Does Sony's success open the door for Canon?

mystik610 wrote in post #17887648
For portraiture, where you're often (but not always) shooting with fast aperture glass, the accuracy of an AF system that isn't subject to miscalibrations and the AF sensor its worth its weight in gold. No more culling out shots because the AF system failed to hit its mark. No more messing around with MFA which is never perfect anyway.

I don't know how much experience you have with AF-C eye focus (present only the a7rII), but its outright been a game-changer for portraiture for me. Being able to continually track my subject down to his/her eyes and nail the focus every time means I don't have to mess with AF points anymore...it means I can focus on composition, interacting with my subject, and timing key expressions and moments (same reason that prior to MILC's, I preferred MF when possible during photoshoots). It also means I'm hitting critical focus on the eyes damn near 100% of the time, even if my subject isn't completely still. Something like that isn't possible without access to image sensor while composing your shot....so its unique to mirrorless cameras, and, despite the EVF's present limitations, it has a tremendous amount of upside.

The evaluation of the pro's and con's will of course vary from individual to individual...We'll see how the technology progresses in the future (I'm personally bullish on the upside), but the only point I'm making regarding the present state is that mirrorless cameras have very distinct advantages already, that depending on your needs and what you shoot, can make them a more attractive choice than DSLR's. The benefits of mirrorless cameras go beyond size alone, and this is the reason why Sony just announced these massive DSLR sized lenses.

I believe that the D5 carries this same technology requiring no manual calibration, so if Canon follows suit, this isn't a distinct advantage, and a lot of mirrorless progress doesn't mean that DSLR tech stays static. I prefer single point AF for f/1.2-f/1.4 lenses, more like driving a race car stick shift in manual for me. For this Sony isn't as good. The eye detect is good in theory, but I don't believe it worked well for full-body portrait or in difficult scenes with multiple subjects. I'd have to try it out more when I do another video shoot with the Sony Artisan we work with, but I still like to do things with more control. i.e. I hate to press a button and then a dpad just move my focus point on the screen. This is where Sony caters to amateurs (I mean that with deep respect, some amateurs are better than professionals and vice-versa; they just don't have do-or-die expectations when it comes to things like autofocus and battery life) instead of professionals.

I think with future models, I look forward to a merging of Fujifilm's XPro-2 joystick and Sony's A7rii / Fuji XPro-2 autofocus with the A7s pixel pitch and video. It will take a while since I think Sony's in just engineer mode and not product development right now (the engineers are at the wheel of the ship, not the feedback from pro photographers, at least in my field). Once Fujifilm or Sony bring this to market, or sooner when I can justify spending 4-10k on a second system (without a solid repair network) to evaluate or use in conjunction with my DSLR's and cinema cameras with built-in ND's, I will test the waters.

I think the massive lenses are a step in the right direction. Just the ergonomics of the body in relation to the lenses need to change. Hoping the a9 is somewhere on the horizon. Again all contingent on Sony's consumer attitude.

idkdc wrote in post #17887659
I believe that the D5 carries this same technology requiring no manual calibration, so if Canon follows suit, this isn't a distinct advantage, and a lot of mirrorless progress doesn't mean that DSLR tech stays static. I prefer single point AF for f/1.2-f/1.4 lenses, more like driving a race car stick shift in manual for me. For this Sony isn't as good. The eye detect is good in theory, but I don't believe it worked well for full-body portrait or in difficult scenes with multiple subjects. I'd have to try it out more when I do another video shoot with the Sony Artisan we work with, but I still like to do things with more control. i.e. I hate to press a button and then a dpad just move my focus point on the screen. This is where Sony caters to amateurs (I mean that with deep respect, some amateurs are better than professionals and vice-versa; they just don't have do-or-die expectations when it comes to things like autofocus and battery life) instead of professionals.

