What 5D MK IV SHOULD be to stay competitive

guntoter wrote in post #17430789
I will attempt to answer that. Us sports & wildlife/birders need a wonderful FF too. Now the 5Ds is fantastic for those who relish the super high MP, but for the remainder of us, maybe not so.

I'm actually looking forward to the 5Ds for wildlife - much more than the 5D3. It may not be the ideal landscape camera if it does not have 14 stops of DR, but looks to be nearly ideal for wildlife.

The resolution allows for much more scope to crop (you can crop from FF to 1.6x crop and still end up with 20MP, and most times you won't be cropping this heavily) as well as the opportunity to frame more loosely when tracking an erratically-moving animal in order to crop to perfect composition afterwards. The stronger colour filters should give you more definition in an animal's features - hairs, a leopard's spots, a bird's plumage, etc.

When shooting wildlife, ISO tends to be in the 400-3200 range anyway (usually 800-1600), so you don't need the super-high ISOs which event photographers often demand. And it's easy to capture wildlife with 5fps - given the choice, I'd rather have more spatial resolution and less temporal resolution than the other way around.

Now you know a little of how landscape/architecture photographers feel, when we haven't had an upgrade for eight/seven years since the 1Ds3/5D2, and the newest version may not even deliver on one of the things we need most. Resolution and DR are to landscape photographers what ISO and fps are to action/sports photographers - you need both, and as much of them as you can get.

I keep thinking. In my mind - not sure if you think the same - 5Ds/5DsR is the successor of 1Ds in terms of key strengths and target audience. Even though the camera can be applied to many types of photography, it really is a tool for commercial studio photographers. It will shine when it comes to fashion, studio portraits, packshots, products, etc. It will be a great tool for commercial photographers that require a top notch output for further Photoshop edits and manipulations. In this case you set up for perfect conditions - perfect light, low ISO, tripod, etc. So it is about the resolution, details, color accuracy. Hence the ISO 6400 limit, no focus on video, no focus on FPS, etc. You just give this camera a specific task and it will deliver flawlessly - high resolution with great color accuracy in perfect conditions. Why it did not come in 1D body? I do not know, but one of the reasons could be a totally different strategy that Canon has for 1D bodies. Most likely it will be THE TOOL for Professional Sport and Action photography. It really make sense and Canon will most likely announce 1Dx MKII sometime around October/November/Decem​ber and will start selling in early 2016 to make it the most anticipated camera for 2016 Olympics. Canon will surely check what Nikon/Sony is going to do with D5.

5D MKIII is different. When it was first release, it was not a massive different when it comes to the sensor (coming from MKII), but it delivered a phenomenal and very accurate AF system. I loved using it for ambient light people photography - it was a nirvana for me. So accurate in terms of AF. I care about IQ and sharpness a lot, so I was never going higher than ISO 1000. For Landscapes - it was great too, but this is where it was lagging behind the D800/D800E and D810 later on. When I went to Iceland, I talked to a lot of folks that changes the system from Canon to Nikon because of D800-series. I was still super happy with MKIII because I do landscape (50%) and people (50%).

If 5D MKIV is still to come, I would love to have an improvement in a couple of areas:
1. DR - this is really needed and this is where Canon is a couple of years behind
2. Around 30MP sensor- it will not cannibalize the 5Ds market, but will be an improvement for those that want more resolution, but are not commercial photographers and do not print Billboards
3. AF improvement - nice to have, but not critical
4. ISO improvement -nice to have, but not critical

Have no clue what Canon is going to do, though.

It was very difficult to properly expose these scene and this is why I would welcome any help when it comes to DR: