# Dynamic Range - Try it for yourself, conclude for yourself: 5D III vs. A7r



## jrista (Sep 27, 2014)

I received my A7r rental from LensRentals today. I've been working, but I took a few minutes to snap some quick shots of my living room, with the goal of preserving the highlights of the bright sunlit outdoors in the front windows. To do that, I had to underexpose the foreground well below the levels that they appeared it my eyes.

I did not try to make any explicit exposure choices here. The goal was simply to expose for the highlights. These were shot from the hip, no tripod, no real planning. The goal was just to create a couple exposures with highlight preservation in mind, and see how the shadows handled some major pushing. I'll leave it up to each person to draw their own conclusions. I have provided a link to the raw files, so you can all download them, play with them yourself, and verify (or refute, if you prefer) the various claims made about DR. 

*Here are the original exposures:*






Canon 5D III





Sony A7r



*Here are the exposures lifted to generally mirror what the room looked like to my bare eyes (+4EV, -100 Highlights):*





Canon 5D III





Sony A7r



Just to see how far I could push things, here a couple more versions, not particularly "realistic", but still a good demonstration of what's possible and how the raw data reacts. No interpretation of the data needed here...5D III totally falls apart. A7r...noisy...but manageable. 

*Maximum push (+5EV, -100 Highlights, -100 Whites, +50 Shadows):*





Canon 5D III





Sony A7r



Here are full size versions of the +4 stop pushed examples (zoom in on PhotoBucket for full size):

Canon 5D III

Sony A7r


Here are full size versions of the +5 stop pushed examples (zoom in on PhotoBucket for full size):

Canon 5D III

Sony A7r



*Histograms* 

ETTR? Yup. Too much. On both cameras. 








You can download the raw files here:

http://1drv.ms/1ol6Km5




Finally got a chance to process one of the sets of images I got with the A7r and 5D III. This particular set of images I did not really expect to show any difference, however I think the subtleties and small push here might actually be best. I saw this rock with a patchwork of different kinds of mosses, frames in the spotty sunlight shining through some pine trees. I thought the light and shadow made for a decent example of DR. 

*Here are the original shots:*





Canon 5D III





Sony A7r

*Here are the shots processed to bring up the shadows:*





Canon 5D III (+2 EV, -80 Highlights, +100 Shadows)





Sony A7r (+2 EV, -85 Highlights, +100 Shadows, +35 Contrast)



Here is a quick close-up comparison of the two key shadow areas after the 2-stop push.








Raw files pending.


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## Lee Jay (Sep 27, 2014)

Looks a lot like a shot I took a long, long time ago with my 20D. Guess how I did that...


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## V8Beast (Sep 27, 2014)

Yeah, I can see how that would give any DR junkie a stiffy ;D

Seriously, though, I'm glad to see that you're finally taking a more productive approach to address that nasty case of DR cognitive dissonance that's running rampant around here. It's a good start, and perhaps adding any A7R to your kit will make you a much more happy camper.....or shooter......or keyboard warrior ;D


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## RLPhoto (Sep 27, 2014)

Looks like the a7r will be your landscape cam. Now you can shorten your posts to a link to this thread when the issue rises. 

As for Lee jay, I would say a bounce flash.


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## Lee Jay (Sep 27, 2014)

RLPhoto said:


> Looks like the a7r will be your landscape cam. Now you can shorten your posts to a link to this thread when the issue rises.
> 
> As for Lee jay, I would say a bounce flash.



Yes, as should be quite obvious, a flash is often a great way to control scene contrast. That was a 550EX fired into the ceiling.


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## jrista (Sep 27, 2014)

I dunno yet. There are definitely things I do not like about the A7r. The EVF has massive lag in a lot of situations, shows a LOT of aliasing and moire, and is very pixelated with limited resolution, which just makes the product DOA for me. EVFs have to come a LOOOOOOONG way before I'll be ready to move on from the OVF. A really freakin LONG way. The focus system needs work. It may just be because I'm using an EF lens with an adapter...but it's just...not good. Maybe the A7s will be better. The shutter is indeed very heavy, like people have said. I haven't experienced shutter shock yet, but wow...compared to the 5D III, it's really loud, and it sounds very deliberate. I don't really get why they didn't just use an electronic shutter...Sony has global shutter technology.

Anyway, lots of little things that are just not really there yet. I heard Sony may be releasing new products in January, so I think I'm going to wait for then, see what they release, and give one or two of those a rental. There are things about Sony's implementation I like. Their UI has some nice things about it. I don't care as much for the menu system...it isn't as easy to get around as with the Canon system. But the rest of the UI is pretty cool. There are three main dials, so you can very quickly control aperture, shutter, and ISO with just a simple turn. They also have a dedicated dial for flash compensation, which is kind of cool. There are more features to it, with programmable custom buttons. Need more time to really conclude about button and dial placement, but so far...eh. It could be a lot better. 

On the IQ front, the A7r does not disappoint!  It's a little noisier in the deep shadows than I expected, not quite like many of the D800 images I've worked. I still need to play around with it, but I think that may be due to compression. Still, despite the noise, the shadows of the A7r are WAY easier to work with. I can just shift the NR slider in LR, and it cleans right up. A little bit of sharpening and deconv, maybe a bit of color noise smoothing, and I can have very usable shadows, even with a +5 stop lift (something I don't expect I'll need very often). I can easily get two more stops out of the A7r than I get with my 5D III, at the very least. Banding presents in the 5D III rather rapidly in high DR situations (like when the sun is setting behind mountains, a situation I am often faced with). I am not sure if the weather will hold up tomorrow...I'm going to be going up into the mountains to photograph the last bit of fall (winter is coming fast this year). 

Hopefully the A7r will serve me well this weekend. I'll be taking images with both cameras, so I can compare the results. First impressions, the 5D III takes warmer images, with more vibrancy than the A7r. However, I feel the A7r colors are more realistic (this is when using them on Camera Neutral, and importing with Camera Neutral in LR). I'm a big realist...I don't like to hyper saturate my images (although in some cases, I think it works for some photographers, like Marc Adamus). In that respect, the A7r would also serve me better, producing color I'm more pleased with right out of the camera, meaning I don't have to spend time working color on top of working noise and blending HDR and all that. 

So yeah, I'm pretty impressed with the IQ. Not so impressed with the camera body, but there are some things I like about it. Not sure I want to buy one, but I'm happy to know there are options out there that can definitely produce better IQ for landscapes.


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## Lee Jay (Sep 27, 2014)

jrista said:


> Lee Jay said:
> 
> 
> > RLPhoto said:
> ...



Yes...in a situation where it is not needed.

In fact, in all my years of shooting, I've never once come across a situation where I couldn't get enough DR from a Canon camera at base ISO. Well, except once, and in that case I needed around 30 stops or so, and I don't think even the lens could manage that due to flare.

I need more DR at high ISO all the time. Fortunately, Canon delivers there.


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## jrista (Sep 27, 2014)

When you don't have a flash...then flash cannot be used to solve the DR issue. Which means, more DR IS needed. I do not have a flash for the A7r.


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## unfocused (Sep 27, 2014)

jrista said:


> Lee Jay said:
> 
> 
> > RLPhoto said:
> ...


That may have been your point, but apparently it wasn't his. Don't you just hate it when people hijack your thread to talk about something you don't care about? Sure glad no one else on this thread does that. 

Seriously I'm also very glad you've found the perfect camera. Although now it sounds a little like you think there may be more to a camera than the dynamic range of the sensor. Too bad no one else has ever made that point.


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## jrista (Sep 27, 2014)

Well, it's clear this thread will be chock full of sarcasm. :

Have at it, ppl. Real data. That's what it's all about. For those who really want to know what the difference between Canon sensor/ACD IQ vs. Exmore IQ is, I hope the data I provide will help you figure that out. I'll try to provide more example RAW images over the next few days. I don't want to conclude for everyone...just, if your interested, download the RAW images and see for yourself. Draw your own conclusions.


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## zlatko (Sep 27, 2014)

jrista said:


> Lee Jay said:
> 
> 
> > RLPhoto said:
> ...



That's a good demonstration of the superiority of the Sony sensor in a situation that few photographers encounter, i.e. underexposing a static scene by 4 stops in order to "control" highlights. It's not so much a test of dynamic range as it is a test of fixing really, _really_ bad underexposure. A near pitch black exposure of a room is a textbook example of a bad photo, one that goes in the trash. I mean look how intensely dark the unprocessed photo is ... and you want it to end up like the processed version?!

Sure, it's also a test of dynamic range. But for whom? For the photographer who can't be bothered to use even a single light or blend bracketed exposures or shoot earlier/later in the day, etc.? For the photographer whose only notion of controlling contrast is the Lightroom shadow & exposure sliders?

For ~ 150 years photographers have faced the same problem of controlling contrast, and that example is not how they did it. The fact that you can do so now is excellent — if you're hellbent on doing it that way. But what happens when you encounter a situation that is even beyond the Exmor sensor? Do you just give up? Look for a newer sensor? Or do you perhaps think about some technique other than the shadow & exposure sliders, such as common photographic techniques that have worked with virtually any film/sensor ever made? 

But if you need to do this — if no other method is acceptable — the Exmor is your thing. Adopt it, use it, love it. In that case, it's the only way to go right now. If this method is such a priority for someone, why in the world would they wait for Canon when they can have it *right now* and presumably solve all of they DR headaches?


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## KeithBreazeal (Sep 27, 2014)

5D Mark III got the job done. I'm happy with my choice of "tools".


Mustang Sunrise Photo Tour CCA 2014 Sun1099 © Keith Breazeal by Keith Breazeal Photography, on Flickr



B-29 FiFi Cockpit Mather 7 June 2014 3334 © Keith Breazeal by Keith Breazeal Photography, on Flickr



F-86 Hell-Er Bust X Sunset CCA 2013 Sat 1331 web 2000 © Keith Breazeal-2 by Keith Breazeal Photography, on Flickr


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## zlatko (Sep 27, 2014)

KeithBreazeal said:


> 5D Mark III got the job done. I'm happy with my choice of "tools".



Nice work! I'm happy too. Some people claim the 1D / 5D series sensors don't meet their very high image quality standards. Presumably they have higher image quality standards than a long list of highly skilled and successful Canon photographers around the world.


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## jrista (Sep 27, 2014)

@zlatko: It's not about any of that. It's simply data. There are lots of debates that go on about DR. There aren't very many RAW files that people can download and play with themselves. That's all this is about. I'm not trying to push anything with this thread. I'm just trying to provide data. People make decisions. It's useful to have data to back up those decisions.

YES, this is an extreme example. It's not intended to be a totally realistic demonstration. All it is supposed to do is give people who may have questions about what it really means to have more DR the ability to see for themselves. To actually download RAW files that they can open up in their preferred editor, work with themselves, and...see what's what. If some people conclude that more DR does nothing for them, fine. I don't care. 

I simply care about providing some concrete data. The DR debate is never going to end until the playing field is level. So it's going to rage on. At least I can provide something people can reference. That's all this is. I am hoping I'll have the opportunity of photographing some landscape scenes tomorrow to provide some more realistic and balanced examples than this. Personally, I'm impressed with how well the A7r holds up under a 5-stop push (especially given it's compression). I don't think that's a particularly common scenario...but the data held up very well, all things considered. For smaller prints, like an 8x10, it's entirely viable. 

It won't be any surprise to me if most of the responses to this thread are like yours, this is a Canon community, so it makes sense that people will decry the value of having more DR, defend their preferred brand, and even get hostile. That seems to be the nature of this community (sadly). Well, so be it. There's the data. Shred it as you will.


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## weixing (Sep 27, 2014)

jrista said:


> @zlatko: It's not about any of that. It's simply data. There are lots of debates that go on about DR. There aren't very many RAW files that people can download and play with themselves. That's all this is about. I'm not trying to push anything with this thread. I'm just trying to provide data. People make decisions. It's useful to have data to back up those decisions.
> 
> YES, this is an extreme example. It's not intended to be a totally realistic demonstration. All it is supposed to do is give people who may have questions about what it really means to have more DR the ability to see for themselves. To actually download RAW files that they can open up in their preferred editor, work with themselves, and...see what's what. If some people conclude that more DR does nothing for them, fine. I don't care.
> 
> ...


Hi,
IMHO, I think a lot of Canon users know that DR of Canon camera is not the best and know the importance of DR, but they also try to point out that there is a lot of aspect that make up of a good camera not just DR... there is no perfect camera out there, so there is always some compromise when choosing a camera or camera system.... may be many user just don't put DR high in their priority list... 

Also, IMHO, many users here get annoyed not because they want to defend their preferred brand (in this case Canon), but the fact that some of you keep bring up the same thing again and again in thread that are not related to DR.

Just my S$0.02 and enjoy your new toy... I mean camera...  

Have a nice weekend.


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## emko (Sep 27, 2014)

since i got a A7r i don't need to do bracketing and merging in PS on most pictures anymore to complete my pictures, i understand some people shoot different things that don't have the need for more DR but there are people who do need it. For example i shoot a street at night i under expose so i don't get blown out light bubbles on the street lights while the 5D3 can bring up the shadows/exposure it gets noise a lot faster then the A7r. I had problems also with shooting city sunsets where i expose for the sky and end up with dark city when i bring up the shadows A7r is amazing.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 27, 2014)

Lee Jay said:


> RLPhoto said:
> 
> 
> > Looks like the a7r will be your landscape cam. Now you can shorten your posts to a link to this thread when the issue rises.
> ...



it is, but it doesn't work when out in nature and shooting scenics


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 27, 2014)

zlatko said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > Lee Jay said:
> ...



Go to a forest, shoot at the edge where there is direct sun and shade. Go inside of a forest where sunbeams are coming in. 

And if you hit something beyond even exmor, well them you struggle in PP or skip the scene. But at least there are now less scenes you need to skip. Why fight so hard to make that seem like a bad thing??


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## Viggo (Sep 27, 2014)

Appriciate the data Jrista, after all, a picture is worth a thousand words ;D

I think this is a much better and more constructive approach. A friend bought the A7r and showed me a few shots, he HAVE to expose for highlights in his landscape shots, and even showed me +3,73 push from a 4 min exposure and it looked fantastic. But as you mention, there are other things to a camera and other things to shoot than landscape which I would rather have over more DR. But if the 1dX is what is and 2,5 stops more range, would I not buy it or be even happier?


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 27, 2014)

KeithBreazeal said:


> 5D Mark III got the job done. I'm happy with my choice of "tools".
> 
> 
> Mustang Sunrise Photo Tour CCA 2014 Sun1099 © Keith Breazeal by Keith Breazeal Photography, on Flickr
> ...



1. of course it can do well for many scenes
2. a couple of those you chose to keep in high contrast, which is fine and looks good for those shots, but what about when you don't want that look?
3. the middle either looks far worse larger than 1/2MP downscale or you used multiple shots and combined in PP (most likely) or you used lighting inside the plane

EDIT: and looking at larger sizes (still far from original, only 2MP vs 20ish MP), you can actually already see a lot of loss of quality in the first image, even though it's kept pretty hi contrast, you can get away with it, but on a big print or UHD large monitor it would show somewhat and that didn't even make shadows get very bright


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## jrista (Sep 27, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> And if you hit something beyond even exmor, well them you struggle in PP or skip the scene. But at least there are now less scenes you need to skip. Why fight so hard to make that seem like a bad thing??



Or you just bracket. However, you would have to bracket in far fewer situations. Which, for me, is a big bonus. I don't like to spend a ton of time on my images...not unless one of them is a gem and I know I can make it phenomenal (which usually has more to do with nature and the weather cooperating than anything else...you need the right sky, the right light, the right time of day...which is really NOT easy to get. At least with an Exmor, your more likely to get as much good, clean data as possible so you CAN make the most of it, even if your bracketing.)


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 27, 2014)

weixing said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > @zlatko: It's not about any of that. It's simply data. There are lots of debates that go on about DR. There aren't very many RAW files that people can download and play with themselves. That's all this is about. I'm not trying to push anything with this thread. I'm just trying to provide data. People make decisions. It's useful to have data to back up those decisions.
> ...



even if you bring it up in a thread titled "DR differences between sensors" you still get pummeled and called a lens cap shooting dweeb, a photographic moron, etc. etc. that gets kind of tiresome and annoying after a while too and maybe some people just quit posting and other just starting posting and not giving anymore and start giving as good as they get

alreadt in this thread instead of people just accepting the difference jrista demonstrated and letting the thread end after 2 or 3 posts, they are trying to find every which way to discredit everything about his test

I meanit's fair enough to bring up other stuff, but then it should be fair enough in any thread where things are relevant.


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## Aglet (Sep 27, 2014)

KeithBreazeal said:


> 5D Mark III got the job done. I'm happy with my choice of "tools".
> 
> 
> Mustang Sunrise Photo Tour CCA 2014 Sun1099 © Keith Breazeal by Keith Breazeal Photography, on Flickr



Keith, those are some nice images but I'm gonna be tough on you here. Even to my old eyes the shadow tones in the mustang shot look full of canon chroma noise and stripes. Not in this little dinky downscaled shot within this thread, but the 2 & 3MP "large" version available on flikr.
And they are, you don't even have to push anything to see it, just look between the 2 photog's on the R side.

Sorry, tools like that do not meet _my_ standards of image quality, not when they come with that kind of price tag.
If you're happy with them, great. But image quality like this is the reason I dumped Canon and went to ABC cameras.
Most people likely would not notice the noise, I sure do, much as I listen to the silence between the music.

A crop and 2x linear with some gamma shift to make it obvious for those who can't see it in the original.
Maybe I'm just getting spoiled looking at super clean ABC shadow tones for the last couple years, this now jumps out at me in some shots.

EDIT: typos fixed, minor change in wording


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## jrista (Sep 27, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> alreadt in this thread instead of people just accepting the difference jrista demonstrated and letting the thread end after 2 or 3 posts, they are trying to find every which way to discredit everything about his test



Oh, it probably hasn't even started yet.  I never expected any less, though. It's a Canon forum.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 27, 2014)

Viggo said:


> But if the 1dX is what is and 2,5 stops more range, would I not buy it or be even happier?



Absolutely! And that is also why many push so hard for Canon to go to a new sensor fab. There is tons to like about CAnon so it would be way nicer if they got on the ball and we didn't have to change to other systems or shoot Frankenstein combinations.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 27, 2014)

jrista said:


> LetTheRightLensIn said:
> 
> 
> > alreadt in this thread instead of people just accepting the difference jrista demonstrated and letting the thread end after 2 or 3 posts, they are trying to find every which way to discredit everything about his test
> ...



and don't forget after they turn this thread, that could have been over with in 2 posts, into 30 pages, they will accuse you of being a "DRoner" who went on and on for 30 pages ;D

and even though this thread was specifically titled "DYNAMIC RANGE" they are bringing up but oh what about UI or AF or the great lenses, so they can bring up anything in any thread, but don't dare bring up DR even in a DR thread ;D


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## jrista (Sep 27, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > LetTheRightLensIn said:
> ...



Yeah well, this is the thread where they can retaliate. Derail a DR thread for once with...whatever it is they want to talk about. It's the nature of these forums...petty. Fine, though. As I said, I primarily just wanted to provide some data. Give people something to base their arguments on, regardless of what their opinions are. 

One argument in particular I do kind of want to crush, however, is the notion that Canon cameras have the same DR as Exmor cameras. One particular individual has been pushing that for years. That same individual demanded I back up my words with my own data. Well...here's my shared RAWs (hopefully the first of many...forecast for the mountains is starting to not look so good), as demanded. Maybe we can quell those claims once and for all, as they are completely fallacious.


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## krisbell (Sep 27, 2014)

Lee Jay said:


> Yes...in a situation where it is not needed.
> 
> In fact, in all my years of shooting, I've never once come across a situation where I couldn't get enough DR from a Canon camera at base ISO. Well, except once, and in that case I needed around 30 stops or so, and I don't think even the lens could manage that due to flare.
> 
> I need more DR at high ISO all the time. Fortunately, Canon delivers there.



You have _never _come across a situation where you couldnt get enough DR from a Canon camera at base ISO??!! I come across this limitation almost every single time I go out shooting a sunrise/sunset scene. Either way, whether you are DR limited or not has no bearing on what jrista has produced here, which is nice, clear evidence of the greater DR of the a7r. 

The suggestion to come back and shoot at another time, or with flash etc I'm sure is helpful or possible in some situations but sunsets generally don't afford you that luxury and my flash for some reason struggles to selectively lighten just the extreme darks across an entire wide-angle landscape scene - I would love to know what flash you use for this application. Regardless and as I mentioned in the first paragraph, this is a total irrelevance for what the OP was trying to show to those of us with an open mind. 

Your comments are akin to someone demonstrating a sensors noise performance and you saying 'just shoot the scene when it is a little brighter' - it ain't always possible or desirable.


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## Ruined (Sep 27, 2014)

jrista said:


> I received my A7r rental from LensRentals today.



You should rent a 6D and do the same test vs the 5D3.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 27, 2014)

krisbell said:


> Lee Jay said:
> 
> 
> > Yes...in a situation where it is not needed.
> ...



Just had to say, wow, you have a truly incredible Flickr collection!


(which I might add is yet more proof that it's not just some dweebs in a lab who shoot lens caps all day long who care about DR as some keep saying, in fact, I swear those who want more DR, often tend to have very extensive and impressive portfolios)


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## jrista (Sep 27, 2014)

Ruined said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > I received my A7r rental from LensRentals today.
> ...



Yeah, that would be interesting. I know the 6D is gaining a good reputation among photographers for having the best signal of any Canon camera. I haven't heard anyone call it "CCD-like", as they are with Nikon Exmor cameras, but it's definitely better than other popular Canon cameras in the astro world.

While I know many others don't, I trust the theory, so I figure the 6D wouldn't have more than a half-stop advantage over the 5D III in terms of read noise/DR. What would be most interesting would be to see how the banding noise compares. The 6D is supposed to have very little, like the 70D and hopefully the 7D II.


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## fragilesi (Sep 27, 2014)

It's an interesting test, and a useful comparison.

I'm also happy that there's balance here. The A7R gives you these impressive and useful for some DR characteristics. But as jrista says it's coming at a big cost, AF, EVF etc are much poorer.

And this is the only point I would make. The DR difference which isn't an issue for everyone but is for some is being given such prominence and some people are describing Canon as not being innovative, lagging behind and so on. Sony are going for headlines and making a splash with DR but are miles behind Canon on other things.

So, I like this thread because the recognition is there that while the A7R has produced these results it's not a "better" camera overall even if it does excel in this DR area. So those who need the DR may go for the Sony but Canon remains better overall for others.


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## jrista (Sep 27, 2014)

Aye, the A7r has it's flaws. Some of em are pretty big. I never expected otherwise. Jury is still out on the full consequences of their compression...I'll probably have to rent a D810 to really get a handle on that. 

Even though the A7r has it's flaws, it does have one big strength: The ability to adapt to many lens systems. You don't have to buy a whole 'nother kit. You can simply add the A7r to your existing kit. That's a big selling point, despite the flaws. Sony could really capitalize on that (will be interesting to see if they do.)

I think Sony will continue to improve, and relatively rapidly at that, too, if they do things right. They have already made some significant improvements to their AF system. It now has full multi-point subject tracking capabilities, which was once the hallmark of high end Canon and Nikon AF systems. I don't know how well the Sony Lock-On AF tracking works compared to Canon or Nikon system in the heat of the moment for sports or other action, but I don't think it will sit still either. I think it will be iterated over and improved fairly quickly, like some other Sony cameras and features (particularly their sensors...Exmor has already come a long way since the release of the D800, and it came a long way before that since it first found it's way into the K-5.)

The big question is whether they will actually go in the right direction with their iterating. They have made a lot of mistakes with their current system. Sony almost seems to make cameras as an afterthought, so you have to wonder whether they will really improve things, or drunkenly wander around no-man's land for a while until they finally stumble across an ideal balance between ergonomics, camera size, functionality and interactivity. They could really skyrocket the A7 series forward in a couple of years...or they could waste five years giving Canon plenty of time to catch up. I'm hoping it's the former, it would put more competitive heat on Canon...but I suspect things may end up more like the latter, with Sony meandering about for a bit before they figure out how to dial in on customer feedback and improve their system, as sensors seems to be Sony's real focus.


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## fragilesi (Sep 27, 2014)

jrista said:


> Aye, the A7r has it's flaws. Some of em are pretty big. I never expected otherwise. Jury is still out on the full consequences of their compression...I'll probably have to rent a D810 to really get a handle on that.
> 
> Even though the A7r has it's flaws, it does have one big strength: The ability to adapt to many lens systems. You don't have to buy a whole 'nother kit. You can simply add the A7r to your existing kit. That's a big selling point, despite the flaws. Sony could really capitalize on that (will be interesting to see if they do.)



Yes, it's all a balance, and if you don't mind me saying so is one reason I like Canon's approach. I feel as if they are trying to deliver an all-round better system. For someone like myself who has specific photographic interests but also likes to "dabble" a lot this is the right approach. 

The point about lens interchange makes it interesting. It could mean that with this cherry picking approach to features they could cleverly target at certain audiences. I wonder for example if instead of the 6d I sometimes think about to supplement my 70d for landscape and gig photography I'd be even better off with the A7r. 

Maybe food for thought


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## msm (Sep 27, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> krisbell said:
> 
> 
> > Lee Jay said:
> ...



+1 on that, awesome stuff. Didn't even see it before I noticed this comment.


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## Khalai (Sep 27, 2014)

I'm about to get a little philosophical here:

Now, before any ranting is going to ensue - I'm not disputing DR advantage of Exmor (I've never did actually), but...

We are here evaluating cameras with as 12 EV (6D and 5D3) vs 14+ EV (Exmor) on monitors right? Is there any magical, yet affordable monitor with as wide as 15 EV of DR? And even more, is there any mythical photopaper, capable of using that DR?

Just food for thought, I think many here from both sides of the DR camp went over their heads, comparing numbers, histograms, ratios and forgot about the vastly severe limitation of the displaying devices or printing media...


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## Valvebounce (Sep 27, 2014)

Hi Jrista. 
Thank you for your efforts, it amazes me that peoples first reaction was oh no Canon is under attack, circle the wagons! 
I think the fact that you have gone to the effort to post and make available comparable images Data from the two cameras (and are promising more real world images) is a credit to you. I don't go hunting for comparisons, but so often they seem to use different images, different times, processed and that's all your getting! 
Your approach means that people can fiddle, play, see what they can do with them, then perhaps make an informed decision on a purchase. 
It was enlightening to have some feedback on the body as a whole system too, especially what many seem to think is "the" way forwards, being the EVF. 

Cheers, Graham.


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## jrista (Sep 27, 2014)

@Khalai: No, there are no screens that can natively display 14 or more stops at once. However, it is for that very reason that we push shadows. A RAW is rendered to the screen with a tone curve. That tone curve compresses the information in a RAW, crushing the blacks and bleeding out the highlights. The middle part of the image fits on the screen...the middle 8 stops. 

The purpose of shadow recovery is to bring back the shadows that were crushed and the highlights that were bleed out. The highlights aren't clipped, they are just rendered such that they appear clipped. The shadows aren't pure black...they are just rendered such that they appear pure black or nearly so. In the actual RAW file, in linear space, all that information is decidedly NOT black or white. It's all non-zero/non-clipped information that can be utilized.

Having more dynamic range, such as you get with an Exmor, means that more of that information that falls outside the display range of your computer screen is recoverable. Canon sensors are eating away at a large chunk of that information, then scattering banding (a semi-random or non-random factor) into the signal that reaches right up into the lower midtones, which are already displayed on the screen. 

So, no, there are no screens that can natively display 14 stops of DR, which is the very reason we push shadows. I took some photographs of what appears to be a dark room. In reality, the room was not dark at all, it was much more like the second set of photos I shared. The information all those "blacks" as rendered in the first set of photos was all there, in the raw. My 8-bit screen, your 8-bit screen, most people's screens, cannot display the entire range of information found within the RAW, so I had to push the shadows up to make it fit. I compressed a wider dynamic range into a narrower dynamic range. In the third set of photos, I compressed the data even more, bringing in another stop of recoverable information in the A7r file that simply wasn't there in the 5D III file. (Hell, the 5D III file doesn't even have three stops of recoverable data, let alone four or five.)

It's actually _because _of the limitations of display devices and print media that we push and pull the digital signals of our RAW images around. Even when 10-bit computer screens become common, and 12-bit screens start hitting the marketplace, we will still be pushing shadows for print.


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## jrista (Sep 27, 2014)

Valvebounce said:


> Hi Jrista.
> Thank you for your efforts, it amazes me that peoples first reaction was oh no Canon is under attack, circle the wagons!
> I think the fact that you have gone to the effort to post and make available comparable images Data from the two cameras (and are promising more real world images) is a credit to you. I don't go hunting for comparisons, but so often they seem to use different images, different times, processed and that's all your getting!
> Your approach means that people can fiddle, play, see what they can do with them, then perhaps make an informed decision on a purchase.
> ...



Thanks.  I am hoping that I can find some time to be artistic tomorrow, too...between juggling camera systems and taking comparison photos.  Last chance for fall photos...


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## Faaier (Sep 27, 2014)

Jrista, I get your point, but you don't have to try to convince everybody. I think plenty of us would agree Exmor is quite something. To be jealous about even... but some people simply don't want to hear this because they are in some kind of brainlock because their *!#@& camera costed so much. Others know exactly how to work around this DR "disadvantage".... and even others won't even see it, when you show the pictures. ???

Good to have Sony sensors so this sets a line in the sand for others, but I'm sure Canon has quite a few lines in the sand also, where other brands are looking at (sometimes from a distance).


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## K-amps (Sep 27, 2014)

Hi Jon: Thanks for tackling this polarizing topic. Canon makes a great system, and it will be obviously greater still of they used exmors in some regards...

But sensors apart.... as a novice not being able to be as articulate as you guys, I have always felt, that where Canon got beat on DR, was not the sensor, rather the footprint and subsequent processing of the raw file. Whatever algorithms Canon uses to build the RAW file and construct shadow (i.e. half missing) data; needs a re-haul. 

This is quite obvious in banding... this is a digital artifact, not an analog output issue form the sensor...

What say you?


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## JohanCruyff (Sep 27, 2014)

@jrista


After carefully examining your picture, my question is:
Why don't you (replace your armchairs and) switch to Ikea instead of switching sensor?


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## DarioVE (Sep 27, 2014)

my 1st post
lurking on this site since 40d released times, started in the '78 with a canon AT1
i felt the urge to post to thank jrista for his tenacity and imho the honest approach to this delicate argument.
after years of reading reviews and looking at examples at various sites i decided to take a further and deeper look at this DR problem, and i have to say that with my workflow (converted to dng - LR 4) the differences, with jrista provided raw files, are huge in the shadows (noise and detail) and to me the highlights too seems to recover better.
To me the AR7 file also need to be pushed 1/2 stop more, i suppose because of the iso base 80, it has a different color cast, adjustable.
For my typical photo needs (landscape, vacation and a bit of everything else) since i don't have the priviledge to wait the perfect light, rarely have a tripod with me, this sensor improvement would be the primary spec to upgrade my already fantastic 5D3 (hopefully in a 5D4).
I'll stay tuned for the promised next file from Jrista and hopefully other contributors.

P.s. i'm not english native speaker, so sorry for any mistakes and in any way i don't intend to be offensive to anyone.


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## Khalai (Sep 27, 2014)

jrista said:


> @Khalai: No, there are no screens that can natively display 14 or more stops at once. However, it is for that very reason that we push shadows. A RAW is rendered to the screen with a tone curve. That tone curve compresses the information in a RAW, crushing the blacks and bleeding out the highlights. The middle part of the image fits on the screen...the middle 8 stops.
> 
> The purpose of shadow recovery is to bring back the shadows that were crushed and the highlights that were bleed out. The highlights aren't clipped, they are just rendered such that they appear clipped. The shadows aren't pure black...they are just rendered such that they appear pure black or nearly so. In the actual RAW file, in linear space, all that information is decidedly NOT black or white. It's all non-zero/non-clipped information that can be utilized.
> 
> ...



I see the point. But the scene you used as demostrated is quite extreme, wouldn't you agree? From a technical standpoint I understand what your point is, but a better job about that scene would be to HDR blend it anyways, regardless of sensor.

Also, there seems to be extreme approach from those using Exmor - underexposing generally while maintaining highlights, then pushing shadows. But with e.g. landscape, you can expose for shadows and control highlights with filters (as I do) to tame the dreaded Canon shadows (which I'm yet to see, pushed my 6D files up to 2 stops, with no banding and only little noise, which does not impede the general quality).

I see the problem in the DR debate being one camp strongly advocating (quite narrow in my opinion) way of pushing shadows (and everything else is blasphemy/wrong/you-name-it), while the opposing extreme opinios is acting like there is no difference whatsoever. The truth will lie (as usual) in the middle. Yes, there is difference, but not groundbreaking and there is always more than one way of accomplishing your goals.

Also what I find rather ironical is your A7r evaluation, that while the sensor is superior, ergonomics, AF, viewfinder and need for an adapter/lack of broad lineup of lenses have also to be considered and are clearly not satisfactory for you. I guess it's always a compromise, there is no ideal system and all that matters is, where you put your priorities.

In my case, I gladly give up 2 EV of DR for all the other things that makes my photography easier (OVF, supreme ergonomics and intuitive UI, great lenses etc.). But that's for everyone to decide, where their priorities lie.
_
(And there will always be constant complainers, unhappy with camera encompassing 30 EV of DR, lightspeed AF covering whole sensor and magical unicors carrying their 14-600/1.4 lens around  )_


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## tcmatthews (Sep 27, 2014)

jrista said:


> Lee Jay said:
> 
> 
> > RLPhoto said:
> ...



Do you have a flash for your Canon or Nikon cameras? If so you can use one of those flashes in manual mode. I use my 430Ex II on my NEX 6 quite often.


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## Lee Jay (Sep 27, 2014)

krisbell said:


> Lee Jay said:
> 
> 
> > Yes...in a situation where it is not needed.
> ...



For multiple reasons, I don't shoot landscapes.

Most landscapes I've seen that were shot with 15 stops of DR look ridiculous and unnatural anyway.


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## Keith_Reeder (Sep 27, 2014)

Valvebounce said:


> it amazes me that peoples first reaction was oh no Canon is under attack, circle the wagons!



Another wilfully wrong-headed misinterpretation of what's happening.

_Everybody_ accepts that - in the margins, and particularly (actually, almost _only_) with _incompetently shot or ridiculously contrived scenes like this one_ - Exmor gives more chances to get the image back (especially if you insist on using the wrong converter and inadequate PP techniques).

What this thread is, is yet more utterly unnecessary, stuck-record, DR zealot trolling - and that's what the reactions are reacting to.

*Seriously*: if Jon is so bad at what he does with a camera that he routinely gets images which are so screwed up that he needs to rely on the "miracle" Exmors as a matter of course to get something half-useful out of, then he doesn't need a new sensor, he needs _lessons_.

But if - and I'll bet all my hair this is the truth of the thing - in fact most of his images aren't ridiculously under-exposed, then the only purpose which this thread serves is to demonstrate an unhealthy obsession with something _which doesn't really matter_, and to continue the pointless argument about what - for most (including some of the DR zealots, if they were remotely honest with themselves) - is a bloody irrelevance in the Real World.


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## ajfotofilmagem (Sep 27, 2014)

I know there are a few options of accessories for Sony cameras... But is there not match any flash available?  

Understand the scientific motivation for this comparison, and see the superiority of EXMOR sensor in this case. But in the real world these photo could only be made ​​as dark as well because of a terrible mistake photographer.  

On the other hand, I ask if anyone can repeat this test at ISO 6400, and let's see if EXMOR still leading. :


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## Lee Jay (Sep 27, 2014)

ajfotofilmagem said:


> I know there are a few options of accessories for Sony cameras... But is there not match any flash available?
> 
> Understand the scientific motivation for this comparison, and see the superiority of EXMOR sensor in this case. But in the real world these photo could only be made ​​as dark as well because of a terrible mistake photographer.
> 
> On the other hand, I ask if anyone can repotir this shooting at ISO 6400 test, and see if EXMOR still leading. :



This isn't under exposed. If he exposes properly for the indoor environment, the windows would be totally white and unrecoverable. If you want to preserve the outside view through the windows, you have to shoot it like this or use artificial lighting to more closely match the two lighting environments.


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## ajfotofilmagem (Sep 27, 2014)

Lee Jay said:


> ajfotofilmagem said:
> 
> 
> > I know there are a few options of accessories for Sony cameras... But is there not match any flash available?
> ...


In the real world, if the purpose of this photo was the view through the windows, the photographer would open the windows first. ??? If he just wanted to see only silhouettes of furniture, there is no reason to lift the shadows in PP. :


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## Lee Jay (Sep 27, 2014)

ajfotofilmagem said:


> Lee Jay said:
> 
> 
> > ajfotofilmagem said:
> ...



Here's real world. This is inside a hotel and the windows are open. The sky was blue and I didn't want to turn it to solid white or for all of that light to wipe out the ceiling structure. Forget the annotations.


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## ajfotofilmagem (Sep 27, 2014)

jrista said:


> I do not have a flash for the A7r.


No kidding. ???
You should buy a flash for Sony camera. :-X


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## ajfotofilmagem (Sep 27, 2014)

Lee Jay said:


> ajfotofilmagem said:
> 
> 
> > Lee Jay said:
> ...


A polarizing filter also help greatly in this case. :
Even a graduated ND filter would help a lot. 8)


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## Dylan777 (Sep 27, 2014)

@ jrista

The RAW files from a7s are very to work with. Not much room to crop though.


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## ChristopherMarkPerez (Sep 27, 2014)

Keith, you speak several very accurate truths here. Bravo and well spoken, sir.

Who On Earth would take such a lousy photo in the first place? Just to prove a point? Hell, let's grab a beer and argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, instead. It'd serve as much purpose as starting with something so ridiculously bad.

If people are this obsessed with unimportant minutiae, no wonder there are so few incredible images in the world. Some people are obviously too busy fetishizing what their camera equipment can or cannot do. Working at these kinds of extremes will ALWAYS turn up something, won't it?

Put the other way around: If people spent this kind of energy in making images instead of Grandstanding just think of how many wonderful things there would be to share with the world. Gods! People might actually perk up, set down their TV remotes, stop their Twittering, and pay attention to you!! You might actually become famous, rich and recognized during your lifetime for outstanding work!!!




Keith_Reeder said:


> Valvebounce said:
> 
> 
> > it amazes me that peoples first reaction was oh no Canon is under attack, circle the wagons!
> ...


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## luckydude (Sep 27, 2014)

jrista said:


> My 8-bit screen, your 8-bit screen, most people's screens, cannot display the entire range of information found within the RAW, so I had to push the shadows up to make it fit.



In case anyone else is scratching their head over the 8 bit thing when your screen reports 24 bits, it's 8 bits for each of red, green, blue. Which does sort of make me wonder why they haven't gone to 30 bits, you'd get 10 bits for each color in a 32 bit word.


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## privatebydesign (Sep 27, 2014)

Lee Jay said:


> ajfotofilmagem said:
> 
> 
> > Lee Jay said:
> ...



What the hell does "approximate EVF view" mean, is it the base exposure pre processing or not?


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## luckydude (Sep 27, 2014)

Keith_Reeder said:


> Valvebounce said:
> 
> 
> > it amazes me that peoples first reaction was oh no Canon is under attack, circle the wagons!
> ...



Um, I'm heavily invested in Canon (4 bodies including the 5DIII and about $30K in Canon glass) so I'm not a Nikon or Sony fan boy. But you are coming off as a Canon apologist.

I understand exactly why the DR people are bitching, more DR is just more goodness. Is anyone going to argue that they want *less* dynamic range? It's just another tool that you can use.

The Sony sensors are clearly better than the Canon sensors right now. Sitting around and making excuses for Canon isn't going to help encourage Canon to get their shit together and give us some new sensors. The 7DII (which I was really hoping would be a 5DIII in crop form) is giving us a warmed over 70D sensor. Say what you will about reduced noise in jpegs (which I like, that's nice) but I was really disappointed to wait 5 years and get a recycled sensor. That's just a bummer. Canon needs to step up and apologizing for them and denying the value that the DR brings to the table isn't going to help Canon step up. I think we all like our Canon equipment and we'd all be happier with a better sensor.

It's one thing to wish for something that doesn't exist, it's quite another to see clearly better technology in a different brand. Come on Canon, step it up. Please.


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## Lee Jay (Sep 27, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> What the hell does "approximate EVF view" mean, is it the base exposure pre processing or not?



Default raw conversion, much like the out-of-camera JPEG or the camera's output to an EVF.


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## V8Beast (Sep 27, 2014)

ChristopherMarkPerez said:


> Put the other way around: If people spent this kind of energy in making images instead of Grandstanding just think of how many wonderful things there would be to share with the world. Gods! People might actually perk up, set down their TV remotes, stop their Twittering, and pay attention to you!! You might actually become famous, rich and recognized during your lifetime for outstanding work!!!



I see you're point, and I am in complete agreement with you, but personally sometimes I have to take a step back and remind myself that Canon Rumors is a "gear forum." Hence, most the talk revolves around gear. 

There are plenty of other photography forums that I visit where 99% of the focus is on imaging technique and sharing beautiful photography. Gear is rarely discussed. When I get sick of the DR debates, I just visit those sites at marvel at the wonderful images talented photogs produce with all types of different gear.


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## V8Beast (Sep 27, 2014)

luckydude said:


> The Sony sensors are clearly better than the Canon sensors right now. Sitting around and making excuses for Canon isn't going to help encourage Canon to get their S___ together and give us some new sensors.



The best way to do this is to stop buying Canon gear. That's why I can't fathom why people who state that low ISO DR is the most important factor in their photographic needs prefer complaining on forums instead of putting their money where there mouths are by switching to SoNikon. 

If landscape photography represented a lucrative chunk of the DSLR market, you could bet your sweet hiney that Canon would focus more effort on improving low ISO DR, whether it's through improving its own sensors or buying Exmors from Sony. 

Just like refuting the low ISO DR superiority of SoNikon over Canon is ludicrous, so is hoping that complaining incessantly on a forum will somehow inspire Canon to improve its low ISO DR. 

Talk is cheap. If anyone wants to hit Canon where it hurts, give another company your money. Then Canon will care.


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## DarioVE (Sep 27, 2014)

some people take this DR thing like a pride offence.
It's only one of the latest issue to improve to reach the recent competitor.
Many years ago someone thought the af was for dumbs, the in camera exposimetre too ...
For those who think more DR it is non necessary, well good for them, probably they have better tecnique while shooting, better lighting, better pp abilities, tripod acessories etc.
From a manifacturer stand point i think it is better to provide an easier camera/instrument so the mediocre people (like probably me) can achieve better results with less effort, so you sell more camera.
Luckily it seems more dr does'nt have any downside, so why can't we be all happy?

The way jrista introduced this particular thread is not trolling, is informative for me once, gratefully, he will provide the raw file of a typical landscape in hdr lighting circumstances. 


P.s. i'm not english native speaking i apologize for any mistake, in any case i don't intend to offend anyone.


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## jrista (Sep 27, 2014)

luckydude said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > My 8-bit screen, your 8-bit screen, most people's screens, cannot display the entire range of information found within the RAW, so I had to push the shadows up to make it fit.
> ...



It's 24-bits total, but that is all channels added. The dynamic range is limited per-channel...so, since it's 8-bit per channel, dynamic range of a screen is 8 stops.


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## jrista (Sep 27, 2014)

V8Beast said:


> Talk is cheap. If anyone wants to hit Canon where it hurts, give another company your money. Then Canon will care.



Absolutely. I wouldn't recommend buying the A7r as a GP camera, but as a landscape camera it's pretty awesome. You could add it to your kit, use your existing Canon lenses (or Zeiss or Sigma EF lenses), and make that "pocketbook vote" without breaking the bank.


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## V8Beast (Sep 27, 2014)

jrista said:


> Absolutely. I wouldn't recommend buying the A7r as a GP camera, but as a landscape camera it's pretty awesome. You could add it to your kit, use your existing Canon lenses (or Zeiss or Sigma EF lenses), and make that "pocketbook vote" without breaking the bank.



Not to put too much pressure on you, but I'm looking forward to your A7R landscapes. Not because I'm looking to buy one, but because I've been debating taking the family out to Colorado for vacation for quite some time. Your photographic efforts could very much help the Colorado tourism industry ;D If it weren't so flat and boring here in Texas, I might have more of an interest in shooting landscapes


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## Simba (Sep 27, 2014)

+1. I really appropriate jrista spending time to explain a lot of technical details. His tone is calm and his explanation is informative. Choosing a brand is personal, but knowledge is universal. Keep it up! Thanks.



DarioVE said:


> some people take this DR thing like a pride offence.
> It's only one of the latest issue to improve to reach the recent competitor.
> Many years ago someone thought the af was for dumbs, the in camera exposimetre too ...
> For those who think more DR it is non necessary, well good for them, probably they have better tecnique while shooting, better lighting, better pp abilities, tripod acessories etc.
> ...


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## turtle (Sep 27, 2014)

To the naysayers, just stop kidding yourselves. I own tonnes of Canon gear and the additional dynamic range with Sony sensors is huge and hugely useful. To those who say its not useful, you've evidently never shot night scenes, where point light sources are mixed with deep shadow, or a long list of other scenarios that would bring out terrible banding with the Canons.

This 'those who think DR is important obviously think they are better than all the Canon pros' is nonsensical, because it assumes that those same Canon pros would not care for more DR. How on earth would you know? I sell prints for thousands of dollars and I shoot Canon.... and I think Canon needs to make a big leap in DR or I will sell up and move on. Is that clear enough?


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## drjlo (Sep 27, 2014)

jrista said:


> First impressions, the 5D III takes warmer images, with more vibrancy than the A7r. However, I feel the A7r colors are more realistic (this is when using them on Camera Neutral, and importing with Camera Neutral in LR).



That's a little unexpected, as others (including myself) feel A7r colors are a bit further from neutral than Canon. I personally found both deviate from what eyes perceive but Canon closer than Sony A7r, coming in from almost opposite directions.


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## skoobey (Sep 27, 2014)

*As an enthusiast you want LESS dynamic range.* That gives you great contrast out of the camera.

DR is great for pulling detail out of shadow and highlights, but it really is mostly useful when trying to correct the exposure, or when you're actually retouching the image.


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## Sporgon (Sep 27, 2014)

V8Beast said:


> ChristopherMarkPerez said:
> 
> 
> > Put the other way around: If people spent this kind of energy in making images instead of Grandstanding just think of how many wonderful things there would be to share with the world. Gods! People might actually perk up, set down their TV remotes, stop their Twittering, and pay attention to you!! You might actually become famous, rich and recognized during your lifetime for outstanding work!!!
> ...



Don't you think the irony of this is that many of the images shown on CR match or even surpass those on other sites ? 

The DR debate can only centre around unrealistic, chronically underexposed images, and the onslaught of missionaries using CR as a platform for their zeal in unrelenting. 

To the OP: let's see you capture a scene that includes the actual sun disc recorded in the EV range and lift shadows from a shaded area with the A7r. This is the only situation in which my Canon gear cannot cope. 

Of course you will fail. I know because I have already tried with a D800. That's why myself and hundreds, nay thousands of 'landscape' orientated photographers are still using Canon.


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## darrellrhodesmiller (Sep 27, 2014)

i have both, and i choose the right tool for the right job.. 

i REALLY love the a7r for its size.. it doesnt draw much attention.. and it works great with canon lens with the metabones adapter. i use focus peaking as much as the autofocus.. both work just fine. its not a fast camera.. its not meant to be. but its image quality (sharpness) and color are better than the 5dmk3 even with the same lens. Battery life is TERRIBLE.. it takes a pocket full of batteries if you are going to go on a day trip somewhere. Luckily the batteries are cheap. Interface is also a little rough around the edges.. but for a v1 camera is really remarkable. 

the 5dmk3 is a far more well rerounded camera. It focuses fast, battery lasts forever, and the silent mode is great for weddings. When i dont know exactly what i'm getting into i take this camera and know i'll come home with some good clean shots. 

Sony is pushing hard.. i hope it pushes canon to creating some remarkable stuff. time will tell i guess.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 27, 2014)

Khalai said:


> I'm about to get a little philosophical here:
> 
> Now, before any ranting is going to ensue - I'm not disputing DR advantage of Exmor (I've never did actually), but...
> 
> ...



With various tonal compression and local contrast enhancements you can often make good use of the extra stops even on current displays. By 2018 they expects lots of HDR displays to start shipping though and by 2020 they hope to ship nothing but 4k+, ultra wide gamut, HDR monitors (with 2018 target if possible).


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 27, 2014)

K-amps said:


> Hi Jon: Thanks for tackling this polarizing topic. Canon makes a great system, and it will be obviously greater still of they used exmors in some regards...
> 
> But sensors apart.... as a novice not being able to be as articulate as you guys, I have always felt, that where Canon got beat on DR, was not the sensor, rather the footprint and subsequent processing of the raw file. Whatever algorithms Canon uses to build the RAW file and construct shadow (i.e. half missing) data; needs a re-haul.
> 
> ...



No, that is not how it works. Although the sensor sensor part of the Canon sensor is good, so you are correct in the the original analog level of capture is good at the most basic level. But it's not the RAW processing or formation that goes badly (and if it was just that, they'd have fixed it years ago). It's the conversion of the analog sensor's capture into digital where it goes bad. The use off chip analog to digital conversion and oh they don't use digital CDS on the sensor either though and don't this and that and it leads to banding and read noise.


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## V8Beast (Sep 27, 2014)

Sporgon said:


> Don't you think the irony of this is that many of the images shown on CR match or even surpass those on other sites ?



I try not to hang out on sites with mediocre photography  I like perusing the sites and portfolios of others that make me strive to become a better photographer 

Surely, there are many talented photographers on this forum. However, there are many people that run their mouths yet never post sample images. Gotta wonder how much their gear is really holding them back.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 27, 2014)

Khalai said:


> Also, there seems to be extreme approach from those using Exmor - underexposing generally while maintaining highlights, then pushing shadows. But with e.g. landscape, you can expose for shadows and control highlights with filters (as I do) to tame the dreaded Canon shadows (which I'm yet to see, pushed my 6D files up to 2 stops, with no banding and only little noise, which does not impede the general quality).



You can't control the highlights in most scenes with filters. Only simple scenes where you have bright up top, horizon and then dark below.

You can use multiple shots at times, although you are forced to use tripod at all times then. Also, if the scene has movement then forget it. Even light breezes can make havoc often enough.



> I see the problem in the DR debate being one camp strongly advocating (quite narrow in my opinion) way of pushing shadows (and everything else is blasphemy/wrong/you-name-it),



FOr the most part I don't think the wanting more DR side is like that. I've said thousands of times that there are infinite number of shots you can take where the DR won't even matter at all with where even Canon is at today.



> while the opposing extreme opinios is acting like there is no difference whatsoever. The truth will lie (as usual) in the middle.
> 
> Also what I find rather ironical is your A7r evaluation, that while the sensor is superior, ergonomics, AF, viewfinder and need for an adapter/lack of broad lineup of lenses have also to be considered and are clearly not satisfactory for you. I guess it's always a compromise, there is no ideal system and all that matters is, where you put your priorities.



Yes, which is also why it would be so nice if Canon just went to a new fab and improved their sensors.



> In my case, I gladly give up 2 EV of DR for all the other things that makes my photography easier (OVF, supreme ergonomics and intuitive UI, great lenses etc.). But that's for everyone to decide, where their priorities lie.



overall I'd agree too. I couldn't simply give up Canon bodies and use nothing but an A7R+A7S.
Going all Nikon (with A7S for video) for stills would be a lot more feasible. Although due to UI and lenses I'd certainly rather stay with Canon if possible.



> _
> (And there will always be constant complainers, unhappy with camera encompassing 30 EV of DR, lightspeed AF covering whole sensor and magical unicors carrying their 14-600/1.4 lens around  )_



to be fair though, low ISO DR has stagnated for a long time now, it's been 7 years, andif the 5D4 doesn't improve it then you are talking more than a decade, that is a lot of shooting opportunities over more than a decade!


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## Dantana (Sep 27, 2014)

Jrista,

Thanks for comparing things side to side in a visible way. Even in an admittedly unrealistic subject, the comparison of DR is there.

The thing for me is, and maybe this is just because I'm getting older, the whole thing seems a bit silly.

Yes the Sony sensors have more DR. That's great. having more latitude and useful information has always been a good thing, going way back into my film days. I'm never going to turn down more range.

So, I suppose if I was going to buy a new camera or a whole new system right now, this instant, I would look at Sony/Nikon gear. But I'm not looking for a new camera, and certainly not looking for a new system. I have had my 6D for a year now and I plan on having it for quite a few more.

Canon will come out with a sensor with more DR. It's inevitable. Nikon/Sony will improve their high ISO performance. It's also inevitable. But what is also inevitable is that at some point those numbers won't be enough, and people will be asking for better High ISO performance or more DR. The status quo will never be enough for some people. I can't afford to be chasing one statistic after another, perhaps others can.

The part of this that feels silly to me is that we have tools with capabilities today that I never dreamed possible. If you can't get a good image out of them, you're doing something wrong. Picking a subject, and the time to shoot, and the day to shoot and the time of year to shoot, and judging the weather, and an infinite amount of other decisions we make are all part of photography.

So again, thanks for the images. It's nice to see them. I am also looking forward to seeing some landscape shots from you taken with the Sony not because of the sensor, but because I like the landscapes that I have seen on your site. When I look at them, I'm not thinking about noise and banding and... They are just nice images.


----------



## emko (Sep 27, 2014)

i am i the only one here who does not give a crap about camera brand? i just got a A7r just for the high MP and DR that the 5d3 lacks. You guys should grow up and not be defending/loyal to a brand get what ever camera works for you. If the DR sucks on Canon just sell it and buy the camera that is better for you this is the only way and if Canon does improve in these areas get a Canon who cares just stop defending the brand when its clear the Canon sensor is not as good as other brands this may not be the case for your current use but many people see what the other sensor can do and will and want to use that capability.


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## Aglet (Sep 28, 2014)

Sporgon said:


> To the OP: let's see you capture a scene that includes the actual sun disc recorded in the EV range and lift shadows from a shaded area with the A7r. This is the only situation in which my Canon gear cannot cope.
> 
> Of course you will fail. I know because I have already tried with a D800. That's why myself and hundreds, nay thousands of 'landscape' orientated photographers are still using Canon.



you mean like this one?..
www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=8105.msg161888#msg161888
good luck using a Digic 4 or 5 Canon for a shot like the first one, you would not be able to re-tone the image to look like it does to the eye.
How does a Canon user cope with such a shot? Cry and go home? Spend many hours in post, trying to tame the stripes and fix the muddy dark tones to have some sort of semi-realistic texture? HAHAHA! Bracket?!? ;D

the last 2 in that post could even be done with a 7D, not that I'd chose one if I had an ABC alternative available.


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## Bennymiata (Sep 28, 2014)

It surprises me that no-one has tried to put a Sony sensor into a Canon 5d3 and make the perfect camera.
Swapping engines and transmissions in cars is not uncommon, so why not swap sensors in cameras?


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 28, 2014)

Bennymiata said:


> It surprises me that no-one has tried to put a Sony sensor into a Canon 5d3 and make the perfect camera.
> Swapping engines and transmissions in cars is not uncommon, so why not swap sensors in cameras?



This is much harder.


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## Zv (Sep 28, 2014)

Bennymiata said:


> It surprises me that no-one has tried to put a Sony sensor into a Canon 5d3 and make the perfect camera.
> Swapping engines and transmissions in cars is not uncommon, so why not swap sensors in cameras?



I don't think it's a simple as changing a lens or a focusing screen. The sensor is the guts of the camera and it's hard wired in. I'd imagine Sony uses completely different components than Canon so you can't just stick it on and expect it to work. Then you need to programme the digic processor to work with the new sensor. So you'd need the electrical engineering skills from both Sony and Canon plus the coding skills of the ML team to stand a chance. How many attempts would it even take? Do you wanna buy a bunch of $3000 cameras just so you can play Dr Frankenstein with them? 

I bet there is some lunatic out there that is probably doing this very thing as I type this!


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## Rofflesaurrr (Sep 28, 2014)

jrista said:


> @Khalai: No, there are no screens that can natively display 14 or more stops at once. However, it is for that very reason that we push shadows. A RAW is rendered to the screen with a tone curve. That tone curve compresses the information in a RAW, crushing the blacks and bleeding out the highlights. The middle part of the image fits on the screen...the middle 8 stops.
> 
> The purpose of shadow recovery is to bring back the shadows that were crushed and the highlights that were bleed out. The highlights aren't clipped, they are just rendered such that they appear clipped. The shadows aren't pure black...they are just rendered such that they appear pure black or nearly so. In the actual RAW file, in linear space, all that information is decidedly NOT black or white. It's all non-zero/non-clipped information that can be utilized.
> 
> ...




Pardon me if I'm incorrect, but although the bit-depth of a display can limit it's dynamic range, it's mainly about the levels of color gradation that are possible. Contrast ratio is the equivalent of dynamic range and that's mostly limited by the display technology itself. My main monitor (HP DreamColor) is an IPS display with a 10-bit panel, and can display 1024 levels of gradation per sub pixel. It's measured contrast ratio is slightly over 1000:1, and that's nearly 10 stops of dynamic range which is decent. Lower end IPS displays are around 9 stops . My previous monitors were VA panels with 3000:1 contrast ratios (~11 stops of DR). Now my reference monitor, which is a professional plasma display, is 12-bit over dual link HD-SDI with 16 bit A/D converter. It has a 30,000:1 static contrast ratio enabling it to display approximately 14.3 stops of dynamic range. OLED displays, which are not widely available yet in anything other than phones are capable of much, much more. 

ANYWAY.... 

I'm a big fan of natural lighting whenever possible. The ceiling bounce flash in Lee Jay's photo worked extremely well and turned out a great photo. However, if that same flash were used in your living room scene, you'd lose all the soft shadows in the room from the window light and it would look rather... odd. Same thing with Keith's cockpit photo. The lighting is clearly artificial and it makes it seem as if there is bright sunlight pouring in from behind, which is not the case. All the shadows are also at the wrong angle for the light to be coming in the front glass. Sorry Keith, I'm not trying to bash your work, just critiquing. 

I think if I had to shoot your living room scene without a flash on a Canon camera, I would blow the highlights a bit and then pull them in post. I have better luck recovering highlights with Canon RAWs than I do shadows. 

Thanks for the RAW photo samples. I do wish Canon sensors had more DR, but like others have said. There's more to a camera system than the sensors. IMO Nikon ergonomics are crap, and Sony is full of bleeding edge technology with botched usability. While the A7R and A7S do deliver some outstanding results, I couldn't have one or the other as my day to day camera.


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## privatebydesign (Sep 28, 2014)

Rofflesaurrr said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > @Khalai: No, there are no screens that can natively display 14 or more stops at once. However, it is for that very reason that we push shadows. A RAW is rendered to the screen with a tone curve. That tone curve compresses the information in a RAW, crushing the blacks and bleeding out the highlights. The middle part of the image fits on the screen...the middle 8 stops.
> ...



Exactly!

There is so much bad information in this thread it is depressing.


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## privatebydesign (Sep 28, 2014)

Aglet said:


> Sporgon said:
> 
> 
> > To the OP: let's see you capture a scene that includes the actual sun disc recorded in the EV range and lift shadows from a shaded area with the A7r. This is the only situation in which my Canon gear cannot cope.
> ...



Yeh, you can't do that with a Canon..........


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## jrista (Sep 28, 2014)

Well, I can see the insults have started to fly. Sad. This community is really crummy at times. Some truly nasty people here.

On my front, today was a bit of a dud, multiple times. The A7r has a continuous bracketing mode, up to 5 frames. I tried it a bunch, and could never get it to work...it just reproduced the same exposure for all the frames. I ended up trying the manual bracketing, but I had to touch the camera, and there was no delay option. I know for a fact that the camera moved between frames, maybe even during the exposures, so who knows if they will turn out. I really love the IQ from this camera...but yeah, it has some major flaws (at least with Canon lenses...I cannot comment how good it is with native E-mount lenses, I suspect better.)

Hauled back to a site along the indian peaks range where I was hoping to get some nice mountainous landscape shots, but it turned out someone built a ranch on the land, so I could no longer get up there. Bust for the real landscapes...go ZIP today.

My parents live up here, and I set up in their yard to do some astrophotography. For some reason, I simply couldn't get the mount polar aligned earlier in the night. Took me a couple of hours to zero in on a good alignment, maybe another 5 minutes left of tweaking to fully dial it in, and clouds rolled in. ALMOST had it, and the night was over.

The worst was yet to come, though. While packing everything up, I caught my foot on something, knee went down hard on solid rock. Gouged the crap out of it, it's bleeding rather profusely right now...and it's swelling up like a balloon.  

I can barely walk...not sure if I really damaged something or just banged it up good. I don't know what will happen tomorrow. I am not sure if I'll be able to walk, certainly in a lot of pain. I have a couple more sites that I want to visit tomorrow. Lighting was TERRIBLE today...really ugly, flat, direct, BORING. I managed some aspen shots, none of which I really like. Absolutely no color in the sky at sunset...blue faded to faint yellow-orange then gray right at the horizon, and the light just sucked, even during golden hour. I don't know that tomorrow will be any different. If I can walk, I'll try a couple more spots, see if I can get something useful. Otherwise, the aspen shots will have to do for comparison purposes. I'm not sure how well they will demonstrate things...

:\ Some days just suck.


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## Aglet (Sep 28, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> Yeh, you can't do that with a Canon..........



HAHA!

Do you expect me to take your example seriously?!?

C'mon, in my example the "pushed" shadow areas are still darker than the shadow areas in your "before" shot! ;D
You're not in a DR-limited scene. Other than the sun being in frame, that's some might flat dull scenery.

