Do you think Canon will respond to the Nikon D800?

Radders wrote in post #16738468
Why?

I have been using my 5DIII and 100-400 L for quite a few airshows. I like the results in general but the reach is a bit short occasionally. I bought a 7D to try it on airshow and sold it a week later. Yes, it gave me more reach than the 5DIII but the clarity of the 7D files is no comparison to the 5DIII's files, to my eyes.

From what I read, the 5DIII's AF is better than the D800's, maybe not by much. Of course the D800's fps is slower, BUT, BUT, the 36MP sensor will give you a lot more "cropabiliy". It will be interesting to see how a D800/Nikon 80-400mm setup is like for airshows.

I think a Canon 5DIII/100-400mm vs Nikon D800/80-400mm comparison is really an AF/fsp vs longer reach (cropability) comparison.

Now, if Sony produces an e mount version of its 70-400mm lens with OSS (Sony's version of IS) that works with the new A6000 (24 MP, 11 fps), that would be an interesting combo, if the A6000's AF is capable enough. From a a few reviews, the A6000's AF tracking seems to be great.

Sorry this went of the topic...

jdizzle wrote in post #16741809
One example is the ability to AF at f8. Canon did not have this feature in their 1D X but, the Nikons did. It was a big deal for bird/wildlife shooters. It took them more than a year to release but, it is limited to certain lenses and certain t-con combos.

It really takes quite a lot of work to implement the AF functionality, with good precision, over a large range of light levels and both for very fast lenses where the precision must be huge because of the tiny DoF and for very slow lenses where the light rays from the lenses doesn't give much difference for the phase-detection to pick up.

It gets even more complicated when considering continuous AF, where the camera needs to try to predict the subject movement and on speculation order the lens to refocus.

It gets extremely complicated when not considering just the center point, but the off center points - especially since different lenses will project differently. Lenses changes focus when the aperture is changed (and the AF is performed with fully open aperture) and they have issues with curvature where they don't manage to capture a flat field so the focus error from the lens grows the closer you get to a corner. And this effect changes over the zoom range.

So the camera vendors invests a huge amount of time and effort into getting the AF to work as well as possible, while they are busy dreaming of being able to switch to on-sensor AF where the sensor points used for the computation will actually be on the image sensor surface and not suffer from mechanical calibration errors and guestimates of spherical image planes.

There really was a very big reason why so many cameras for many years just had three very well-centered AF points - they couldn't afford the processing capacity and battery power to do anything better.

Going from 20MP to 40MP isn't making life easier - while the old DoF tables might stay the same, the range where the DoF will manage pixel-level sharpness will be even narrower.

pwm2 wrote in post #16742929
Going from 20MP to 40MP isn't making life easier - while the old DoF tables might stay the same, the range where the DoF will manage pixel-level sharpness will be even narrower.

I think this is a bigger factor to consider (rather than AF speed) if using a camera like the D800 for BIF and sports, since you need to use increasingly higher shutter speeds/ISO to render a pixel-sharp image; to get that "cropability" you'd need to use at least twice the shutter speed you'd normally use.
The D800 has extra resolution and DR, but unless you're shooting in very good light with a fast lens, those advantages quickly disappear, like when tracking a moving subject at ISO6400.

kdrk888 wrote in post #16742910
I have been using my 5DIII and 100-400 L for quite a few airshows. I like the results in general but the reach is a bit short occasionally. I bought a 7D to try it on airshow and sold it a week later. Yes, it gave me more reach than the 5DIII but the clarity of the 7D files is no comparison to the 5DIII's files, to my eyes.

From what I read, the 5DIII's AF is better than the D800's, maybe not by much. Of course the D800's fps is slower, BUT, BUT, the 36MP sensor will give you a lot more "cropabiliy". It will be interesting to see how a D800/Nikon 80-400mm setup is like for airshows.

I think a Canon 5DIII/100-400mm vs Nikon D800/80-400mm comparison is really an AF/fsp vs longer reach (cropability) comparison.

Now, if Sony produces an e mount version of its 70-400mm lens with OSS (Sony's version of IS) that works with the new A6000 (24 MP, 11 fps), that would be an interesting combo, if the A6000's AF is capable enough. From a a few reviews, the A6000's AF tracking seems to be great.

Sorry this went of the topic...

I really need to try out the 5D3, it might be the body I need. I've just had my Sigma 50-500 re-calibrated and fixed in Japan, and it's now pin sharp.. I just want a slightly better body where I can crop with little to no evidence of cropping.

Radders wrote in post #16742991
I really need to try out the 5D3, it might be the body I need. I've just had my Sigma 50-500 re-calibrated and fixed in Japan, and it's now pin sharp.. I just want a slightly better body where I can crop with little to no evidence of cropping.

OT.
If you are interested, take a look at here: http://www.flickr.com …u/sets/72157629​879347246/

I am just a hobbyist. Most pictures were taken with 5DIII+100-400, and 5DII+70-200 or 100-400. In my usage, the 5DIII+100-400 is fine in most situations, especially for formations. But for single plane that's pulling away, I do think more reach would be very very helpful.