I think with future models, I look forward to a merging of Fujifilm's XPro-2 joystick and Sony's A7rii / Fuji XPro-2 autofocus with the A7s pixel pitch and video. It will take a while since I think Sony's in just engineer mode and not product development right now (the engineers are at the wheel of the ship, not the feedback from pro photographers, at least in my field). Once Fujifilm or Sony bring this to market, or sooner when I can justify spending 4-10k on a second system (without a solid repair network) to evaluate or use in conjunction with my DSLR's and cinema cameras with built-in ND's, I will test the waters.

I think the massive lenses are a step in the right direction. Just the ergonomics of the body in relation to the lenses need to change. Hoping the a9 is somewhere on the horizon. Again all contingent on Sony's consumer attitude.

The stick-shift analogy is interesting. I would still drive a stick if my wife knew how to drive stick.... and I would say the equivalent to driving stick (feeling truly connected with the car) in the camera world is straight up manual focus. More control, and more accurate barring poor technique. That said in that same vein, most high-end sports cars are ditching true manual focus (clutch and stick), in favor of semi-automatic paddle shifters because they can toggle gears more quickly and more precisely than a human ever could. This is the way I view AF-C eye focus.

Fair point on the ergonomics of the a7 cameras. Sony is straggling an awkward point with them right now...too big to be truly consumer...too small to give the ergonomics a professional would like. I shoot professionally with them, and last stent of my wedding photography days was using an a7r alongside a 5DIII, but can't deny that in terms of ergonomics, it involves some compromises. Sony really does need to bring an a9 to the table to really be taken seriously in this space....I'd buy one if the price were right, but am currently happy in the areas that matter at the end of the day...performance and IQ

idkdc wrote in post #17887634
Ok, so ignoring your hyperbolic false analogy on the horse drawn carriage:

It's not a false analogy.

Cars and horse-drawn carriages both do the same thing - they get you from A to B wherever there is a road. Cars do many things a lot better - they have the potential to be much faster and more comfortable and don't depend on the performance of the horse on any particular day. Just like mirrorless cameras have the potential to have far better AF than SLRs (with a combination of on-sensor phase detection and intelligent, AI-based subject acquisition and tracking) while achieving faster frame rates (electronic shutters), less vibration, retrospective shooting, true WYSIWYG composition and simultaneous video and stills - none of which are possible on SLRs. But cars also have their drawbacks - they need refined petroleum (and a network of shops selling it) and can't just run on any old vegetation, and early cars weren't much faster than a horse while having many other performance limitations. Just like how mirrorless cameras use more power and current, early mirrorless cameras have viewfinder lag problems due to slow, low-power processors and displays. It wasn't until all these limitations were ironed out that cars almost fully replaced horse-drawn buggies, but replace them they did. And it will be the same with EVFs and mirrorless displays.

After all, all remote-controlled vehicles - including very fast ones - are piloted via electronic displays rather than direct vision, many weapons systems are controlled via electronic displays and a camera rather than direct vision, and even some piloted vehicles in development now - aircraft and spacecraft - rely on electronic displays rather than windows. And viewfinder lag is important in all of these applications.

You must be awfully slow at changing batteries then, as well as very unaware of the current status of your camera. It only takes me a few seconds - easily accomplished between key moments.

I know quite a few wedding photographers who have completely switched to Sony and have no problem changing batteries as needed.

Even with a gripless D810 or 5D3, you still need to change batteries once during a long day.

I never said anything about a camera being small.

Mirrorless doesn't mean small. It just means it doesn't have a mirror and displays the sensor image itself on a viewfinder.

After the debacle with the 100-400, then the 70-200, then the 500L, I have no confidence in Canon's professional services either.

In contrast, when my A7r failed (through no less than a lightning strike on a tree several metres away while shooting in a tropical thunderstorm), I got a loaner unit from Sony within the day.

Not any more.

Look at the new Sony FE-mount 85/1.4. 24-70/2.8 and 70-200/2.8. They're huge - the same size as Canon and Nikon's offerings - and dwarf the A7 bodies. Which strongly suggests a larger, full-featured E-mount body coming out soon.