A large part of the lower right corner of my before shot is rendered RGB (0-255) 0,0,0 by the camera's internal jpg engine. In the after shot it's brought up the the mid-20s on average.
Your before shot dark area is about 11,17,20 brought up to about 22,35,42 in the after shot.

My Sol glint is not even clipped in the before shot; 248,247,218 is about the brightest pixel in the small image. In the after shot, it's still 249,246,212 so I'm not pulling my highlights down like in your example either.
My example is a proper ETTR shot to take advantage of the Exmor capabilities; maxing out the exposure at the brightest point in the image and re-curving the entire thing to bring back the tonality that is close to how it was visually perceived.

my after






vs your before





*If you want to come up with a good comparison, leave the 1DS3 at home, grab a current Digic 4 or 5 body and see if you can replicate this much DR and recovery in one shot.*

Thanks for playing tho. 

EDIT: bonus point for picking a similar composition


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## Aglet (Sep 28, 2014)

Sporgon said:


> Of course there will be those that say my Aldeburgh beach shot didn't hit the noise floor ? Is that the term that has been bandied about ?
> 
> Here is a frame that is from the faster exposure, this one not actually part of a pano sequence. The first is the original, converted from the raw, the second is the push from the same frame, the third is a 100% crop of the push. There has been no noise reduction applied, this is a straight conversion from DPP. It is a blue boat which doesn't make the job easier. The fourth is a very quick brush together of the two conversions to show that the 5DII has enough dynamic range to produce a stupid picture where the shaded foreground is lighter than the sky.
> 
> I do agree that the 5DII is not as good in this respect as cameras such as the 1DsIII, and certainly nothing like as good as the 6D, but it is more than adequate for what I wish to do.



You silly insult from prior post is mere water on my Exmor duck. Don't waste your energy, save it for the photoshop work you need to do on your images. 

Your dark areas, as presented, in this "dark" shot are still varying from a low of 1 or 2 to 5 or 6. So you may not have quite hit the noise floor.
AND you _might_ have a good copy of a 5D2. Jeez, my early model had MIDtone banding when viewed 1:1!


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## DarioVE (Sep 28, 2014)

@ Sporgon

it was already mentioned that DPP is better at develop cr2 raw expecially in the shadows, from this point your examples of the blue boat is very interesting even more with no noise reduction ...

it would be very useful if you would post your version of the 5D3 jrista file developed with your workflow so we have a direct comparision (i think jrista used lightroom since is similar to my results). In some way the windows area could be the clouds and the furniture the dark beach ... so even it is not intended to be an artistic shot i think it is informative.

I think it is probable that your DPP conversion would be better and i'm curios to see how much ...

In the end if not better sensor Canon could realise a better/powerful software or why not help Adobe improve the CR2 raw converter ??? Their DPP is free, they do not need to protect sales in this regard, maybe it is the opposite, there are many adobe customers that could get more out of canon so no need to search elsewhere.


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## tomscott (Sep 28, 2014)

A lot of these examples are worst case scenario pushing the tech as far as it can go.


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## Sporgon (Sep 28, 2014)

tomscott said:


> A lot of these examples are worst case scenario pushing the tech as far as it can go.



That's exactly right. The only reason I defend the Canon sensor is to refut the outrageouse comments that have been made against it by a few people. There seem to be thousands of people read CR but aren't members, and I guess many are inexperienced in photography, and it annoys the hell out of me thinking of those people reading some of the asinine comments made here, by people who are more versed in sounding like they know what they are talking about than actually producing pictures.


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## Sporgon (Sep 28, 2014)

DarioVE said:


> @ Sporgon
> 
> it was already mentioned that DPP is better at develop cr2 raw expecially in the shadows, from this point your examples of the blue boat is very interesting even more with no noise reduction ...
> 
> ...



In this case this morning it was actually converted in an old version of DPP. No noise reduction, shot at 100 ISO ( which is actually 73 on the 5DII). I'll have a look at the mkIII file but I'm guess it is chronically under exposed. You can't push zero data and get an acceptable result, whether it is riddled with read noise or not.


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## ChristopherMarkPerez (Sep 28, 2014)

Exactly.

Push the tech far enough and you'll find _something _you don't like.

I think what the original poster shows me is that the things Sony has over Canon is, literally, lost in the noise.

For every technical limit, I'll bet we can find an equally technical way of getting beyond that limit.

DR range not sufficient? Shoot three different exposures of the same scene and use luminosity masks to blend the exposures. The results will be much better in extreme dynamic ranges than anything you could take in a single shot and you'll have a lot more control over the end results.

Shadow noise got you concerned? They take multiple exposures of the same scene and then average. Noise reduction never had it so good.

Not enough mpixels? Shot multiple sections and stitch them together later. Ever interested in what a 25,000x10,000 pixel Canon 7D image might look like? I can tell you it's GLORIOUS!!! I have a series on iron and rivets that will soon be released and the details in la tour Eiffel is more amazing that you might realize.

I completely understand this is a "gear" forum and that I many times I ask why people aren't out taking photos. It can become monotonous at times. I get it. 

What I'd ask is why people demand the technology at the edges deliver on their Pet Peeve when what they have is more than sufficient to just about any task you throw at it?

No one has yet been able to show me how in the Real World these little technical edge differences will make my life as an image maker any better than it already is. That's now small the differences currently are in what is being discussed in these kinds of threads. Big differences that I can see? That's a different matter. Then we'd have something to discuss.

*My offer still stands:* I bring a stack of large prints made using cameras and lenses of different makes. I'll throw in Sony A7r/Zeiss/Leica/Canon/Nikon/Fuji/AF/manual focus. You get time to consider DR, resolution, MTF, or anything else you feel you know something about and know (in your heart of hears) really matters. You look at the prints and each time you can tell me what camera/lens made which image, I'll buy you a beer. Each time you miss, you buy me a beer.

This offer is open to one and all. Pro. non-Pro. Know-it-All. Newbie. Doesn't matter. Deal?




tomscott said:


> A lot of these examples are worst case scenario pushing the tech as far as it can go.


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## dtaylor (Sep 28, 2014)

* This is a far better test scene then a Coke box or anything else produced here for this topic. Kudos to jrista for that.

* Once again we see a pair of images where the _total dynamic range_ is nearly identical between Canon and Exmor (sorry DxO), but the noise in the Canon shot means the Exmor sensor has more _shadow latitude._ (Yes, I'm going to be a pain about using correct terminology.)

* Canon noise/banding overwhelms RAW NR with this combination of underexposure and a +4 or +5 push. No surprise there. I've had no trouble at +2.5, and can usually manage +3, but if highlight retention is driving your shadows deeper you're going to have noise, banding, and detail loss with Canon.

* That said, this test scene demonstrates something I've said all along: the range between both sensors being OK and both sensors needing HDR is rather narrow. Despite the severe underexposure the highlights were not preserved and are not recoverable. If they don't matter then you don't need to underexpose this scene to this degree and the 5D3 will work fine. If they do matter then neither sensor can handle this scene without lighting or HDR...and the 5D3 will work fine.

Sometimes Exmor is easier to work with, or produces the better shadows in print, or lets you work with one frame where you would want two on Canon. Just not as often as some imagine.

* I don't think jrista deserves snark for this thread. He started a DR specific thread with fair samples.

* At the same time, I don't think anyone deserves to be called a "Canon fanboy" for discussing the practicality of this shadow latitude difference, especially in light of some of the hyperbole seen on this forum.


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## Don Haines (Sep 28, 2014)

dtaylor said:


> At the same time, I don't think anyone deserves to be called a "Canon fanboy" for discussing the practicality of this shadow latitude difference, especially in light of some of the hyperbole seen on this forum.


+1

Personally, I don't understand how someone can be accused of being a "Canon Fanboy" for pointing out that another company does something better. Could someone please explain the logic to me?


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## privatebydesign (Sep 28, 2014)

Don Haines said:


> dtaylor said:
> 
> 
> > At the same time, I don't think anyone deserves to be called a "Canon fanboy" for discussing the practicality of this shadow latitude difference, especially in light of some of the hyperbole seen on this forum.
> ...



Don,

You are falling into that fault of yours, hoping that any more than 1-3% of the replies here are based on logic. 

I try to have "the discussion" but any attempts are derailed, disallowed, disputed, or the best one, taken in a completely different direction, to such a degree that it just isn't worth the effort.

There are some really smart people here with some very bad ways of putting things. I appreciate the effort jrista tried to make here, but the subject is so corrosive whatever approach is taken it seems ******* to failure.

From my own point of view I was genuinely interested in the topic, not least because I shoot a lot of images like the first post, interiors where I need something outside. What the files illustrate to me is the Exmor cannot do what I, personally, would need any better than my Canon, the shadow "detail", whilst being noise free, still has no tonality. 

And that is just a simple issue of maths and what happens when the output from a linear capture "curve" is changed to a dramatic gamma style tone curve after a dramatic gamma tone curve has already been applied. If you take the bottom 5% of the tones and stretch it to fill the bottom 35% of the tonality then you have less than 1/7th the tonality, and that doesn't cut it for what I shoot in DR limited scenes. Further, the blooming is as bad in both images, and that doesn't work either.

So, whilst I appreciate for others the Exmor might be the answer, for me, who does regularly shoot DR limited scenes, the Exmor is not the answer and Jrista's images have proved that beyond any shadow of a doubt.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 28, 2014)

V8Beast said:


> Sporgon said:
> 
> 
> > Don't you think the irony of this is that many of the images shown on CR match or even surpass those on other sites ?
> ...



A lot of people like to keep their photography separate from all the tech/Canon marketing mess pushing controversy and feel freer to just call it all as they see it and so on.

And for the record, when you do come across the portfolios of those who ask for more DR, I have to say they generally are among the more impressive and comprehensive ones you'll find while many of those attacking them and talking about going out and shooting end up having a portfolio consisting of three, non-artistically, blurred photos of a cat in the back yard (not in your case though, just to make that clear though and for all I disagree with what and how he posts here, Sporgon does have a good portfolio too).

I mean heck did you miss the flickr account linked to earlier in this thread?


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 28, 2014)

Zv said:


> Bennymiata said:
> 
> 
> > It surprises me that no-one has tried to put a Sony sensor into a Canon 5d3 and make the perfect camera.
> ...



You need to replace almost all of the electronics, design new custom chips, write a new firmware from scratch.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 28, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> Aglet said:
> 
> 
> > Sporgon said:
> ...



That example was only like a half stop or stop lift of lower mid-tones, not near black areas.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 28, 2014)

Sporgon said:


> I _never_ get noise or banding in images taken with the 5DII, not in blue skies, dark shadow - nowhere. Either you had a real dud of a camera or a real dud of a brain. Maybe both, I'm being generous.



If you've never once seen noise or banding in 5D2 shadows then you never push it or use DPP which now apparently mushes shadows to nothing, maybe not much banding or noise, but raw mush, no details at all either.

I mean come on, you can say it doesn't matter for what and how you shoot, but to try to imply that nobody ever sees banding or noise in 5D2 low ISO shadows unless they have a defective copy, come on man.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 28, 2014)

DarioVE said:


> @ Sporgon
> 
> it was already mentioned that DPP is better at develop cr2 raw expecially in the shadows, from this point your examples of the blue boat is very interesting even more with no noise reduction ... In the end if not better sensor Canon could realise a better/powerful software or why not help Adobe improve the CR2 raw converter ??? Their DPP is free, they do not need to protect sales in this regard, maybe it is the opposite, there are many adobe customers that could get more out of canon so no need to search elsewhere.



That is debatable. DPP shows less banding and noise in shadows now, but it also gets a very mushy, sometimes almost posterized, very fake, digital, waxy, no detail look IMO. Personally I'd call that putting lipstick on a pig.


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## deleteme (Sep 28, 2014)

jrista said:


> I received my A7r rental from LensRentals today. I've been working, but I took a few minutes to snap some quick shots of my living room,



If you fixed the verticals your house will sell faster. 

Actually thanks for the comparison. I can see a difference but I am not sure if it means much to me. When I started photography transparency films gave us a rather compressed range that we opened up or compressed as needed with lighting, reflectors, scrims etc.. It was really a matter of selecting what range we wanted to have reproduced and the mood that the reproduction would carry.
A very long tonal range compressed into a print that revealed ALL the detail in highlights and shadow leaves us with a flat image. The flat image may be delightful in and of itself but if drama and contrast is what you want then one must choose what will be dropped in favor of the impact of the image.
So while I would be happy to get more DR, the fact that the A7 gives incrementally more is scarcely reason to abandon my tools. The fact that it has a small form, lens adaptability and high resolution are far more compelling reasons for me. The poor battery life is a very real drawback.


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## raptor3x (Sep 28, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> DarioVE said:
> 
> 
> > @ Sporgon
> ...



Yeah, especially with the new version of DPP even the lowest non-zero level of noise reduction is very heavy handed.


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## V8Beast (Sep 28, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> A lot of people like to keep their photography separate from all the tech/Canon marketing mess pushing controversy and feel freer to just call it all as they see it and so on.



For every person that "likes to keep their photography separate from all the tech/Canon marketing mess pushing controversy" there's another person too busy arguing on forums to produce anything beyond watermarked snapshots on flickr. 



> And for the record, when you do come across the portfolios of those who ask for more DR, I have to say they generally are among the more impressive and comprehensive ones you'll find while many of those attacking them and talking about going out and shooting end up having a portfolio consisting of three, non-artistically, blurred photos of a cat in the back yard (not in your case though, just to make that clear though and for all I disagree with what and how he posts here, Sporgon does have a good portfolio too).
> 
> I mean heck did you miss the flickr account linked to earlier in this thread?



Please. There are lame or non-existent portfolios on both sides of the DR debate, just like there are incredibly spectacular portfolios on both sides of the DR debate. Trying to assess the skill set of everyone who has an opinion on the DR debate based on the tiny yet very vocal fraction of the population that posts on CR is preposterous. I don't doubt that you perceive that those seeking more DR have more impressive portfolios. What I seriously doubt is how precisely your own personal perception reflects the skill set of the entire photography world as a whole.


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## jrista (Sep 28, 2014)

I really screwed up my knee, and weather is blowing in rather fiercely now. I can hardly walk, so hiking up to my landscape spots (Long Lake is a great one, but it's a decent hike up past Brainard Lake, which is a nice area...and I can't take any hikes like that now. ). 

I'll see what I can do about getting some more demonstration shots. Given the tone of this thread, I don't think it will matter much...same old stuff, same old retorts, same old nastiness. I simply set out to demonstrate the differences, as best as possible...which required an extreme situation. It doesn't matter if you always do a 5-stop push, even with a one or two stop push, the differences can be realized. 

I'm pretty dismayed at some of the insults being thrown, not even at myself, it's just not necessary (Sporgon!) We can be civil about this issue.


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## Don Haines (Sep 28, 2014)

jrista said:


> I really screwed up my knee, and weather is blowing in rather fiercely now. I can hardly walk, so hiking up to my landscape spots (Long Lake is a great one, but it's a decent hike up past Brainard Lake, which is a nice area...and I can't take any hikes like that now. ).
> 
> I'll see what I can do about getting some more demonstration shots. Given the tone of this thread, I don't think it will matter much...same old stuff, same old retorts, same old nastiness. I simply set out to demonstrate the differences, as best as possible...which required an extreme situation. It doesn't matter if you always do a 5-stop push, even with a one or two stop push, the differences can be realized.
> 
> I'm pretty dismayed at some of the insults being thrown, not even at myself, it's just not necessary (Sporgon!) We can be civil about this issue.


I am waiting the results with an open mind.


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## Marsu42 (Sep 28, 2014)

jrista said:


> The way LR reports tonality, it's POST-render!!! In the Exmor, there is WAAAY more tonality in the region that LR reports as the bottom 5% than in the Canon file. I believe it is extremely misleading to utilize LR's dropper tool to measure tonality, since it is not measuring the linear data.



Interesting point, I didn't know that (cannot read all posts about dr )



jrista said:


> I really screwed up my knee, and weather is blowing in rather fiercely now. I can hardly walk, so hiking up to my landscape spots (Long Lake is a great one, but it's a decent hike up past Brainard Lake, which is a nice area...and I can't take any hikes like that now. ).



Get better soon! If you can manage sooner or later I'd also like to see some comparison images esp. in connection with the low 5% tonality you described.

I am using Magic Lantern to boost the dynamic range, but with the way it works it reduces detail in the very high and low histogram regions where just one part of the interlaced image caputres data. If you happen to have installed ML by now and reached dual_iso in the menu, maybe you can also include a 100/800 and 100/400 ML shot - that would be conclusive.


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## Sporgon (Sep 28, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> Sporgon said:
> 
> 
> > I _never_ get noise or banding in images taken with the 5DII, not in blue skies, dark shadow - nowhere. Either you had a real dud of a camera or a real dud of a brain. Maybe both, I'm being generous.
> ...



Honestly I don't. My 5DII has always been as clean as a silent whistle in blue skies. However I think you are probably right in saying I don't push much. One stop push, one stop pull, that is always enough for me.

The 5DII has a fair amount of highlight latitude and headroom, much more than the 5D ever had, but it hates chronic under exposure, so I don't chronically under expose. Simples. 

But anyway the 5DII is 2009 tech, so it's hardly relevant to judge it against a D8x0 anyway. The 6D has significantly more latitude than the 5DII and that's a more relevant comparison.


----------



## Sporgon (Sep 28, 2014)

jrista said:


> I really screwed up my knee, and weather is blowing in rather fiercely now. I can hardly walk, so hiking up to my landscape spots (Long Lake is a great one, but it's a decent hike up past Brainard Lake, which is a nice area...and I can't take any hikes like that now. ).
> 
> I'll see what I can do about getting some more demonstration shots. Given the tone of this thread, I don't think it will matter much...same old stuff, same old retorts, same old nastiness. I simply set out to demonstrate the differences, as best as possible...which required an extreme situation. It doesn't matter if you always do a 5-stop push, even with a one or two stop push, the differences can be realized.
> 
> I'm pretty dismayed at some of the insults being thrown, not even at myself, it's just not necessary (Sporgon!) We can be civil about this issue.



I'm interested to see the images too. If I could make a suggestion: don't get carried away with 5 or 6 stop pushes in scenes. It's just too extreme, most seem to agree on that. I'd like to see some sunlit landscapes shot into or across the sun, holding as much highlight as possible but not the sun disc. Then see if you can get the tonality and luminosity in the shadow areas from one exposure.


----------



## Lee Jay (Sep 28, 2014)

jrista said:


> I really screwed up my knee, and weather is blowing in rather fiercely now. I can hardly walk, so hiking up to my landscape spots (Long Lake is a great one, but it's a decent hike up past Brainard Lake, which is a nice area...and I can't take any hikes like that now. ).
> 
> I'll see what I can do about getting some more demonstration shots. Given the tone of this thread, I don't think it will matter much...same old stuff, same old retorts, same old nastiness. I simply set out to demonstrate the differences, as best as possible...which required an extreme situation. It doesn't matter if you always do a 5-stop push, even with a one or two stop push, the differences can be realized.
> 
> I'm pretty dismayed at some of the insults being thrown, not even at myself, it's just not necessary (Sporgon!) We can be civil about this issue.



I often fly off of Nern lake at Long Lake Park.


----------



## zlatko (Sep 28, 2014)

Aglet said:


> Sorry, tools like that do not meet _my_ standards of image quality, not when they come with that kind of price tag.
> If you're happy with them, great. But image quality like this is the reason I dumped Canon and went to ABC cameras.
> Most people likely would not notice the noise, I sure do, much as I listen to the silence between the music.



Apparently your standards of image quality are higher than those of photographers who shoot with Canon ... Sam Abell, David Burnett, Patrick Demarchelier, Greg Gorman, Lauren Greenfield, Gregory Heisler, David Hume Kennerly, Douglas Kirkland, Antonin Kratochvil, Vincent Laforet, Annie Liebovitz, Don McCullin, Eric Meola, Peter Read Miller, James Nachtwey, Martin Parr, Paolo Pellegrin, Denis Reggie, Sebastiao Salgado, Mario Sorrenti, Pete Souza, Joyce Tenneson, Damon Winter, etc. I know some of them don't shoot Canon exclusively, but with all of the talk about Canon's poor sensors, it's a wonder they shoot Canon at all. Those folks just don't have image quality standards like you do, or maybe they just photograph easy-peasy stuff without too much dynamic range.


----------



## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 29, 2014)

V8Beast said:


> LetTheRightLensIn said:
> 
> 
> > A lot of people like to keep their photography separate from all the tech/Canon marketing mess pushing controversy and feel freer to just call it all as they see it and so on.
> ...



So you think, based upon nothing. Maybe you'd be surprised.



> And for the record, when you do come across the portfolios of those who ask for more DR, I have to say they generally are among the more impressive and comprehensive ones you'll find while many of those attacking them and talking about going out and shooting end up having a portfolio consisting of three, non-artistically, blurred photos of a cat in the back yard (not in your case though, just to make that clear though and for all I disagree with what and how he posts here, Sporgon does have a good portfolio too).
> 
> I mean heck did you miss the flickr account linked to earlier in this thread?



Please. There are lame or non-existent portfolios on both sides of the DR debate, just like there are incredibly spectacular portfolios on both sides of the DR debate. Trying to assess the skill set of everyone who has an opinion on the DR debate based on the tiny yet very vocal fraction of the population that posts on CR is preposterous. I don't doubt that you perceive that those seeking more DR have more impressive portfolios. What I seriously doubt is how precisely your own personal perception reflects the skill set of the entire photography world as a whole.
[/quote]

That's kinda rich since you were the one who brought portfolios and hinted that the DR side is basically a bunch of zero portfolio types.

You were the one who started trying to make claims that one side had the portfolios.


----------



## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 29, 2014)

jrista said:


> I really screwed up my knee, and weather is blowing in rather fiercely now. I can hardly walk, so hiking up to my landscape spots (Long Lake is a great one, but it's a decent hike up past Brainard Lake, which is a nice area...and I can't take any hikes like that now. ).



ah man, sorry to hear that.
Hope it gets better sooner rather than later.


----------



## privatebydesign (Sep 29, 2014)

Aglet said:


> privatebydesign said:
> 
> 
> > Yeh, you can't do that with a Canon..........
> ...



Thanks for the compliment.

I posted that particular picture for two reasons, first because of the composition being so similar to yours, the second because I knew you would do the "oh but the 1Ds MkIII is the only Canon camera that could do that" so it is from a 2002 1D.


----------



## risc32 (Sep 29, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> Zv said:
> 
> 
> > Bennymiata said:
> ...



NOW YOU TELL ME! OMG i guess i gotta put this all back the way it was...
====
seriously, jrista, get better and keep up the good fight. I'm by your side in spirt. 

Sure this place isn't all rainbows and sausages, but it's pretty good overall. I've always been surprised that these disagreements don't quickly go down the road of, "ya? well your mother...." again overall pretty good. Lots of guys here are mostly into gear and perhaps never actually use their cameras. others will grab whatever they have and do their best. I'm much closer to the later. most of my nitpicks involve getting stuff done as efficiently as possible. I only wish i could fiddle with one image for hrs, and personally I don't see the example you posted as being so out of line. tons of people go all "natural light", and that's just what they would get.(personally i feel that most natural light shooters just don't know how to light but that's a horse of a different color) i guess you could go the other way and expose for the inside and then tweak out on the windows. i guess that would be better. at least it would have a smaller footprint on the... print, but whatever, i get it. 
some of you are hopelessly lost yet damn sure of where your are. to the point i don't care to bother looking the i forum, but then sometimes (cue dumb and dumber) you go and totally redeem yourselves. i don't know. i guess i'll kick around. 
so on reacap, 
jrista-cool, i would totally take you out for a beer if i was in (wherever you live).
clueless people(I know, you don't think i'm pointing at you)- be more humble. 
everyone- chill. we are taking about cameras.


----------



## privatebydesign (Sep 29, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> privatebydesign said:
> 
> 
> > Aglet said:
> ...



It was a +100 shadow lift, basically a two stop lower lift, plus a modest exposure lift.

If that isn't "enough" then here it is with a totally unrealistic lift, a +100 shadow lift and a 1.5 stop exposure lift on the bottom, looks kind of ridiculous even though I held the sky back with a filter in post. Don't forget this is with a 2002 4.2MP camera with a >3.5 lift in post at 100%.


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## ajfotofilmagem (Sep 29, 2014)

jrista said:


> I really screwed up my knee, and weather is blowing in rather fiercely now. I can hardly walk, so hiking up to my landscape spots (Long Lake is a great one, but it's a decent hike up past Brainard Lake, which is a nice area...and I can't take any hikes like that now. ).


I wish you recover well, and I'm praying for that. Rest and do not feel pressured to prove anything. Regardless of my opinion on the test that originated this post, I am grateful for you to share your knowledge with us.
Peace and good.


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## V8Beast (Sep 29, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> That's kinda rich since you were the one who brought portfolios and hinted that the DR side is basically a bunch of zero portfolio types.
> 
> You were the one who started trying to make claims that one side had the portfolios.



Why so defensive? No one's call you out personally


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## Zv (Sep 29, 2014)

jrista said:


> I really screwed up my knee, and weather is blowing in rather fiercely now. I can hardly walk, so hiking up to my landscape spots (Long Lake is a great one, but it's a decent hike up past Brainard Lake, which is a nice area...and I can't take any hikes like that now. ).
> 
> I'll see what I can do about getting some more demonstration shots. Given the tone of this thread, I don't think it will matter much...same old stuff, same old retorts, same old nastiness. I simply set out to demonstrate the differences, as best as possible...which required an extreme situation. It doesn't matter if you always do a 5-stop push, even with a one or two stop push, the differences can be realized.
> 
> I'm pretty dismayed at some of the insults being thrown, not even at myself, it's just not necessary (Sporgon!) We can be civil about this issue.



Take it easy man, you don't need to prove anything. I appreciate that you've tried to demonstrate the differences in this thread. I understand that it's important to some and less to others. It's good to see for ourselves so thanks for sharing samples. Hope you get better soon!

Btw - I downloaded the sample from the a7r but I guess Lr 4 can't open the file, (doh! moment) so for me none of this is relevant! I don't even know what I'm missing out on!  (I'm sure it would be glorious!)


----------



## TeT (Sep 29, 2014)

Curious about the setting... Are the walls a vibrant or subdued green?

Low ISO shots the A7 shows a more neon green while on the next set the 5DIII shows more neon green and the A7 show the subdued hue...

on boths sets something between the two would be pleasing to my eye (what little eye I have for such things)...


----------



## privatebydesign (Sep 29, 2014)

TeT said:


> Curious about the setting... Are the walls a vibrant or subdued green?
> 
> Low ISO shots the A7 shows a more neon green while on the next set the 5DIII shows more neon green and the A7 show the subdued hue...
> 
> on boths sets something between the two would be pleasing to my eye (what little eye I have for such things)...



The colours really are irrelevant, both cameras can be used with profiles to make the colours identical.


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## Dantana (Sep 29, 2014)

jrista said:


> I really screwed up my knee, and weather is blowing in rather fiercely now. I can hardly walk, so hiking up to my landscape spots (Long Lake is a great one, but it's a decent hike up past Brainard Lake, which is a nice area...and I can't take any hikes like that now. ).
> 
> I'll see what I can do about getting some more demonstration shots. Given the tone of this thread, I don't think it will matter much...same old stuff, same old retorts, same old nastiness. I simply set out to demonstrate the differences, as best as possible...which required an extreme situation. It doesn't matter if you always do a 5-stop push, even with a one or two stop push, the differences can be realized.
> 
> I'm pretty dismayed at some of the insults being thrown, not even at myself, it's just not necessary (Sporgon!) We can be civil about this issue.



I'm sorry to hear about your knee. Go easy on it. I know you are on a rental timeline, and I'm looking forward to seeing your images, but don't hurt it any more than you have to.


----------



## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 29, 2014)

V8Beast said:


> LetTheRightLensIn said:
> 
> 
> > That's kinda rich since you were the one who brought portfolios and hinted that the DR side is basically a bunch of zero portfolio types.
> ...



Because it's tiresome to have seen years worth of such general veiled, or not so veiled, insults. Some very knowledgeable posters don't even post in any forums any more and it feels like they were driven away. I think they got sick of being constantly attacked and personally insulted. Some stuck around longer but became a lot chippier themselves after a while.

Not to mention that you asked me why I decided to bring this up and I was just pointing that it was you who brought up the whole portfolio thing.

And there has been a lot of very personal calling out and other nonsense, including with just the last two days alone. Unless "pathetic lens cap shooting dweebs who never take an actual photo" or "incompetent morons who don't understand how to take a photo or have even the most basic post-processing skills or any real knowledge about anything" doesn't count....


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 29, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> LetTheRightLensIn said:
> 
> 
> > privatebydesign said:
> ...



And yet the really dark parts still look pitch black which seems to hint that you are really lifting low mid-tones and not deep shadows.


----------



## jrista (Sep 29, 2014)

Dantana said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > I really screwed up my knee, and weather is blowing in rather fiercely now. I can hardly walk, so hiking up to my landscape spots (Long Lake is a great one, but it's a decent hike up past Brainard Lake, which is a nice area...and I can't take any hikes like that now. ).
> ...



Knee on the one leg is in fairly bad shape. I don't think I broke anything, but I am pretty sure I bruised the bone. I really didn't see it coming, went strait down. Dim red light of my astro headlight didn't reveal any shadows...so I didn't think there were any rocks where I was walking. I haven't hurt myself like that since I was a kid... Whole leg is extremely sore now, and I apparently knocked the other knee as well as it, too, hurts, just not as bad. Walking is a chore, to say the least, and a painful one at that. Just...one of those weekends, I guess. 

Not much to show for the rental time, other than more familiarity with the A7r. I still think it's a mixed bag, with the mix leaning towards "Needs Improvement." Was a totally clouded out, rainy day Sunday. I didn't really get anything to compare. I took both cameras out to do some comparison shots with the 50mm f/1.4 lens, but started hearing thunder, and just took shots with the A7r until the rain hit. The majority of the aspen landscape shots done with the A7r were ruined because I had to manually press the shutter button myself for bracketing to work, and it did not have a timer option for bracketed shots, which resulted in camera shake (I'd taken my Gitzo Mountaineer along, an ultra light, but therefor not as sturdy, tripod). The only shots that did come out were a series for a panorama of aspens lining a meadow...hoping those turn out, as I did not bracket, and I did use a timer setting, so the camera should have had time to stabilize.

Ironically, one set of shots that I took that I never thought would show any difference between the two cameras ended up exhibiting some banding in the shadows for the 5D III...I'll share those RAWs when I get a chance. Not much...but at the moment, it's all I've got.  Ironically, it's a mild case of 5D III banding where the A7r outshone it without me even trying...the _ultimate unintentional real-world non-contrived DR comparison_.  Maybe people will trust that one better.


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## dtaylor (Sep 29, 2014)

jrista said:


> I really screwed up my knee, and weather is blowing in rather fiercely now. I can hardly walk, so hiking up to my landscape spots (Long Lake is a great one, but it's a decent hike up past Brainard Lake, which is a nice area...and I can't take any hikes like that now. ).



