5D3, 6D and D600 true RAW (dcraw) comparison

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snapsy
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p.3 #1 · 5D3, 6D and D600 true RAW (dcraw) comparison

MayaTlab wrote:
DXO is a useful tool, but it certainly isn't foolproof. Three illustrations, as examples :
1) : they rate my D700 as being better at high ISOs than my 5DIII. I've got only one answer for that : ha ha ha. Even at 100%, disregarding the increased mp count, the 5DIII is slightly better than the D700.

That's only for the composite low-light ISO score, which factors in color purity, an area where the 5DM3 is lacking. There are valid usage cases where that will make a difference, depending on processing requirements, but on balance the 5DM3 tests higher than the D700 in DxO's results.

MayaTlab wrote:
in my opinion, opening files made in reasonably similar circumstances and looking at them on your own computer probably is the best way to make up your mind about sensors' performances.

The problem with this methodology is that differences in nominal ISOs between bodies can taint the results, esp since with the latest generation of sensors all the bodies perform so close to each other, which itself may argue that further measurement doesn't yield much interesting information other than bragging rights.

Dec 04, 2012 at 08:12 PM

Ralph Conway
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p.3 #2 · 5D3, 6D and D600 true RAW (dcraw) comparison

StillFingerz wrote:
gdanmitchell wrote:
One thing that it proves is that all three cameras produce excellent results and with normal post processing workflow one can shoot at high ISOs and make lovely big prints with images from any of them. :-)

+1

Would have been my next + 100, too.

+100

Dec 04, 2012 at 08:13 PM

Wahoowa
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p.3 #3 · 5D3, 6D and D600 true RAW (dcraw) comparison

Ralph Conway wrote:
StillFingerz wrote:
gdanmitchell wrote:
One thing that it proves is that all three cameras produce excellent results and with normal post processing workflow one can shoot at high ISOs and make lovely big prints with images from any of them. :-)

+1

Would have been my next + 100, too.

+100

Agreed as well.

Dec 04, 2012 at 08:27 PM

skibum5
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p.3 #4 · 5D3, 6D and D600 true RAW (dcraw) comparison

MayaTlab wrote:
kapytalyst wrote:
The definitive test of whether or not the 6d has a better sensor than the d600 will come from from DxO Labs.

DXO is a useful tool, but it certainly isn't foolproof. Three illustrations, as examples :
1) : they rate my D700 as being better at high ISOs than my 5DIII. I've got only one answer for that : ha ha ha. Even at 100%, disregarding the increased mp count, the 5DIII is slightly better than the D700.
2) DXO doesn't measure amplification noise, or colour shifts at higher ISOs, which are a pain to correct. If you were to look at their graphs, you'd believe the D800 is as good as the D4 at high ISOs. That's not the case : above 6400 ISOs, it's got quite a bit of amplification noise, while the blacks on the D4 remain black.
3) It doesn't tell you anything about banding.

At least it attracts attention to the importance of DR at low ISOs, and for that, I thank them. I also salute the effort. But it's not very precise.

in my opinion, opening files made in reasonably similar circumstances and looking at them on your own computer probably is the best way to make up your mind about sensors' performances.

DxO doen't take into account resolution and when the MP is much higher that tends to make even the same noise appear nicer and the 5D3 score got knocked down a lot because they cheated more on the color filter and made it a lot more color-blind than the D700 which also increases color noise so it might have better luminance noise but worse color noise or be more color-blind (since really high ISO is often not taken under daylight color temps where the 5D3 is the most color-blind i'm not sure the color-blindness part should really matter for high iso though, although the color noise still would, but anyway 5D3 has a lot more and the D800 way more mP than the D700 and in the end yeah the D700 doesn't look as good as either of those at high iso) So that is one case where you do need to look into their ratings deeply and sort things out.

It is true that they also don't take into account of banding. The 5D3 does very well there at high iso and not so well there at low ISO.

