Is Canon now two generations behind Nikon?

[crashpc]

Guys, guys, what should I do? Tried to make some product photography, but I accidentally underexposed that shot by 5 stops with my EOS M, so it ended up like this:

This is really crap and I shouldn´t of buy this cam for $320 back then...

 

[jakeymate]

You still don't get it, do you? It''s other people's lack of open mindedness, and their fanatical obsession with DR, that's the problem here.

Do try to keep up...

No Keith, YOU don't get it. Discussion about facts concerning cameras is not a fanatical obsession with DR.

Some have contributed useful information.

All you've done is rant at those who have. Not overly useful.

 

[dtaylor]

Jon, for what it's worth, here's the first quick and dirty test I did when my D800 arrived, alongside my Mk3.

Thank you for providing these. They won't settle any arguments about HDR landscapes, but it's something.

Clearly the D800 has less shadow and red channel noise. But once again I'm stuck wondering why there's so much angst over this. Play with the NR sliders in ACR and/or add some NR in post and they're not that different. Though I will say in this case that the shadow gradation is better on Nikon and would probably appear so in print side by side after NR.

I will also make the point that the dynamic range is essentially the same between the two (as I would expect), though the D800 has more shadow latitude thanks to the lack of noise and smoother gradation (i.e. no banding).

Do I wish Canon would improve to this level? Of course. Do I think it's worth switching brands? No, though I wouldn't give anyone grief on FB for doing so.

 

[dtaylor]

The thing that puzzles me, is that Canon's aren't the best at hi ISO either.

Right now, the A7s, the D4s, and even the 2009 D3s are pretty much the best hi ISO cameras out there.

The D3s is more then a stop behind the 5D3, and that's before scaling the 5D3 image down to match. 1DX and D4s are a wash at high ISO. The A7s is a solid stop ahead of other current FF sensors, Canon or Nikon.

I know quoting DXO is a crucifiable offence round here, but their first Canon in the hi ISO chart is the 1DX at number 10.

Once again, DxO is at odds with observable reality. Not just in terms of where the 1DX ranks, but on the Nikon rankings as well. The D4s is without question ahead of the D3s.

Sad that they get all these great cameras to test and never actually photograph the real world. If they did they might fix their tests ;D

 

[Don Haines]

no.

 

[jakeymate]

Jon, for what it's worth, here's the first quick and dirty test I did when my D800 arrived, alongside my Mk3.

Thank you for providing these. They won't settle any arguments about HDR landscapes, but it's something.

Clearly the D800 has less shadow and red channel noise. But once again I'm stuck wondering why there's so much angst over this. Play with the NR sliders in ACR and/or add some NR in post and they're not that different. Though I will say in this case that the shadow gradation is better on Nikon and would probably appear so in print side by side after NR.

I will also make the point that the dynamic range is essentially the same between the two (as I would expect), though the D800 has more shadow latitude thanks to the lack of noise and smoother gradation (i.e. no banding).

Do I wish Canon would improve to this level? Of course. Do I think it's worth switching brands? No, though I wouldn't give anyone grief on FB for doing so.

I just posted the red channel. The blue and the green are the same. Actually, the green is better of course as it has two photo sites.

The angst is that while noise removal is ok, that doesn't bring back your detail that the sensor never saw in the first place.

Basically, below 36%, the Canon's are losing detail, and not much further down it's all gone.

The issue is, a lot of people don't really know, they don't know what to look for, and they don't see it when their images aren't flat grey, and are busy, but it appears in real life images all the time.

Architectural and automobile photographs, with smooth surfaces to shoot for example.

My issue was how Canon renders skin as it falls into shadow. It struggles with shadowed skin so much, and you don't want green blotches in skin.

The solution I used when I was a Canon user was to crush it to a point where it wasn't a factor.

I di that for ages and considered it normal. I don't do that anymore.

Another area where the issue shows itself even more is in black and white.

The strongest channel quality is the green channel of course, but skin tones aren't green so when you make a black and white properly of a portrait, and colour mix, you're pushing the red channel, and yellows, and they do not respond very well.

Here's a shot I did on the Mk2, and this is edited, and I've crushed the noise in the shadows, so the shot is fine.