I know you and I have been at each other's throats in past threads, and we will likely never agree on just how much that extra Exmor latitude matters or doesn't matter.

But all debating aside, I am sorry to hear about your injury and I hope you heal quickly and completely.


----------



## Sandrine (Sep 29, 2014)

It's an interesting test, funda piel iphone 6 plus and a useful comparison. I'm also happy that there's balance here. The A7R gives you these impressive and useful for some DR characteristics. But protector pantalla iphone 6 plus as jrista says it's coming at a big cost, AF, EVF etc are much poorer.


----------



## Aglet (Sep 29, 2014)

jrista said:


> Knee on the one leg is in fairly bad shape. I don't think I broke anything, but ..



sorry to hear that, especially when you had a weekend planned, even if the Wx didn't quite cooperate.
I did a bunch of similar damage to a knee many ago too, more than once, actually, and much more than my knees. Took months for me to get back to normal walking and still have some good scars and use limitations. I hope you fare much better. I'm frustrating I can't go on long hikes any more.
OTOH, I chuckle at the reaction I see whenever some x-ray tech looks over my images before forwarding them, they just look at me and shake their head. ;D


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## Aglet (Sep 29, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> I posted that particular picture for two reasons, first because of the composition being so similar to yours, the second because I knew you would do the "oh but the 1Ds MkIII is the only Canon camera that could do that" so it is from a 2002 1D.



HAHA! I see you like messin' with us. 
BUT - I could boot up my old 40D and it would also fare quite well with a deep shadow lift.
The challenge is to rework a shot like that on a Digic 4 or Digic 5 body. Digic 3 and older didn't generally have as much of an FPN problem, even if they still had plenty of noise.


----------



## Aglet (Sep 29, 2014)

zlatko said:


> Aglet said:
> 
> 
> > Sorry, tools like that do not meet _my_ standards of image quality, not when they come with that kind of price tag.
> ...



My standards ARE high. Is that a bad thing?

When I see a great image, like the one a few pages back, that's marred by muddy shadows full of chroma noise and banding that I find obvious even at a 2 and 3 MP reduction, there's a problem with the CAMERA, not the photographer.
See and think for yourself, spewing a bunch of random names is meaningless to me and pointless to your argument if these are supposed to be pros. Many big name pros have an army of photoshop'ers working behind the scenes to fix the problems.
While you're at it, why didn't you include Joe McNally? There's a guy who knows how to use light to make an image, whatever gear he's using. Canon likely bought him off with a crate of RT600s, saves him a bunch of setup time but I wonder if he's secretly using Nikon when he's alone in the woods...


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## tapanit (Sep 29, 2014)

jrista said:


> Just to see how far I could push things, here a couple more versions, not particularly "realistic", but still a good demonstration of what's possible and how the raw data reacts. No interpretation of the data needed here...5D III totally falls apart. A7r...noisy...but manageable.


Interestingly, I don't really see any significant difference between them, even in the +5 ones (calling the 5D3 one "falling apart" is totally ridiculous, it's a perfectly usable picture). Admittedly my eyes are old and I'm looking at the pictures with a relatively lowly monitor, but that's what I'd mostly do anyway. I guess it means the DR difference isn't a good reason to go for Sony, *for me* - your mileage may vary.


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## leGreve (Sep 29, 2014)

tapanit said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > Just to see how far I could push things, here a couple more versions, not particularly "realistic", but still a good demonstration of what's possible and how the raw data reacts. No interpretation of the data needed here...5D III totally falls apart. A7r...noisy...but manageable.
> ...



Seriously?

The +5 ones are from a professional standpoint completely unusable compared to the Sony shot.... look how the chair is muddying up on the side.
The Sony retains the detail to a degree where even the shadows are somewhat acceptable. The Canon shot... I would never present that to a client and pretend that it would be ok.


----------



## J.R. (Sep 29, 2014)

tapanit said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > Just to see how far I could push things, here a couple more versions, not particularly "realistic", but still a good demonstration of what's possible and how the raw data reacts. No interpretation of the data needed here...5D III totally falls apart. A7r...noisy...but manageable.
> ...



I arrived at the same conclusion but for different reasons. To me both shots are unusable


----------



## tomscott (Sep 29, 2014)

How often would you shoot that scene like that to get a useable image? Never… IMO a test of how far you can push the tech and its an extreme test, interesting but extreme. 

There is barely anything to recover from its so under exposed, basically a black image, even tho the sony resolves more +5 is ridiculous, I would never send something like that out.

Ok expose for the highlights but there is nothing to recover the blinds have no detail to show, ok if it was a landscape in the background and the blinds were open to let more light in…

Either way if you were shooting this commercially you would bracket with both cameras, you would never shoot one image, to expect the camera to be able to resolve that is just silly and again extreme. Once you bracket the difference becomes much slimmer.

Yes from playing with the raw file the sony is impressive and does open up more possibility but again, I personally don't shoot like that and also wouldn't send something like that out, although in a pinch is definitely useful.

I think tho these technologies start to render the actual skill of the photographer as useless and you can rely on the tech too much as in ye its fine il sort in it post. I don't like that attitude.

I understand your frustration Jrista, I think your a great contributor but there are ways and means of getting around the problem, just enjoy shooting instead of fixating on a problem that there are answers too


----------



## tapanit (Sep 29, 2014)

leGreve said:


> tapanit said:
> 
> 
> > Interestingly, I don't really see any significant difference between them, even in the +5 ones
> ...


Well, I'm not a professional photographer - but as a potential client, I can say I could well consider paying for a photo of similar quality to the Canon +5 one, if the content of the image was what I wanted. And I'm willing to bet most non-photographers wouldn't see the difference even as well as I do.


----------



## tomscott (Sep 29, 2014)

Im not a Canon fan boy but there is a huge difference between the two images. You could probably get away with the Sony but not the Canon. Professionally tho an image like that is IMO bad practice and it is just a test. You would shoot this differently.

I used to shoot property for a local estate agent and they would insist I used their cameras for insurance reasons, unfortunately 1100D and some really poor tokina 10-24mm wide angle lens :-\ comparing this to my 5DMKIII is night and day, but I used it and I got good results with 3 brackets… in HDR situations



Swan House, Thornthwaite, Keswick, Dining area for PFK Estate Agents by TomScottPhoto, on Flickr

I find unless there is something to see out of a window or a view recovering the highlights gives an image too HDR like and looks unrealistic prefer the light to actually come through the window.



Swan House, Thornthwaite, Keswick, Kitchen/Living room for PFK Estate Agents by TomScottPhoto, on Flickr



High Chestnut Hill, Kitchen, Keswick, Cumbria, PFK by TomScottPhoto, on Flickr


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## Sporgon (Sep 29, 2014)

Aglet said:


> privatebydesign said:
> 
> 
> > I posted that particular picture for two reasons, first because of the composition being so similar to yours, the second because I knew you would do the "oh but the 1Ds MkIII is the only Canon camera that could do that" so it is from a 2002 1D.
> ...



But I did just that a few pages ago with a 5DII - dig!c 4. I've now deleted those examples and won't be posting any more because it is clear that some people will not be moved even when the proof stares them in the face.

In my experience the Dig!c 4 cameras do have more FPN that both the earlier and later versions but it is buried so deep that it is just irrelevant 99.9% of the time to 99.9% of people.


----------



## melbournite (Sep 29, 2014)

Thank you jrista for sharing these raw files with us to allow me to see first hand the differences between the two sensors albeit in this one niche area. 

It's always good to know and see what the competition sensors are able to do with the use of our own software rather than just reading about it. 

And this was a good comparison for me to test against a camera I own and love (5DIII) and a camera I hear some much about.


----------



## 3kramd5 (Sep 29, 2014)

jrista said:


> Not much to show for the rental time, other than more familiarity with the A7r. I still think it's a mixed bag, with the mix leaning towards "Needs Improvement."



Me too. I'll keep mine for situations where I really want resolution (which tend to be situations where I'm sitting around with my tripod waiting and thus have the time to work around the interface), but it is quite ponderous to use. 95 times out of 100, I'll take a 5D.


----------



## J.R. (Sep 29, 2014)

Sporgon said:


> In my experience the Dig!c 4 cameras do have more FPN that both the earlier and later versions but it is buried so deep that it is just irrelevant 99.9% of the time to 99.9% of people.



Yes, it is irrelevant to most people simply because not everyone underexposes their photos massively needing to push their photos by 5 stops to make them "usable".


----------



## tomscott (Sep 29, 2014)

What I find funny is if you go over to sonyalpharumors many people compare the new Exmor to the 5DMKIII and admit it is a better camera system all round.

These are all comments by sonyalpharumors members on the latest sensor threads.

"dynamic range at higher ISO's where the 5DIII's lurch ahead of their nikon/sony counterparts" 

Funny how even they think DXO is dodgy "If you leave DxOMark planet and land back to earth, you'll see that in real life the difference is very very little, and after ISO400 Canon 6D and 5DMarkIII are as good as or better than Sony sensors"

Also most are in the same camp bout the mega pixel war and know that sony needs to create more native faster lenses 'I'd rather have faster autofocus, in body stabilization, quieter shutter and more native lenses (and faster ones) than more megapixels.'

http://www.sonyalpharumors.com/the-high-megapixel-war-rumors-canon-46mp-camera-coming-soon-and-sony-in-januaryfebruary/

From that article it seems they are excited to see what Canon do with this new sensor, because although sony make the best sensors their cameras and systems are a lot less than to be desired. Also How much more R&D do sony actually have after putting all into exmor?

Canon was in a similar position a few years ago and then regurgitated the same tech for the last 5 years so that will be interesting to see how far sony can push their tech and if Canon does have new tech how it will rival and the time scales because sony is to announce their new sensors early 2015.

I think thats what we are forgetting and a lot of people on here are the other way round ATM DR and resolution is all the rage and aggressively contested, forget about all that Canon has over its competition and that the 5DMKIII is far from being thrown to the parts bin.


----------



## J.R. (Sep 29, 2014)

tomscott said:


> What I find funny is if you go over to sonyalpharumors many people compare the new Exmor to the 5DMKIII and admit it is a better camera system all round.
> 
> These are all comments by sonyalpharumors members on the latest sensor threads.
> 
> ...



Pretty much sums up human behavior, doesn't it? In the yearning for something better, most people don't value what they already have.


----------



## zlatko (Sep 29, 2014)

Aglet said:


> zlatko said:
> 
> 
> > Aglet said:
> ...



I see ... those names are "meaningless" to you. And their shooting Canon is "pointless" because _you know_ when the problem is the camera, not the photographer. And that "army of photoshoppers" theory — yes, that explains everything. No doubt big name pros find it easier and cheaper to have an army of photoshoppers _fixing problems_ than to switch to Nikon/Sony, especially if they're bought off with something like a crate of Canon flashes. Got it!

Considering that those are all world-renowned photographers and masters of their craft — it's just a _little_ hard to believe that some anonymous person on the internet has _higher_ image quality standards than they do. Just a little. So we'll just have to take your word for it.


----------



## Lee Jay (Sep 29, 2014)

jrista said:


> HDR would certainly be better in the case of the +5 stop, regardless of which camera, but the A7r is still going to handle HDR better than the 5D III, and with fewer bracketed frames.



I doubt that. I shot this something like 15 years ago with a Nikon Coolpix 950, and the top-right finished image used just two frames.


----------



## J.R. (Sep 29, 2014)

Aglet said:


> zlatko said:
> 
> 
> > Aglet said:
> ...



Did someone mention Joe McNally? Isn't he the same guy who uses 17 flashguns? I wonder why, when he has all the DR that a Nikon camera provides


----------



## TeT (Sep 29, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> TeT said:
> 
> 
> > Curious about the setting... Are the walls a vibrant or subdued green?
> ...



Not exactly, color is more relevant than most other things on a camera...

Sure, you can do what you want with the colors both on camera and post. But all things being equal I wanted to know which one was spitting out accurate colors... From the pics they are each inaccurate at different settings.


----------



## V8Beast (Sep 29, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> Because it's tiresome to have seen years worth of such general veiled, or not so veiled, insults.



If I wanted to insult you, I'm come right out and do it. No need to disguise it. This is the internet after all 



> Some very knowledgeable posters don't even post in any forums any more and it feels like they were driven away. I think they got sick of being constantly attacked and personally insulted. Some stuck around longer but became a lot chippier themselves after a while.



So if someone asks for sample images to better illustrate how the DR limitations of Canon sensors adversely affects their images, you equate that with a personal attack? Different people shoot different things in different environments under different circumstances. I think a sample image or two goes a long way in illustrating how important DR is to each individual photographer. 



> Not to mention that you asked me why I decided to bring this up and I was just pointing that it was you who brought up the whole portfolio thing.



It's really quite simple. The guys that say Canon sensors have enough DR usually question the technique or skill set of the guys that say that Canon sensors don't have enough DR. On the other hand, the guys that go poo poo on Canon sensors state that all the technique in the world doesn't change the fact that Exmor sensors produce better IQ under certain situations. 

IMHO, sample images (as some have already posted) would be a far more effective method of pointing out the need for more DR than typing out paragraphs upon paragraphs of arguments back and forth, but I suppose some people equate this with a personal attack. Gotcha, buddy


----------



## privatebydesign (Sep 29, 2014)

TeT said:


> privatebydesign said:
> 
> 
> > TeT said:
> ...



Yes exactly, colour is completely irrelevant with RAW digital capture, just like WB. So which profile was set? 

There is no such thing as "accurate colors" from RAW files, nothing can be rendered without a camera profile/picture style (well it can but you don't want to see it, it is green and dark with no contrast and a gamma of 1.0) choose one better to your liking, it is as simple as that.


----------



## Marsu42 (Sep 29, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> There is no such thing as "accurate colors" from RAW files, nothing can be rendered without a camera profile/picture style (well it can but you don't want to see it, it is green and dark with no contrast and a gamma of 1.0) choose one better to your liking, it is as simple as that.



Good point there, and it's easy to miss since at least in Lightroom the most important setting is at the last position of the development module - so usually you get to work with "Adobe Standard" which, after some consideration, is not my choice.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 29, 2014)

zlatko said:


> Considering that those are all world-renowned photographers and masters of their craft — it's just a _little_ hard to believe that some anonymous person on the internet has _higher_ image quality standards than they do. Just a little. So we'll just have to take your word for it.



It depends what they shoot and how the rest of the features balance out or much of a pain it is to switch and so on.

Just because some big name shoots with something doesn't mean it is perfect in every way.

People shoot all sorts of different things. One setup that a sports guy uses might get found to have tons of major faults by someone else and vice-versa.

And some of those people have complained about stuff Canon makes, outside of forums, on the sidelines.

And these are just tools. One the sidelines at games, sometimes photographers chat a little about this or that body and they talk the truth freely, and sometimes that means bashing say some aspect of AF on this or that model and nbody gets all defensive about it or agitated in a how dare you not declare so and so brand to be perfect.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 29, 2014)

V8Beast said:


> LetTheRightLensIn said:
> 
> 
> > Because it's tiresome to have seen years worth of such general veiled, or not so veiled, insults.
> ...



1. You are not the only poster here.
2. You kinda did seem to make a general dig at those on one side of the debate. It wasn't a simple request for an example.



> So if someone asks for sample images to better illustrate how the DR limitations of Canon sensors adversely affects their images, you equate that with a personal attack?



Where did I say that and I note how you clipped out some of the examples I gave, which were of an entirely different nature.



> Different people shoot different things in different environments under different circumstances. I think a sample image or two goes a long way in illustrating how important DR is to each individual photographer.



And when people provide them, they get written off as contrived, or only a test, or this that and the other thing no matter what. Some tried a few weeks ago, but no matter what was posted, it wasn't a valid demonstration.
Plus, people tend to not shoot the stuff they know won't work and delete the stuff that didn't work out and not spend time getting it hosted. It takes a lot of time to post such examples and only a few seconds to type a few words and the examples never solve anything anyway so why waste time.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Sep 29, 2014)

J.R. said:


> Sporgon said:
> 
> 
> > In my experience the Dig!c 4 cameras do have more FPN that both the earlier and later versions but it is buried so deep that it is just irrelevant 99.9% of the time to 99.9% of people.
> ...



I don't know anyone who goes around and purposely tries to underexpose by 5 stops so that they have to lift shadows and make a mess. It's about scenes that have a lot of DR so that when you expose properly some important parts of the scene end up in the lower parts of the signal.


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## Sporgon (Sep 29, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> J.R. said:
> 
> 
> > Sporgon said:
> ...



But surely the argument here is will a massive push on the Exmor be equal in quality to a correctly bracketed image in this extreme case ? If not then it doesn't replace the Canon tech for many.


----------



## zlatko (Sep 30, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> zlatko said:
> 
> 
> > Considering that those are all world-renowned photographers and masters of their craft — it's just a _little_ hard to believe that some anonymous person on the internet has _higher_ image quality standards than they do. Just a little. So we'll just have to take your word for it.
> ...



No one said Canon is "perfect in every way", so I don't know why you're quoting me or who you're arguing with.

Saying "it depends on what they shoot" works both ways. The list of photographers I made represents an extremely diverse range of shooting conditions, subjects and styles. Their work is out there for anyone to see. The work of antonymous sensor critics on the internet is ... _not as visible_. So claiming to having higher image quality standards than some of the best photographers on Earth is pretty dubious. 

No doubt some of those photographers have complained about things they wish to be improved, and yet they still shoot Canon. Perhaps they know more about image quality than anonymous critics on the internet.

No one said that Canon is perfect and no one says "how dare you not declare so and so brand to be perfect". Describing people as getting defensive or agitated about "how dare you not declare so and so brand to be perfect" is just a big, fat, empty straw man of an argument, just a deliberate misrepresentation of what people are actually saying in this thread.


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## TeT (Sep 30, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> TeT said:
> 
> 
> > privatebydesign said:
> ...



I get that. I am talking about what I shoot looking like what I see. You are talking about what you can do to it after you shoot it. 

I want my colors to come out of the camera close to what I see (I understand that once we enter post its all a wash), Some cameras do a better job of this than others. That was the basis of my question... pure and simple. Back in the day it was more about what film you used.


----------



## Lee Jay (Sep 30, 2014)

TeT said:


> privatebydesign said:
> 
> 
> > TeT said:
> ...



And now it's about what raw converter and profile you select if you shoot in raw, or it's about what picture style and other in camera raw processing settings you choose in the camera if you shoot in JPEG.


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## neuroanatomist (Sep 30, 2014)

jrista said:


> I'll leave it up to each person to draw their own conclusions.



Will you?




jrista said:


> Well, you must be blind, then.  Sorry, but the difference is night and day obvious with the +5 stop pushes. The 5D III is completely and utterly unusable, period. The A7r, depending on your processing skills, it could be made to be entirely usable.






jrista said:


> Trying to be a man of my word.



Try not. Do...or do not. There is no try.


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## Sporgon (Sep 30, 2014)

jrista said:


> I've updated the _original post_ with a set of example images from this weekend. One of the few sets that actually were not blurred by camera shake on the A7r. I don't know if I'll get another chance to use the A7r in any kind of DR-limited situation...weather moved in, it's been raining a lot, so there simply isn't any high contrast. I could do more interior shots...but we all know how that would probably go down.



Looking at your new samples there is considerably more highlight ( direct sunlight) on the rocks on the right of the picture in the Sony file - I mean significantly more, anyone will see it. Either the light was changing as you changed cameras or once again the Canon file is under exposed relative to the Sony.

I'll be interested to see the raw files.


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## Marsu42 (Sep 30, 2014)

jrista said:


> I've updated the _original post_ with a set of example images from this weekend.



Thanks for all this work, it is interesting. One the one hand, as expected (at least by me ) there is a clear difference in shadow resolution, but fortunately for us Canon people you really have to push the exposure to see it. The difference in tonality is there, but you need side-by-side shots and Canon seems to be "good enough" for what I do. Last not least, I reckon the 6d has improved a bit over the older 5d3 in the deep shadow department.

One experiment would be nice though: Do a blind test or deliberately exchange and mis-label the Sony/Canon shots next time and see how many people still comment that Canon is sub-par and really needs to get a grip


----------



## jrista (Sep 30, 2014)

Sorry guys, looks like my OneDrive upload stalled yesterday. I am reuploading now, same place as the original two. In the mean time, here are the histograms:






Here is a magnification of the highlight end:






As much as the A7r image may LOOK as though it is more exposed than the 5D III, it is not (especially when the white balance is corrected, the A7r WB was much cooler, I set it to the same 5200 as the 5D III image). The histogram is pushed farther to the right in the 5D III image. The 5D III image looks darker because...it has less dynamic range. More of the signal was exposed in tones that, on a relative scale, are deeper for the 5D III compared to the A7r. The exposure advantage, as far as ETTR goes, leans towards the 5D III here.


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## Deleted member 372972 (Sep 30, 2014)

Hi jrista,
thanks for the pictures.
It's nice to see what Sony do with the A7r data, but for me the 5D III files are good enough.
Also I think that the exposure, WB and maybe other parameter are not the same.
Also I don't know if you have read this http://www.rawdigger.com/howtouse/sony-craw-arw2-posterization-detection 
If this is trough, we maybe didn't compare sensor data with sensor data. If Sony really use a LUT (Look up table) to transfer the sensor data to 14-bit raw data, they cook the raw files very heavy.
If this is not a feature of the Sony camera and maybe done on chip level, we have a possible explanation of the 13.8 DR value I read somewhere.
In my opinion a 13.8 DR isn't physically possible with a 14-bit ADC and the 11.x-bit of Canon are more believable to me.
But the point is the Sony A7r files look better in the pushed shadows than the canon data. The pictures of your living room are very impressive in the amount of information in the shadow area. Also the A7r seems to have a resolution advantage and may be a good camera for landscapes.
For my use the 7D and maybe the 7D Mark II would be the better choice.
The most pictures I throw away are out of focus and so good AF is the most needed feature on my next camera. 
Still hope canon find a way to close the cap to the Exmor sensors or find a way to make the shadow data of there sensors better, but the current level of digital sensors is good enough for me.

Thank you for your great work again.

PS: Hope to get a feedback on the RawDigger findings from you, because I think you understand more from the findings than I do


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## tapanit (Sep 30, 2014)

jrista said:


> tapanit said:
> 
> 
> > Interestingly, I don't really see any significant difference between them, even in the +5 ones (calling the 5D3 one "falling apart" is totally ridiculous, it's a perfectly usable picture). Admittedly my eyes are old and I'm looking at the pictures with a relatively lowly monitor, but that's what I'd mostly do anyway. I guess it means the DR difference isn't a good reason to go for Sony, *for me* - your mileage may vary.
> ...


I'm not quite blind, yet.  I didn't say I can't see any difference, just not a significant one. Not when viewed on screen without magnifying or deliberately pixel-peeping. And I'm pretty sure most non-photographers would agree.


> The 5D III is completely and utterly unusable, period.


That would depend on the intended use, I should think. Even and indeed especially professionals should be able to adjust their standards depending on client's needs.


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## TeT (Sep 30, 2014)

All of the DR talk has helped my photography; but I am light years behind most of you in technique + the fact that my eye for composition sucks... 

Thanks for all the back n forth, it has been amusing always and educational at times..

Observations...

Calling the 5Diii unusable is a joke.

Saying that capturing images with the A7 in certain situations is easier with better results would be fair and accurate.

PPl who post comparison pictures to prove a point about camera capabilities remind me of my aunt millie who used to weigh herself on saturdays with her left hand touching the towel bar.


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## mjbehnke (Sep 30, 2014)

You mentioned the UI and button layout. Also you mentioned how turned off you are about the EVF. How is the build quality? As compared to the 5DIII? Is it about the same, better, worse? I have a 6D on my list for landscape shooting, but with an EF adaptor, it's something to think about.

Thanks
Matthew


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## neuroanatomist (Sep 30, 2014)

*Warning: Humor Alert*




TeT said:


> PPl who post comparison pictures to prove a point about camera capabilities remind me of my aunt millie who used to weigh herself on saturdays with her left hand touching the towel bar.



Yeah, but have you tried taking a picture of that 'event', exposing for the bright sunlight streaming through the window to capture the detail of the backlit white lace curtains, then tried to push the shadow exposure to bring up the fabric detail in your Aunt Millie's black dress?


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## jrista (Sep 30, 2014)

tapanit said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > tapanit said:
> ...



If you haven't downloaded the RAWs and taken a look at them, then I encourage you to. Lifting the shadows a couple stops doesn't render the 5D III image unuable, however it does exhibit banding before you even lift three stops. The "utterly unusable" image is the +5 stop 5D III image. Maybe it's not as obvious in the small JPEGs I shared in the first post...but when you see the RAW, I think you will understand. 

The difference between the A7r and 5D III is night and day. Whether that matters to you or not is something I won't judge, but just from a simple empirical standpoint, the +5 stop 5D III image is....really poor. 



TeT said:


> Calling the 5Diii unusable is a joke.



_That is *not* what I said._ I said the +5 stop pushed 5D III image of my living room was entirely unusable. Again, I encourage you to download the RAWs and compare them. I'm not calling the 5D III an "unusable camera"...I never have, I never will. I am simply calling the result of a +5 stop push with a 5D III RAW image "utterly unusable." I would honestly be surprised if anyone disagreed with that assessment after playing with the RAWs themselves...however if you insist the image could be usable after seeing the RAWs for yourself....well, to each his own, I guess.


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## Don Haines (Sep 30, 2014)

*Re: The Sony A7r - High DR, high resolution companion to a Canon kit?*

Thanks for the review!


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## Lee Jay (Sep 30, 2014)

jrista said:


> If you haven't downloaded the RAWs and taken a look at them, then I encourage you to.



I finally did, and your 5D3 has more red channel and fixed pattern noise than even my T2i pushed just about as hard. Fiddling with 70D raws doesn't seem to look anything like that.


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## jd7 (Sep 30, 2014)

Wanted to add my thanks to jrista for taking the time and effort to post these examples. Very interesting to get a chance to play with an a7r raw file. 

Leaving aside the issue of how useful it is in practical application, the IQ the a7r retains when the exposure is pushed certainly seems impressive to me. That said, there is something about the 5D3 image I still like too - something about the light/tone it shows. And looking at the detail of what you can see through the windows, especially the right hand window, i am wondering if the 5D3 has actually done better there. I will have to play with the a7r image some more tho, to see if it's a pp thin thing.


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## jrista (Sep 30, 2014)

The A7r files were exposed at a cooler temperature...4100 something. In my comparisons, I always normalized the white balance to 5200. When you do that, the A7r gets a lot warmer, and the color channels align more like the 5D III.


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## dtaylor (Sep 30, 2014)

jrista said:


> That's not the argument. That's what it sounds you would like the argument to be, but it's not the argument.
> 
> The argument is simply that the OOC IQ is better on an Exmor. That's it.



As is apparent from the responses to these many threads, that's not what most people care about or wish to discuss. Especially when only one aspect is better, and then only in extreme shooting/processing conditions at low ISO, and everyone concurs on that point any way.

People seem far more interested in relevance. What is the practical end result when they print or show photos on screen? I would contend that it's not all that relevant because 99% of the time either both cameras are OK or both really need HDR. I do not deny that sometimes, however, the Exmor can produce a single frame where the Canon might need two.


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## dtaylor (Sep 30, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> Try not. Do...or do not. There is no try.



Always with him what cannot be done with Canon. Hear he nothing that we say? 

(How frightening is it that I didn't have to look that up???  )


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## TeT (Sep 30, 2014)

jrista said:


> TeT said:
> 
> 
> > Calling the 5Diii unusable is a joke.
> ...


_

I have no idea who made the statement, and am not going to go search it out... I was responding to that particular comment though not to your initial post..._


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## steliosk (Sep 30, 2014)

in terms of dynamic range this is interesting too

http://www.rossharvey.com/reviews/nikon-d750-review

my wish? May Canon use Sony sensors in the next models


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## emko (Sep 30, 2014)

steliosk said:


> in terms of dynamic range this is interesting too
> 
> http://www.rossharvey.com/reviews/nikon-d750-review
> 
> my wish? May Canon use Sony sensors in the next models



that or they make something equal to or better then the Sony sensor but at this rate i don't see Canon beating Sony.


----------



## Deleted member 91053 (Oct 1, 2014)

*Re: The Sony A7r - High DR, high resolution companion to a Canon kit?*

Some very interesting observations!
I can see many liking this camera and I was looking at it for myself. Unfortunately it is completely useless for my uses - pity as I quite fancied the A7 version - ah well it will have to be a 6D or 5D3, bulky and heavy but they do have reasonably quick AF and viewfinders (optical).


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## Aglet (Oct 1, 2014)

zlatko said:


> Saying "it depends on what they shoot" works both ways. The list of photographers I made represents an extremely diverse range of shooting conditions, subjects and styles. Their work is out there for anyone to see. The work of antonymous sensor critics on the internet is ... not as visible. So claiming to having higher image quality standards than some of the best photographers on Earth is pretty dubious.



Image quality is, to me, not very subjective. I'm only considering the results produced by the hardware used.
I'm not alone here with very high quality standards in that regard. 
If you haven't run into such hardware limitations you're staying within your handicap. If you're using various workarounds "that have been around for a century" then you're accepting a compromise or exercising an artistic choice to work within those limitations.
Some of us have artistic choices that require better hardware with less limitations to fulfill. That's how progress happens.




> No doubt some of those photographers have complained about things they wish to be improved, and yet they still shoot Canon. Perhaps they know more about image quality than anonymous critics on the internet.



pure speculation




> No one said that Canon is perfect and no one says "how dare you not declare so and so brand to be perfect". Describing people as getting defensive or agitated about "how dare you not declare so and so brand to be perfect" is just a big, fat, empty straw man of an argument, just a deliberate misrepresentation of what people are actually saying in this thread.



I think he was paraphrasing.

Some people here react to this debate far too emotionally, with lots of passion and only a few facts.
The OP has not only shown examples, he's also provided his raw data and used a lot of his personal time and resources to do so, only to receive insult on top of (literal) injury.
Some of us have bolstered his findings with more examples.
Point is, these are facts, not opinions, about sensor system capabilities of Canon vs Sony.
It can be summarized as such:
- Canon is good enough
- Exmor is excellent
... in the one sensor metric where they differ substantially, low iso SNR and FPN.


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## Aglet (Oct 1, 2014)

Sporgon said:


> But I did just that a few pages ago with a 5DII - dig!c 4.



And thank-you for doing so.
You provided me with the opportunity to see that at least some 5d2s could perform fairly well in this manner.
Tho without having the actual file to play with and not knowing the exact processing parameters it doesn't address all doubts that's it's as good as a pre-Digic 4 bodies for base ISO FPN.



> In my experience the Dig!c 4 cameras do have more FPN that both the earlier and later versions but it is buried so deep that it is just irrelevant 99.9% of the time to 99.9% of people.



Well, with that admitted I can only add that I continue to suspect some Digic 4 bodies were better than others.
I know my 5d2 was a disappointing performer in this regard. I still got lots of good images from it but I could not use it for the kinds of shooting I expected to from a camera at that price point. Ironic since my much cheaper, older 40D was able to provide better files with respect to low ISO FPN.
When I did a quick test and found the 5d3 was really no better than my 5d2, disappointment continued.
A very stripey 7D did not improve my opinion of this aspect of their cameras.