And much of the success of the A7 series has not been from people buying them for their small size (people wanting that seem to gravitate towards Olympus and other M43 systems) but for their sensor performance and adaptability to many different lenses. That's why Metabones has been so successful since the A7r came out - particularly with the Canon-to-Sony adapters - yet few people had heard of them before then.

No doubt.

Which is a problem of small size and limited power (both processor and battery power) rather than the camera not having a mirror.

Make an SLR the same size as a mirrorless camera (other than a thicker lens mount to accommodate a mirror) and it'd also fail miserably in capturing action.

You can't adopt something which hasn't come yet.

Yes.

Apple's success is due to their consumer products - the iPod, then the iPhone, as well as iTunes and their online services. Not due to their repair services (which many non-Apple shops carry out around here anyway).

This vertical integration and hermetically-sealed development pathway is one of the many reasons Apple hasn't taken off at a professional level, outside of a few creative industries which only run limited software and are happy with the pre-approved packages. The software and hardware may work well with each other, but neither is very adaptable. You can take a Windows or Linux platform and run almost anything on it; it's very easy for IT to get such a setup to run everything from network databases, to office software, to graphics software. It might be a clunky, A7r+Metabones+Canon-type setup, but it works and is adaptable in such a way that an Apple-based system could never be.

I don't know anything about North America.

Here in Australia, all of them are equally bad (the incident with the A7r I mentioned happened in Singapore, and the local support was great).

idkdc wrote in post #17887659
I believe that the D5 carries this same technology requiring no manual calibration, so if Canon follows suit, this isn't a distinct advantage, and a lot of mirrorless progress doesn't mean that DSLR tech stays static. I prefer single point AF for f/1.2-f/1.4 lenses, more like driving a race car stick shift in manual for me. For this Sony isn't as good. The eye detect is good in theory, but I don't believe it worked well for full-body portrait or in difficult scenes with multiple subjects.

Seems to work well enough at f/1.4 for the wedding photographers I know who are using it. Don't know about f/1.2 - as far as I know, there's no f/1.2 lens out there which can be used with eye detect on a Sony body.

I believe the A7r2 does this a lot better than the other A7 bodies when it comes to groups or full-body portraits. The eye is a small subject, and having more resolution makes it easier for the processor to recognise.

When you have dozens, or hundreds, of AF points to choose from, selecting the AF point is slow. When the subject is moving - particularly if the eye is moving in relation to the rest of the body - keeping the active AF point over the eye while maintaining a good composition over the rest of the subject can be near-impossible. That's why many wildlife photographers frame loosely, then crop.

Manual may be more accurate than automatic, but is also slower. You don't always have the luxury of time. That's why AF was invented. When you aim an AF point at a subject, you don't know whether it's going to slightly front-focus or slightly back-focus or end up dead on target. You don't know if it's going to focus on the eye, or the eyelash in front of it. But we do it anyway, in situations where we don't have the time to manually focus. Trusting a powerful, well-designed system to detect and focus on the eye is just an extension of this.

Sony pro users - whether landscape, studio, wedding or architecture - have been wanting an A9 ever since the A7 was announced.

The ergonomics are fine, although a few more dedicated buttons would be useful. But a bigger body is needed to house everything that makes an SLR useful - AF processors, dual cards, larger batteries, etc. Leica only gets away with small bodies because their bodies literally don't do anything except house the sensor.

Shadowblade wrote in post #17887673
It's not a false analogy.

Cars and horse-drawn carriages both do the same thing - they get you from A to B wherever there is a road. Cars do many things a lot better - they have the potential to be much faster and more comfortable and don't depend on the performance of the horse on any particular day. Just like mirrorless cameras have the potential to have far better AF than SLRs (with a combination of on-sensor phase detection and intelligent, AI-based subject acquisition and tracking) while achieving faster frame rates (electronic shutters), less vibration, retrospective shooting, true WYSIWYG composition and simultaneous video and stills - none of which are possible on SLRs. But cars also have their drawbacks - they need refined petroleum (and a network of shops selling it) and can't just run on any old vegetation, and early cars weren't much faster than a horse while having many other performance limitations. Just like how mirrorless cameras use more power and current, early mirrorless cameras have viewfinder lag problems due to slow, low-power processors and displays. It wasn't until all these limitations were ironed out that cars almost fully replaced horse-drawn buggies, but replace them they did. And it will be the same with EVFs and mirrorless displays.