But this is the red channel AFTER I've crushed out the noise. Still a terrible gradation round that arm. Less than the original after crushing it, but still there.

That's one of the many reasons the IQ of the Nikon won me over.

 

[jakeymate]

Here is a highly shadowed shot from the D800 of skin.

Here's a 1:1 crop of the red channel.

Those are not from the raws, but from the full res JPEGs I use for my folio, so there is a bit of posterisation at 1:1 as it's been jpeged (is that a word) twice.

You'll need click them to look at them. Not sure why they are squashed in the post itself.

 

[jakeymate]

Here's a 1:1 crop on the guitar shot.

Again, bear in mind, this has been processed and the shadows crushed and that noise on her arm is still very apparent.

I'd get the raw out, but it's 2-3 years old and on a disk somewhere and will take me ages to find it.

 

[jakeymate]

The thing that puzzles me, is that Canon's aren't the best at hi ISO either.

Right now, the A7s, the D4s, and even the 2009 D3s are pretty much the best hi ISO cameras out there.

The D3s is more then a stop behind the 5D3, and that's before scaling the 5D3 image down to match. 1DX and D4s are a wash at high ISO. The A7s is a solid stop ahead of other current FF sensors, Canon or Nikon.

I know quoting DXO is a crucifiable offence round here, but their first Canon in the hi ISO chart is the 1DX at number 10.

Once again, DxO is at odds with observable reality. Not just in terms of where the 1DX ranks, but on the Nikon rankings as well. The D4s is without question ahead of the D3s.

Sad that they get all these great cameras to test and never actually photograph the real world. If they did they might fix their tests ;D

I won't argue with you, as I'm not a D3s, D4s user.

I do know wedding togs that will get that D3s out when the lights go down though, even when they've got a D4 or a D800.

As for the D3s been a stop behind the Mk3, that does not fit with my experience of a Mk3.

The mk3 was a stop, maybe two if you're charitable, better than the Mk2, and the D3s killed the Mk2 at hi ISO's. Killed it stone dead imho.

I know that much as I was pretty jealous of my D3s using mates around 2009-2012, on the occasions I shot shows and light limited things. Their images were streets ahead of mine, even when they were up at 6400, and I was at 1600.

In the few weeks I had the Mk3, I shot one concert and I didn't see the low light performance of the D3s when I did, let alone a stop better.

 

[mmenno]

The reasoning of downplaying the importance of DR to the point of 'We don't need a better DR sensor because canon doesn't have one' eludes me.

The reasoning doubtless eludes you because nobody's actually doing that.

More disingenuous "spinning" to push an agenda and score cheap points...

Don't paint me as a troll, I don't have any agenda to push, nor points to score. For what it's worth, I only shoot canon myself and have never really liked any nikon body I shot with.

The point I was making is that in a discussion like this one people seem to want to defend the fact that their brand is worse at some characteristic than a competing brand by dismissing the importance of that characteristic, like claiming that people who run into canon's shadow banding are bad photographers, or no one should ever need more DR.

 

[Orangutan]

Then do as I do and stop buying new Canon cameras until they fix it.

And also stop recommending Canon cameras to others too.

Should Nikon and Sony owners stop buying new editions of those brands until they fix their auto-focus? An out-of-focus shot is useless, regardless of IQ.

 

[Orangutan]

Jon, for what it's worth, here's the first quick and dirty test I did when my D800 arrived, alongside my Mk3.

I'm not a big fan of this test. Since each camera might handle differently, I'd want to identical framing and optimal exposure for some bright element of each, then we'd look at the shadows. My question is not how each looks at the same exposure, but which scenes can/can't be captured with reasonable use of each. If one handles highlights better, why is it wrong to increase exposure to make use of that? Setting equal exposure doesn't seem like a valid test to me.

 

[Loswr]

The reasoning of downplaying the importance of DR to the point of 'We don't need a better DR sensor because canon doesn't have one' eludes me.

The reasoning doubtless eludes you because nobody's actually doing that.

More disingenuous "spinning" to push an agenda and score cheap points...

