Off Brand: Sony Announces the Full-frame a7R III

[ethanz]

I need Sony being the best it can be, so that Canon lowers the 5DIV price lower ... which ... most probably will just not happen. We need to buy in two months. Hey, Canon, please do something

Ask and ye shall receive:
http://www.canonrumors.com/the-canon-store-restocks-popular-refurbished-lenses/

Effectively it's as good as new (my 35 f/2 IS Canon refurb was pristine), one year warranty, $2349, zero chance of a ripoff that you might get from eBay/craigs/etc.

That's the best (risk-free) deal you'll see for quite some time, I'd wager. #giddyup

- A

That really is quite the deal.

 

[ethanz]

There's nothing Canon can put into a 5DSR2 to make it competitive with the D850 or A7R3 without sabotaging at least the 5D4, the 7D2 and likely 7D3, as well as some Cinema options...just to name a few.

The real weak link in all of this is the 5D4's 7 fps, which I've ranted to no end about. Besides a seemingly good but not great 30 x 7 throughput (which is roughly half of the competitive list I gave earlier), it will indeed make anything a 5DS2 does on the fps front threaten 5D4 sales, I agree.

So play the duo of 'all-arounder' (5D4) and 'super detail' (5DS) to the hilt. Dramatically jack up the 5DS2 MP and leave the burst parked at 5 fps. One for detail and one for speed. Done.

I (sort of) kid, but Canon's hands may be tied here. Between the competition's mad progress on throughput and the 7 fps of the 5D4, it rather terribly boxes in Canon with the 5DS2. If the 5DS2 throughput is jacked up to compete with Sony & Nikon, the 5D4 will look like the 2nd tier option to users and its sales could very well suffer.

- A

But the 5DS2 would be at least $1,000 more than the 5D4, so I would think they could bump the specs in it and not necessarily threaten the 5D4. Different price points for different level of gear?

 

[ahsanford]

But the 5DS2 would be at least $1,000 more than the 5D4, so I would think they could bump the specs in it and not necessarily threaten the 5D4. Different price points for different level of gear?

This is the 'relative prestige of the 5-level' thing. Some think it's important, others less so. Aligning specs makes sense, but the timing of the product lines doesn't line up to do that. Others argue the 'feature-set envy' the 5DS camp gets at (say) an on-chip sensor or DPAF/touchscreen in the 5D4 may serves to drive people to buy both models -- who knows?

A clean slate approach of releasing a 5D5 / 5DS2 with the exact same core tech / same basic throughput other than the sensor and FPS would deliver 'parity' for the two brands:

50 MP x 7 fps for the 5DS2
36 MP x 10 fps for the 5D4

...(or thereabouts, you can play around with an hypothetical throughput) should command the same price if everything else is kept the same.

Others would argue 'screw relative prestige, don't make me choose speed or detail -- give me both!' and ask Canon to bend it's strategy to better align to the competition of:

Good: 6D2
Better: 5D4
Best: 5DS2 (with high MP and at least the 5D4's fps count)

(Hint: many Canonites are saying this of late in light of Sony and Nikon offering such cake-and-eat-it-too high throughput products.)

We've beaten this up many times. There is no right answer -- just opinions.

- A

 

[OSOK]

Different strategies. Canon separates features out to different bodies. Nikon and Sony have provided two, essentially "do all" bodies.

5D4 looks very weak and old in comparison.

Canon was looking good within the industry due to the presumption that you couldn't have your cake and eat it, until Nikon D850 and A7R3 proved otherwise.

42mp @ 10fps w/ 14+ stops of DR and low noise FF for $3,200.

The folks in here can have their fun and bash them all they want, but in reality there is very little answer to this.

 

[Jopa]

Different strategies. Canon separates features out to different bodies. Nikon and Sony have provided two, essentially "do all" bodies.

5D4 looks very weak and old in comparison.

Canon was looking good within the industry due to the presumption that you couldn't have your cake and eat it, until Nikon D850 and A7R3 proved otherwise.

42mp @ 10fps w/ 14+ stops of DR and low noise FF for $3,200.

