Where are the Rumors? EOS 5D Mark IV

[bedford]

Who cares how good the AF is? It's not better than my gear, so that's all that matters. Nothing to offer me.

Well, I really would like to know how good the AF of the A7RII really is in comparison to DSLRs. Some claim it's superior (dpreview), others say the opposite. And I mean in a photographically relevant context.

Oliver

 

[pedro]

Really hoping we get some news on the 5D IV soon. It's the only Canon camera I am interested in at the moment, as a replacement for my 5D III. The 5D III is really long in the tooth, and I'm not happy with its IQ. The 5Ds/r, on the other hand, has shown some decent improvements in IQ. If those improvements move over to the 5D IV, without any increases (and preferably with reductions) in noise, along with a higher frame rate (preferably 8fps), I'll be a happy camper.

I'm just starting to wonder when....it's been a long time now...

jon, just subscribed to your great wordpress blog btw... The 5DIII I had got stolen due to an assault earlier this month but as insurance fully covered the loss I am in the waiting line for a next 5D body sometime by the end of next year... I really liked the cam, not having an 1DX still handheld ISO 12800 photography resulted quite usable. But yes, I hope for real improvement in high ISO IQ... Wish that the 5DX at 18 MP/5DC really hits the shelves... Or they give us an 24 MP sensor with at least 1/2 to 3/4 stop of improvement in IQ. But being aware of your knowledge this might remain wishful thinking

 

[jrista]

Really hoping we get some news on the 5D IV soon. It's the only Canon camera I am interested in at the moment, as a replacement for my 5D III. The 5D III is really long in the tooth, and I'm not happy with its IQ. The 5Ds/r, on the other hand, has shown some decent improvements in IQ. If those improvements move over to the 5D IV, without any increases (and preferably with reductions) in noise, along with a higher frame rate (preferably 8fps), I'll be a happy camper.

I'm just starting to wonder when....it's been a long time now...

jon, just subscribed to your great wordpress blog btw... The 5DIII I had got stolen due to an assault earlier this month but as insurance fully covered the loss I am in the waiting line for a next 5D body sometime by the end of next year... I really liked the cam, not having an 1DX still handheld ISO 12800 photography resulted quite usable. But yes, I hope for real improvement in high ISO IQ... Wish that the 5DX at 18 MP/5DC really hits the shelves... Or they give us an 24 MP sensor with at least 1/2 to 3/4 stop of improvement in IQ. But being aware of your knowledge this might remain wishful thinking

I just hope the 5D IV gets similar relative IQ improvements as the 7D II and 5Ds did. That's all. I don't much hope for Canon to do anything radical in the sensor space. I read about sensor news a few times a week. Canon isn't even a blip on the outer edge of the radar when it comes to sensor technology. They are so far behind the times, there isn't any point in talking about it.

That said, there was a visible improvement with the 5Ds IQ. It did not gain much in base DR (unscaled DR)...Canon's DR performance has effectively been flat. On a normalized basis, depending on what you normalize to, the improvement may be around a stop. That's decent, but nothing to write home about.

With what I use my 5D III for, AF system, metering, power to drive the AF of large & heavy lenses, frame rate, buffer depth, etc. are more important factors. I could really, really use reliable AF at 8fps in a 5D style body. By reliable, I mean AF that does not jitter between frames. The 7D jittered a ton between frames, so the effective frame rate (where you got decently in focus or ideally focused frames) was more like 5fps. The 5D III still has some jitter, and I don't feel it's got a practical FPS much faster than 5fps either. Having the ability to acquire and maintain focus lock at 8fps while tracking a moving subject without having a largish percentage of the frames pop out of focus (i.e. completely unusable) would be extremely useful for me. I could indeed use the better iTR metering and AF capabilities with a high res RGB metering sensor as well, especially for BIF (the 5D III is ok for BIF, but far from great...the iTR tech from the 7D II would really help that.)

At the moment, I still believe that a dedicated PDAF unit in a DSLR is still a better way of achieving that, hence my interest in the 5D IV.

I don't know how long that will remain true, though. I need to test the A7r II with my 600mm lens, see how it does. I'm very curious to see if it could be usable for BIF. The biggest drawback with the A7r II for BIF is it would need to be done on a tripod...the small mirrorless body is a non-starter for hand-held BIF with a lens that large.

 

[kubelik]

jrista, purely out of curiosity and not meant to be sarcastic - what's keeping you from investing in a 1D-type body? from your webpage and based on your comment above, it sounds like at least for the wildlife part that a 1D X (or even perhaps an older 1D Mark IV) could be a better fit for half of what you do, no?

 

[jrista]

jrista, purely out of curiosity and not meant to be sarcastic - what's keeping you from investing in a 1D-type body? from your webpage and based on your comment above, it sounds like at least for the wildlife part that a 1D X (or even perhaps an older 1D Mark IV) could be a better fit for half of what you do, no?

The 1D bodies are just too expensive, and the gains are becoming marginal. There isn't going to be much if any real IQ benefit. Maybe some relative to other Canon cameras...it's really tough for me to spend that kind of money when I can have top notch IQ in a competitor's camera for much less.

There is probably at least twenty grand worth of equipment I need to buy for astrophotography. I'm buying things bit by bit, and I'm looking at spending somewhere around $5500 to $6000 on a mono CCD camera and a couple sets of filters soon here. I put about $2800 into a new 8" Ritchy-Cretien telescope and robotic focuser and a bunch of additional parts to adapt my 5D III for use with it earlier this year. I also need a new mount, something much more reliable than the one I have (which cost me $1400), and that will cost me about $7000-$10,000. Finally, at some point, after I get the mount, I have plans to get a larger telescope. Something larger than my current mount can handle. It will either be a 14" Celestron EdgeHD, which is about $5000, or a 16" Ritchy-Cretien Truss design, which is about $8000.

Buying expensive Canon equipment just isn't in the books in the face of all that. I'd be willing to spend $3000 on a 5D Mark IV if it had solid improvements in frame rate, metering, and AF performance, as well as at the very least the same level of IQ improvements as the 7D II and 5Ds. I'd obviously prefer IQ on the level of an Exmor, but I stopped holding out hope for that a long time ago, and have no intention of building up hopes for it any time soon. The 5D IV, if it gives me the performance characteristics I need and want, will probably be my last Canon camera for a long time.

If Sony keeps improving their adaptive AF technology in the future, and I can get Canon-like AF performance with my 600mm f/4 lens out of say an A7r III with at least 6-7 fps, it is entirely possible I'll ditch Canon bodies alltogether. They just....don't impress me anymore. I'm a details oriented guy. The details matter to me. Canon has been ignoring a detail that REALLY matters to me for a very, very long time...instead trotting out vaporware products like 120mp DSLRs and 250mp sensors every couple of years to rattle the cage and keep people interested, rather than investing that money on creating something real, tangible, that they can put into an actual consumer product that people can put in their hands and use. That irks me, as I waited, loyally, for too many years, and never got the IQ improvements I was looking for, while the rest of the DSLR & mirrorless world kept plowing forward.