And yeah they don't account for the amp glow.

Dec 04, 2012 at 08:35 PM

skibum5
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p.3 #5 · 5D3, 6D and D600 true RAW (dcraw) comparison

gdanmitchell wrote:
One thing that it proves is that all three cameras produce excellent results and with normal post processing workflow one can shoot at high ISOs and make lovely big prints with images from any of them. :-)

Uh oh. I agree.

(at low ISO we will still differ I bit though, so not EVERYTHING is wrong in the world at least)

Dec 04, 2012 at 08:36 PM

AGeoJO
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p.3 #6 · 5D3, 6D and D600 true RAW (dcraw) comparison

Ralph Conway wrote:
Would have been my next + 100, too.

+100

Wahoowa wrote:
Agreed as well.

Is that not the idea of having one or more of these cameras all about? On the other hand, this is a gear forum frequented by a lot of gear-heads

. Oh, well.

Dec 04, 2012 at 08:39 PM

D. Diggler
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p.3 #7 · 5D3, 6D and D600 true RAW (dcraw) comparison

baltmin wrote:

In this test with dcraw the difference seems to be huge reaching almost 1 stop.

I was ballpark thinking about 2/3 of a stop with this test. Hard to be sure but it looks like better than 1/2.

Dec 04, 2012 at 09:08 PM

snapsy
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p.3 #8 · 5D3, 6D and D600 true RAW (dcraw) comparison

D. Diggler wrote:
baltmin wrote:

In this test with dcraw the difference seems to be huge reaching almost 1 stop.

I was ballpark thinking about 2/3 of a stop with this test. Hard to be sure but it looks like better than 1/2.

Visually I agree but that can't be considering the difference between a 5DM3 and D3s/1DX is only 1/3 stop on noise (which is perceptually the difference we're seeing here instead of DR). I suspect some of it is nominal ISO differences, esp. since the 5DM3 has such a high nominal ISO output brightness relative to previous Canon bodies.

Dec 04, 2012 at 09:13 PM

carstenw
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p.3 #9 · 5D3, 6D and D600 true RAW (dcraw) comparison

JohnBrose wrote:
I think cgarcia was talking about the dop is similar from 2.8 on full sensor ot f4 on cropped sensor?

dop? Do you mean depth of field, i.e. dof? He specifically mentioned depth of field and light gathering as separate items, so it didn't *seem* like a mistake.

Dec 04, 2012 at 09:25 PM

Pixel Perfect
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p.3 #10 · 5D3, 6D and D600 true RAW (dcraw) comparison

cgarcia wrote:
D. Diggler wrote:

I wonder if CGarcia could put the 1DX up there against the 6D.

Yes, I also had that idea and fortunately www.focus-numerique.com has tested the 1DX. Here it is:

6D vs 5D3 vs 1DX

Despite slightly ahead of 5D3, until ISO 1600 it is not clear if 6D is cleaner or not compared to 1DX. After seeing this I'm sceptical about the improved dynamic range of 6D, taking into account the 1DX results at DxO. The lower noise at low ISO could continue being more related to the higher pixel size than to readout noise improvements. At high ISO, 1DX is clearly better than 6D, albeit by a little margin. The good news is that 6D seems more close to 1DX than to 5D3, despite it should be "just in the middle" due to the pixel size. Well, Canon has still a lot of work pending, but 6D buyers will get one of the best sensors Canon currently makes (the couple of megapixels seems the only "crippling" chosen, fortunately not the image quality) from the point of view of signal to noise ratio (we are not talking here about sharpness, etc).