The folks in here can have their fun and bash them all they want, but in reality there is very little answer to this.

Apparently you can't "do all" with the 5dm4? I'm wondering what exactly it can't do for you? I know it can't make a sandwich, so it must be a crappy camera, right?

 

[Mikehit]

Canon was looking good within the industry due to the presumption that you couldn't have your cake and eat it, until Nikon D850 and A7R3 proved otherwise.

That actually changed with the Sony A7R and the Nikon D800 - and still Canon kept growing its market share. You are making the assumption that the things that look great on a spec sheet are important to the general public but time and again the consumer technology market has shown us that 'perfect' is rarely the driving force.

CD won out over LP because of convenience and durability. But HDCD, Bluray music, DVD-A barely made a dent despite superiority. And the CD is itself being superceded by low-res digital downloads to the point that ipod plug in stations are the closest many get to a 'hifi'.
VHS beat betamax despite technical inferiority, and DVD beat VHS because of convenience and durability not because of image quality.
Any camera now has reached the point that any change is incremental and in general the market just doesn't care.

Question: if Canon cameras continue to be at the top of, or very close to, the top of the sales where does that leave your argument? Or will you simply blame 'people don't want to sell their Canon lenses' and brush it off with the same disdain that you claim Canon are showing to their customers?

 

[ahsanford]

Different strategies. Canon separates features out to different bodies. Nikon and Sony have provided two, essentially "do all" bodies.

5D4 looks very weak and old in comparison.

Canon was looking good within the industry due to the presumption that you couldn't have your cake and eat it, until Nikon D850 and A7R3 proved otherwise.

42mp @ 10fps w/ 14+ stops of DR and low noise FF for $3,200.

The folks in here can have their fun and bash them all they want, but in reality there is very little answer to this.

Sure there's an answer for this. Canon is in a leading marketing position and has built a terrific reputation of stuff working well. They have to do less to maintain that position than their competitors do to claim that position.

Sony and Nikon are in a following market position and can do a lot of things to change that. One of those things is to follow the Canon model and be efficient and smart about improvements, core technology, improve quality/reliability/service, etc. and the other is to simply offer more per dollar to gain business. Sony and Nikon are choosing the latter. It looks awesome on paper, but one might imagine they are burning through cash to do this -- selling more for less tends to hurt your margins.

But please spare us all the entitlement to an answer from Canon for why they are offering less spec per dollar. They don't owe us anything. Just because Sony and Nikon have a balls out throughput cake-and-eat-it-too camera design approach (a) doesn't mean it will be financially successfully and (b) doesn't mean Canon has to follow suit.

- A

 

[Loswr]

5D4 looks very weak and old in comparison.

Canon was looking good within the industry due to the presumption that you couldn't have your cake and eat it, until Nikon D850 and A7R3 proved otherwise.

42mp @ 10fps w/ 14+ stops of DR and low noise FF for $3,200.

The folks in here can have their fun and bash them all they want, but in reality there is very little answer to this.

Canon is the ILC market leader and has been so for >14 years. Nikon and Sony are a distant second and third, and recently have been losing market share to Canon.

The trolls in here can have their fun and bash Canon all they want, but in reality there is very little answer to this.

 

[Talys]

Different strategies. Canon separates features out to different bodies. Nikon and Sony have provided two, essentially "do all" bodies.

5D4 looks very weak and old in comparison.

Canon was looking good within the industry due to the presumption that you couldn't have your cake and eat it, until Nikon D850 and A7R3 proved otherwise.

42mp @ 10fps w/ 14+ stops of DR and low noise FF for $3,200.

The folks in here can have their fun and bash them all they want, but in reality there is very little answer to this.

Sure there's an answer for this. Canon is in a leading marketing position and has built a terrific reputation of stuff working well. They have to do less to maintain that position than their competitors do to claim that position.

Sony and Nikon are in a following market position and can do a lot of things to change that. One of those things is to follow the Canon model and be efficient and smart about improvements, core technology, improve quality/reliability/service, etc. and the other is to simply offer more per dollar to gain business. Sony and Nikon are choosing the latter. It looks awesome on paper, but one might imagine they are burning through cash to do this -- selling more for less tends to hurt your margins.