After all, all remote-controlled vehicles - including very fast ones - are piloted via electronic displays rather than direct vision, many weapons systems are controlled via electronic displays and a camera rather than direct vision, and even some piloted vehicles in development now - aircraft and spacecraft - rely on electronic displays rather than windows. And viewfinder lag is important in all of these applications.

You must be awfully slow at changing batteries then, as well as very unaware of the current status of your camera. It only takes me a few seconds - easily accomplished between key moments.

I know quite a few wedding photographers who have completely switched to Sony and have no problem changing batteries as needed.

Even with a gripless D810 or 5D3, you still need to change batteries once during a long day.

I never said anything about a camera being small.

Mirrorless doesn't mean small. It just means it doesn't have a mirror and displays the sensor image itself on a viewfinder.

After the debacle with the 100-400, then the 70-200, then the 500L, I have no confidence in Canon's professional services either.

In contrast, when my A7r failed (through no less than a lightning strike on a tree several metres away while shooting in a tropical thunderstorm), I got a loaner unit from Sony within the day.

Not any more.

Look at the new Sony FE-mount 85/1.4. 24-70/2.8 and 70-200/2.8. They're huge - the same size as Canon and Nikon's offerings - and dwarf the A7 bodies. Which strongly suggests a larger, full-featured E-mount body coming out soon.

And much of the success of the A7 series has not been from people buying them for their small size (people wanting that seem to gravitate towards Olympus and other M43 systems) but for their sensor performance and adaptability to many different lenses. That's why Metabones has been so successful since the A7r came out - particularly with the Canon-to-Sony adapters - yet few people had heard of them before then.

No doubt.

Which is a problem of small size and limited power (both processor and battery power) rather than the camera not having a mirror.

Make an SLR the same size as a mirrorless camera (other than a thicker lens mount to accommodate a mirror) and it'd also fail miserably in capturing action.

You can't adopt something which hasn't come yet.

Yes.

Apple's success is due to their consumer products - the iPod, then the iPhone, as well as iTunes and their online services. Not due to their repair services (which many non-Apple shops carry out around here anyway).

This vertical integration and hermetically-sealed development pathway is one of the many reasons Apple hasn't taken off at a professional level, outside of a few creative industries which only run limited software and are happy with the pre-approved packages. The software and hardware may work well with each other, but neither is very adaptable. You can take a Windows or Linux platform and run almost anything on it; it's very easy for IT to get such a setup to run everything from network databases, to office software, to graphics software. It might be a clunky, A7r+Metabones+Canon-type setup, but it works and is adaptable in such a way that an Apple-based system could never be.

I don't know anything about North America.

Here in Australia, all of them are equally bad (the incident with the A7r I mentioned happened in Singapore, and the local support was great).

I think you and I are from two very different markets. Let's chalk up the pro services to that. And, no, I don't care to change my battery 4-6 times per body. I can probably change faster than you can, but I'd rather concentrate on other things on the day of. I grip my 5d3's and will prob move to at least one 1dxii in April.

I'm down for all these advances when they happen. I think they're just not here yet, and in North America, Canon's pro service is much better than Sony's right now. The pro wedding market in the 12k use range is almost all Canon right now in SF. So prob chalk that up to regional differences as well.

Shadowblade wrote in post #17887692
Seems to work well enough at f/1.4 for the wedding photographers I know who are using it. Don't know about f/1.2 - as far as I know, there's no f/1.2 lens out there which can be used with eye detect on a Sony body.