Altho overall SNR has improved only slightly at base ISO for recent models like the 70D and 6D, I'm glad to see visible reductions in FPN over the previous couple generations. If Canon can at least keep the FPN out of the raw files, it makes a big difference even if overall SNR and DR are still below Exmor levels.


----------



## tapanit (Oct 1, 2014)

jrista said:


> If you haven't downloaded the RAWs and taken a look at them, then I encourage you to. Lifting the shadows a couple stops doesn't render the 5D III image unuable, however it does exhibit banding before you even lift three stops. The "utterly unusable" image is the +5 stop 5D III image. Maybe it's not as obvious in the small JPEGs I shared in the first post...but when you see the RAW, I think you will understand.


I think I do understand, but perhaps you don't get my point.

Whatever can be seen from the raw file doesn't matter to non-photographers.. Only the end result matters, in the context where it will be actually used. If it used as a small jpeg in the web, then that's what counts, nothing else.


> just from a simple empirical standpoint, the +5 stop 5D III image is....really poor.


Well, if I could have gotten that good results pushing underexposed slide film even just two stops 20 years ago, I would have been ecstatic. 

It may be poor in comparison with the state of art, but hardly "really poor", let alone unusable: much worse pictures have been used and are still being used, and are paid good money for. Even totally lost shadow details may not matter if the object of interest is not in the shadows. Most photos are not used to make big prints or anything with artistic intent: often it is enough that the object is recognizable.


----------



## zlatko (Oct 1, 2014)

Aglet said:


> zlatko said:
> 
> 
> > Saying "it depends on what they shoot" works both ways. The list of photographers I made represents an extremely diverse range of shooting conditions, subjects and styles. Their work is out there for anyone to see. The work of antonymous sensor critics on the internet is ... not as visible. So claiming to having higher image quality standards than some of the best photographers on Earth is pretty dubious.
> ...



Let me be sure I understand your point about "pure speculation". On the one side:

A) world-renowned photographers and masters of their craft with numerous years experience between them, all shooting Canon (despite any flaws or limitations) in extremely diverse conditions with diverse lighting and subject matter, and producing high quality work with their reputations at stake.

On the other side:

B) anonymous sensor critics whose photography is of unknown caliber and who seek near-black 4- or 5-stop underexposed frames in order to prove to Canon users that Sony sensors are superior for rescuing such photos from the trash assuming one's "artistic choices" require that contrast be addressed strictly by radical underexposure followed by software slider-pushing to the point that photos have virtually no black in them.

Which of those, A) or B), is likely to know more about photographic image quality? That's a tough choice , but I'm going to _speculate_ and go with A).

As for the forum member you think was paraphrasing, he was paraphrasing _no one_.


----------



## zlatko (Oct 1, 2014)

tapanit said:


> Even totally lost shadow details may not matter if the object of interest is not in the shadows. Most photos are not used to make big prints or anything with artistic intent: often it is enough that the object is recognizable.



I agree. I would add that shadows are one of the artist's _most important tools_. Look at the shadows in Steve McCurry's photos. Or look at the shadows in the work of famous painters. The idea that shadows must be massively pushable in brightness via software, despite no added lighting, is a very, very, very narrowly technical definition of "progress" having little to do with most of photography.


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## Marsu42 (Oct 1, 2014)

zlatko said:


> A) world-renowned photographers and masters of their craft with numerous years experience between them, all shooting Canon (despite any flaws or limitations) in extremely diverse conditions with diverse lighting and subject matter, and producing high quality work with their reputations at stake.



_*Nooooooooo*, I'm about to post in a dr thread  ... but anyway:_

The points about pro photogs using and having used Canon sensors successfully seems to leave out the competitive aspect and only concentrate on the *absolute* iq. 

For most of us, there certainly is a "good enough" for a given print/view size. But if the competition with other brands can move ahead in *relative* terms some photogs might face a problem if an editor has to pick just one. Esp. if their genre mostly depends on producing the very highest iq possible at any given time and the creative aspects doesn't matter so much (I imagine shooting models on a catwalk in so-so lighting).


----------



## Sporgon (Oct 1, 2014)

I'm still puzzled why the OP didn't take some 'landscape' shots as a direct comparison between the two cameras,,and this has been something of a disappointment to me. I know he stated that the weather was very poor but the shots of the rocks, judging by the image and histogram, looks like there was a fair amount of bright light about when they were taken. Why didn't he just point the camera at a sky/land/trees scene and shoot ? Or was it that he found, as I have been saying all the time, the Sony can't record the actual light source as well as what it's illuminating either in one exposure ? 

Anyway the samples so far have put me off getting a Sony A7s. I've been half talking myself into one of these due to the 12 mp sensor and large pixels. Canon will never produce another 12 mp FF camera because it is just too niche a product for them. It's probably too niche for Sony too, it's just that unlike Canon they don't realize that yet. As all the serious work I do is stitched, 12 mp is just ample in one frame and I have been kidding myself that others might actually see a difference in the tonal ranges of the final print, but really it's just an excuse to purchase something new.

And in the UK the D810 is being offered at a £300 ($450) discounted sale price for a 'limited period of time'. What's that all about so soon after launch ? Someone is supposed to be dropping one of these in for me to try any time now, and I still have a few Nikkor lenses left, so I'll post some 'normal' high contrast landscapes when I've used it.


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## neuroanatomist (Oct 1, 2014)

Sporgon said:


> Or was it that he found, as I have been saying all the time, the Sony can't record the actual light source as well as what it's illuminating either in one exposure ?



Dude, get a grip. Go read the Internet. It's Exmor!! There's nothing it can't do. Need to stand in a cave under overcast skies at night and capture the sun while pushing shadows to reveal crater detail on the dark side of the moon? Get an Exmor!!


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## Sporgon (Oct 1, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> Sporgon said:
> 
> 
> > Or was it that he found, as I have been saying all the time, the Sony can't record the actual light source as well as what it's illuminating either in one exposure ?
> ...



Well there is at least one 5DIII that appears to have an Exmor sensor installed in it; at least when fitted with a 17 TS-E 

http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=22916.30


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## Lee Jay (Oct 1, 2014)

steliosk said:


> my wish? May Canon use Sony sensors in the next models



I hope not. Sony doesn't make a dual-pixel sensor, and that functionality is much more important to me than base ISO dynamic range.

I'd rather Canon just reduce read noise across the board on their dual pixel sensors.


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## AcutancePhotography (Oct 1, 2014)

zlatko said:


> :
> 
> A) world-renowned photographers and masters of their craft with numerous years experience between them, all shooting Canon (despite any flaws or limitations) in extremely diverse conditions with diverse lighting and subject matter, and producing high quality work with their reputations at stake.



FYI

That is an example of both an "argument from authority" and "bandwagoning" both of which are logical fallacies. 

Simply observing that a large number of succcessful photographers use a specific brand does not indicate that the specific brand is better or worse than any other brand -- unless a relationship of causation between camera brands and succcess as a photographer can be established. 

Which will be difficult to establish since we like to proclaim that it is the photographer not the equipment that makes the good picture. 

There are many reasons why one would consider a specific camera brand to be better. The fact that a bunch of famous successful people use a particular brand should not be one of them.


----------



## zlatko (Oct 1, 2014)

AcutancePhotography said:


> zlatko said:
> 
> 
> > :
> ...



_My point was not about which brand is better or worse — that's really not the point, sorry_. My point was that group A) has a proven public record of skill and mastery *and* Canon clearly meets _group A)'s_ standards for image quality. So the fact that Canon doesn't meet the "high" image quality standards of group B) is of _very_ little relative importance, considering group B)'s unknown level of skill and mastery, and considering group B)'s determination to fix radical underexposures as a way of proving alleged sensor superiority. Moreover, it does sound rather dubious for anyone in group B) to claim to have _higher_ image quality standards than group A).

There are indeed many reasons why one would choose one camera brand over another. That's consistent with my view that DR is not as important as some people make it out to be. Recall that Steve McCurry (current Nikon & Hasselblad user) created an amazing body of work shooting slide film with limited DR. Even the threat of contrasty lighting did not make him choose color print film.


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## Aglet (Oct 2, 2014)

zlatko said:


> ..it does sound rather dubious for anyone in group B) to claim to have _higher_ image quality standards than group A).



your argument logic is reminiscent of someone under the influence of too many _wobbly-pops_ 

MY image quality standards are higher than YOURS

go ahead, debate that. :


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## 3kramd5 (Oct 2, 2014)

Aglet said:


> MY image quality standards are higher than YOURS
> 
> go ahead, debate that. :



I'll give it a shot 

(argument from boredom )

1) What is, in your professional opinion, the camera body which produces the best quality images?
2) What are, in your professional opinion, the lenses for that body which produce the best quality images for the variety of scenes you frame?

Do you exclusively use 1 & 2?

If so, I concur that you have higher standards than [whomever].

If not, I assert that, while you may have high desires for image quality, you don't have higher *standards*.


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## zlatko (Oct 2, 2014)

Aglet said:


> zlatko said:
> 
> 
> > ..it does sound rather dubious for anyone in group B) to claim to have _higher_ image quality standards than group A).
> ...



So easy to say, "MY image quality standards are higher than YOURS" when you're anonymous and can say whatever you want. You can as easily say that you've flown to Jupiter and back ... with the same level of conviction, and just as much credibility. But I'll grant you that your standards for pushing 4- or 5-stop underexposed nearly-black frames and rescuing them from the trash are higher than mine. You'll win that argument every time.

Could Canon's IQ be higher? Of course! But the fact remains that Canon meets the IQ standards of some of the very best photographers.


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## krisbell (Oct 2, 2014)

Aglet said:


> Image quality is, to me, not very subjective. I'm only considering the results produced by the hardware used.
> I'm not alone here with very high quality standards in that regard.
> If you haven't run into such hardware limitations you're staying within your handicap. If you're using various workarounds "that have been around for a century" then you're accepting a compromise or exercising an artistic choice to work within those limitations.
> Some of us have artistic choices that require better hardware with less limitations to fulfill. That's how progress happens.
> ...



+1 and bravo Aglet - beautifully summarized, objective post. Couldnt have said it better myself.


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## unfocused (Oct 2, 2014)

zlatko said:


> Aglet said:
> 
> 
> > zlatko said:
> ...



Well, Aglet's not quite as anonymous as you might suppose. http://a2bart.com/

You can browse his website and draw your own conclusions.


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## msm (Oct 2, 2014)

I think the subject is interesting, I am trying to get better at landscape photography, I am however unsure what methods yield the best results-

I been out the last days and chanced on couple of sunsets, both from rather boring places though. Tried to take some single exposures on my a7r and process them and they are both near the limit of what the a7r can do so needless to say it would just be garbage if taken with a Canon camera.

My question is, would they be better if taken as multiple exposures (with any camera) and mixed or HDR or any other form of processing? And if so what would the benefits be?


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## neuroanatomist (Oct 2, 2014)

unfocused said:


> Well, Aglet's not quite as anonymous as you might suppose. http://a2bart.com/
> 
> You can browse his website and draw your own conclusions.



I like this one. It's titled, "9th Street Bridge, SW" but I'd call it "Stairway to Heaven" because of all the artifacts in the sky. Really speaks to having a high standard for image quality in the way one showcases their work.


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## privatebydesign (Oct 2, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> unfocused said:
> 
> 
> > Well, Aglet's not quite as anonymous as you might suppose. http://a2bart.com/
> ...



I took the high quality outlets that represent him to be a true measure of his creative worth, one farm seed shop in Edmonton.

Apache Seeds, 10136 - 149 St NW Edmonton

With representation in the art world like that I find it very easy to take anything the guy says with complete seriousness. /sarcasm.


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## Sporgon (Oct 2, 2014)

msm said:


> I think the subject is interesting, I am trying to get better at landscape photography, I am however unsure what methods yield the best results-
> 
> I been out the last days and chanced on couple of sunsets, both from rather boring places though. Tried to take some single exposures on my a7r and process them and they are both near the limit of what the a7r can do so needless to say it would just be garbage if taken with a Canon camera.
> 
> My question is, would they be better if taken as multiple exposures (with any camera) and mixed or HDR or any other form of processing? And if so what would the benefits be?



Well at least you have posted something the OP should have done, some landscape shots into the sun with the A7. 

The first picture is really quite beautiful.

Were you being serious about saying the images would be garbage if shot on a Canon ? Not sure if you were being sacrastic or not. 

In the first picture it looks as if the sun has virtually gone, obviously not in the frame so not a huge EV range in this pic. My only comments would be that the horizon is just a little off ( down on the left ) and the luminosity - light intensity of the sky does not match the luminosity in the rest of the picture, so to me it just looks a little unnatural, but that is just a personal point of view. 

In the second picture the camera has been unable to record the sun disc which is no surprise. Perhaps you have a tiny bit more around the sun that's not blown than I would expect, but you'd have to put the two pictures together to notice it. You have a masking shadow or correction radius left on the hills, but to be honest I don't think you would see much of a difference between Canon and Exmor in these situations until you began pushing shadows more, which is not what most people want to do. 

Regarding using B&B or HDR it is difficult to give a definitive response without seeing the raw files. I suspect the luminosity of the valley and hills in the second shot could be improved significantly if you'd worked from a B&B file.


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## msm (Oct 2, 2014)

Sporgon said:


> [
> 
> Well at least you have posted something the OP should have done, some landscape shots into the sun with the A7.
> 
> ...



Thanks for your comments.

I probably worded it a bit wrong, I am not sure the picture would be garbage if shot on my 5DIII or 1DX but from my experience I would not be able to dig out the foreground so with the exact same treatment they would be garbage if shot as a single exposure.

You are right about the first picture the sun is just gone, however the dynamic range is still high, there are some slight overexposure in the red channel on the clouds on the left and the foreground is almost black before pushing.

I am a bit unsure what you mean by recording sun disc, do you like to see the sun as a circle with no burn going into the clouds? If so then no it is not possible with this exposure, it has melted into a nearby cloud. Maybe a bit faster shutter could have helped in that respect.

If there is an interest for it I can see if I can put out the arw files.


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## V8Beast (Oct 2, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> I like this one. It's titled, "9th Street Bridge, SW" but I'd call it "Stairway to Heaven" because of all the artifacts in the sky. Really speaks to having a high standard for image quality in the way one showcases their work.





privatebydesign said:


> I took the high quality outlets that represent him to be a true measure of his creative worth, one farm seed shop in Edmonton.
> 
> Apache Seeds, 10136 - 149 St NW Edmonton
> 
> With representation in the art world like that I find it very easy to take anything the guy says with complete seriousness. /sarcasm.



You mean I'm not the only one who determines a photographer's credibility based on the quality of the images they produce? According to some people (cough, LTRLI), many people complaining about how Canon sensors are holding them back produce exceptional images yet choose to keep them top secret. Using that logic, we should give everyone the benefit of the doubt and just assume they're all exceptional photographers.


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## Kmccarthy (Oct 2, 2014)

krisbell said:


> Aglet said:
> 
> 
> > Image quality is, to me, not very subjective. I'm only considering the results produced by the hardware used.
> ...



In the real world, the overall capability of a camera system includes various factors and compromises, not just DR (i.e. lenses, AF, frames per second, image stabilization, handling, build quality, skin tones, etc...) If you tabulate and score all these different factors, I think you will find that a 5DIII is a much more capable system than a A7r. Personally, I wouldn't trade the 5DIII's excellent AF system and lenses for a couple extra stops of DR.


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## Sporgon (Oct 2, 2014)

msm said:


> Sporgon said:
> 
> 
> > [
> ...



I'd be interested to look at the two raw files if that was possible.


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## msm (Oct 2, 2014)

Sporgon said:


> I'd be interested to look at the two raw files if that was possible.



Try these links:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9qjo0kz91zbg3a7/_DSC7081.ARW?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wgwmdg0q1y6m91s/_DSC7236.ARW?dl=0


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## Skulker (Oct 2, 2014)

Easy


When I can't expose photographs properly I'll come back and read this thread. :


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## Sporgon (Oct 2, 2014)

msm said:


> Sporgon said:
> 
> 
> > I'd be interested to look at the two raw files if that was possible.
> ...



Many thanks, that will be interesting.


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## Otara (Oct 3, 2014)

AcutancePhotography said:


> zlatko said:
> 
> 
> > :
> ...



Not really, this is a common mistake. An argument from authority from a logic perspective says it _must_ be true, which is rather different from the idea that some opinions on topics that involve judgment are more valuable than others - I ask a doctor what to do when I break my leg, not anonymous people on the internet, even though it is still possible they make an incorrect diagnosis. While the photographer may be most important, theres a reason not too many are using kodak brownies any more.

Otara


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## NancyP (Oct 3, 2014)

Speak for yourself - there are still a few film photographers out there, though most are using view cameras.


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## NancyP (Oct 3, 2014)

Admittedly, jrista, I would have thought that you might rent a Sony A7s and try it out on astro-landscape and on DSOs. Of course it would be fun to rent all sorts of equipment.


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## zlatko (Oct 3, 2014)

Otara said:


> AcutancePhotography said:
> 
> 
> > zlatko said:
> ...



That makes sense, thank you. I would add that AcutancePhotography is arguing with a _different_ argument from authority, not the one I actually made. My argument from authority is not about which brand is better or worse, as clearly there are excellent photographers using various brands. My actual argument from authority is in Reply #195 above and relates to Canon already meeting the image quality standards of renowned excellent photographers, notwithstanding complaints by mostly anonymous people with dubious claims to having _higher_ image quality standards.


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## Aglet (Oct 3, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> unfocused said:
> 
> 
> > Well, Aglet's not quite as anonymous as you might suppose. http://a2bart.com/
> ...



ya, my web site sucks, I should spend half as much time on it as I do here.
_Would you like to look after the farm for me for a while so I can attend to that?_

but I choose 1 of 2 options to protect images from infringement.
- watermark it in a very distracting way
- compress the tonality of it so you can't even make a small print but retain a semblance of the content
you can figure out which one and why

Meanwhile, would you like to order a 48x32" print?... It was shot with a 5d2, you like those. 
I totally rocks on canvas where the texture helps to hide the residual noise that even DxO Pro couldn't quite eliminate.


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## Aglet (Oct 3, 2014)

zlatko said:


> So easy to say, "MY image quality standards are higher than YOURS" when you're anonymous and can say whatever you want. You can as easily say that you've flown to Jupiter and back ... with the same level of conviction, and just as much credibility. But I'll grant you that your standards for pushing 4- or 5-stop underexposed nearly-black frames and rescuing them from the trash are higher than mine. You'll win that argument every time.
> 
> Could Canon's IQ be higher? Of course! But the fact remains that Canon meets the IQ standards of some of the very best photographers.



Dude, I'm yankin' your chain because you're arguing silliness!
What the heck does who I am vs your gaggle of celebrities have to do with anything?!?

If I'm loading a roll of 24 or larger into my printer, there's better be some damn good image quality or it's gonna start to show.

_Sorry for pickin' on you Keith, but you posted a good example for my argument back on page 1 of this thread._

If you take that otherwise lovely shot of photographers capturing the sweet lines of that backlit P-51 against a colorful sky, and try to print it much bigger than 12 inches wide, you're going to be treated to a bunch of ugly Canon-brand shadow noise that will be visible. (see my post on the next page) To ME that detracts from the image, therefore it does not meet MY standards of image quality. It was apparently shot with a 5d3, I don't know how it was processed. If you're only printing "little pictures" or posting online then it's fine, the downsampling hides the problem.
I DO KNOW that if he'd shot that with any other brand at the moment, those shadows would be a lot cleaner and the image would stand up better to close scrutiny when printing it huge.

Do you now understand what I mean when I say I have higher image quality standards?
no?...
It means I would not use a noisy Canon for such a shot. I've learned that by experience, not by listening to fanboys.
That doesn't mean you can't use that same noisy Canon for plenty of other shots and still get good results where shadow noise will not be a problem; it would then likely meet my high standards for IQ.

So if your precious gaggle of high ranking professional photographers is satisfied with using Canon gear then they're going to run into the same limitations Keith did if they try a shot like that.
So, how would you like to summarize that?.. (hopefully not by take some personal shots at Keith's abilities)


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## Aglet (Oct 3, 2014)

3kramd5 said:


> I'll give it a shot
> 
> (argument from boredom )
> 
> ...



both 1 & 2 vary, depending on the task/shoot.



> Do you exclusively use 1 & 2?



HAHA! It would be a lot cheaper if I did restrict myself to that. ;D
I usually use the best practical hardware for the shot that gives me the results I want.
Sometimes I have to use what I've got available.


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## neuroanatomist (Oct 3, 2014)

Aglet said:


> Meanwhile, would you like to order a 48x32" print?



No, thanks. It really doesn't meet my high standards for quality.


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## moocowe (Oct 3, 2014)

I see what you tried to do with this thread jrista, and while it does show that the A7R's sensor is superior to the 5D3's at the settings you used, unfortunately the fanboys have gone on the defensive and resorted to borderline bullying.


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## Perio (Oct 3, 2014)

Guys, I hope that you spend at least as much time with your families/girlfriends as here discussing dynamic range.


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## Skulker (Oct 3, 2014)

moocowe said:


> I see what you tried to do with this thread jrista, and while it does show that the A7R's sensor is superior to the 5D3's at the settings you used, unfortunately the fanboys have gone on the defensive and resorted to borderline bullying.



He has deliberately drastically under exposed to try to prove his theory. 

Just because some people think what he is doing is invalid or just daft dose not make them a bully or a fanboy. Two derogatory comments that do you no credit what so ever. jrista makes what could quite reasonably be considered provocative posts it is hardly a surprise when people are provoked.


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## Lee Jay (Oct 3, 2014)

Skulker said:


> moocowe said:
> 
> 
> > I see what you tried to do with this thread jrista, and while it does show that the A7R's sensor is superior to the 5D3's at the settings you used, unfortunately the fanboys have gone on the defensive and resorted to borderline bullying.
> ...



The images are NOT underexposed if the goal is to preserve the view outside the windows. In fact, some of the pixels from the windows are blown out in the raw data.

Now, if you don't mind all-white windows, then the images are underexposed.


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## Sporgon (Oct 3, 2014)

Lee Jay said:


> Skulker said:
> 
> 
> > moocowe said:
> ...



I don't think _anyone_ is arguing that the Exmor isn't better in this rather niche circumstance, _if_ you are happy with the, let's face it, unacceptable result to most. 

I asked the OP to shoot some realistic landscapes in challenging light. He failed to do so, claiming the weather was too poor, yet in his rock comparison picture both the image and the histogram suggest there was some bright light - unless of course both these cameras have a dynamic range of about four EV. 

However mnm has kindly made available some A7r raws which were shot in a realistic but challenging landscape EV situation. I'm currently working on those with interest.


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## Skulker (Oct 3, 2014)

Lee Jay said:


> Skulker said:
> 
> 
> > moocowe said:
> ...




He has chosen to take a picture concentrating on the highlights, by your version. Then concentrates on the rest of the image that has been drastically under exposed. Wriggle all you like, split all the hairs you like. The end result is that many people will not think much of the images or the results. To then angle an accusation of bullying or a loaded angled accusation of "fanboyisum" at them is not reasonable. Some people might call it bullying or anti-fanboyisum.


Do you really believe the goal was to "preserve the view out of the window". To be honest its not much of a view. If that's the standard of images he's after he has plenty more to worry about than the sensor. But I think the goal may well have been to produce an image with large areas of under exposure that could then be used to try to prove Jrista's point of view. Then you try to imply that I am some how at fault for not minding "all white windows".


If the goal was to take an image with un-blown highlights view out of the window there are plenty of examples on the internet of how to do it much better.


You have chosen to only quote part of my post. As such you have missed the point entirely. My point was that Moocowe is making what might be considered inappropriate accusations.


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## Lee Jay (Oct 3, 2014)

Skulker said:


> Do you really believe the goal was to "preserve the view out of the window".



The goal was to do a dynamic range test BY preserving the view out of the window.


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## moocowe (Oct 3, 2014)

The first post clearly states that the purpose was to expose for the highlights and see how much shadow detail can be recovered. Jrista even went as far as to say the results were not realistic and were just to show the potential of each sensor. Yet people still continue to criticise the exposure of the photos and question the abilities and quality standards of others.

There is no question that the 5D3 sensor is good enough, or that bracketing would give better results for either camera, but that is not the subject being discussed here. The conclusion of this particular subject is that the A7R files handles shadow recovery better than the 5D3 files at the ISO used. This is a fact, not a theory, no matter what the subject or conditions.

...or, I could just jump on the bandwagon and criticise the composition of his living room, or the quality of his decor.


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## privatebydesign (Oct 3, 2014)

Lee Jay said:


> Skulker said:
> 
> 
> > Do you really believe the goal was to "preserve the view out of the window".
> ...



Which would be fine if he had done that. But on what planet is this crop of the widow view considered _"preserving the view out of the window"?_ It is unmitigated garbage.

As shot both images are completely unusable in any real context, the DR was too extreme for either sensor to get a usable image in one shot let alone preserve the view out of the window, nothing was demonstrated very well other than what has been said and agreed so many times, when an image is severely underexposed the Exmor sensor will give less shadow noise. We all know and agree with that. We now also know that when the DR exceeds both sensors capabilities the results are equally unusable.


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## jdramirez (Oct 3, 2014)

What was the dynamic range of film? I'm curious if digital has surpassed film in that regard.


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## neuroanatomist (Oct 3, 2014)

moocowe said:


> The conclusion of this particular subject is that the A7R files handles shadow recovery better than the 5D3 files at the ISO used. This is a fact, not a theory, no matter what the subject or conditions.



Sure. We've all known that for quite a while...years, in fact. So of course, jrista's conclusion was utterly banal. If you're a fan of entirely predictable 'experiments' perhaps you'd like to drop an object – tennis ball, apple, your camera – from a couple of meters above the ground, and verify the existence of gravity. Be sure to start a new forum topic to educate all of us on your findings.


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## Sporgon (Oct 3, 2014)

jrista said:


> I wasn't able to find any kind of landscapes on the first day that had high dynamic range (traffic held me up earlier in the day, when I finally got deep enough into the mountains, the sun had set before I found a scene.)



Hmmm......



jrista said:


> My goal was to provide data.



There's a slight contradiction here; no one was asking for a pictorial masterpiece, simply a genuine but EV challenging landscape shot into, or across the sun. Any bright or sunlit landscape will do. 

Fortunately mnm stepped into the breach with some real examples, and one of them is very pleasing to boot. 

I reckon you found, not surprisingly, that you were unable to emulate the wonderful pictures that you linked to on 500px in a single exposure because those images were, of course, multiple exposures, even if only two.


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## privatebydesign (Oct 3, 2014)

jrista said:


> privatebydesign said:
> 
> 
> > Lee Jay said:
> ...



Just like always, making shit up. Show me one person who has ever said that? 

DR/shadow recovery is better with Exmor, well done, we have all known and agreed that for, well, ever. What we disagree on is how much difference that actually makes to most people most of the time in actual shooting scenarios, and your "test" did nothing to further that.


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## moocowe (Oct 3, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> If you're a fan of entirely predictable 'experiments' perhaps you'd like to drop an object – tennis ball, apple, your camera – from a couple of meters above the ground, and verify the existence of gravity. Be sure to start a new forum topic to educate all of us on your findings.



Are the derogatory remarks really necessary?
Perhaps the comparison is new to some people.
If the topic is so banal to you, then I don't see why you're wasting your time reading and replying, other than to attempt to belittle others and make yourself feel like a big boy.

I do hope your post made you feel a little bit better about yourself though.


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## jdramirez (Oct 3, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> moocowe said:
> 
> 
> > The conclusion of this particular subject is that the A7R files handles shadow recovery better than the 5D3 files at the ISO used. This is a fact, not a theory, no matter what the subject or conditions.
> ...



Yeah, but how do you explain a feather not falling straight down, but seemingly soaring above the clouds.


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## Aglet (Oct 3, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> ..If you're a fan of entirely predictable 'experiments' perhaps you'd like to drop an object – tennis ball, apple, your camera – from a couple of meters above the ground, and verify the existence of gravity. Be sure to start a new forum topic to educate all of us on your findings.



Yes, I'm sure we' hear from a few anti-gravity types who will tell us that gravity is not really necessary or serves no practical purpose or that the experiments are contrived and have nothing to do with real life


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## Eldar (Oct 3, 2014)

You guys do have stamina ...


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## 3kramd5 (Oct 3, 2014)

Sporgon said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > I wasn't able to find any kind of landscapes on the first day that had high dynamic range (traffic held me up earlier in the day, when I finally got deep enough into the mountains, the sun had set before I found a scene.)
> ...



Be that as it may, can you blame him for wanting to find something beautiful to shoot with short-term rented gear?


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## privatebydesign (Oct 3, 2014)

Aglet said:


> neuroanatomist said:
> 
> 
> > ..If you're a fan of entirely predictable 'experiments' perhaps you'd like to drop an object – tennis ball, apple, your camera – from a couple of meters above the ground, and verify the existence of gravity. Be sure to start a new forum topic to educate all of us on your findings.
> ...



And I am sure the people who conflate "anti" gravity with with practical applications of shadow recovery and the lack of tonality due to noise, or just because there is not much actual tonal value down there, will keep deliberately misrepresenting the views of the "anti" gravity crowd.

It seems the anti gravity crowds point is just to nuanced or subtle for the DRoners to comprehend.


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## 3kramd5 (Oct 3, 2014)

Aglet said:


> I usually use the best practical hardware for the shot that gives me the results I want.
> Sometimes I have to use what I've got available.



Thus impeaching the notion that you have higher standard of image quality than those who also use what is practically available despite of better equipment existing (e.g. using a D810 in the studio rather than an IQ180, or using a Sigma 50 Art rather than a Zeiss Otus).


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## neuroanatomist (Oct 3, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> DR/shadow recovery is better with Exmor, well done, we have all known and agreed that for, well, ever. What we disagree on is how much difference that actually makes to most people most of the time in actual shooting scenarios, and your "test" did nothing to further that.



^^ This. 

It sounds like jrista proved something _to himself_ about actually using the a7R, so there was some utility to him I hope.


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## I_Miss_Minolta (Oct 3, 2014)

I could take a picture of my ass with the A7 and there'd be "X" amount of dynamic range.

I could take a picture of a smiling baby with my 60D...not as much.

Which would you rather BEHOLD?

IT'S NOT ABOUT THE DAMN DATA!


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## Sporgon (Oct 3, 2014)

3kramd5 said:


> Sporgon said:
> 
> 
> > jrista said:
> ...



Not at all, and he was heading that way by the sound of it. But once it became clear that I was being beaten by time ( which happens to me sooo often !), in this case, and given his goal to provide data, I'd have pulled up and just got a sunlit landscape shot of _something._ And as you have read above, I think he probably did.


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## Sporgon (Oct 3, 2014)

I_Miss_Minolta said:


> I could take a picture of my ass with the A7 and there'd be "X" amount of dynamic range.
> 
> I could take a picture of a smiling baby with my 60D...not as much.
> 
> ...