I include bellow 1DX in the full size conversions, adding also a 6400 picture for those more interested in (very usable) high ISO rather than clean low ISO. The only parameter passed to dcraw is -a (for the white balance):

5D3 ISO 100
6D ISO 100
1DX ISO 100
5D3 ISO 6400
6D ISO 6400
1DX ISO 6400

Looking at the ISO 6400 shots the 5D III while having slightly more noise than the 6D and 1D X (< 0.5 stop, maybe 0.3 stops) does not lose out and in fact still shows a bit better detail than either of these cameras if you look closely. So in real terms there is bugger all difference between them. 6D does not appear to me to be any big breakthrough. Small evolutionary step. The gap will be even narrower if you resize them all to 18MP.

Dec 04, 2012 at 09:34 PM

D. Diggler
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p.3 #11 · 5D3, 6D and D600 true RAW (dcraw) comparison

snapsy wrote:

I suspect some of it is nominal ISO differences, esp. since the 5DM3 has such a high nominal ISO output brightness relative to previous Canon bodies.

Someone with both cameras could easily do the nominal ISO comparison. Can't wait.

Dec 04, 2012 at 09:36 PM

D. Diggler
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p.3 #12 · 5D3, 6D and D600 true RAW (dcraw) comparison

cgarcia wrote:
D. Diggler wrote:

I wonder if CGarcia could put the 1DX up there against the 6D.

Yes, I also had that idea and fortunately www.focus-numerique.com has tested the 1DX. Here it is:

6D vs 5D3 vs 1DX

1Dx does look good there.

Dec 04, 2012 at 09:42 PM

Gunzorro
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p.3 #13 · 5D3, 6D and D600 true RAW (dcraw) comparison

cgarcia -- Thank you for the tests! Echoing what Dan said: the tests show we have three very usable cameras here with higher IQ than their predecessors. We can debate the virtues of the improvement or how the Canon/Nikon rivalry is going, but we can take these out without argument and get excellent results. That's what counts.

I'm impressed Canon has built such a nice little FF camera -- nothing seems missing on the IQ compared to the more expensive models, at least on the surface.

Looking forward to more "in life" comparisons between these models.

Dec 04, 2012 at 10:41 PM

24Peter
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p.3 #14 · 5D3, 6D and D600 true RAW (dcraw) comparison

Gunzorro wrote:
cgarcia -- Thank you for the tests! Echoing what Dan said: the tests show we have three very usable cameras here with higher IQ than their predecessors. We can debate the virtues of the improvement or how the Canon/Nikon rivalry is going, but we can take these out without argument and get excellent results. That's what counts.

I'm impressed Canon has built such a nice little FF camera -- nothing seems missing on the IQ compared to the more expensive models, at least on the surface.

Looking forward to more "in life" comparisons between these models.

I'm no expert but shouldn't the image resolutions be "normalized" to make a valid comparison? Won't the noise in the 5DIII image look "better" at 18MP, whereas the noise in the 1DX images look "worse" at 22MP?

Dec 04, 2012 at 11:10 PM

Pixel Perfect
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p.3 #15 · 5D3, 6D and D600 true RAW (dcraw) comparison

24Peter wrote:

I'm no expert but shouldn't the image resolutions be "normalized" to make a valid comparison? Won't the noise in the 5DIII image look "better" at 18MP, whereas the noise in the 1DX images look "worse" at 22MP?

Yes it should.

Dec 05, 2012 at 01:45 AM

Fred Miranda
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p.3 #16 · 5D3, 6D and D600 true RAW (dcraw) comparison

Pixel Perfect wrote:
24Peter wrote:

I'm no expert but shouldn't the image resolutions be "normalized" to make a valid comparison? Won't the noise in the 5DIII image look "better" at 18MP, whereas the noise in the 1DX images look "worse" at 22MP?

Yes it should.

Indeed...

Dec 05, 2012 at 01:52 AM

pixelpix
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p.3 #17 · 5D3, 6D and D600 true RAW (dcraw) comparison

Fred Miranda wrote:
Pixel Perfect wrote:
24Peter wrote:

I'm no expert but shouldn't the image resolutions be "normalized" to make a valid comparison? Won't the noise in the 5DIII image look "better" at 18MP, whereas the noise in the 1DX images look "worse" at 22MP?