I believe the A7r2 does this a lot better than the other A7 bodies when it comes to groups or full-body portraits. The eye is a small subject, and having more resolution makes it easier for the processor to recognise.

When you have dozens, or hundreds, of AF points to choose from, selecting the AF point is slow. When the subject is moving - particularly if the eye is moving in relation to the rest of the body - keeping the active AF point over the eye while maintaining a good composition over the rest of the subject can be near-impossible. That's why many wildlife photographers frame loosely, then crop.

Manual may be more accurate than automatic, but is also slower. You don't always have the luxury of time. That's why AF was invented. When you aim an AF point at a subject, you don't know whether it's going to slightly front-focus or slightly back-focus or end up dead on target. You don't know if it's going to focus on the eye, or the eyelash in front of it. But we do it anyway, in situations where we don't have the time to manually focus. Trusting a powerful, well-designed system to detect and focus on the eye is just an extension of this.

Sony pro users - whether landscape, studio, wedding or architecture - have been wanting an A9 ever since the A7 was announced.

The ergonomics are fine, although a few more dedicated buttons would be useful. But a bigger body is needed to house everything that makes an SLR useful - AF processors, dual cards, larger batteries, etc. Leica only gets away with small bodies because their bodies literally don't do anything except house the sensor.

There's a reason there's full time manual on Canon L lenses. I'll have to try afc next time I get a chance with the rii, but I come from a sports background, so I'm not sure it'll be my cup of tea. Ergonomics are subjective, again not my cup of tea on the current generation of a7's.

idkdc wrote in post #17887712
There's a reason there's full time manual on Canon L lenses. I'll have to try afc next time I get a chance with the rii, but I come from a sports background, so I'm not sure it'll be my cup of tea. Ergonomics are subjective, again not my cup of tea on the current generation of a7's.

Sports will be the last holdout of SLRs, even more so than wildlife, in the same way that landscapes are the last holdout of large-format film used with view cameras. It's the area of photography most affected by lag times, be it viewfinder lag or shutter lag.

Automated acquisition and tracking (of eyes, faces, etc.) already works very well with slower-moving subjects, e.g. events/weddings, street photography (I've heard it's been a godsend for candid shots). Speed it up a little and it'd be fantastic for sports; expand its repertoire to include tracking animal eyes and it'd be fantastic for wildlife. With a powerful-enough processor built for image recognition, (i.e. currently experimental AI and being further developed for security cameras) it could potentially recognise and track all sorts of other subjects too.

I hate these threads. I'm annoyed at myself I read all the way through. The gist of all these type threads is someone who doesn't like mirrorless (and a lot of the time hasn't even tried it) argues why dslr is better and then mirrorless users argue the opposite.

Both have their pros and cons and there isn't a perfect solution. All these posts quoting facts and figures and trying to pick holes in things others have said are pointless.

I dont like bird photography but I dont spend my time on the bird forum arguing why its pointless. Not sure why people feel the need to argue why dslr is better all the time?

The thread is so far detached from what the OP actually asked.

Sorry for the rant

Bringing this up b/c it was discussed earlier.....Just realized that the a6300 EVF actually has a 120hz viewfinder.

mystik610 wrote in post #17887557
Then NPD is consistent with CIPA. It makes sense that global sales have diminished outside of the US, as the rest of the world has been deep in recession for a while now, whereas the U.S. has been relatively stable and has enjoyed a strengthening dollar. As such, the U.S. market is a better barometer for measuring the receptivity of mirrorless cameras. It's also relevant because traditionally, mirrorless cameras have not sold well in the U.S., however for the Apr '14-Apr '15 period contemplated by both CIPA and NPD, mirrorless cameras have reversed course and sales are actually increasing while DSLR sales are decreasing. It's up to interpretation whether the growth of mirrorless sales come at the expense of corresponding DSLR sales, or if these are independent phenomena.... but it is what it is.

I think we cannot draw any conclusion about mirrorless for at least another year or two, since mirrorless overall numbers sold in the most recent year are not representative of any significant growth vs. two years ago. If you apply averaging before plotting volume, to smooth the peaks and dips, it looks like a virtual flat line for two year.