But please spare us all the entitlement to an answer from Canon for why they are less spec per dollar. They don't owe us anything. Just because Sony and Nikon have a balls out throughput cake-and-eat-it-too camera design approach (a) doesn't mean it will be financially successfully and (b) doesn't mean Canon has to follow suit.

- A

They are really good at pricing stuff, and have a whole slew of pretty darn good alternatives below their top tier.

I have a few top-shelf Canon lenses, like 70-200/2.8L IS, 100-400LII, and a couple of L primes. Those are cheaper and/or better than Nikon/Sony alternatives, by the way. But, the truth is, as a non-professional photographer, I don't want to spend a fortune on every lens, and Canon just has much better mid-tier and consumer alternatives, and a whole spectrum of primes that are priced and that performs at what I want.

I have one friend who has a A7RII, and he buys the best lens that Sony has to offer in every category that he buys glass in, because, it seems, most of their cheaper lenses are really quite poor. His opinion is that there really aren't any cheap lenses that are optically excellent. The practical reality of that (he is also not a professional photographer) is that he barely owns any lenses (two... plus a kit lens he hates) and really has to think hard before he makes a purchase.

In contrast, I have a huge number of midrange lenses that I bought on a whim. A lot of them are very useful; for example, I still have a 10-18mm attached to an old Canon APSC body, which takes beautiful photos at that FL. It is an infinitely cheaper alternative to a 16-35/2.8, or even 16-35/4, and frankly, on tripod shots at f/5.6 or f/8, I can't tell the difference. It's not just me; check the Ken Rockwell review with side by side photos with the 16-35II. I still have my 100mm macro, which is very nearly as good than (and half the price of) my 100mm L, and I still put it to good use, setting it up on a second body so that I can take shots from 2 angles and 2 tripods without moving the cameras. But pick a focal range, and the Sonys are pretty much all significantly more expensive on the glass that enthusiasts (or pros) really want.

Also, there is a very healthy used lens market for Canon, plus excellent third-party lens options.

It doesn't in any way diminish feature set of the A7RIII or the D850 -- and I hope that Canon narrows the gap. But practically, the total investment "value" gap is still just huge for me (favoring Canon), because realistically, I will own a mix of top tier and mid-tier glass.

 

[bhf3737]

Different strategies. Canon separates features out to different bodies. Nikon and Sony have provided two, essentially "do all" bodies.

5D4 looks very weak and old in comparison.

Canon was looking good within the industry due to the presumption that you couldn't have your cake and eat it, until Nikon D850 and A7R3 proved otherwise.

42mp @ 10fps w/ 14+ stops of DR and low noise FF for $3,200.

The folks in here can have their fun and bash them all they want, but in reality there is very little answer to this.

Companies are to do business rather than entertaining us. A simple business rule, based on Babich (1992) study is that:
If the market share of competing companies is evenly distributed (e.g. C, N and S each 33%) you have to be better than your competitors.
If the market share of competing companies IS NOT evenly distributed (as currently it is the case between C, N and S), the company with the highest market share should do what it is already doing. And Canon is exactly doing that! That is the business "reality".

 

[Talys]

Different strategies. Canon separates features out to different bodies. Nikon and Sony have provided two, essentially "do all" bodies.

5D4 looks very weak and old in comparison.

Canon was looking good within the industry due to the presumption that you couldn't have your cake and eat it, until Nikon D850 and A7R3 proved otherwise.

42mp @ 10fps w/ 14+ stops of DR and low noise FF for $3,200.

The folks in here can have their fun and bash them all they want, but in reality there is very little answer to this.

Companies are to do business rather than entertaining us. A simple business rule, based on Babich (1992) study is that:
If the market share of competing companies is evenly distributed (e.g. C, N and S each 33%) you have to be better than your competitors.
If the market share of competing companies IS NOT evenly distributed (as currently it is the case between C, N and S), the company with the highest market share should do what it is already doing. And Canon is exactly doing that! That is the business "reality".