If you are Miss Minolta I think you should post some examples.


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## jdramirez (Oct 3, 2014)

I_Miss_Minolta said:


> I could take a picture of my ass with the A7 and there'd be "X" amount of dynamic range.
> 
> I could take a picture of a smiling baby with my 60D...not as much.
> 
> ...



It all depends on whose ass...


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## jdramirez (Oct 3, 2014)

While I'm asking dumb questions... why aren't we just using hdr multiple exposures to capture some of our missing dynamic range... sure if the subject is moving... but it was a living room.


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## Orangutan (Oct 3, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> privatebydesign said:
> 
> 
> > DR/shadow recovery is better with Exmor, well done, we have all known and agreed that for, well, ever. What we disagree on is how much difference that actually makes to most people most of the time in actual shooting scenarios, and your "test" did nothing to further that.
> ...



Given your scientific background, perhaps you could propose such a test? It seems to me that any fair test will be contrived in much the same way that tests of similar lenses are contrived by use of test charts, which are not common "actual shooting scenarios." Just as we extrapolate test-chart performance to real-world performance, so, I would hope, we could have a contrived test that would provide some insight regarding real-world performance.


----------



## privatebydesign (Oct 3, 2014)

jdramirez said:


> While I'm asking dumb questions... why aren't we just using hdr multiple exposures to capture some of our missing dynamic range... sure if the subject is moving... but it was a living room.



Because, as the example broke down and failed equally, it became about more than the room, it was about the lifting capability of an Exmor file, something we have all agreed on for a long time never disagreed about.


----------



## Lee Jay (Oct 3, 2014)

Okay, I'll provide an image from a high DR scene, that's actually a picture I wanted, not just a test. This was taken at ISO 100 on a Rebel T2i and it was exposed such as to reduce, but not eliminate, blow out of the raw data on the bright pixels at the top of the image. In other words, this was about as much exposure as I could give it without further blowing out the raw data on the top of the frame.

See what you think of the technical performance here, by seeing what you can make of the image.

http://tinyurl.com/neof9y4


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## Skulker (Oct 3, 2014)

jrista said:


> Yes, it's .. contrived .............. and I'm tired of being party to any of it.




Finally I can agree with something you have said Jrista. And its been some time since that has happened. ;D 


So I won't be posting in this thread again.


----------



## privatebydesign (Oct 3, 2014)

Orangutan said:


> neuroanatomist said:
> 
> 
> > privatebydesign said:
> ...



Personally I'd just like to see real world images from regular shooting scenarios where the differences in DR make an appreciable difference to the output image quality.

We all agree there is a difference in shadow lifting capability between the Exmor and Canon, what the DRoners seem incapable of doing is posting simple real world images illustrating this making an actual noticeable impact on image quality. 

It is always contrived tests that normally fall flat, seriously do you think either room shot is worth a damn?

To be sure, there are times when that 2, or whatever number of stops difference it is, will make a difference, but it seems to me, and many others, those occasions are actually very few and far between, which raises the common sense question 'how useful a feature is it?' Don't get me wrong, when I get I will be happy, but I am not seriously limited by not having it and I have seen very few images to convince me otherwise.


----------



## turtle (Oct 3, 2014)

What gets boring about this discussion is that those who attack the 'high DR advocates' are invariably coming from one of the following flawed perspectives:

1. It does not matter to me, so it should not matter to you. _Sorry, around whom does the universe spin?_
2. You do not understand how to expose correctly. _Condescending and ignorant view point._
3. If Canon pros can make great photos, then you must think you are better than them. _This ignores entirely the plethora of factors that lead to some people shooting Canon versus other brands. It also has no bearing whatsoever on the facts being discussed here. What's more it is about as logical as saying 'Mr X, the Formula 1 racer uses a BMW 535D as his daily driver so I cannot see why its not good enough for YOU.... without recognising that you might live on a remote farm in Scotland, accessed via a track passable only to 4x4s! _
4. When buying a camera, DR is only one consideration. _You should look at the whole camera! Yes, but it may be that amazing AF and live view matters not to a given person, whereas high DR is actually more important for specific applications. Some people don't want to 'work around' the issue when they don't have to, or own multiple systems just to cover those high SBR moments that a Canon will struggle with... and carry both 'just in case'._
5. Show me the paper or monitor that has 14 stops of range - there are none that are close so this 'data' is wasted! _Sorry, but this shows a total lack of technical understanding of the issue. You need to learn about the relationships between subject brightness ranges, capture and output. This is basic stuff and its sad to hear how many people get their teeth stuck in while showing their ignorance on this one. _
6. A five stop push is unrealistic and therefore shows us nothing about real life application! _Sure, 5 stops is extreme, but you try even 2 stops when those shadows are on the floor and the Canon still falls apart, especially if you want to make large prints. And yes, you can encounter these scenarios every single outing if you happen to shoot the sort of subject matter that will require you to expose to include hot highlights and then lift deep shadow. Sony sensors are dramatically better here and its visible in an 8x10, never mind a 30"_
7. Shadows are supposed to be shadows you fools! They aren't supposed to be lifted that much. _Once again, you don't understand the basics of exposure and tonal placement in relation to the exposure latitude of the materials you are working with. Put in crude and simple terms, the photographer decides what is shadows and if the exposure means they fall darker than desired, its better if the photographer has recourse. There was the same issue in the darkroom, when you did your best with exposure and development, but due to various factors were left with heavy dodging in the darkroom...._
8. All cameras are compromises. You are getting all upset because Canon is not perfect, but neither is Nikon. _Sure, this is true, but as everyone's needs differ and as the compromises differ from one manufacturer to the other, this is a non-point. We can still prefer one compromise over the other. Besides, now that Nikon has sorted LOTS of issues out with the D810 and D750, if Canon does not nail the DR and banding issue, its going to be difficult to show a strong reason to be selected. Besides, none of this diminishes the frustration that far smaller companies with much lower budgets produce much cheaper cameras with much smaller sensors with much more dynamic range! Canon has ZERO high DR options. None at ANY price._

There are a lot of people commenting here like they are real pros, who are clueless on the issues about which they are commenting. Then there are those who just think that anyone whose needs differ from their own are delusional. Either way, its really boring hearing the same tired old counter-arguments from people you'd think are having their identities attacked.

....So I would be interested to know if there is anyone out there who will disagree with the following statement. If not, there is not a lot more to say:

"Sony sensors do have measurably higher DR than existing Canon sensors. They have measurably and visibly lower read noise and banding too. The lower DR of Canons and the appearance of banding _can_ be a factor in some photos and significantly reduce the quality of the end file. While this may not be important to most people most of the time - and here the Canons are just great - it is hugely important to _some_ people _a lot of the time because of how they use their cameras and what they use them for._"

So?


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## Krob78 (Oct 3, 2014)

Eldar said:


> You guys do have stamina ...


And an incredible excess of time! :


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## privatebydesign (Oct 3, 2014)

turtle said:


> ....So I would be interested to know if there is anyone out there who will disagree with the following statement. If not, there is not a lot more to say:
> 
> "Sony sensors do have measurably higher DR than existing Canon sensors. They have measurably and visibly lower read noise and banding too. The lower DR of Canons and the appearance of banding _can_ be a factor in some photos and significantly reduce the quality of the end file. While this may not be important to most people most of the time - and here the Canons are just great - it is hugely important to _some_ people _a lot of the time because of how they use their cameras and what they use them for._"
> 
> So?



The first seven points are self indulgent fluff that have been debated ad nauseum, you choose to take the Exmor "high ground" and ignore the extensive rebuttals that have been put forwards to your oversimplifications, that is your choice.

Your closing statement, like many of these comments, has broad support from both sides, but the devil is in the detail, "huge" we disagree on, two stops is two stops, most pros can deal with two stops in a variety of ways, and I can only speak from the point of view of a professional photographer. We also disagree on "a lot of the time", if that were true we'd have people posting lots of images where that difference made a difference, and we don't.

Change "huge" to small, and change "a lot of the time" to rarely or sometimes, and you might be in with a shot.


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## Orangutan (Oct 3, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> Orangutan said:
> 
> 
> > Given your scientific background, perhaps you could propose such a test? It seems to me that any fair test will be contrived in much the same way that tests of similar lenses are contrived by use of test charts, which are not common "actual shooting scenarios." Just as we extrapolate test-chart performance to real-world performance, so, I would hope, we could have a contrived test that would provide some insight regarding real-world performance.
> ...



Ah, I see you've missed one of jrista's major points. My reading is that he agrees with you that, in all but a few cases, you can get indistinguishable results from a Canon sensor. What he further asserts (and I'd love to see tested in some reasonable way) is that there is a significantly larger number of cases where it's easier and much less work to achieve the desired result with a sony sensor than with a Canon sensor. That has the potential to be much more important. If, for example, you can achieve your desired look in 5 minutes of PP on a sony sensor, and that same (or indistinguishable) look would take 30 minutes on a Canon sensor, isn't that also important?

Again, I'd like to see this tested properly, but it requires a well-designed test to account for the variability of PP skills.


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## Sporgon (Oct 3, 2014)

Here is a link to a guy who uses Sony, including the a7 and the a7s (Yosemite Sunrise). These look to be single exposure pictures and many are really lovely, but you can see the EV range limitations with one exposure even here.

https://500px.com/burkardphoto

@ orangutan: jrista has backpeddled when stating "in many cases there is no difference" and he has done this since trying the a7r for himself. Prior to this he was saying Canon had _fundamental_ issues with image quality, and it is statements like that which create the arguments. 

The a7s, the D810s, they are all capable of fantastic quality - just like Canon.


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## serendipidy (Oct 3, 2014)

Sporgon said:


> I_Miss_Minolta said:
> 
> 
> > I could take a picture of my ass with the A7 and there'd be "X" amount of dynamic range.
> ...



;D ;D ;D


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## privatebydesign (Oct 3, 2014)

Orangutan said:


> privatebydesign said:
> 
> 
> > Orangutan said:
> ...



Over the course of his rantings, diatribes and lectures he has made many many claims, some of which are quite outlandish. I can't be bothered to cherry pick them, but many of them are just absurd, and that is the main reason for this ridiculous overrun on the subject.

Getting back to the actual interesting bit here is a simple example of how much it really matters. I shoot a lot of interiors with window detail like the first post, severe DR scenes, I follow many pros who do similar work and when you get to the _above real estate listings_ shooters the vast majority of the notable shooters are shooting Canon, why when the DR is always on our minds and often a pain in the butt? Lenses. It turns out that the differences in the 17TS-E and the Nikon? and the 24 TS-E MkII and the Nikon PC-E24mm make more of a difference to full time pros than the differences in post processing.

I would be the perfect candidate for the previously mentioned "huge" and "a lot of the time", but it just isn't true.

It is yet another one of those overinflated features, the small differences between makes and models that some people seem to get so passionate about. The Nikon D750 threads are tearing up the forums with their "not a D700 successor" comments over PC sockets etc. 

It won't end and we each have to make our own choices, what jrista and the DRoners seem to refuse to accept is that many of us who own Canon cameras, and use them to good effect, made our choice from the standpoint of an intelligent and educated position, all systems are compromises, I choose to compromise DR/shadow lifting capabilities because it has less of an impact on my shooting than lens availability.


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## serendipidy (Oct 3, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> If you're a fan of entirely predictable 'experiments' perhaps you'd like to drop an object – tennis ball, apple, your camera – from a couple of meters above the ground, and verify the existence of gravity. Be sure to start a new forum topic to educate all of us on your findings.


Galileo already did that long ago in Italy.

Einstein's Theory of General Relativity states that there is no real gravity as a force but it is the apparent effect of the warping of space-time by matter.


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## Orangutan (Oct 3, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> Orangutan said:
> 
> 
> > Ah, I see you've missed one of jrista's major points. My reading is that he agrees with you that, in all but a few cases, you can get indistinguishable results from a Canon sensor. What he further asserts (and I'd love to see tested in some reasonable way) is that there is a significantly larger number of cases where it's easier and much less work to achieve the desired result with a sony sensor than with a Canon sensor. That has the potential to be much more important. If, for example, you can achieve your desired look in 5 minutes of PP on a sony sensor, and that same (or indistinguishable) look would take 30 minutes on a Canon sensor, isn't that also important?
> ...



I understand that this is an area of your expertise, so I mean this as a proposal for discussion, not as a statement of fact. I think there is a difference between photographing such a space as a pro and as an amateur. I'm an amateur, and I've encountered the bright window problem. If you're a pro, you'll try to schedule your shoot when light is favorable, or perhaps you'll bring in some of your own lighting to balance the windows and the existing fixtures and lamps. As an amateur I don't do that: I stumble upon a scene I like and whip out my camera. It goes without saying that I shouldn't expect the same quality a pro would get with a properly set-up shot; however, I still want the best I can get with the 2lbs of metal and glass I happen to be carrying. If brand x sensor is better for that than brand y, then I'd like to know that so I can work it into my decision making at my next purchase.

Would you agree that the pro vs. amateur perspectives on this room are different?


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## V8Beast (Oct 3, 2014)

serendipidy said:


> Galileo already did that long ago in Italy.
> 
> Einstein's Theory of General Relativity states that there is no real gravity as a force but it is the apparent effect of the warping of space-time by matter.



Yeah, but the real question is how does that all relate to Quantum Mechanics ;D?


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## turtle (Oct 3, 2014)

Please rebut the 'fluff' point by point, because I must have missed the intelligent and informed rebuttals somewhere in the mix. 

As for my closing point, it is based on my own experience as an owner of both a 5D III (which I still love) and the A7 and A7R, as well as plenty of other cameras. As for your modification to my statement, I'm sorry but it does not fit as far as I am concerned. You are doing precisely what I suggested in my first few points, which is imposing your perception as fact and implying mine to be delusion or, at best, inaccurate or a distortion. 

The DR issue as I shoot weddings is 'rarely' - I have already said that Canon sensors are often just great - but when I shoot city night scenes, it is '_all the bloody time_', hence buying into the Sony A7 series and, before that, Nik Dfine. I did not do this for fun. At most print sizes, the detail differential of 36MP is 'not much', but the DR and lack of banding, well.... that's such a pleasure. If I shot daylight wildlife, I would not care less. If I were shooting motor sport, I would not care less.... but I don't. I never shoot these things. Unfortunately, I shoot a lot of the stuff that shows up the Canon sensors and there is no getting around that. Unfortunately, you and those like you, cannot get your heads around that, but I suspect that is because you spend too much time looking at cameras and your own photography than other peoples.

You are being vague. Please be specific, so its clear what you are actually arguing about. Are you too shooting city night scenes and finding that you could ask no more of your Canon sensors? What do you do that leaves you asking for nothing more. Can we be clear, are you asking for nothing more in terms of DR and banding? Would it be of no benefit to you? Maybe you are suggesting that I should not be shooting what I shoot instead, thus preventing the DR issue from rearing its inconvenient head in the first place?

It does not matter how you cook it: you are saying one of the following:

a. The significant differences in DR and banding are NOT a fact.
b. They may be a fact but they cannot possibly be important to me (not you), regardless of my assertions to the contrary.

Which is it? Is there another explanation that you can actually explain?



privatebydesign said:


> turtle said:
> 
> 
> > ....So I would be interested to know if there is anyone out there who will disagree with the following statement. If not, there is not a lot more to say:
> ...


----------



## privatebydesign (Oct 3, 2014)

Orangutan said:


> I understand that this is an area of your expertise, so I mean this as a proposal for discussion, not as a statement of fact. I think there is a difference between photographing such a space as a pro and as an amateur. I'm an amateur, and I've encountered the bright window problem. If you're a pro, you'll try to schedule your shoot when light is favorable, or perhaps you'll bring in some of your own lighting to balance the windows and the existing fixtures and lamps. As an amateur I don't do that: I stumble upon a scene I like and whip out my camera. It goes without saying that I shouldn't expect the same quality a pro would get with a properly set-up shot; however, I still want the best I can get with the 2lbs of metal and glass I happen to be carrying. If brand x sensor is better for that than brand y, then I'd like to know that so I can work it into my decision making at my next purchase.
> 
> Would you agree that the pro vs. amateur perspectives on this room are different?



I'd agree that anybody thinking either are acceptable shots is a whole world away from a paying client above real estate listings, yes.

But as an enthusiastic amateur I would say you would get vastly better images in that scenario with either camera choosing the window/exterior view, or the interior as the key point for a single shot, or take the time and trouble to make two shots, even hand held, that can be used together to make a good image that will do the job much better.

I accept that lighting, time of day etc, is often beyond even pros capacity to control, but there it is still an easy way to take the shot much better than it was done with either system.

I will also agree that there will be a rare occasion in that type of situation where you can "get away" with one Exmor exposure rather than two Canon ones, but I'd venture the two Canon ones would give you a much better image anyway!

In truth I did learn something from the files, that was that from my perspective the tonality of heavily lifted shadows is very limited, if the lifted areas only account for a small area of the scene I can see some utility to the capability, but when the areas to be lifted become a larger part of the image, even thought hey have little noise and no banding, I can't see the practical benefit for my uses, if I had I would have had an A7r here by now!


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## serendipidy (Oct 3, 2014)

V8Beast said:


> serendipidy said:
> 
> 
> > Galileo already did that long ago in Italy.
> ...



Figure that one out and the Nobel prize is all yours 8)


----------



## Orangutan (Oct 3, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> Orangutan said:
> 
> 
> > I understand that this is an area of your expertise, so I mean this as a proposal for discussion, not as a statement of fact. I think there is a difference between photographing such a space as a pro and as an amateur. I'm an amateur, and I've encountered the bright window problem. If you're a pro, you'll try to schedule your shoot when light is favorable, or perhaps you'll bring in some of your own lighting to balance the windows and the existing fixtures and lamps. As an amateur I don't do that: I stumble upon a scene I like and whip out my camera. It goes without saying that I shouldn't expect the same quality a pro would get with a properly set-up shot; however, I still want the best I can get with the 2lbs of metal and glass I happen to be carrying. If brand x sensor is better for that than brand y, then I'd like to know that so I can work it into my decision making at my next purchase.
> ...





> In truth I did learn something from the files, that was that from my perspective the tonality of heavily lifted shadows is very limited, if the lifted areas only account for a small area of the scene I can see some utility to the capability, but when the areas to be lifted become a larger part of the image, even thought hey have little noise and no banding, I can't see the practical benefit for my uses, if I had I would have had an A7r here by now!



Part of that could be the Sony's lossy "raw" format. I haven't used any of these, so I can only speculate.


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## V8Beast (Oct 4, 2014)

serendipidy said:


> V8Beast said:
> 
> 
> > serendipidy said:
> ...



No way, dude. I'm still trying to figure out how to manage photons


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## V8Beast (Oct 4, 2014)

jrista said:


> I'd like Canon to fix that, and until they do...I don't be buying another Canon DSLR. I have cameras that serve my needs for action...I'll be giving my money to whoever can best serve my needs for landscapes. If Canon fixes their sensor issues before I spend, great! If not, too bad for Canon. I personally think anyone who wants more DR should do the same. Make Canon's bottom line shrink. Money is the the only power we have, we "DRoners" should wield that power to be heard by the only entity that matters (which does not involve one single soul on these forums). I guess that's outlandish



Best advice I've read yet. Why others who find Canon sensors lacking in DR can't reach the same conclusion is beyond me. 

I applaud you for trying out an Exmor-equipped camera so you can experience firsthand how it can impact what you shoot. If additional DR were at the top of my priority list, I'd do the exact same thing, and wouldn't hesitate to give another company my money if the pros outweighed the cons. Money talks, not whiny message board posts (BTW, I'm referencing other posters not you)


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## Lee Jay (Oct 4, 2014)

jrista said:


> ...I think in the end the D810 is really going to be *the *Exmor-equipped camera for landscapes.



I'd personally dismiss it for the lack of an AA filter alone. I'd never be able to trust it for that reason.


----------



## sanj (Oct 4, 2014)

turtle said:


> What gets boring about this discussion is that those who attack the 'high DR advocates' are invariably coming from one of the following flawed perspectives:
> 
> 1. It does not matter to me, so it should not matter to you. _Sorry, around whom does the universe spin?_
> 2. You do not understand how to expose correctly. _Condescending and ignorant view point._
> ...



So? So you are right. I agree with with your thought process.


----------



## eml58 (Oct 4, 2014)

jrista said:


> Anyone who really loves the TS-E 17mm and 24mm lenses could use 'em with the Metabones (although possibly with some added flocking, based on reviews I've read.)



I'm currently using the V4 Metabones for my a7r, larger diameter Barrel (for better use with Canon TSE) and additional black flocking (for reduced reflection), works exceptionally well, although I haven't had any real issues with the V3 either, except some vignetting with the TSE use, V4 resolves that issue for me.

Had the loan of a Pentax 645z for a week, just simply love this sensor, quite possibly the best I've ever encountered in any Camera I've used (Haven't tried Phase one yet), not too keen on the Camera style, but it works well (if someone gets this sensor into a dslr/1D form, I'm onboard in a new york second), let down like the a7r with poorish selection of Lenses, if Pentax fix the lens issue, adapt Leaf Shutter etc, it's a real nice set up for Landscape/Still Imaging.


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## neuroanatomist (Oct 4, 2014)

jrista said:


> The simple point were trying to make is...why should you have to compromise at all? You wouldn't have to, if.....



Oh...IF. If Canon would make better sensors. If Sony would fix their RAW format. If Nikon had this lens or that one. The a8R will be the perfect landscape camera. I thought the D810 would be the perfect landscape camera, then I used one and now I know the D820 will be the perfect one. 

Your 'simple point' is irrelevant in the real world. The _real_ point is that we *DO* have to compromise. 




jrista said:


> Someday, someone will get it _all _right.



Not likely. Someone else will always get some part of it _more_ right, making everything else imperfect. But hey, keep wishing...throw in wishes for world peace and an end to hunger while you're at it.


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## raptor3x (Oct 4, 2014)

jrista said:


> Although they have been moving along at a faster clip than Canon...so if the 5D IV ends up not being a high DR camera, I am sure Sony will have an ANr out at some point between the 5D IV and 5D V that solves some of the key issues). I do feel it would be stupid to buy the A7r before finding out what Sony has in store for January, though. (And stupid to buy it before trying a D810.)



At the rate Sony's been releasing bodies, I'd be shocked if there's not an A8R/A7Rii before the 5D4 is released.


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## msm (Oct 4, 2014)

raptor3x said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > Although they have been moving along at a faster clip than Canon...so if the 5D IV ends up not being a high DR camera, I am sure Sony will have an ANr out at some point between the 5D IV and 5D V that solves some of the key issues). I do feel it would be stupid to buy the A7r before finding out what Sony has in store for January, though. (And stupid to buy it before trying a D810.)
> ...



The Sony rumor site is very confident there will be new full frame cameras out in beginning of next year with a new sensor with high DR and around 50mpix. They are not sure of what kind of model it will be though.


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## msm (Oct 4, 2014)

Lee Jay said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > ...I think in the end the D810 is really going to be *the *Exmor-equipped camera for landscapes.
> ...



Funny thing is, I get more moire on 5DIII and 1DX than on A7R with no AA filter. It has to do with lenses outresolving the first 2 cameras much more easily.


----------



## Orangutan (Oct 4, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > Someday, someone will get it _all _right.
> ...



You're partially correct: we can always point to a single feature of another product we'd like to have -- the "rising expectations" thing. It is, however, fair to expect all the components of a top brand not to lag the competition by a long way. E.g., how would you feel if your brand-new Acura SUV had a stereo with a cassette player that was not replaceable, and could not connect to your iToys? (yes, that's an exaggeration)

I'm sympathetic to jrista's perspective in that it would be baffling if Canon does not make significant landscape-friendly IQ improvements in the next couple of years. It doesn't affect me, really, because I won't choose to buy those products until they hit the refurb market. From the market perspective, Canon is right to set the priority on AF, both for stills and video, since an OOF shot is worthless regardless of the IQ.

Please dial-back the sarcasm a bit, though -- wouldn't want it to leak over to RL.


----------



## neuroanatomist (Oct 4, 2014)

Orangutan said:


> neuroanatomist said:
> 
> 
> > jrista said:
> ...



Actually, I'm completely correct. The crux of your argument is the claim of 'lagging by a long way'. If Sony brings a 60 MP sensor with 20 stops of DR (real DR, not Sony's exaggerated marketing claim) and Canon's sensors are unchanged, that argument might make sense. But I'd say that falls clearly into the category of not likely.

Your "exaggerated" example is quite a good one. Much like the current situation between sensors, what some people perceive as major liabilities can be quite easily addressed in many cases. In this specific case of your example, there is a $5 solution:


----------



## Orangutan (Oct 4, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> Orangutan said:
> 
> 
> > neuroanatomist said:
> ...



Your "solution" occurred to me when I was writing the previous post, and I even started by using "8-Track" rather than cassette for this very reason. Have you ever used one of those "$5 dollar solutions?" At least when I used one it was clunky and imperfect: not only is managing the wire a hassle (depending on the layout of your dashboard) but there's background noise at low ISO volume. ;D 



> The crux of your argument is the claim of 'lagging by a long way'


No, the crux of my argument is that 'lagging by a long way' and 'major liability' are in the eye of the beholder. Canon's sensor tech is not a major liability in my eye right now, based on my type of shooting. Others are welcome to come to a different conclusion. If you would like to suggest better technique to improve their results, please do so. Belittling others does not help, nor does it reflect well on you.


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## Orangutan (Oct 4, 2014)

jrista said:


> They are far, far closer to having a DSLR that does everything generally right than Canon.


jrista, I think you underestimate Canon: I have no doubts that they already have the basic tech needed for higher DR and lower noise. For them it's almost certainly a business decision, both due to retooling costs (why make capital expenditures when the market doesn't demand it?) and also for the sales opportunities down the road. E.g., if Canon comes out with a 1DX Mark II that's nearly identical to the current 1DX, except for the improved sensor tech, you can bet Neuro will pre-order one. 8)  

DR / low noise is not what the overall market demands now.


----------



## unfocused (Oct 4, 2014)

Orangutan said:


> neuroanatomist said:
> 
> 
> > Orangutan said:
> ...



Sort of hate to jump into this, but actually, I think this is, for once, not a bad analogy.

I went for years driving a truck where the CD player was broken. Once you put a CD in there, it was pretty much there forever no matter how often you pushed the eject button. Once in a while, when the stars were aligned, you could eject it and then, of course, you dare not put another CD in.

But, the point is this: Did it stop me from driving wherever I wanted? Did I get to my destination late? Did I get more tickets? Did it, in fact, have the least bit of impact on the ability of me and my truck to get the job done and get to the destination we were headed for? No. Not in the least.

So, that's the way I look at the Dynamic Range debate. Would it be nice to have a little extra range? Sure. But like the sound system in any vehicle, it doesn't prevent your from getting to where you are going.


----------



## unfocused (Oct 4, 2014)

Orangutan said:


> DR / low noise is not what the overall market demands now.



This may be the most succinct and accurate explanation yet. 

I hate to mess it up with any additional comment, but what the heck...

I wish people would just recognize the fact that the most bitter debates on this forum have been reduced to trivial matters – dynamic range, mirror or no mirror and more megapixels or no more megapixels seem to dominate.

If these are the biggest things we have to worry about in terms of the quality of technology today, I would say we are pretty darn lucky. Just once, I wish the naysayers would admit that none of these differences are significant or likely to have the least bit of impact on the success or failure of any camera manufacturer.


----------



## Orangutan (Oct 4, 2014)

unfocused said:


> Orangutan said:
> 
> 
> > neuroanatomist said:
> ...



Agreed; however, this was your personal experience. For others it may be more or less tolerable. My point is that the importance of DR is a matter of personal taste and tolerance for the work-arounds. For me it's not a problem, for others it is. In some cases (e.g. that Gold Coast guy) I'm convinced better technique would help. Some posters here seem to have experience, technical chops and self-skepticism; for those I'm willing to accept their conclusions that more DR would help them, and don't feel a need to second-guess or demean them.


----------



## neuroanatomist (Oct 4, 2014)

jrista said:


> All your snark aside, I think Nikon is extremely close to nailing it all. I don't like their ergonomics as much as I like Canon's, however it's much better than the A7 series ergos. Ergonomics is subjective anyway. If Nikon can solve their manufacturing issues, and avoid things like oil spots or hot pixels, then I think they WILL nail it. They are far, far closer to having a DSLR that does everything generally right than Canon.



So if Nikon fixes all those issues you listed before Canon fixes that one issue you're unhappy with, Nikon will have a dSLR that does everything generally right. At that point, will you change your earlier statement/decision about sticking with Canon and adding other brand(s), and instead sell your inferior Canon gear and switch to Nikon?

Or does the _camera system_ matter more? Which is exactly what many of us have been saying all along...

What if by the time Nikon has 'the perfect dSLR', Sony has a 50 MP Exmor-on-steroids FF sensor with a 16-bit ADC and 15.9 stops of DR but in the same a7 body with the same lossy RAW...and they don't sell it to Nikon. I guess Nikon's perfect dSLR won't look so perfect...




Orangutan said:


> > The crux of your argument is the claim of 'lagging by a long way'
> 
> 
> No, the crux of my argument is that 'lagging by a long way' and 'major liability' are in the eye of the beholder.



That's been my argument all along. As I've stated so often, everyone should choose the camera system that best meets their needs. But I just don't see the point in some people trying to convince everyone that their eye is better at beholding than everyone else's. "Canon's sensor IQ doesn't meet my needs," is very different than, "Canon sensors deliver poor IQ." Yet I see the latter posted far more often on these forums, in some cases by those who start out stating the former.


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## Aglet (Oct 4, 2014)

unfocused said:


> But, the point is this: Did it stop me from driving wherever I wanted? Did I get to my destination late? Did I get more tickets? Did it, in fact, have the least bit of impact on the ability of me and my truck to get the job done and get to the destination we were headed for? No. Not in the least.
> 
> So, that's the way I look at the Dynamic Range debate. Would it be nice to have a little extra range? Sure. But like the sound system in any vehicle, it doesn't prevent your from getting to where you are going.



I nice analogy but, in scale and relevance, more akin to the neckstrap ring mounts on the camera than its sensor.


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## Orangutan (Oct 4, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> That's been my argument all along. As I've stated so often, everyone should choose the camera system that best meets their needs. But I just don't see the point in some people trying to convince everyone that their eye is better at beholding than everyone else's. "Canon's sensor IQ doesn't meet my needs," is very different than, "Canon sensors deliver poor IQ." Yet I see the latter posted far more often on these forums, in some cases by those who start out stating the former.



I see a lot of people talking past each other, which often derails what could be a cordial conversation.


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## neuroanatomist (Oct 4, 2014)

Aglet said:


> unfocused said:
> 
> 
> > But, the point is this: Did it stop me from driving wherever I wanted? Did I get to my destination late? Did I get more tickets? Did it, in fact, have the least bit of impact on the ability of me and my truck to get the job done and get to the destination we were headed for? No. Not in the least.
> ...



