for any serious (fast) pro work.

I always wonder why people comment on a 2015 post two years later??

 

[IglooEater]

You have to use this type of CF cards with no SD cards (or at least to select ONLY the CF port) if you want to have satisfying buffer depth with 5D3.

I always laugh a little when people blow the horn of the 5DIII as a pro camera because it has 2 slots when you can hardly use both slots at the same same anyway for any serious (fast) pro work.

I always wonder why people comment on a 2015 post two years later??

Sometimes new tech makes one think about the previous latest tech, and have different insights. No harm there.
But it does seem curious that someone has time enough to be browsing two-year-old threads.

 

[Maiaibing]

I always wonder why people comment on a 2015 post two years later??

Sometimes new tech makes one think about the previous latest tech, and have different insights. No harm there.
But it does seem curious that someone has time enough to be browsing two-year-old threads.

;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

I always wonder why people comment on a 2015 post two years later??

Sometimes new tech makes one think about the previous latest tech, and have different insights. No harm there.
But it does seem curious that someone has time enough to be browsing two-year-old threads.

;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

What happens is that a person doing a internet search finds and clicks the subject, signs up for CR to post, never realizing that it was two years old, so a comment to the OP is probably not much good. Then others see the post and start commenting. Apparently not looking at the original post to see how old it was. Long time users should not get caught up in this, but I'm not perfect by a long shot, just a snarky comment. I apologize!

 

[Jopa]

There's a handy table at http://www.everyothershot.com/pixel-pitch-canon-dslrs/ (disclaimer: I wrote it) which gives an APS-C equivalent megapixel rating for full frame cameras.

Man, that's an awesome table. If you add FF equivalents as well (like to know how an 80d would look if it was FF) - it will worth being on Wikipedia!

 

[Jopa]

An age old question by now, however; when cropping out half an image so you have the tiny bird fill the frame, is the 5DSr with that massive 50mp sensor any good?
IQ can become degraded when cropping heavily with the 5DIII, so this question is to the owners.
I now have a 600L (mark 1) and a 1.4xIII but there are some locations where I still have to crop heavily, so I'm interested in the answer to this.
Thanks in advance.

5DS/R is the cropping king hands down (and I crop a lot).

Another thought. When I got my 5DSR I thought it would only be king of the DSRL MPIX hill for a few months before SONY delivered 60 or even 75 MPIX. Now its 2017 and no such SONY sensor in sight while Canon has a 120 MPIX sensor under development.

We never know what Sony thinks... But the 5dsr is still kicking a$$!

 

[tron]

An age old question by now, however; when cropping out half an image so you have the tiny bird fill the frame, is the 5DSr with that massive 50mp sensor any good?
IQ can become degraded when cropping heavily with the 5DIII, so this question is to the owners.
I now have a 600L (mark 1) and a 1.4xIII but there are some locations where I still have to crop heavily, so I'm interested in the answer to this.
Thanks in advance.

5DS/R is the cropping king hands down (and I crop a lot).

Another thought. When I got my 5DSR I thought it would only be king of the DSRL MPIX hill for a few months before SONY delivered 60 or even 75 MPIX. Now its 2017 and no such SONY sensor in sight while Canon has a 120 MPIX sensor under development.

We never know what Sony thinks... But the 5dsr is still kicking a$$!

It really does

 

[AlanF]

Just been calibrating my 100-400mm II using charts. The 5DSR gives 25% more linear resolution than the 5DIV than expected from the increase of 30 to 50 mpx. The 5DSR at 400mm and f/5.6 is sharper than the 5DIV with a 1.4xTC at 560mm and f/8. The 5DSR has similarly 25% more resolution than the 7DII.

This thread and the 5DSR might be two years old, but the 5DSR is still the king of high resolution.