sanyasi said:
I have seen others write that the ISO on the new 5D, Mark III is 2 stops improved and that the 1DX ISO reflects three stops of improvement. If so, for me, the question is whether one more stop of improvement is worth close double the price (yes, I realize there are other differences, the this is the one that matters the most to me).
Is the way we measure improvement to the sensor just in terms of ISO, or are there other improvements that go beyond ISO that either increase image quality at any given ISO number or that further improve the ISO.
Bottom line: If it is just image quality, on the 5D, Mark III, I assume now I can set the ISO to 3200 and get the same level of noise that I got at 800 on my 5D Mark II. What other improvements should I expect? I realize much of this will only become clear once people have worked with the cameras, but for those of you who know more about how the specs translate into image quality, I would appreciate your thoughts.
Thanks
Jack Siegel
The 5D3 won't be 2 stops better. Canon was talking about in cam jpg NR. Nobody really has a solid figure yet on it. The best educated guess points to the 5D3 being two-thirds of a stop better than the 5D2 in the RAW files, but that could easily change. It will be interesting to see what DxO comes up with. Two-thirds of a stop at this point now that they are nearing possible limits would actually be a solid improvement.
The quality of the noise might look a bit nicer on the 5D3 compared to the 5D2, at high ISO at least, it's hard to say exactly to what degree yet, especially for the low ISO case. If this difference is big enough it might make the apparent SNR improvement seem larger than the actual measured values.
It appears that the maxium dynamic range of the 5D3 will most likely be the same as that with the 5D2. Some suggest that the 1DX may use a new fab that allows for a bit better dynamic range and that they used and old process for the 5D3 again, that remains to be seen. (One easy way to get more low ISO dynamic range is through digital CDS and column-parallel ADC on chip but Sony has patents all over that it seems. Some suggest that super high quality fab and quality control might be a way for Canon to get closer to that without that tech but they say it is a much more expensive way to get there and it alone will only so far. We will see. One person claimed Canon had been offered some sort of dynamic range at base ISO enhancement years ago but turned it down, who knows the details even if so. Some say that without the Sony patents that the Canon engineers will have a heck of a time figuring out some creative way to get past the point they have reached since the 1Ds3.)
If the 5D3 uses some old sensor fab and the 1DX uses a new fab perhaps it could have a stop or so better max DR??? Maybe another 1/2 stop in SNR??? Or maybe it will be more or less the same. We have no data at all from the 1DX. Some varying claims from various Canon reps that don't all fit together and a claim by someone with some connections that didn't have any numbers attached to it. You may need to wait a month or two to find the answers to this part.
Maybe the color filter array will be less color blind, maybe not. Such like that will have to await DxO.
In all honesty you probably need to wait a few weeks and come back and ask again. It probably has no max DR improvement (I hope I am wrong though but it is much more likely than not it won't, but still possible), the other stuff is a lot more speculative at this point or simply not even known at all.
I guess you said the other stuff doesn't matter much for your needs, but to mention a little bit of it:
The AF should be light years better assuming they didn't make some royal disaster of the new system, but that seems hard to believe. On paper it would be very much better for both still and AI Servo shooting in the center frame and worlds much better away from center frame for both.
Shutter response time is shorter and fps are up to 6.
The movie mode appears to have a lot less moire and aliasing, the SNR may be noticeably better too. Hopefully the sharpness will be much better, although none of the demos shown demonstrate this yet, but most appear to have used heavy NR or been compressed for the web.
AutoISO still isn't 100% perfect but may have finally reached the first usable stage outside of 1 series camera. Insane that something so trivial has been dribbled out over a decade.
Some nice UI and general functionality improvements have been made.
Supports dual cards.
Sadly there are no replacement view screens now although the VF is improved to 100% view and has built in electronic levels and rule of thirds lines and such.
etc.