You're right, the engine is likely a better analogy for the sensor. More specifically, comparing a pair of 6-cyl engines, one with 230 hp and one with 280 hp, and the latter has more torque (so it can lift tow more weight, provided you shoot RAW and post-process properly know how to properly hook up a trailer hitch). The extra hp and towing ability will benefit some owners...but really, the need to pass a car while driving up a steep hill is rare for most drivers, and only a small fraction of car owners pull trailers.


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## Marsu42 (Oct 4, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> "Canon's sensor IQ doesn't meet my needs," is very different than, "Canon sensors deliver poor IQ."



Agreed.



neuroanatomist said:


> Yet I see the latter posted far more often on these forums, in some cases by those who start out stating the former.



Did you count them, the posts vs. the posters? My view is that it's about psychology, namely "_salience_" and fact that strong stimuli leave a more accessible memory esp. if they trigger an emotional reaction (like in: "your 1dx is crappy"). It's part of neuroscience, should be right up your alley :->

My impression is that there are lots who think that there might be legit requirements for higher dr (example: daylight beach volleyball) and it's a smart idea to purchase your gear based on your requirements. After that, said posters usually go about doing their business *or* out of frustration that anything moderate tends to ignored in such a thread adopt a stronger position to be heard as you described above.


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## gruhl28 (Oct 4, 2014)

This thread is probably too long already, and I'm not sure if anyone has already made this point (I haven't seen it made in any other threads on this topic). I'm not denying that having extra dynamic range is nice, but think about all the beautiful pictures taken on Fuji Velvia and the fact that Velvia has only a few stops of dynamic range, far less than even the "worst" Canon available. Again, I'm not saying that there aren't times when I'd like more dynamic range or that it isn't an advantage, just pointing out that some of the most fantastic photos ever taken were done with something that had far less dynamic range than any current DSLR.

Thanks, jrista, for the photos.


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## Orangutan (Oct 4, 2014)

gruhl28 said:


> This thread is probably too long already, and I'm not sure if anyone has already made this point (I haven't seen it made in any other threads on this topic). I'm not denying that having extra dynamic range is nice, but think about all the beautiful pictures taken on Fuji Velvia and the fact that Velvia has only a few stops of dynamic range, far less than even the "worst" Canon available. Again, I'm not saying that there aren't times when I'd like more dynamic range or that it isn't an advantage, just pointing out that some of the most fantastic photos ever taken were done with something that had far less dynamic range than any current DSLR.
> 
> Thanks, jrista, for the photos.



A similar point has been made. The standard reply is not to deny it, but to say that auto-focus, smart metering, high ISO IQ and high framerate have all contributed to higher "keeper rates." Also, high pixel count allows a bit more cropping, and PP software has made the job of "developing" your capture quicker and easier.

It's entirely true that great shots have been taken with simpler gear, but that does not at all detract from the legitimate desire for even better tech to make success more likely and less work to achieve.


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## Neil1000 (Oct 4, 2014)

May I thank both sides in this argument for some excellent technical insights. I have learned a lot over the last few weeks.

We are in the dark as to whether Canon is reluctant or unable to produce a D810 competitor. 


So how quickly can Canon move to meet technical development? May I draw your attention to this excellent post from Digital Picture in 2012.

http://community.the-digital-picture.com/showthread.php?t=5865&highlight=daniel+browning

Does it sound familiar and current in this thread?


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## Orangutan (Oct 5, 2014)

Neil1000 said:


> May I thank both sides in this argument for some excellent technical insights. I have learned a lot over the last few weeks.
> 
> We are in the dark as to whether Canon is reluctant or unable to produce a D810 competitor.
> 
> ...



Is that you, Mikael?


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## Marsu42 (Oct 5, 2014)

Orangutan said:


> Is that you, Mikael?



Probably not, *NO CAPS IN THE POST* :-> ... yet.


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## eml58 (Oct 5, 2014)

Orangutan said:


> In some cases (e.g. that Gold Coast guy) I'm convinced better technique would help.



Reasonably sure that's me, not too sure why I copped a mention here but even so it would have been a common courtesy to use my handle "eml58", I guess where you come from "that Gold Coast Guy" works just fine, but if you'd care to elucidate on where my technique has gone wrong (and I'm sure there's a 300 page book in there somewhere, but a few succinct pointers would do), I'm always extremely keen to learn from those with better technique & skills (indeed it's the main reason I participate in CR).

I assume (I know, dangerous), from your comment you've established you fall into that category ?? better skilled and such ?? So happy to learn from those that can teach.


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## Orangutan (Oct 5, 2014)

eml58 said:


> Orangutan said:
> 
> 
> > In some cases (e.g. that Gold Coast guy) I'm convinced better technique would help.
> ...



No, I don't think it was you, it was someone who just started posting a few months ago. You've been around for a while, I'm pretty sure. I don't want to re-open that whole event. My only point was that "someone" a while back was making claims about the poor studio performance of a 5D3, but appeared to be drastically underexposing. 



> I assume (I know, dangerous), from your comment you've established you fall into that category ?? better skilled and such ?? So happy to learn from those that can teach.



No, I'm no pro. I'm just a guy who's smart enough to see that other people here know a lot more about photography than I do. The poor technique by that other person was to disparage ETTR for studio work. I'm happy to be corrected here, but I'm absolutely baffled that there could ever be a DR problem in a studio, where the photographer controls all the lighting.


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## eml58 (Oct 5, 2014)

Orangutan said:


> No, I don't think it was you, it was someone who just started posting a few months ago.



Then I stand corrected, my apologies.


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## neuroanatomist (Oct 5, 2014)

jrista said:


> ...lack of DR and Canon's hideous read noise (which is a matter of *poor IQ*, not simply "doesn't meet my needs"...)



Wrong. The IQ doesn't meet _your_ needs. Canon sensors meet the needs of many photographers better than you or I will ever be, and have produced a plethora of award-winning images. That's not commensurate with 'poor IQ'. 

Also, you previously stated that you could achieve equivalent results with Canon, you just didn't want to (or couldn't, same difference) put in the time. Did I miss when you changed your tune on that?


----------



## Orangutan (Oct 5, 2014)

eml58 said:


> Orangutan said:
> 
> 
> > No, I don't think it was you, it was someone who just started posting a few months ago.
> ...



No apology was needed. Cheers.


----------



## Orangutan (Oct 5, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> Canon sensors meet the needs of many photographers better than you or I will ever be



There are two different questions at work, and both are valid. (1) whether it "meets the needs;" (2) whether a different sensor would _better _meet the needs. By analogy, a 1D4 shooting 10fps met the needs of high-end sports photographers at the time, but a 1DX shooting 12fps _better_ meets their needs. I don't recall reading whether you've said you've tried any camera with a current-gen Sony sensor. I have not, so I don't know the answer to (2) for myself.

Please propose a test protocol that you would find fair and meaningful.


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## neuroanatomist (Oct 5, 2014)

Orangutan said:


> neuroanatomist said:
> 
> 
> > Canon sensors meet the needs of many photographers better than you or I will ever be
> ...



For the point I was making, the distinction between 'meets' and 'better meets' is irrelevant. I don't think photographers – award winning or not – list 'poor IQ' among their needs. 

I have no doubt that for some, the Exmor sensors _better_ meet their needs...just as for others, an ultrawide tilt-shift lens better meets their needs. Everyone's needs differ, there's no 'test protocol' for that. There are market research tools that help determine the needs of the majority, Canon and other manufacturers obviously invest in such research.


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## Orangutan (Oct 5, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> Orangutan said:
> 
> 
> > neuroanatomist said:
> ...



I get that, but I think you're missing another important point: sometimes people don't know what they're missing. There are cognitive biases that prevent people from believing information which would change their minds. Since you're in the pharma industry I'll risk a pharma analogy: consider medications to treat a particular condition, one of which is 10% cheaper, 10% more effective and has 10% lower risk of side effects. Suppose the physician is not aware of this; s/he may prescribe the less desirable medication because it _meets the needs_, which it certainly does. Now suppose a major trade journal publishes a large-scale study demonstrating the superiority of the alternative. Most physicians will now be aware, and will likely change their prescription practices.

How this applies to photography: I agree with you on the whole "system" thing -- I really do get that. However, if there were reasonable tests which demonstrated a significant difference to the few hundred(?) high-end loyalist photographers who work with Canon on product development, Canon might start feeling some pressure to improve that one component of their system.

I agree with you about how things are today (system, personal choice, market, business choices, etc). I disagree that it needs to remain so. The first question is whether there really is significant difference that we'd like to see in our next Canon purchase. If the answer is yes, then the next question is whether there's a way to bring that to the attention of people who have some influence. It should go without saying that all the voices on all the photo blogs in the world would not have the power to influence, but a few hundred key professionals might.

I'd also like to see good tests just to satisfy my nerd curiosity.


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## Sporgon (Oct 5, 2014)

Orangutan said:


> neuroanatomist said:
> 
> 
> > Orangutan said:
> ...



The point is that the Exmor can't actually meet the demands of a discerning / professional ( insert what you want ) photographer in the vast majority of challenging light situations in one exposure. Yes you can underexpose more, yes you can push more but _you will not equal the technical quality of someone who has blended exposures correctly. _ that is the point. Yes you can try and artificially create a situation to give the Exmor an advantage in one exposure, but it is just that: artificial. 

You are correct in saying many working pros may not 'know what they are missing' but don't underestimate the professional 'grapevine', and one of the reasons some don't know is because the Exmor sensor has not taken the professional work by storm, because, as has been very clearly demonstrated in this thread, the advantages are limited, primarily to those who are happy with poor tonality / saturation from heavily pushed data. 

A good example of this was the link I made to a friend of mine, international automobile photographer David Burgess. Jrista made a comment about his interest in what the likes of this pro (having seen his work ) would make of the D810. However he must have missed the fact that all David's work is _lit_ by an army of lights and lighting crew, even outside !


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## Orangutan (Oct 5, 2014)

Sporgon said:


> The point is that the Exmor can't actually meet the demands of a discerning / professional ( insert what you want ) photographer in the vast majority of challenging light situations in one exposure.



This is the question I'd like to see addressed by testing. I think we agree that it would take about 20 stops of clean DR to capture nearly all terrestrial scenes with one frame. But where's the transition point? Presumably, somewhere between 11-15 stops it ceases to be a single-frame capture. For those scenes is there a difference between sensors, both in the ability to capture the scene and in the quality of the shadow detail? I don't know. I see a lot of vehement hand-waving on both sides, and would love to see some good tests. (not to say that anyone owes me any tests) 

I currently have a 60D (which certainly does not have Canon's best sensor) and I sometimes have problems with interior shots (e.g. at a house party / fundraiser event) where a window is mostly blown-out, and the interior is not well exposed. As an amateur I'd like to get a _better_ (not perfect) capture of that casual scene without intrusive lighting. To many of you, jrista's interior example was a contrived shot, but it was precisely the problem I see several times a year.

I do have a flash, and I'll need to make friends with it until I have something better. I'm currently considering a refurb 6D.


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## neuroanatomist (Oct 5, 2014)

Orangutan said:


> I get that, but I think you're missing another important point: sometimes people don't know what they're missing. There are cognitive biases that prevent people from believing information which would change their minds. Since you're in the pharma industry I'll risk a pharma analogy: consider medications to treat a particular condition, one of which is 10% cheaper, 10% more effective and has 10% lower risk of side effects. Suppose the physician is not aware of this; s/he may prescribe the less desirable medication because it _meets the needs_, which it certainly does. Now suppose a major trade journal publishes a large-scale study demonstrating the superiority of the alternative. Most physicians will now be aware, and will likely change their prescription practices.
> 
> How this applies to photography: I agree with you on the whole "system" thing -- I really do get that.



Again, I get that...but it misses the point. In your analogy, does the 10% more effective medicine make the other medication a 'poor therapy'? What if the risk of adverse events was 10% lower, but the severity of them increased substantially? That's the 'system' issue. The improvement in the sensor under discussion aren't currently 'free'. 




Orangutan said:


> I'd also like to see good tests just to satisfy my nerd curiosity.



There are ample tests showing the technical differences. What you're asking for is a test of the utility and impact of those differences, and those are determined by the needs/practices of each individual meaning such a 'test' would be in the realm of the social sciences. In this context, that's the market research to which I alluded. We know Canon routinely conducts such research, and yet they haven't released a sensor with substantial improvements in low ISO DR. One possible explanation (among several) is that Canon finds more low ISO DR is not a primary need for the majority of their market.


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## Orangutan (Oct 5, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> Orangutan said:
> 
> 
> > I get that, but I think you're missing another important point: sometimes people don't know what they're missing. There are cognitive biases that prevent people from believing information which would change their minds. Since you're in the pharma industry I'll risk a pharma analogy: consider medications to treat a particular condition, one of which is 10% cheaper, 10% more effective and has 10% lower risk of side effects. Suppose the physician is not aware of this; s/he may prescribe the less desirable medication because it _meets the needs_, which it certainly does. Now suppose a major trade journal publishes a large-scale study demonstrating the superiority of the alternative. Most physicians will now be aware, and will likely change their prescription practices.
> ...


As previously stated, I do understand the trade-off thing. My analogy was more about small (but not inconsequential) differences not being widely known.



> Orangutan said:
> 
> 
> > I'd also like to see good tests just to satisfy my nerd curiosity.
> ...


When there's a quibble about comparative lens quality I usually see flurries of references to bench tests; I don't recall seeing such here. I'd assumed that's why jrista offered his own. If you know of any particularly good tests please post a reference. I'll search for them on my own when I have a bit of time.


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## Marsu42 (Oct 5, 2014)

Orangutan said:


> This is the question I'd like to see addressed by testing. I think we agree that it would take about 20 stops of clean DR to capture nearly all terrestrial scenes with one frame. But where's the transition point? Presumably, somewhere between 11-15 stops it ceases to be a single-frame capture. For those scenes is there a difference between sensors, both in the ability to capture the scene and in the quality of the shadow detail? I don't know. I see a lot of vehement hand-waving on both sides, and would love to see some good tests.



I don't know about Nikon, I didn't do any scientific tests - but as I'm switching between Magic Lantern's dual_iso and vanilla Canon shooting all the time, I have gotten better at predicting a scene's dynamic range.

I find the difference is in daylight shooting with harsh shadows, of course with movement, or you can just bracket. You can capture a lot with Canon's dr range, but you have to ettr precisely and the postprocessing gets more difficult, at least with ACR that's not designed for shots that fill the histogram left to right. Having more dynamic range results in noticeably more resolution in the shadows after pulling them by a moderate amount (like +33 to +50 shadows in ACR).



Orangutan said:


> I currently have a 60D (which certainly does not have Canon's best sensor) and I sometimes have problems with interior shots (e.g. at a house party / fundraiser event) where a window is mostly blown-out, and the interior is not well exposed



I didn't mention this for about 10 posts, so it's time now again: if your problems are at low iso, use ML to boost your dr by ~2 stops on the 60d... I'm using it on my 60d all the time since even the 1ev difference 60d vs 6d can be felt in daylight.


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## Orangutan (Oct 5, 2014)

Marsu42 said:


> Orangutan said:
> 
> 
> > I currently have a 60D (which certainly does not have Canon's best sensor) and I sometimes have problems with interior shots (e.g. at a house party / fundraiser event) where a window is mostly blown-out, and the interior is not well exposed
> ...



Every time I see one of your posts it's a reminder that I need to make friends with ML.


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## fish_shooter (Oct 5, 2014)

Maybe Canon is addressing this thread here:
http://www.seeimpossible.usa.canon.com/


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## Orangutan (Oct 5, 2014)

jrista said:


> fish_shooter said:
> 
> 
> > Maybe Canon is addressing this thread here:
> ...



A bit ambiguous, eh? Someone in marketing has some 'splainin' to do.


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## JohnUSA (Oct 5, 2014)

These images are not mine...
Check out this real world use of the D750 and it's dynamic range... Don't think Canon can do that unfortunately...:




Screen Shot 2014-10-04 at 10.10.07 AM by Ken | www.kenkienow.com, on Flickr



Screen Shot 2014-10-04 at 10.12.17 AM by Ken | www.kenkienow.com, on Flickr

I love my 5D3 but there are times when I really need the extra stops of DR while shooting weddings. Happened last week shooting the groom at high noon with blaring sun bouncing off his shaved head. No I couldn't move into shade as he was standing on the front bumper of a Fire Engine. Was damned if I exposed for his noggin, was damned if I exposed for his face/body/Fire Engine. I chose the later.


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## Orangutan (Oct 5, 2014)

JohnUSA said:


> Don't think Canon can do that unfortunately



But we don't know for certain without good tests. If anyone knows of any well-designed, well-executed and meaningful side-by-side tests, please post links.


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## DominoDude (Oct 5, 2014)

jrista said:


> fish_shooter said:
> 
> 
> > Maybe Canon is addressing this thread here:
> ...



Could it be that it relates to how they see the chance of, finally, convincing you that they *can* make good sensors to put in their already more than good bodies?  (just teasing you and pulling your leg, jrista)


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## Marsu42 (Oct 5, 2014)

JohnUSA said:


> Check out this real world use of the D750 and it's dynamic range... Don't think Canon can do that unfortunately...



Think again, I'm shooting these sunset scenes all the time using Magic Lantern - your Canon has greater dynamic range than any Nikon or Sony and outputs 16bit raw files. It's a usability hassle and Canon is certainly behind Nikon in terms of on-sensor dr, but if people are so set upon not using the available software fix the need cannot be that bad.


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## Eldar (Oct 5, 2014)

Marsu42 said:


> Think again, I'm shooting these sunset scenes all the time using Magic Lantern - your Canon has greater dynamic range than any Nikon or Sony and outputs 16bit raw files. It's a usability hassle and Canon is certainly behind Nikon in terms of on-sensor dr, but if people are so set upon not using the available software fix the need cannot be that bad.


I have never tried ML´s software/frimware before, but I think I would like to. But I do not want more problems than necessary. When I go to ML´s web site, I do not find any support for the 5DIII, but I believe that is the camera you´re using. Is that correct? If so, how do you go about getting the thing installed?


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## DominoDude (Oct 5, 2014)

Eldar said:


> Marsu42 said:
> 
> 
> > Think again, I'm shooting these sunset scenes all the time using Magic Lantern - your Canon has greater dynamic range than any Nikon or Sony and outputs 16bit raw files. It's a usability hassle and Canon is certainly behind Nikon in terms of on-sensor dr, but if people are so set upon not using the available software fix the need cannot be that bad.
> ...



Jumping into debate:
http://builds.magiclantern.fm/#/ In "Select platform" you should find your body.
Download latest zip and unpack it. Format a card in your camera, and then transfer the files to the root of the card. (2 files + 1 directory)


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## Marsu42 (Oct 5, 2014)

Eldar said:


> I have never tried ML´s software/frimware before, but I think I would like to. But I do not want more problems than necessary. When I go to ML´s web site, I do not find any support for the 5DIII, but I believe that is the camera you´re using. Is that correct? If so, how do you go about getting the thing installed?



Nope, I've got a 6d, but the 5d3 is much better supported by ML. The website is outdated, look at their forum, there's a good installation thread: http://magiclantern.fm/forum/

Basically it's downloading ML "rolling release" for your camera (http://builds.magiclantern.fm/#/), put the files on your cf card, update the firmware with Magic Lanter's mini-firmware, done. ML runs from the cf card, the fw update only tells the camera to enable loading it.

Beware though, ML has many features and it'll take you some time to sort through them - what you want is the "dual_iso" module.


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## Sporgon (Oct 5, 2014)

Marsu42 said:


> Eldar said:
> 
> 
> > I have never tried ML´s software/frimware before, but I think I would like to. But I do not want more problems than necessary. When I go to ML´s web site, I do not find any support for the 5DIII, but I believe that is the camera you´re using. Is that correct? If so, how do you go about getting the thing installed?
> ...



If ML are doing this with normal sensors what would Canon be able to do with dual pixel technology ?


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## Marsu42 (Oct 5, 2014)

Sporgon said:


> If ML are doing this with normal sensors what would Canon be able to do with dual pixel technology ?



The ML people are wondering, too, if dual pixel can be harnessed for a similar feature. 

Most likely Canon doesn't do it because it's enterprising  and admittedly rather hackish - the shots in-camera are interlaced & have screwed up wb, then you have to run a cpu-intensive intermediary step cr2->dng before postprocessing ... probably cannot be done in camera with sufficient quality.


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## lintoni (Oct 5, 2014)

Marsu42 said:


> Think again, I'm shooting these sunset scenes all the time using Magic Lantern - *your Canon has greater dynamic range than any Nikon or Sony *and outputs 16bit raw files. It's a usability hassle and Canon is certainly behind Nikon in terms of on-sensor dr, but if people are so set upon not using the available software fix the need cannot be that bad.



;D There's a nice English idiom that goes something like "Now _that's_ set the cat among the pigeons!"


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## gruhl28 (Oct 5, 2014)

Orangutan said:


> gruhl28 said:
> 
> 
> > This thread is probably too long already, and I'm not sure if anyone has already made this point (I haven't seen it made in any other threads on this topic). I'm not denying that having extra dynamic range is nice, but think about all the beautiful pictures taken on Fuji Velvia and the fact that Velvia has only a few stops of dynamic range, far less than even the "worst" Canon available. Again, I'm not saying that there aren't times when I'd like more dynamic range or that it isn't an advantage, just pointing out that some of the most fantastic photos ever taken were done with something that had far less dynamic range than any current DSLR.
> ...



I agree, just making the point that one can get carried away with always wanting something better and forget that terrific stuff was done with equipment that wasn't near the standards available today.


----------



## gruhl28 (Oct 5, 2014)

jrista said:


> gruhl28 said:
> 
> 
> > This thread is probably too long already, and I'm not sure if anyone has already made this point (I haven't seen it made in any other threads on this topic). I'm not denying that having extra dynamic range is nice, but think about all the beautiful pictures taken on Fuji Velvia and the fact that Velvia has only a few stops of dynamic range, far less than even the "worst" Canon available. Again, I'm not saying that there aren't times when I'd like more dynamic range or that it isn't an advantage, just pointing out that some of the most fantastic photos ever taken were done with something that had far less dynamic range than any current DSLR.
> ...



Hi jrista,
If you don't mind, can you explain the relationship between downsampling and dynamic range? I don't recall ever hearing that downsampling can improve dynamic range, not sure I understand how that works. I could imagine that scanning with different intensities of light could pull more DR out of a slide than you would see looking at it on a light table or projected at one intensity, but I don't understand how the downsampling helps. I guess it would hide some grain, but anything that's blown out would be gone.


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## neuroanatomist (Oct 5, 2014)

gruhl28 said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > gruhl28 said:
> ...



Yes, please do explain. It sounds suspiciously like what DxOMark does to calculate a DR Score that exceeds the bit depth of the ADC. How does downsampling increase the DR beyond the limits of the film emulsion used to capture the scene?


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## Vgramatikov (Oct 5, 2014)

i was Nikon shooter with d90,d300 and now 7d,70d. Used all pro canon body gear too. Included 1dx and 5d3.
As a wildlife and nature photographer DR is really important but not as AF and speed.

So if you looking closely you will found that even Nikon d300 and especially d90 have better DR than latest Canon body`s. Before 4-5 years i have pulled much more shadows via my Nikon d90 NEFF file than now in my 70d raw`s.
But these days`s Nikon files have to wrong colors, tints, bad overall fine detail and so one. Not as good long optics and i switch to Canon. Now... i fell lucky cause for me Canon have greatest AF and speed cameras as 7d,70d,5d3 and now 7d2 and 1dx. So i feel good and on the right course. 

DR is big deal indeed for landscape and portrait photography and available light photography.

ISO performance seems equal and the 7d2 may be again slightly better than d7100 for example. As my 70d is better or equal to d7100 on 800 nad 1600 iso`s. DR on that iso`s is equal to if not better in Canon`s.

So huge DR at base iso is indeed big deal for those who are enable to use these settings. I almost never shoot below 400 iso on actions scenes and if i do 100 iso is usually static and i have time to get proper exposure. So i really don`t care for DR at base iso`s.

I think if i was generally landscape photographer for sure 610,d800/E/810 are best sensors and system available.(Made by Sony).

So i do not thing that 3 EV or much much less shadow noise are not important. Indeed this will save your time ,improve your final quality, make you flexible and sometimes may be save your ass from the field mistakes.

We speak about 2-3 EV difference here witch is already not minor difference. I say this is major one of somebody really needed.

Peace. There are better sensors, better systems, better lenses but only if you know how to use them.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Oct 6, 2014)

Well I have to say I sure as heck could've used more DR the last few days. On a fast pace, with others some of whom were not into photograph, tons of ground to cover, often fast changing and soon fading light, so much to see, even when multi-shot tripod HDR would've worked only had time to set up the tripod once. So it's probably gonna be mostly a mess for the extreme DR woods scenes I took. Knew I shoulda rented the A7R for this week. Maybe some never need it (other than to help fix the rare mistake and maybe a few are in a studio and work at a slow pace and never have a mistake since even the mistakes can be re-shot) and some only rarely, but it is simply disingenuous to claim that nobody can ever need it or that such scenarios are nearly impossible to find or that 2-3 more stops wouldn't do them any good anyway. I could've made great use of Exmor a few dozen times today alone. People don't just bring this up over some lab tests or for DxO crowing, people bring it up for REAL WORLD SHOOTING.
Of course my 5D3 handles tons of shots well I'm sure, but man having that Exmor performance for ISO100-400 sure as heck would be nice at times. I mean I really, truly could've made good use and hit quite a few shots the last few days where just 3 more stops at low ISO would've made a realistic difference for sure.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Oct 6, 2014)

jrista said:


> So, dynamic range is relative to noise. Downsampling averages pixels together, thus reducing noise by the square root of the number of source pixels averaged into each output pixel. This isn't exactly going to improve your editing latitude...as to downsample you have to convert to a non-RAW format like TIFF. That takes totally independent source channels and combines them together into RGB subpixels for each output pixel. Once the independent source channels are combined like that, you lose a fair amount of editing latitude. The primary benefit of downsampling is generally going to be after you've made your exposure adjustments. The more you downsample, the lower the noise in your final output.
> 
> Downsampling a 36.3mp image to 22.3mp has a pretty big impact on the smoothness of shadow tones (you can see this for yourself with the four RAW images I've shared in the first post of this thread.) The improvement is around 30% (SQRT(36.3)/SQRT(22.3) = 1.28x). If you scan a 4x5" film slide such that you ended up with a 90mp image, you could reduce noise by a factor of 2x (or by 100%, reduce it in half.) A 4x5" slide can be scanned as a higher resolution than that...up to maybe 130mp, which is about 6x the megapixel count of a 5D III. Donwsample that image, and you reduce noise by a factor of 2.45x.
> 
> You wouldn't be able to lift shadows by another six stops after downsampling like that (not without some serious technique...you might be able to if you used a tool like PixInsight, but it would be a LOT of work, which kind of negates the benefit as far as editing latitude goes), however the expectation is that you do all your lifting before downsampling. The noise improvement you get from downsampling is really just a bonus. I figure there is about a 30% improvement in noise when downsampling A7r images to 5D III size. The A7r looks a little bit better than the 5D III before downsampling, but after downsampling is when you really obviously SEE the differences. A 145% improvement would be nothing short of RADICAL.




Hah, so finally after like 30 decades of my trying to get this across and your calling DxO Print DR and my claims and everyone else's so much nonsense or worse, finally you get the camera and rent and see DxO and some of us were right all along. ;D

Whew, at last.

Anyway at last you have fully come around on all points I and a few others have been trying to make for years. ;D


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Oct 6, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> gruhl28 said:
> 
> 
> > jrista said:
> ...



Because it is calculated from max well capacity value/max brightness level (which stays constant during downsampling (or upsampling for that matter) and read noise and we are just trying to compare on a normalized basis comparing detail and noise at the same energy scale. So the max value stays the same and the read noise lowers (of course as you filter away some of the read noise, you filter away higher frequency signal down there.)

When they measure mid-tone SNR they basically just measure noise about a solid block of gray (or maybe green for one channel) and the color is what is should be and that is scale invariant and as you downsample and combine the noise about the scale invariant number you want goes down.

In the most general case, we filter away high frequency noise so noise goes down, of course high frequency signal also gets filtered away bt a 12MP sensor would've even collect any of the higher frequency signal that a 36MP sensor could collect so we are filtering away actual detail down to a 12MP signal and also reducing noise to that scale and then we can fairly compare the noise between them at the same scale.

It's just normalizing to the same scale so you assume 8MP level of detail and then compare how much noise at that signal scale and you filter all signal detail and noise down to the same 8MP level and then compare.


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## neuroanatomist (Oct 6, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> neuroanatomist said:
> 
> 
> > gruhl28 said:
> ...



I get the normalize to compare idea. But if you take a 'sensor' with 5 stops of DR (Velvia was being discussed), and take a picture of a scene with 15 stops of DR, you've lost 10 stops of DR at capture - you have parts of the scene with saturated data, and parts with zero data outside of noise/gain - clipped highlights and blocked shadows. Same idea if you have a sensor with 13 stops of DR and a 15 stop scene - you've lost 2 stops of information. Now, when you downsample that 130 MP drum scan or that 36 MP image file to 22 MP, do you get the data from the blocked shadows and clipped highlights back? 

If you buy a stalk of celery at the grocery store and cut it into 5 pieces, you can later cut it into 20 pieces...but that won't get you the celery root or the leafy greens for your stock.


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## Lee Jay (Oct 6, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> Well I have to say I sure as heck could've used more DR the last few days. On a fast pace, with others some of whom were not into photograph, tons of ground to cover, often fast changing and soon fading light, so much to see, even when multi-shot tripod HDR would've worked only had time to set up the tripod once.



You don't need a tripod to shoot an HDR. In fact, you don't even need one second. Just shoot a bracketed burst, and use software to obtain perfect alignment in post.


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## StatisticsRule (Oct 6, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> I get the normalize to compare idea. But if you take a 'sensor' with 5 stops of DR (Velvia was being discussed), and take a picture of a scene with 15 stops of DR, you've lost 10 stops of DR at capture - you have parts of the scene with saturated data, and parts with zero data outside of noise/gain - clipped highlights and blocked shadows. Same idea if you have a sensor with 13 stops of DR and a 15 stop scene - you've lost 2 stops of information. Now, when you downsample that 130 MP drum scan or that 36 MP image file to 22 MP, do you get the data from the blocked shadows and clipped highlights back?
> 
> If you buy a stalk of celery at the grocery store and cut it into 5 pieces, you can later cut it into 20 pieces...but that won't get you the celery root or the leafy greens for your stock.



Actually, the data is not completely lost like it is in your celery example.

Consider a set of data divided into three parts. The first part has a (normalized) value of 1. The second part is 11 stops below that, but not exactly zero. The third section has a value exactly zero. Put some random noise (i.e. photon noise or read noise) on top of that. Then "digitize" the result to 10 stops. In other words, truncate the result so you have data with 10 bit numbers for each pixel.

If you average over enough pixels you will find that you can distinguish the low signal section from the section which is exactly zero. This is because the mean values of the two sections will be different. The data is not in any one pixel, but statistically is spread across many pixels.

