leeys

You know, Nikon's PR company is inviting me to an event next month. Surely it's not for the D810, because an event three weeks past the announcement for a camera that's just an update is just...

Are they jpegs or raw? Dxomark couldn't find these "differences"

Raw. Dxomark measures sensor data before demosaicing. I think you'll find examples online where the A7R is *slightly* worse.

Possibly due different algorithms? I find the A7R images slightly worse than the D800's.

Of course faster is always better. Just a matter of how much. I think the integrated GPU difference is not as much as the difference between the dual and quad core difference. Just make sure your programs are multi-threaded (I don't use a Mac, so have no idea how FCPX performs).

Focal lengths are focal lengths. The sensor size they cover is independent of that.

EDIT: To be clear - always calculate based on the focal length. To base FoV equivalent calculation on the projected image circle is like saying a pound of feathers is lighter than a pound of iron.

Why not just use an A7R? Same sensor.

Purely from a stills perspective:

1. Nikon has a proper lens lineup, with a much better AF system.

2. Nikon 14 bit RAW loseless vs some weird semi-lossy RAW format Sony uses

3. Much better ergonomics on the Nikon.

Well, thanks for the info. Things to consider when upgrading the computer some time next year.

Resolve needs high-end GPUs.

 

My R9 290X can't do 4K + NR + medium grade at full 30 frames.

Doomed. Isn't Resolve OpenCL enabled? The R9 290X is pretty much a high-end card.

First up, I want to ask: How is autofocus with this thing? Because it might be useful for stills here.

That's pretty awesome news for canon lens owners. 

Now I'm not one of those people anymore, but it does raise a question: Does this mean that Metabones is now capable of releasing other powered speedboosters? (within the near future, not immediatly of course) For example, MFT/BMPCC to Nikon? I'd love to be able to switch on the lens stabilization on my nikon mount lenses!

This might be tricky, because 95% of Nikon lenses require a mechanical arm to move the aperture (iris). There's a reason why the Nikon 1 adapter is more expensive than the Canon EF-M adapter. My guess is that without Nikon helping them out, reverse engineering a fully electronic Speed Booster is going to be harder than the Canon one.

Panasonic should really up the ante on the PRO lens development front. We would certainly like more of these pro lenses like the new Pana/Leica 42.5mm say perhaps a new  11-13mm pana/leica prime with very low CA and low distortion.

There is the Olympus 12mm f/2 you can use for the latter. I just want longer lenses with IS. 

Yes as you have stabilisation and proper aperture control from the body. The Nikon mount adapter has no electronic contacts.

 

Regardless with the Canon mount adapter, you can still use Nikon lenses on it via an adapter ring.

 

So best of both worlds in terms of the optics.

Its compelling for that reason. Don't forget that you need the adapter to work with G lenses if you're going to use the newer Nikkors!

Aha, so that last post was sort of a setup for this. Nice idea. Looking forward to it. 

Right. It's western capitalism, founded on a nation-independant european mindset that their 'culture' is the most advanced and that all others need to assimilate anyway. 

I doubt it's Western either - give the Chinese half a chance and you'll see something similar, if not worse! It's just... capitalism. And human greed.

And perhaps raise the saturation in the GH3 up a bit?

Do this first. Panasonic's colour processing by default is very neutral, especially at Natural. Canon, especially for their consumer grade cameras, tend to jack up the contrast levels and mid-tone saturation levels by quite a bit. I still remember the time I had with a 6D... I didn't know my home was *that* colourful!

For a moment, I thought the owl wasn't real.

 

So how does the owl attain such stabilisation?   Maybe I can build a DIY prototype once the principles are clear. :D

I think if you can, you're well on your way to building GIANT DEATH ROBOTS

i just got my gh4 yesterday and one of the first things i noticed is that mine comes with a 30min recording cap. didnt quite a few people agree that there is no recording cap on the GH4? switching prom PAL to Cinema didnt fix the problem. is there a workaround with an american firmware version or something?

Not until there's a hack to to disable the EU limit. I am assuming you're from the EU!

I know I should be sympathetic to art and artists, but I don't understand why artists can never wrap their heads around capitalism.

They definitely can. They took a look at their projected income and said, "fuck this".

What they're not, are corporate sympathisers.

Yes, no one at sight knows a masterpiece and most artists' work is pissing in the wind--I can tell you mine is   ;)

That's true, and also depressing. Sometimes makes me want to give it all up.  -_- 

 

If there was a bullet-proof way for filmmakers, amateur and pro alike to license commercial music instantly and easily with the click of a button and the payment of a one off $50.

Oh yes. That is simple yet great. Do you think most musicians will be happy with that though?

Reading about labs tests (or doing them yourself) provides useful insight (especially metamarism and CRI), however actual real world testing is needed to understand how the devices really perform. For example, showing clients and talent skintones shot on the Sony FS700 compared to the Canon 5D Mark 3, most of them much prefer the Canon. I can spend a lot of time trying to make the FS700 look like the Canon, and while I can get very close, many times it's not worth the effort. This is not just my findings, many others have the same experience and that's why the C100/C300 cameras sell so well and are used so much even though their specs were dated even at launch. 5D3 RAW looks so good folks call it the baby Alexa. The FS700 rocks at slomo (for the price).

I have to say, you're quite right on this. Many consumers love the skin tones from the Canons. This extends to the stills as well, so a lot of wedding photographers use the 5D series cameras.

Ok, so I downloaded RawTherarpee and managed to get the RAWs working. Better than the JPEGs, so certainly looks good. Definitely not super duper THREE STOPS ZOMG good though.

And seriously, some of the posts I see here...