Don't paint me as a troll, I don't have any agenda to push, nor points to score. For what it's worth, I only shoot canon myself and have never really liked any nikon body I shot with.

The point I was making is that in a discussion like this one people seem to want to defend the fact that their brand is worse at some characteristic than a competing brand by dismissing the importance of that characteristic, like claiming that people who run into canon's shadow banding are bad photographers, or no one should ever need more DR.

Conversely, some people (not referring to you) take a single factor of camera system performance, promote the idea that better performance in that factor is of such paramount importance that no other aspect of camera system performance has relevance, and then proceed as if that one factor which is important to them is critical for everyone, so much so that lesser performance in that metric spells 'doom' for a particular brand.

Those same people sometimes obsess over trying to prove their point, and post their views rampantly, even in threads which have nothing to do with that issue.

Ultimately, people vote with their wallets. Sales figures and market share for the past few years are ample proof that while low ISO DR is of paramount importance to a small minority, a difference of a couple of stops on that one single metric doesn't have any meaningful impact on the buying decisions of the majority of photographers.

 

[jakeymate]

I'm not a big fan of this test. Since each camera might handle differently, I'd want to identical framing and optimal exposure for some bright element of each, then we'd look at the shadows. My question is not how each looks at the same exposure, but which scenes can/can't be captured with reasonable use of each. If one handles highlights better, why is it wrong to increase exposure to make use of that? Setting equal exposure doesn't seem like a valid test to me.

You don't think how they look at the same exposure is a valid test? Wow.

What exactly would you do to avoid read noise in the lower 36% of the image exactly? How would you expose to not have that problem?

Expose to the right, with less dynamic range to start with? Why should you even have to?

After 2 years with a Mk1, 3 years with a Mk2, and a month with a Mk3, over two years with a D800, and a month with a D810, I know there is no exposure that the Nikon won't outshine the Mk2/3 etc on.

Canon's do not handle highlights better.

From my experience, there is more headroom in D800/D810 than the Mk2 or Mk3, and with the dynamic range advantage, you can mess up a D800 exposure and still be ok.

I spent a long time trying to expose around Canon's limitations. I wasn't selling my work when I had the Mk1, but from the Mk2 I was, and that's 3 years of dealing with those issues, that are plain to see in my examples.

When a Camera is not able to differentiate noise from detail in the lower 3rd of the tonal range, then no test is going to make it shine.

 

[mmenno]

Ultimately, people vote with their wallets. Sales figures and market share for the past few years are ample proof that while low ISO DR is of paramount importance to a small minority, a difference of a couple of stops on that one single metric doesn't have any meaningful impact on the buying decisions of the majority of photographers.

True, and exactly the reason why I shoot canon, even though I really wouldn't mind having a bit more DR sometimes

 

[crashpc]

"When a Camera is not able to differentiate noise from detail in the lower 3rd of the tonal range, then no test is going to make it shine."

This is very wide claim that can be viewed from different angles of view. From what I´ve seen, there is SOME noise in this part, but also it is clearly able (or my eye if I look at the output) to differentiate noise and detail. There is lots of detail there.

 

[jakeymate]

Conversely, some people (not referring to you) take a single factor of camera system performance, promote the idea that better performance in that factor is of such paramount importance that no other aspect of camera system performance has relevance, and then proceed as if that one factor which is important to them is critical for everyone, so much so that lesser performance in that metric spells 'doom' for a particular brand.

Those same people sometimes obsess over trying to prove their point, and post their views rampantly, even in threads which have nothing to do with that issue.

Ultimately, people vote with their wallets. Sales figures and market share for the past few years are ample proof that while low ISO DR is of paramount importance to a small minority, a difference of a couple of stops on that one single metric doesn't have any meaningful impact on the buying decisions of the majority of photographers.

Ah, yet another attack. How many is that now exactly?

And were back to the same drum beat. Canons sales are great, so no one wants Nikons or Sony's superior IQ.

Well, with people like you preaching inaccurate information, I guess Canon has its blind followers doing it's marketing work for them.

I've discussed the pros and cons of both systems, from my own experience, and there are pros and cons to both.

I've shown examples of the problems I found with the time I spent with Canon and how the D800 solved those issues for me.