When you are downsampling, you are averaging, and that helps recover that statistical information. If the noise is random and obeys ergodicity, then your signal-to-noise will improve as the square-root of the number of pixels averaged during downsampling [see signal averaging]. Average 4 pixels, and you gain a factor of two (1 bit) of extra information. 

Keep in mind that the total information in the image does not change. In this case, you are trading off bit depth for spatial resolution. If you know your 16 megapixel image only has one bright and one dark region, your knowledge of those bright and dark values can be much more accurate than if you request each pixel in your original image to be a potentially different value. It is the space-bandwidth product which matters. [for very technical discussion, the following paywall-restricted paper is one example.]

In short, if you take a 16 megapixel image with 10 bits per pixel, you can downsample that to a 4 megapixel image with approximately* 11 bits of information per pixel. 

[edit]
Just so there is no confusion later, the extra bit in the above example will come from improved shadows. You can't do much about clipped highlights, but there is more information in those noisy shadows than you might think.
[/edit]

---
* The approximation is because it depends on the noise and signal properties. In most cases of interest to this group, it is a reasonable approximation. This approximation also assumes your downsampling algorithm is using more than 11 bits to represent each number.


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## sanj (Oct 6, 2014)

Lee Jay said:


> LetTheRightLensIn said:
> 
> 
> > Well I have to say I sure as heck could've used more DR the last few days. On a fast pace, with others some of whom were not into photograph, tons of ground to cover, often fast changing and soon fading light, so much to see, even when multi-shot tripod HDR would've worked only had time to set up the tripod once.
> ...



Unless of course the light is low or one wants absolute perfection.


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## privatebydesign (Oct 6, 2014)

sanj said:


> Lee Jay said:
> 
> 
> > LetTheRightLensIn said:
> ...



If you want "absolute perfection", well the highest IQ we can currently attain within our personal budgets, you need to make a commitment to that, so many times this argument is brought up and it is a strawman. People spend years taking the time and effort to learn their equipment, post processing techniques, and getting the time and place just right for that "absolute perfection", now the argument is 'well I want to be able to attain IQ comparable to that at a fast pace while on vacation within an organized party with twenty other people', grow up people. 

If you want great shots take the time and trouble to create great shots, no excuses.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Oct 6, 2014)

Lee Jay said:


> LetTheRightLensIn said:
> 
> 
> > Well I have to say I sure as heck could've used more DR the last few days. On a fast pace, with others some of whom were not into photograph, tons of ground to cover, often fast changing and soon fading light, so much to see, even when multi-shot tripod HDR would've worked only had time to set up the tripod once.
> ...



I wasn't entirely happy with that technique when I tried it once before, but maybe I should have tried it again for a few shots where there was no wind/water/swirling mists, maybe it would've worked a few times at least to some degree of OK. Just today that would've never worked as the breeze was blowing stuff around and forget it though. And sometimes, also, it sets the shutter speed too low to work out hand-held for the shot with more exposure, so if you are just at the border you can maybe shoot at ISO100/200 if the sensor had more DR, but fall into hand shaking issues if it doesn't, which would've been a scenario for some of the shots from yesterday.


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## Eldar (Oct 7, 2014)

I am still amazed over the number of posts this topic is able to produce. I hope Canon is paying us some attention.

To me it is rather simple. If I shoot images and the histogram shows I have covered what I wanted covered, I am, from a DR perspective, good. If the histogram shows that I hit either the floor or ceiling, I'm either irritated over a poor exposure setting, or, especially when I'm in the basement and through the roof, with shadows black and highlights blown, in the same picture, I want more DR. I have quite a few of those, where I have to choose which end I want to give priority and have black shadows or blown hightlights in the other end.

Yes, I could in some cases use HDR and bracketing, but as Lee Jay also points out, when things are moving I find that to be a poor option at best. People, wind in trees, flowing water etc. requires one-shot images.

For people to form their own opinion, I suggest they go back and study the histograms of some of their more contrasty images and see how many (if any) would benefit from more DR.


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## ChristopherMarkPerez (Oct 7, 2014)

I think this suggestion is a perfect way to find out if the kinds of shooting situations a person finds themselves in _requires _more dynamic range. I put _requires _in italics because, if a shooter thinks carefully about what they're doing, I'll bet they can find a way to manage extreme contrast ranges in fast moving situations where HDR might not be possible.

I seldom encounter any problem. The reason is likely tied to my long history of controlling contrast from Back In The Day when the only light sensitive material available was film. Working in silver halide for far too many decades taught me the value of light controls to manage contrast.




Eldar said:


> ... I suggest they go back and study the histograms of some of their more contrasty images and see how many (if any) would benefit from more DR.


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## Lee Jay (Oct 7, 2014)

Eldar said:


> I am still amazed over the number of posts this topic is able to produce. I hope Canon is paying us some attention.
> 
> To me it is rather simple. If I shoot images and the histogram shows I have covered what I wanted covered, I am, from a DR perspective, good. If the histogram shows that I hit either the floor or ceiling, I'm either irritated over a poor exposure setting, or, especially when I'm in the basement and through the roof, with shadows black and highlights blown, in the same picture, I want more DR. I have quite a few of those, where I have to choose which end I want to give priority and have black shadows or blown hightlights in the other end.
> 
> ...



The in-camera histogram? The histogram of the default raw conversion? What histogram are you talking about?


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## Marsu42 (Oct 7, 2014)

Eldar said:


> To me it is rather simple. If I shoot images and the histogram shows I have covered what I wanted covered, I am, from a DR perspective, good.



In that case, you're throwing away dynamic range because Canon's histogram only covers the jpeg range. To make really use of the dr, use Magic Lantern with the raw histogram and let it auto-ettr the shot.


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## privatebydesign (Oct 7, 2014)

Marsu42 said:


> Eldar said:
> 
> 
> > To me it is rather simple. If I shoot images and the histogram shows I have covered what I wanted covered, I am, from a DR perspective, good.
> ...



It is even worse than that, if you have your camera set to sRGB it gives warnings when they get to that colour space which is even earlier than Adobe RGB and way before the cameras capabilities. If your file names do not start with an underscore then you useing a very unrealistic histogram.

That is why I am always going on about optimal exposure for RAW file comparisons, people earnestly come back with 'but the histogram was touching' but that isn't the optimal exposure, especially in DR limiting scenes.

I'd love some ML capabilities on the 1 series but know they won't be ported there.


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## Marsu42 (Oct 7, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> It is even worse than that, if you have your camera set to sRGB it gives warnings when they get to that colour space which is even earlier than Adobe RGB and way before the cameras capabilities. If your file names do not start with an underscore then you useing a very unrealistic histogram.



Whatdoyaknow, that's news to me - thanks, you learn something new every day around CR


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## AcutancePhotography (Oct 7, 2014)

Marsu42 said:


> Whatdoyaknow, that's news to me - thanks, you learn something new every day around CR



There IS good information on CR. It is just a shame that one has to wade through all the crap to find the pearls.


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## Eldar (Oct 7, 2014)

I was not going to make a big case out of this, but what you see on the camera is what you see on the camera. You need to be able to read that properly. And yes, what you see there is nor correct, but you need to judge your settings based on what it tells you. At least that's what I do. The histogram I referred to was LR, looking at the Raw files. If that is incorrect also, I'd appreciate a clarification.


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## Marsu42 (Oct 7, 2014)

Eldar said:


> The histogram I referred to was LR, looking at the Raw files. If that is incorrect also, I'd appreciate a clarification.



Depends what LR process version and camera you're using - with my 60d the LR histogram is not correct because highlight pulldown conjures data out of nothing on the right side. With my 6d, the raw conversion seems to be different as the LR histogram is correct right from the start.


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## Lee Jay (Oct 7, 2014)

Eldar said:


> I was not going to make a big case out of this, but what you see on the camera is what you see on the camera. You need to be able to read that properly. And yes, what you see there is nor correct, but you need to judge your settings based on what it tells you. At least that's what I do. The histogram I referred to was LR, looking at the Raw files. If that is incorrect also, I'd appreciate a clarification.



The default conversion gives you much less dynamic range than is available in the raw data. Even if both highlights and shadows are clipped in the default conversion, using -highlights and +shadows may recover several stops of DR from the ends of the histogram.


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## Zv (Oct 7, 2014)

Back up a second. So even if you shoot RAW the histogram in camera is only displaying the color space you've chosen? So does that mean I should set my camera's color space to Adobe RGB just so I get a more accurate histogram? 

I have also noticed the default conversion in LR seems to clip earlier than some of the others like Faithful or Neutral. I feel like I should be tinkering with that in some way to maximize latitude. For most of my stuff the highlight slider takes care of my DR needs. It's hard to gauge just how far to ettr without ML. I had it on the M but it got buggy with the EF-M 11-22mm lens for some reason so now I'm just doing without. Maybe I should install it on the 5D2. Not sure I need all those features but this RAW histogram thing has got me re-interested. ???


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## Lee Jay (Oct 7, 2014)

Zv said:


> Back up a second. So even if you shoot RAW the histogram in camera is only displaying the color space you've chosen?



And the in-camera processing (especially contrast and saturation) you've chosen.


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## lintoni (Oct 7, 2014)

Zv said:


> Back up a second. So even if you shoot RAW the histogram in camera is only displaying the color space you've chosen? So does that mean I should set my camera's color space to Adobe RGB just so I get a more accurate histogram?
> 
> I have also noticed the default conversion in LR seems to clip earlier than some of the others like Faithful or Neutral. I feel like I should be tinkering with that in some way to maximize latitude. For most of my stuff the highlight slider takes care of my DR needs. It's hard to gauge just how far to ettr without ML. I had it on the M but it got buggy with the EF-M 11-22mm lens for some reason so now I'm just doing without. Maybe I should install it on the 5D2. Not sure I need all those features but this RAW histogram thing has got me re-interested. ???


This is worth reading:
http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=12096.0


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## privatebydesign (Oct 7, 2014)

Zv said:


> Back up a second. So even if you shoot RAW the histogram in camera is only displaying the color space you've chosen? So does that mean I should set my camera's color space to Adobe RGB just so I get a more accurate histogram?



Yes.

This is the kind of thing that enables people to play with the top 5-10% of a systems potential IQ, it is the kind of thing that allows us to up our game in the smallest steps that when put together end up making an intangible but noticeable difference to our output. It is the kind of thing camera testers never have the time to explore, and people who do "comparisons" never evaluate. It s the kind of thing that makes people say "you couldn't do that to mine" or "my XXX was a dud, because it's files never looked like that".

Every single RAW file I ever shot starts with an underscore.


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## Eldar (Oct 7, 2014)

Lee Jay said:


> The default conversion gives you much less dynamic range than is available in the raw data. Even if both highlights and shadows are clipped in the default conversion, using -highlights and +shadows may recover several stops of DR from the ends of the histogram.


Agree.


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## Zv (Oct 7, 2014)

lintoni said:


> Zv said:
> 
> 
> > Back up a second. So even if you shoot RAW the histogram in camera is only displaying the color space you've chosen? So does that mean I should set my camera's color space to Adobe RGB just so I get a more accurate histogram?
> ...



Thank you for this. When I started looking into ML I couldn't find a detailed explanation of all the features. Now I know what the numbers mean! 

Bookmarkin this!


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## Zv (Oct 7, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> Zv said:
> 
> 
> > Back up a second. So even if you shoot RAW the histogram in camera is only displaying the color space you've chosen? So does that mean I should set my camera's color space to Adobe RGB just so I get a more accurate histogram?
> ...



I can't say it's ever been an issue for me to have an accurate histo. I usually just expose to the right but lately I was wondering about this kinda thing and it makes so much sense now after reading that link about RAW histograms. Damn, why don't Canon put that feature in their cameras by default?!! WHY?! I feel like I just had one of them lightbulb moments! 

Finally, this topic is paying off! Woohoo!!


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## DominoDude (Oct 7, 2014)

If anything, I've learned that, despite trying to ETTR by looking at the histogram on the camera, I can overexpose even more than I imagined. I knew that the histogram was only based on the jpg-thumbnails, just as the image I see on the display, and that it is a result of the PictureStyle and Colourspace.

The use of ML's Auto-ETTR and the RAW-based histograms have shown that I can be a lot more brutal when I choose my exposure. But the limiting parameter are the widest aperture of the chosen lens, and it dictates the combinations of shutter times and ISO I can pick to get my desired/needed exposure. I've learned that I, most of the time, need rather short shutter times to not introduce shake, and then I end up needing to increase the ISO to get my histogram to crawl over more to the right.

I think we could all benefit from a redesign of the Canon sensors. A redesign that incorporates deeper photon wells (more electrons can be stored and thus giving us a greater dynamic range), and measures taken to lessen the banding tendency. From texts I've read, by Stanford university researchers, the A/D-converters are less crucial for a high DR in optical sensors.


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## neuroanatomist (Oct 7, 2014)

Zv said:


> Back up a second. So even if you shoot RAW the histogram in camera is only displaying the color space you've chosen? So does that mean I should set my camera's color space to Adobe RGB just so I get a more accurate histogram?



When you shoot RAW, the camera generates a small JPG preview image that's embedded in the RAW file container. That image is what you see during the on-camera review, and it's what's used to generate the histogram and highlight warning (blinkies). All in-camera settings are applied (color space, ALO, picture style, HTP, etc.).

If you don't mind somewhat funky images for on-camera review, you can use UniWB to get a histogram that better approximates the RAW data.


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## Marsu42 (Oct 7, 2014)

Lee Jay said:


> The default conversion gives you much less dynamic range than is available in the raw data. Even if both highlights and shadows are clipped in the default conversion, using -highlights and +shadows may recover several stops of DR from the ends of the histogram.



Fyi: The effect is far stronger on crop cameras (at least my 60d) vs. full frame (on my 6d). I guess for the crop cameras, Canon adds a larger "safety limit" to prevent clipped highlights when shooting raw, but expects "pros" on ff to know what they're doing?



neuroanatomist said:


> When you shoot RAW, the camera generates a small JPG preview image that's embedded in the RAW file container. That image is what you see during the on-camera review, and it's what's used to generate the histogram and highlight warning (blinkies). All in-camera settings are applied (color space, ALO, picture style, HTP, etc.).



The nice thing about this is that you don't waste card space with a jpeg sidecar, but can extract it from the cr2 anytime later. The thumbnail is also very handy for quick browsing/rating (except in ACR), so getting the jpeg settings right makes sense even when shooting raw.



neuroanatomist said:


> If you don't mind somewhat funky images for on-camera review, you can use UniWB to get a histogram that better approximates the RAW data.



The length people w/o ML have to go to to get a raw histogram approximation ...


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## unfocused (Oct 7, 2014)

After 25 pages this thread is starting to provide some useful information. How disappointing.  

Can we go back to lifting shadows by five stops and arguing over banding?


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## heptagon (Oct 7, 2014)

unfocused said:


> After 25 pages this thread is starting to provide some useful information. How disappointing.
> 
> Can we go back to lifting shadows by five stops and arguing over banding?



With the 6D, the banding issues are basically gone. 5DIII shooters just use the wrong tool for the job and should get add a 6D to their kit.


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## Lee Jay (Oct 7, 2014)

jrista said:


> Read noise aside, larger sensors have more dynamic range.



Yeah, but that's misleading, because read noise scales (down) along with size (well capacity), so DR isn't strongly affected by pixel size.


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## Lee Jay (Oct 7, 2014)

jrista said:


> It looks like the sensorgen.info domain has expired, so I can't provide any references.



https://web.archive.org/web/20140708054926/http://sensorgen.info/


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## AcutancePhotography (Oct 7, 2014)

unfocused said:


> After 25 pages this thread is starting to provide some useful information. How disappointing.
> 
> Can we go back to lifting shadows by five stops and arguing over banding?



Weird huh? I had to check the URL to see if I accidently went to a real photography site. LoL


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## Sporgon (Oct 7, 2014)

heptagon said:


> unfocused said:
> 
> 
> > After 25 pages this thread is starting to provide some useful information. How disappointing.
> ...



Don't you believe it, some of the acclaimed band masters here could manage it. 



neuroanatomist said:


> Zv said:
> 
> 
> > Back up a second. So even if you shoot RAW the histogram in camera is only displaying the color space you've chosen? So does that mean I should set my camera's color space to Adobe RGB just so I get a more accurate histogram?
> ...



Another interesting point to add to PBD's sRGB / Adobe RGB histogram info.

If I'm not wanting an OOC jpeg and just shooting for the raw file I set either neutral or faithful in Picture Styles, with contrast set to zero. This seems to give a reasonable impression of the raw data. Haven't tried UniWB but will do to see if that is better.


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## DominoDude (Oct 7, 2014)

Something here that makes any sense? --> http://www.stanfordcomputeroptics.com/technology/dynamic-range/photon-noise.html


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## Marsu42 (Oct 7, 2014)

unfocused said:


> After 25 pages this thread is starting to provide some useful information. How disappointing.



Proves even people bound to argue some point over and over get tired at some point 



jrista said:


> This is not the case for Canon cameras because they have higher read noise, which eats away at a significant amount (at least two stops) of the maximum potential dynamic range allowed by a given sensor size and design/technology.



... but with current Canon sensors, you can argue that shooting on iso400 is nearly as good as iso100 - take that, Nikon trolls :-> ... so using the "min. iso" setting of auto iso really makes sense to get higher shutter speeds at (nearly) no iq cost.


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## Lee Jay (Oct 7, 2014)

jrista said:


> Lee Jay said:
> 
> 
> > jrista said:
> ...



https://web.archive.org/web/20140715201224/http://www.sensorgen.info/CanonPowershot_G15.html

The reason the read noise scales with pixel size is that well capacity does. If you need more range to capture a larger voltage, you get more noise at the smaller voltages.


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## Marsu42 (Oct 8, 2014)

jrista said:


> ISO 400 is still worse overall...the photon shot noise is higher because a lesser signal is amplified more, which impacts the entire signal. Read noise drops, which only affects the low signal (shadow) areas. I'd still choose ISO 100 if I want the lowest photon shot noise possible and the cleanest midtone through highlight detail.



Hmmyes, I know about the effect of read noise on low iso dr. But except for tripod shooting, I have discovered that my overall iq is much better if I use 200 or even 400 to gain more stopping power with higher shutter speed = less residual motion blur. But this is really just my personal, subjective impression.

Are there any sources or samples how much the difference of iso 100/200/400 on the latest Canon sensors is (like my 6d)? I don't worry about photon noise on ff lower iso, but I wonder how much other iq parts suffer (colors, tonality).


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## Zv (Oct 8, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> Zv said:
> 
> 
> > Back up a second. So even if you shoot RAW the histogram in camera is only displaying the color space you've chosen? So does that mean I should set my camera's color space to Adobe RGB just so I get a more accurate histogram?
> ...



Thanks, I had a brief flirt with video once and became familiar with picture style settings etc and ended on faithful with a low contrast setting. I've also had HTP and ALO off from day one. I think just knowing now that the histogram is for the JPEG preview is enough for me at this stage. I can work with that. Moving forward I think ML will be better.


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## privatebydesign (Oct 8, 2014)

Eldar said:


> The histogram I referred to was LR, looking at the Raw files. If that is incorrect also, I'd appreciate a clarification.



Lightroom is a colour space marvel and I don't know the answer to every combination but as I understand it:
The Library Module uses Adobe RGB for it's previews and thumbnails unless the file is tagged with a different colour space, normally sRGB, remember RAW files don't have a clour space attached so are displayed in Adobe RGB in the Library Module.
The Develop Module displays the images in a custom Lightroom colour space commonly called Melissa RGB (named after Melissa Gaul an Adobe manager), this has the cromacity, or colours, of the Prophoto colour space but it has an sRGB gamma curve applied to it. Melissa RGB is what the histogram in the develop module is based on.
I do not know 100% if the histogram in the Library Module is based on the Library Module's Adobe RGB preview or the behind the scenes Melissa RGB render, but I believe it is based on the behind the scenes Melissa RGB render. 
Under the hood of the Develop Module Lightroom actually works on the RAW files in another custom space, this has the Prophoto cromacity and a gamma value of 1. We never see images in this space but for internal calculations, apparently, it is simpler to do that on a gamma 1 file.
The differences between Adobe RGB and Melissa RGB is the reason you get a colour shift on the same image between the Library Module and the Develop Module with RAW files, you shouldn't with tagged jpegs.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Oct 8, 2014)

But how do you control light out in the wild, in a forest or overlooking a ton of land?
Plus, in some cases, even if you could control it, you might be controlling away the magic.

It sounds like you are talking about planned type shots?



ChristopherMarkPerez said:


> I think this suggestion is a perfect way to find out if the kinds of shooting situations a person finds themselves in _requires _more dynamic range. I put _requires _in italics because, if a shooter thinks carefully about what they're doing, I'll bet they can find a way to manage extreme contrast ranges in fast moving situations where HDR might not be possible.
> 
> I seldom encounter any problem. The reason is likely tied to my long history of controlling contrast from Back In The Day when the only light sensitive material available was film. Working in silver halide for far too many decades taught me the value of light controls to manage contrast.
> 
> ...


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Oct 8, 2014)

Zv said:


> Back up a second. So even if you shoot RAW the histogram in camera is only displaying the color space you've chosen? So does that mean I should set my camera's color space to Adobe RGB just so I get a more accurate histogram?



Yes, and there are ways to set it to make it even closer to what the camera sees, although it makes the previews look really nasty. ML RAW Histogram is better.

One side note, you often see it claimed that digital sensors are terrible for red and clip red and Canon sensors are super bad at clipping red. But the reality is that it is sRGB that is clipping the reds, not the digital sensors. Canon sensors capture way the heck more red than sRGB. Even a simple red rose blows out sRGB. A lot of flowers always look weird and not like in real life, but it is sRGB not the Canon sensor that is the culprit. Keep the shot in ProphotoRGB 16bit and then view on a wide gamut monitor and you'll see for some stuff that a lot more color is there. It was just that sRGB clipped it.



> I have also noticed the default conversion in LR seems to clip earlier than some of the others like Faithful or Neutral. I feel like I should be tinkering with that in some way to maximize latitude. For most of my stuff the highlight slider takes care of my DR needs. It's hard to gauge just how far to ettr without ML. I had it on the M but it got buggy with the EF-M 11-22mm lens for some reason so now I'm just doing without. Maybe I should install it on the 5D2. Not sure I need all those features but this RAW histogram thing has got me re-interested. ???



Yes.

One tricky thing is that absolute extreme ETTR can make processing tricky as most standard tone curves end leaving you with poor highlight separation and a lot of stock color profiles are twisted so you can get weird color tints and problems.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Oct 8, 2014)

Lee Jay said:


> Zv said:
> 
> 
> > Back up a second. So even if you shoot RAW the histogram in camera is only displaying the color space you've chosen?
> ...



Yeah dialing contrast way down and saturation down a little bit is a good idea too, if you want the regular histogram to give a better picture of what the RAW is doing.


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## LetTheRightLensIn (Oct 8, 2014)

DominoDude said:


> If anything, I've learned that, despite trying to ETTR by looking at the histogram on the camera, I can overexpose even more than I imagined. I knew that the histogram was only based on the jpg-thumbnails, just as the image I see on the display, and that it is a result of the PictureStyle and Colourspace.
> 
> The use of ML's Auto-ETTR and the RAW-based histograms have shown that I can be a lot more brutal when I choose my exposure. But the limiting parameter are the widest aperture of the chosen lens, and it dictates the combinations of shutter times and ISO I can pick to get my desired/needed exposure. I've learned that I, most of the time, need rather short shutter times to not introduce shake, and then I end up needing to increase the ISO to get my histogram to crawl over more to the right.
> 
> I think we could all benefit from a redesign of the Canon sensors. A redesign that incorporates deeper photon wells (more electrons can be stored and thus giving us a greater dynamic range), and measures taken to lessen the banding tendency. From texts I've read, by Stanford university researchers, the A/D-converters are less crucial for a high DR in optical sensors.



Yeah one nice thing about having more DR on the system is that it can also let you manage to get away with hand holdable exposures at lowest ISO or two more easily. And that is also a problem with using brackets and software to align, even if the alignment actually does work out well and not leave minor or mega defects, the brightest bracket might pick up handshake if you are in marginal conditions, while the highlight saving single shot and then lifting shadows from that might be easily hand-holdable.


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## DominoDude (Oct 8, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> DominoDude said:
> 
> 
> > If anything, I've learned that, despite trying to ETTR by looking at the histogram on the camera, I can overexpose even more than I imagined. I knew that the histogram was only based on the jpg-thumbnails, just as the image I see on the display, and that it is a result of the PictureStyle and Colourspace.
> ...



Precisely! You get more room to manoeuvre in. Less restrictions on which combinations to select from to get what you want and need. So it is, indeed, giving more than just technically better rendition on the pixel level, you get that extra artistic freedom to combine settings that's usable.


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## deleteme (Oct 8, 2014)

DominoDude said:


> If anything, I've learned that, despite trying to ETTR by looking at the histogram on the camera, I can overexpose even more than I imagined. I knew that the histogram was only based on the jpg-thumbnails, just as the image I see on the display, and that it is a result of the PictureStyle and Colourspace.
> 
> The use of ML's Auto-ETTR and the RAW-based histograms have shown that I can be a lot more brutal when I choose my exposure. But the limiting parameter are the widest aperture of the chosen lens, and it dictates the combinations of shutter times and ISO I can pick to get my desired/needed exposure. I've learned that I, most of the time, need rather short shutter times to not introduce shake, and then I end up needing to increase the ISO to get my histogram to crawl over more to the right.
> 
> I think we could all benefit from a redesign of the Canon sensors. A redesign that incorporates deeper photon wells (more electrons can be stored and thus giving us a greater dynamic range), and measures taken to lessen the banding tendency. From texts I've read, by Stanford university researchers, the A/D-converters are less crucial for a high DR in optical sensors.



Actually what that tells me is that I want an EVF with a live histogram so that I can optimize before I take the shot. 
Virtually all final images will have data that is eliminated on purpose to create the final image. Optimizing capture is what we always did with film. 
Yes, we fiddled in the darkroom but if we knew we wanted shadow detail we exposed for shadows, if we wanted highlights we exposed of them. When using transparency film this meant we bracketed.


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## sarangiman (Oct 8, 2014)

jrista said:


> The reason ISO 100 on a Canon has roughly the same DR as ISO 400 is because the read noise drops by about a stop with each progressive increase to ISO. Hence the flattening of the DR curve on Canon sensors.



Well, it's not that the read noise drops, it's just that all other data & noise off the sensor is amplified 4x compared to ISO 100, which lowers the impact of the read noise. So even though you're throwing away 2 stops of highlight range at ISO 400, 4x (2 EV) darker signal is now being amplified to be brought up to your SNR = 1 (or what have you) threshold, leaving DR largely the same. Cameras with very little downstream read noise don't need the sensor signal amplified to overcome the 30+ electrons of read noise in a Canon camera.



jrista said:


> It is still Exmor...I just think they removed the black point clipping and restored the bias offset. Based on the Nikon hackers who restored the bias offset for Nikon Exmor cameras, the read noise at ISO 100, after the offset was restored, was around 6e-. I think the A7s ISO starts below ISO 100, where it's read noise is a little higher, however at ISO 100, I believe the A7s is around 6e- as well...given the similarities between the A7s and an offset-restored Nikon D800, I think that's all Sony did: stop clipping.



No... the A7S has significantly more read noise at base ISO than the D800, A7R, etc. Also, the A7R _has_ an offset and doesn't clip its black. Yet it has significantly more DR than the A7S. The A7S has a different architecture, which explains why its read noise has two plateaus - it doesn't just drop as a function of ISO. It drops, flattens out, then drops again, then flattens. Something about this architecture lends it more measured downstream read noise, which limits its DR. It's still significantly better than Canon, but not as good as the A7R, the D800/810, etc.



LetTheRightLensIn said:


> One tricky thing is that absolute extreme ETTR can make processing tricky as most standard tone curves end leaving you with poor highlight separation and a lot of stock color profiles are twisted so you can get weird color tints and problems.



Good point. Probably explains some of the odd colors I see with 6 EV pushes 



DominoDude said:


> Precisely! You get more room to manoeuvre in. Less restrictions on which combinations to select from to get what you want and need. So it is, indeed, giving more than just technically better rendition on the pixel level, you get that extra artistic freedom to combine settings that's usable.



Now that's just talking too much sense!



LetTheRightLensIn said:


> Yeah dialing contrast way down and saturation down a little bit is a good idea too, if you want the regular histogram to give a better picture of what the RAW is doing.



Interesting. I've been trying to find a way to get the histogram to better indicate what's happening in Raw, without much luck. Perhaps 'Flat' profile and Adobe RGB on the D810 would be a good place to start. Thanks for the tip.


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## Lee Jay (Oct 8, 2014)

jrista said:


> sarangiman said:
> 
> 
> > jrista said:
> ...



Yeah, it does.

Let's say, for sake of argument, that 1V = 10,000e- at ISO 100.
Let's say the analog noise is 10mv. 10mV * (10,000e-/1V) = 100e-

Now, let's say that 2V = 10,000e- at ISO 200.
We still have 10mv of analog noise. 10mV * (10,000e-/2V) = 50e-

Got it?


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## Marsu42 (Oct 8, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> One tricky thing is that absolute extreme ETTR can make processing tricky as most standard tone curves end leaving you with poor highlight separation and a lot of stock color profiles are twisted so you can get weird color tints and problems.



This is also an issue with Adobe's ACR process version 2012 which is "intelligent", unlike PV2010 before it.

In my experience this means that a shot filling the histogram left to right w/o having a nice and cozy "normal" structure with a bump in the middle is a hassle to postprocess. The shadows/highlight controls react in a different way and/or are not strong enough, they need to be dialed at least to 11. So you regularly end up tweaking the tone curve which takes more time.


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## privatebydesign (Oct 8, 2014)

Marsu42 said:


> LetTheRightLensIn said:
> 
> 
> > One tricky thing is that absolute extreme ETTR can make processing tricky as most standard tone curves end leaving you with poor highlight separation and a lot of stock color profiles are twisted so you can get weird color tints and problems.
> ...



You can dial it to 11, just dial it to 10 and export as a TIFF, then reimport and put on another 10.


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## Sporgon (Oct 8, 2014)

jrista said:


> First, it's definitely an Exmor. Sony calls it an Exmor in their marketing materials:
> 
> http://www.sony.net/Products/di/en-us/products/vq5f/index.html
> 
> ...



So what you are saying is: All Exmors are equal but some are more equal than others ?


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## Lee Jay (Oct 8, 2014)

jrista said:


> Lee Jay said:
> 
> 
> > jrista said:
> ...



Of course it doesn't. But it explains why it's not a constant, as you said it should "logically" be above.


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## Marsu42 (Oct 8, 2014)

jrista said:


> More equal? ??? I don't know what that means.



You really don't? It's from George Orwell's Animal Farm, a fable about the communist revolution. After the animals get rid of their jailers and start into a bright new era with all animals being equal, it turns out that the top cadres are "more equal", murder their rivals and enslave the tamer animals again. Always a good quote 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm#Plot_summary


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