Yes it should.

Indeed...

But aren't we interested in their noise performance at their native max size (ie what we can expect real world) and normalisation and then direct comparison is really just kicking tyres?

Dec 05, 2012 at 02:01 AM

spdntrxi
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p.3 #18 · 5D3, 6D and D600 true RAW (dcraw) comparison

personally I dont care for normalized either... that's me

Dec 05, 2012 at 02:06 AM

thw2
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p.3 #19 · 5D3, 6D and D600 true RAW (dcraw) comparison

Sigh... so complicated. Different people, different needs.

Anyway, I agree with Dan that 5D3, 6D, D600 and 1DX all perform equally well at high ISO. Any difference is subtle and can be ignored.

Dec 05, 2012 at 02:09 AM

cgarcia
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p.3 #20 · 5D3, 6D and D600 true RAW (dcraw) comparison

carstenw wrote:
cgarcia wrote:
Another lens I'm interested is the 24-70 F4L IS

[...]

Equivalent in all respects to 17-55 F2.8 IS in crop cameras (depth of field, effective light gatering, weight)

I don't see how an f/4 lens on FF is "equivalent in effective light gathering" to an f/2.8 lens on 1.6x crop? Light is light, no?

I said that because a FF sensor has 2.6 times the area of a canon 1.6 crop. Since 2^1.38 = 2.6, that means that a FF sensor made with the very same technology should gather 1.38 f-stops more of light. In fact, one can crank up the ISO by 1.38 f-stops, getting the same noise at the image level (full picture) and turning the F4 lens "as bright" as a F2.5 lens is in a crop sensor, with the same noise. At the same time, that F4 lens is equivalent to 4/1.6 = F2.5 crop lens in terms of depth of field. The same reasoning may be applied to diffraction for a given resolution, concluding that both systems (Xmm F4 in FF compared to 1.6*Xmm F2.5 in crop) are totally equivalent. The end of the old FF-vs-crop wars!

Smaller sensors have the theoretical advantage of allowing more compact lenses. However, they lose shallow depth of field unless the lenses are made "abnormally" fast to compensate. And in such case, they are no longer compact. My first camera was a Olympus (C-8080) and thus I was interested in their developments, including 4:3 (a path I finally not opted for, though). Thanks to this, I was aware of one of their exotic developments, the "perfect zoom lens": the Olympus Zuiko ED 14-35 F2.0 (one of the best zooms ever made by humans):

http://www.photographyblog.com/reviews/zuiko_digital_ed_14_35mm_f2_0_swd_review/

This four thirds lens is equivalent (in FF terms) to a 28-70 F4 due to the 2.0 crop. However, it weights more than Canon 24-70 II F2.8. Yes, image quality is surely better (take a look at the review samples, totally uncorrected) but I'm sure that Canon would also be able to make such a miracle in their new 24-70 F4 if we were willing to carry 915 gr instead of the 600 gr it weights (and not to forget that the Zuiko starts at only 28mm-equiv, with no IS). Olympus had a huge delay placing this lens in the market, years after the initial announcement (it seems a very difficult design challenge). And this Zuiko "only" costs the same as the new 24-70 F2.8 II because it was released a few years ago (imagine it being released today, specially if made by Canon

)

I personally prefer FF systems because, despite the cameras being a bit bulkier (the 6D is nearly a crop-size camera, though); same-quality, truly-optically-equivalent lenses seem not to be compact at all when paired with smaller sensors. And in FF there is less depth of field when required (most small sensor systems lack equivalent-fast lenses) or the ability to trade less depth of field in exchange for necessary scarce light. And there are smaller compact lenses too. Of course, I understand people who prefer smaller sensors and systems, each one has its advantages and uses, and not a single DSLR is pocketable at all...

Dec 05, 2012 at 02:11 AM

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