Wilt wrote in post #17885688
The issue absolutely isn't 'blur'...the issue is that for any moving object, its relationship to its surroundings (as seen in the viewfinder) will be different than it was at 1/30-1/60 earlier in time, which is where any EVF would be depicting the subject to be.
Fast subjects are more in error in their relationship (e.g. 90 mph race car is 26.4" past the finish line although the EVF shows it AT the fininsh line, so after any shutter lag the race car is really >27" past the finish line when I see it in the EVF at the finish line) and capture it on the sensor.
Slower objects (a 100m dash sprinter) might be only 1/4 of that error and even slower objects (a toddler's hand) might be only 1/6 of that error, but the error is real and cannot go away entirely due to processing speeds and EVF update rate.

Reduce the refresh rate (to 120 Hz) and the error in space is cut to one-half of 26.4".

• 13.2" EVF error in the case of the race car at 90 mph crossing finish line
  
• 6.6" EVF error in the case of the sprinter at 23 mph running across finish line
  
• 4.4" EVF error in the case of the toddler at about 16 mph movement of hand
  

So even a non-sports photographer is affected to some degree.

You do realize that the average human response time is roughly 250ms right? Are you trying to tell me you are timing the race car as it crosses the finish line. I venture to think you would lay on the 11fps shutter as the car gets near and continue shooting until it crosses. There is no way you could successfully time the race car at the finish line.

Now, tell me how this would be different with a mirrorless camera able to shoot at 11fps?

Wilt wrote in post #17886125
history has shown that Poor #2 Canon caught up with Dominant #1 pro film SLR Nikon to take over, with the EOS line of bodies and cameras, after trailing for decades. So it is not inconceivable that Canon beat Sony 'at its own game' since they have taken over once before.
More Nikon share was lost to Canon when the Canon dSLR had its low noise high ISO, and Nikon loyalists changed their camera system from Nikon to Canon.
However, keep in mind that the EVF market is STALLED in growth, just as the dSLR market is stalled, too. There might not be a reason for Canon to invest heavily in a segment of the industry doomed to a limited growth market.

Correction...the mirrorless cameras are stalled in growth...the DSLR cameras are drastically sliding downhill.

Wilt wrote in post #17885711
I agree that shutter lag has always forced us to anticipate the peak of action (high jumper arching over the bar). With EVF we have to understand that where we see the high jumper relative to his surroundings is actually at least 1/60 sec. later in the EVF than reality, so we have to add that delay to our anticipation of the peak of action.

See my post on human reaction time of 1/4 second. Sort of puts things into perspective as far as ability to accurately time peak action. That is why we have cameras able to shoot at 11fps...humans are lousy at being able to react.

I did a shoot of a singer using eye AF and it was amazing. I locked onto the eye and from then on the focus followed the singer's eye as it moved around in the image. I did not have to worry about focus again...just had to worry about compositions and getting that great expression shots. What amazed me when I got home to process the images....they were bang on in focus. I've shot with DSLR's before and there is no way I would have been able to accomplish these results.

The eye focus tracking is really a game changer for me. I can see the future allowing tracking sports or birds or cars or whatever...interesting times.

Hogloff wrote in post #17888043
You do realize that the average human response time is roughly 250ms right? Are you trying to tell me you are timing the race car as it crosses the finish line. I venture to think you would lay on the 11fps shutter as the car gets near and continue shooting until it crosses. There is no way you could successfully time the race car at the finish line.

Now, tell me how this would be different with a mirrorless camera able to shoot at 11fps?

Yeah, I know there is human response time, there is shutter lag, there are multiple factors that must all be considered. The EVF lag ADDS to the issues, I am not making the EVF lag into the 'killer' reason, it is a factor that makes a task less easy, not more easy to deal with, that's all. We should be aware of what we, as photographers, are fighting in order to try to offset the issue sufficiently!