Canon's video crusade goes on. Next target: 7D II

thedcmule2 wrote in post #16388527
So in a nutshell, you wish canon would chill with the video r&d so your astro photos come out better?

Yes. But if my astro-photos come out better, your low-light terrestrial photos will come out better as well.

Plus, I have no use for the video to being with.

Low-light terrestrial photos are already excellent...the perfect camera wont make the photographer better...

All this talk about having "better" photo technology...does it really matter after a certain point? Are you in it for the love of creating the art or are you in it to pixel peep at the noise?

All across these boards whenever there's a Nikon/Canon discussion we're told how Canon has a huge market share over Nikon, and is making profits from it.
So, how come Sony can come on the scene and virtually immediately produce a superior sensor. Not just a tiny bit better but in terms of DR a lot better. Either Canon cannot compete or it's putting its resources into other areas ( video ? ? ? )
Now Sony have outmanoeuvred Canons advantage in the lens department, this could be a watershed moment for Sony. Canon have to make leaps and bounds in sensor design soon or people will spend their money in Sonys direction. For all the slating Sigma has received over the last few years, the 35mm 1.4 has been a real boost for them. Lots of people dropped the 35L for the Sigma or people just spent their money on the cheaper better Sigma.
I earn my money the hard way, I won't part with it for minuscule upgrades. The A7r could get me to add to my 7D. Canon, in trying to protect its 5D3 sales could have lost a sale from me. Many others seem to be saying the same. Protecting certain models in the Canon range from each other is one thing, losing a sale to the competition is another. Along with the camera body sale, goes all the extras like flash/batteries/lens etc

thedcmule2 wrote in post #16388543
Low-light terrestrial photos are already excellent...the perfect camera wont make the photographer better...

All this talk about having "better" photo technology...does it really matter after a certain point? Are you in it for the love of creating the art or are you in it to pixel peep at the noise?

Actually, in astrophotography, I often joke that there isn't a problem that cannot be fixed by throwing money at it. Unfortunately, it's true. And you don't have to pixel peep for the noise to make it's way into the image. It all about SNR and low signal areas in an image look noisy. I'm literally collecting photons one at a time and it takes a lot of them to rise above the noise floor.

For terrestrial photography, I'm fine with my T1i.

For astrophotography, I'm trying to decide whether to go with another DSLR or make the jump to mono CCD. It will most likely be CCD. Now the question becomes Kodak(Trusense) or Sony sensor. After I select the sensor, I have to pick the camera manufacturer. Some are better then others and the noise levels can change on the same sensor considerably depending on how good the electronics are executed. And how cool you can get it.

h14nha wrote in post #16388553
All across these boards whenever there's a Nikon/Canon discussion we're told how Canon has a huge market share over Nikon, and is making profits from it.
So, how come Sony can come on the scene and virtually immediately produce a superior sensor. Not just a tiny bit better but in terms of DR a lot better. Either Canon cannot compete or it's putting its resources into other areas ( video ? ? ? )

Sony isn't a small company either, and they didn't just start making sensors. They have been in the business for a long time, and have lots of fabrication capacity because of other products. Fabrication capacity to produce electronics that they have made huge losses on for a long time. So when they managed their patent on how to balance read channels they decided to run with the ball - when the Exmor sensor was released, Canon was caught by surprise and already 2-3 years behind.

Right now, we don't really know anything about what Canon is doing to catch up - Canon keeps everything silent until they feel they have something to release. They would kill their current market if they said "6 months from now, our new super-sensor will arrive". Just that we don't know if a new sensor will happen in the next three months or if we will have to wait a year.

The only thing we can know if that Canon made lots of money from staying with their current, and very inexpensive, production facilities. Only history will tell what Canon have lost by being late taking the jump.

Just that Nikon was a too weak competitor until Sony released their new sensor, and Canon thought their gear were good enough.

Canon have a huge lens collection - it doesn't get overrun over a weekend.

pwm2 wrote in post #16388610
Canon have a huge lens collection - it doesn't get overrun over a weekend.

Not only that but they have acquired another slice of the market just by Sony releasing (the presumably wonderful) A7 + A7r cameras that are very adapter+other_lens_mou​nt friendly.

pwm2 wrote in post #16388610
Sony isn't a small company either, and they didn't just start making sensors. They have been in the business for a long time, and have lots of fabrication capacity because of other products. Fabrication capacity to produce electronics that they have made huge losses on for a long time. So when they managed their patent on how to balance read channels they decided to run with the ball - when the Exmor sensor was released, Canon was caught by surprise and already 2-3 years behind.


Canon have a huge lens collection - it doesn't get overrun over a weekend.

No you mis-read my post. The entire Canon lens collection is now open to Sonys sensor. They don't need to develop a lens line up to entice Canon users, that's a plus plus plus..........

I worked for Sony. The LCD television caught them napping. Sony were developing a twin gun tube TV they thought would slaughter the competition. They were wrong. The manufacturer responsible for the Trinitron tube, the best tv tube in the world, was caught with its pants down.

h14nha wrote in post #16390820
I worked for Sony. The LCD television caught them napping. Sony were developing a twin gun tube TV they thought would slaughter the competition. They were wrong. The manufacturer responsible for the Trinitron tube, the best tv tube in the world, was caught with its pants down.

Sony has been losing billions and billions for years

http://www.nytimes.com …/global/10iht-sony10.html

But this year .... finally break even

watt100 wrote in post #16392095
Sony has been losing billions and billions for years

http://www.nytimes.com …/global/10iht-sony10.html

But this year .... finally break even

From the above:

"Sony also struggled in its digital camera and video business, hurt by a shrinking market for compact cameras and camcorders as more users chose to snap photographs and take video with their smartphones. However, Sony has found some success with high-end cameras with interchangeable lenses for photography buffs. "

They should do even better with the A7 and A7r.

Is there a SOny adapter already on the market for EF lenses that handles aperture and AF reliably?

kfreels wrote in post #16392594
Is there a SOny adapter already on the market for EF lenses that handles aperture and AF reliably?

Check out the metabones adapter - supports AF (albeit slower than on your Canon body) and aperture control and even IS.

Footbag wrote in post #16388212
Are you suggesting that they must add pixels to make the sensor better? There are a lot of things you can do to improve sensor performance without shrinking pixels. And I'm not talking about JPG noise reduction.

Such as putting a super thick AA filter on your new 18mp sensor, so that it reduces the res to make it work better for video...

Z...

EtherealZee wrote in post #16394100
Such as putting a super thick AA filter on your new 18mp sensor, so that it reduces the res to make it work better for video...

Z...

When the readout electronics is improved enough that it can either perform full sensor readout at the required video frequency, or can perform averaging of two-and-two scanlines during read-out, then you don't need a strong AA filter. The AA filter only needs to be strong for video if the camera has to limit itself to only read out some of the sensor pixels - this would require the AA filter to have strong enough blur radius to reach past the skipped pixels. So more work on video read-out can make video co-exist better with stills performance.

pwm2 wrote in post #16394122
When the readout electronics is improved enough that it can either perform full sensor readout at the required video frequency, or can perform averaging of two-and-two scanlines during read-out, then you don't need a strong AA filter. The AA filter only needs to be strong for video if the camera has to limit itself to only read out some of the sensor pixels - this would require the AA filter to have strong enough blur radius to reach past the skipped pixels. So more work on video read-out can make video co-exist better with stills performance.

Yup, that was my point. A sacrifice of stills quality in favour of video...

Z...

Moire patterns show up in still images as well without an aa filter.