It is also worth mentioning that passionate enthusiasts care about things like AA filters and on-chip ADC and steps of dynamic range.

RETAILERS really don't care at all. I've been to a lot of camera stores, and they all try to stay very neutral, and are happy to sell you whatever you're inclined to want to buy. They are certainly not going to try to convince someone who is thinking of buying a 5DMk4 that there is an alternative with XYZ gizmo, because story might end in, "I get no commission at all".

Shelf space also matters. Sony typically has a small amount of shelf space compared to Canon or Nikon. People tend to buy the brands that take up the largest amount of shelf space. It's also chicken and egg. Shelf space costs money, and you give more shelf space to the company that is selling more stuff.

Sony also has an uphill climb for grabbing new photographers. People think cameras when they think of Nikon, Canon, Pentax or Olympus; but when you mention Sony to the average person, they think playstations and expensive TVs. Now, those folks probably won't buy an A7RIII any more than a 5DIV, but they might get into photography, and because of this bias, they are less likely to buy a Sony as their first camera, which diminishes the chances of them buying a Sony ILC, and ultimately, a pro ILC.

 

[stochasticmotions]

This sounds like it will be a nice update to the A7RII. It addresses most of the things that were just ok in that camera and if it turns out the autofocus is better then great, joystick, bigger battery and dual cards are the things I really wanted....I didn't expect the extra speed. A7RII with the new 100-400 I find works just as well as my 5DS and 100-400 II once you really start to understand the differences in the way each type of continuous autofocus wants to work (took me some time to get used to the sony after many years with the canon but now there are some conditions that the sony is better and some for canon but I don't tend to miss on birds in flight for either anymore in that focal range). I am more than happy with both cameras for image quality (and I don't expect any real difference in the new A7R raw files). I carry both of these cameras for pretty much all of my shoots these days with either a wide angle zoom on the sony and 100-400 on the canon or the 100-400 FE on the sony and the 500 (+teleconverters sometimes) on the canon.

There are differences with canon usually giving slightly redder tones and sony more green but I can usually adjust both to my liking pretty easily.

I have no problem with the ergonomics of either camera even after long days out but everyone has their own preference (I used to have a 1DIV and found that really hard to hold for a long time, unlike most people it would seem).

One great thing about the latest a7RIII and Nikon D850 is that hopefully when they replace the 5DS(R) they might give us a few more frames per second and a bigger buffer ( I don't usually do long bursts but there are times when it would be a nice bonus)...there really isn't much else to complain about with the current 5DS, as you can probably tell with my current camera choices I like detail

 

[that1guyy]

I wonder if those complaining about Sony's ergonomics have ever even shot using the A7 cameras? Or perhaps they have really fat hands?

I admit that DSLR grips are nicer in the hands but I've owned a Sony A7II (and will definitely buy this new A7RIII) and the grips are totally fine and usable, nowhere near as bad as some people make them out.

 

[dak723]

I wonder if those complaining about Sony's ergonomics have ever even shot using the A7 cameras?

Yes, shot with both the A7 and A7 II.

Or perhaps they have really fat hands?

No, I have rather small, thin hands.

I admit that DSLR grips are nicer in the hands but I've owned a Sony A7II (and will definitely buy this new A7RIII) and the grips are totally fine and usable, nowhere near as bad as some people make them out.

Well, each person is entitled to their opinion. I found that the Sony's were (by far) the least comfortable cameras to hold -especially compared to any Canon or Nikon or the Olympus E-M1. The EVF was also quite poor compared to the EVF on the Olympus, but I believe various reviews have mentioned Sony has improved their EVFs. Considering ergonomics should be the easiest part of the camera design, the fact that Sony continues to make no improvements in this area is rather mind-boggling.

 

[-pekr-]

I need Sony being the best it can be, so that Canon lowers the 5DIV price lower ... which ... most probably will just not happen. We need to buy in two months. Hey, Canon, please do something

Ask and ye shall receive:
http://www.canonrumors.com/the-canon-store-restocks-popular-refurbished-lenses/

Effectively it's as good as new (my 35 f/2 IS Canon refurb was pristine), one year warranty, $2349, zero chance of a ripoff that you might get from eBay/craigs/etc.