I've not preached Nikon, I've shown facts, and examples, so people can work out for themselves if those advantages are for them or not.

All I've wanted to do is get some actual real info out there, instead of the blind evangelising you seem to do, day in, day out.

All I've seen you do, is post a lot of times about the Mk3 having 6fps.

Is that what it's come down to Neuro? A wedding camera having 1fps more than a studio camera is your new mantra?

Fine, it does have 1fps more in full frame.

It has nothing else meaningful that the D810 doesn't, and in fact it a lot less.

But I encourage people to do their research, take time with more than one camera, to see for themselves if the advantages of one outweigh th other.

I photographed a 26 year old client today who is a photographer.

She loved the images as we did our selections and then she asked me about her Mk3 and my D810.

I showed her the examples I showed here, and a lot more as she was sat next to me.

She said she thought she might have gone down the wrong path. I asked her how she ended up with a Mk3.

I quote "Canon people always say Canons are the best so I never even looked at Nikon."

But she wasn't convinced of that after seeing my work on my 30" screen and 30" and 50" prints around the place.

But, I asked her what kind of work she was into and what she wanted to do in the future and then I advised her the best camera she should buy.

A 5D mk3. Which was great as she already had one

Because my mission on this earth is not to sell Nikons to make myself feel good about my choice of camera system.

I know why I use Nikon, and I'll pass that info on, so that there is some balance for anyone that actually wants to know that stuff.

If they don't see an advantage for their work, then great, they'll stay happy Canon campers, but they'll at least have seen something real about the alternatives, and not your agenda driven propaganda.

When was the last time you gave a BALANCED view of the pros and cons of the two cameras in question?

I've never seen you do that once.

What's your mission here Neuro?

Balance? Sensible debate about the many camera option available, or are you here for the glory of the Canon religion?

Because that's getting really, really boring.

And the attacks at every opportunity? Really, really tiresome.

Is it really that bad for you that Nikon have a 36 meg studio camera out now that can do what the Mk3 can do, besides 6FPS in FF of course?

Jeez, how upset are you going to be when the D750 comes out?

You might need some counselling given how you've been about dissing anything and everything you can about Nikon.

 

[Khalai]

Seventeen pages of bashing and arguing like old hags on the marketplace

C'mon, bury this thread and go out shooting, it will be much more productive than measurebating, comparing and beating with "impenetrable" facts...

 

[jakeymate]

This is very wide claim that can be viewed from different angles of view. From what I´ve seen, there is SOME noise in this part, but also it is clearly able (or my eye if I look at the output) to differentiate noise and detail. There is lots of detail there.

Well it's a claim supported by a grey gradation of the red channel that starts to fall apart at 36%.

Personally, I think the Canon red channel is horrible frankly. Losing detail that early in the tonal range is not acceptable to me.

If you're ok with that then that's fine. I've put the info up there, and that's all I can do.

 

[crashpc]

jakey, we already know this. Canon people not only here know about worse shadow noise of their cams, but they are somehow locked to Canon systems, the same as I am. But you should realize that
1) It is not only shadow noise what should drive one to buy some cam
2) that not everybody can gain from this
3) there are other aspects, body ergonomics, but also things you cannot solve. Lets say I can borrow few L lenses for free. Do you believe some Sony sensor can overpower this advantage?
4) The rest of the system is usually more expensive outside Nikon and Canon
5) It might be some time, but wait for new Canon releases, as it really is about LAST company waiting for important releases. If it does well, there is not anything wrong, they do good, and you must realize there really isn´t any reason for 99% of population to jump on new sensor with higher DR every two or three years.

That way not only I would be very, VERY happy to have Canon sensors with APS-C 36Mpx and 15 stops of DR. Would jump on it immediately, but it doesn´t happen, and Sony sensors doesn´t save me from great pain with Sony cameras.

So what is it? What do you want to hear from us? I don´t understand....

//Now about your quote: It seems I´m fine to some degree, but I´d also be happy to have it better of course. Falling apart is very vague term. If I shoot something which appears to be in one third of the histogram, it still has about "great" detail in there, so I don´t follow what you actually mean. Would be nice from you to explain further....