Why is the DR so low ???? :((((( they claimed 15.3....  and now it is less than Nikon d5200 --' 

This is pretty much how most sensors tweaked for high ISO respond. Average low ISO DR but fantastic high ISO DR.

I am pretty sure that the 15 stop claim is not possible unless Sony had some breakthrough in sensor tech, which doesn't seem to be present.

As I mentioned, the JPEGs are fantastic. No one has any public tools available right now to decode the raw files though. I'd love to see what they're like.

I have A7S sample images that I personally took. While I forget to set some settings (notably AF), my impression from the JPEGs is that I'm going to side with Andrew here. It's simply not that clean. I might try some video another day.

Really, given state of the art sensors, the difference between a GH4 and a A7S should be theoretically 2 stops. I guess it shows the GF3 being quite a bit further behind!

Looks good. Can't wait to see how it performs. For video I doubt that it has an equal that, but stills-wise Sony has disappointed when placed next to similar Nikons.

I'll have to have a look at the Nikon 14mm F2.8 lens.  I don't see it on their website, though.

 

Michael

Oh, and that 14mm has been discontinued, with the 14-24 taking its place. I never shot with it, but it's not a very highly regarded lens.

How accurate are these tests though really? When I tested the a6000 (13.1 evs) and gx7 (12.2 evs), I took some raw photos and used Lightroom to push the shadows and pull the highlights on both at different ISOs. The  latitude on both ended up being the same (same highlight recovery, same amount of noise in the shadows). In fact slightly worse on the a6000 because at high ISOs the shadows had a purple cast.

 

And if you use the dpreview camera comparison tool, you can see that the Canon 6d clearly has less noise than the Nikon d800, yet it's rated lower on DXOMark.

These tests are pretty good, but you must understand them, and never ever look at the summary alone. For one thing DxO judges based on 8MP images, which when downsizing might affect the final image quality.

I've Shot with 6d and own d800.  Chalk and cheese.  I found the 6d noisy and a bit gnarly for a 20mp camera.  THe d800 shadow noise cleans up very well. 6d still had that typical low frequency fuzzy purple and magenta chroma noise that is hard to clean up.  The d800 continues to blow me away with how much range is usable.  I wish as a company they had just the teensiest bit of vision.

I do like what the D800 sensor can do. It's an amazing sensor. Actually, even the 24MP APS-C sensors are quite amazing too. It's really Canon that has dropped the ball here.

Sony NEX7 scores the same amount of points on DXOMark as the 5dmarkIII. But I can say (I have both here in my hands) that the images from the NEX7 are considerably worse.

 

How do those measurements work??

 

And why DXOMark seem to go out of their way to avoid measuring for example Fuji sensors?

 

I will bet my ass that the Sony A7s will be the best sensor they've ever tested just because they don't really test anything else except dynamic range.

As I was saying - look at the entire suite of measurements across all ISOs. It's actually not that straightforward some times. eg. a D4 has worse dynamic range than a D800 at first glance, but at high ISOs it easily pulls away, making it such a great high ISO camera.

I really like your camera test.  Great info there.  I, too, have been wondering about the dynamic range of the cameras tested.  I hope you test some more cameras, even though I know you thought it was boring. :)

 

This got me thinking.  If you are using an 8-bit Codec, wouldn't the maximum number of stops of dynamic range be 8, perhaps 9 if you throw in gamma?

 

Michael

The tone curve plays a part too, so some settings let you eke out a bit more. The main thing here is that with raw you get a lot of data that you can post process with. Not so with baked images/video.

I'm astounded. How can you absolutely know for sure? I've been using cameras for 20 years, and reviewing them for the past few, and I'd *never* make assumptions like these until I actually have spent some time with either the camera, or a substantial number of sample files.

Also, don't be surprised if the sensors are the same.

I think, much like the A7s and GH4, that there is a place for both the RX10 and the FZ1000 in the marketplace. The Zeiss lens on the Sony will be better, that's a near 100% guarantee, at all focal lengths where they match. The 60p1080 on the RX10, being full pixel readout, should hold its own well enough... despite AVCHD. The RX10 is better built, by a considerable measure, being as well built as a 5DMkIII or A99v level camera. The RX10 also has the headphone jack so proper sound monitoring is available, and the ability to work with an XLR mic, natively, is a huge bonus for the people who care. The customizability of the Sony cameras is also beginning to get the attention it deserves: someone can take this camera and make it their own. Add in the ND filtration and proper stabilization in video and we can say it still does well, if a tad overpriced. The innate capability of the RX10 is very high, however, and the still images are stunning. I haven't seen anything in the Rebel class of DSLR that really competes. You have to go to an A6000ish level camera before that happens. I doubt the Panasonic will be able to get that still performance out of the FZ1000. Physics of lens vs no BSI say so.

 

The BSI sensor in the RX10 will  win the high ISO, high dynamic range battle quickly where still photos come into play and Sony's Object Tracking has always beaten Panasonic where continuous CDAF has come in. 

 

I think that once Sony drops the price of the RX10 to, say, $1k, it'll still be the better overall photographer's tool. The 25-400mm lens with a non-bsi sensor behind it will have too many compromises to compete at the top end of the imaging range. Still, the versatility of such a lens is not to be denied.

 

The 4k crop will be interesting to see on the FZ1000. I think that, much like most compact devices currently shooting 4k,  it's more of a gimmick, still, than a viable feature BUT it is the first to start moving more towards the viable feature end of the spectrum. Those memory card requirements are going to be a bummer in the wallet for some, however :)

 

Anyway. RX10 vs FZ1000: another Sony vs Panny argument that is sure to last the summer.