That's the best (risk-free) deal you'll see for quite some time, I'd wager. #giddyup

- A

Well, contacted Canon, but those deals are only in terms of US. You have to add a VAT there too, at least on my end, it displayed the price of 2799$ or something like that.

We are most probably going to get it via Panamoz, as we've got some friends living in UK, sending the camera here to CZ.

 

[snoke]

...
The sensor in the a7RIII is the same as the sensor in the a7RII. Perhaps there will be measurable improvements in the RAW image quality, but claims of a full stop seem unlikely, at best.

Wait evidence then Sony liar. Not yet.

Update: photonstophotos say same. Sony liar.

Sony say RAW IQ better. RAW or JPEG? Many company say this. Reality: JPEG noise better.

Not moving, and really static:
"The camera must also wait either 0.5, 1, or 2 seconds between shots for the sensor to settle"

Suitable for product work and still life, not for landscapes that have any moving objects (like grass in wind, leaves, water, clouds).

Same condition HDR merge.

I shoot bracketed shots for HDR with ~83 milliseconds between frames – the lag with the a7RIII pixel shift is 6- to 25-times longer. So, not the same conditions.

What shutter speed this need?

Please experiment. HDR and 0, -2, +2. Minimum give 83ms is?

Example. 83ms slowest is 1/100, make 0/-2/+2 be 1/400, 1/800, 1/100. Add DoF. ISO?

Back to problem.

Use HDR at 100m sprint? No. Runner fast, camera slow. Want 3 images at time of 1 image.

Water worst. Not matter if 83ms or 830ms. HDR hell.

For good HDR merge, no motion. Need HDR if light bad. Bad light, slow shutter. Photographer hell. Sony feature same problem but photographer can't pretend.

 

[snoke]

P.S. How are you supposing they are fitting 15 stops of DR into a 14 bit, at most, file?

Log?

Good bet. Need non-linear raw data.

 

[snoke]

..
Put a Canon onto LiveView One Shot, and crank the aperture to f/14 in a dim room, til almost everything is barely visible. Tap somewhere on the screen or hit the AF button, and the screen will suddenly light up for a second or so while it focuses -- that's the camera going to max aperture when it needs more light to electronically AF. Then it returns to being dark.

No you wrong. Canon lens wide open until exposure. Canon simulate exposure and artificial bright in live view. Want preview DoF? Push button on front camera. Maybe some camera not work same.

 

[snoke]

The camera always focuses stopped down. It's not necessary bad - you won't get any focus shift related problems.

How do you figure that? Focus shift, with lenses that exhibit that problem, occurs when a different aperture is used for focus than for image capture. On a dSLR, it occurs when focus is performed wide open and the image is captured stopped down, and that results in back-focus. But if focus is achieved with the lens stopped down, and the image is captured wide open, focus shift will still occur...the only difference is that it will result in front-focus instead.

The problem is that no autofocus system is perfect. If you focus using the shallowest DoF achievable (lens wide open), stopping down will serve to mask any focus errors; but, if you focus stops down then shoot with a shallower DoF, any focus errors will be exacerbated.

Photographer with Canon use eye and live view zoom for focus verify and guess about expose. DoF button help sometime if light good.

Photographer with Sony use focus highlight. Canon photographer need ML to get this.

Focus highlight closest perfection but electronic only, not optical.

 

[privatebydesign]

P.S. How are you supposing they are fitting 15 stops of DR into a 14 bit, at most, file?

Log?

Good bet. Need non-linear raw data.

How does turning linear data into a curve help? There is no more space so something somewhere is crushed. Sure there are theoretical oversampling and averaging computations that haven’t been shown to be practical in this application that can give you more steps within a file. But so far we have been given linear data as linear data, so how are Sony getting, supposedly, well over 14 stops of DR into a 14 bit file? Red moved to 16 bit files to achieve the feat.