saneproduction wrote:
Not seeing many photos, too bad.
I was hoping to see more real world examples and less D800 is better fluff. Sure it is better, but what is the real difference? Tired of seeing so many complaints about canon DR with no examples to back it up.
I already provided two "real world" examples which include detailed explanations of the shooting scenarios. How many more would you like?
alundeb wrote:
The water reflections between the pier posts are identical, but the recovered one is cropped.
Sorry Jordan! I agree with alundeb -- everything is the same, except cropping and raised shadows being the most extreme adjustments. No way you could get exactly the same finger positions from so many animated models!
chez wrote:
Why is that so troubling for you. It is not so easy to drop your Canon investment in gear and just go out and purchase the equivalent nikon gear. For one there is the cost associated with the switch and there is not the equivalent range of lens with Nikon.
You don't have to switch gear to add the abilities of a D800E to your inventory. If you truly "need" greater DR you go out and get the equipment that gives you that capability. What good are all those lenses going to do you if they are all putting light on a sensor that doesn't meet your needs?
Jman13 wrote:
Bruce - these are not the same photo...the water reflections visible between the pier posts are quite different between the two. Obviously taken very close to each other given that the poses are identical, but I think the before is from an earlier frame in a burst, as the one wave appears to be traveling to the right between the 'before' and 'after' photos. (or it was taken after in a burst and the wave is moving left).
This 100% the same photo. These are not 2 different images. What reason would I have to deceive anyone?
ggreene wrote:
You don't have to switch gear to add the abilities of a D800E to your inventory. If you truly "need" greater DR you go out and get the equipment that gives you that capability. What good are all those lenses going to do you if they are all putting light on a sensor that doesn't meet your needs?
As has been repeated often, no one truly "needs" greater dynamic range. But it would be beneficial, most particularly in a Canon sensor. I could go out and buy a D800 tomorrow, but it won't do me much good in my work beause I can't mount Canon's TS-E lenses on it.
But moreover I don't understand this refrain that keeps coming up telling other people to go buy a D800. That's not actually what this discussion is about. The issue being discussed is the technical limitations of Canon's sensors comapred to EXMOR sensors, and to what extent those limitations impact real world shooting scenarios. The issue is not individual gear choices of posters.
They go hand in hand. How big of an impact it makes in real world shooting will tell you if you "need" greater DR or just "want" it. Ultimately, it also tells us about Canon's own list of priorities and where they want to spend their research funds. They seem far more concerned about high ISO noise then they do about low ISO DR and that seems to mirror what I hear when I talk to other photographers.
If your photography is dependent on DR perhaps you should be looking elsewhere.
I'd question these images also, the house referenced has a builder's or landscraper's crane just to the left of the largest roof peak, in the 1st photo it is clearly visible, in the 2nd it is gone...perhaps dogged/layered out in PS or LR?
On third look, it seems the crane has been cropped out the image. To be more effective, next time when demonstrating an issue such as DR, use the same image without any cropping just to be consistent and not raise an integrity question...leaving out little details tend to flock things up
I have both a D7000 and a 60D, and I can tell you that I shoot differently with the 60D due to its DR limitations. If I want shadow details, I will sometimes purposefully blow highlights. Pushing shadows on Canon crops is, quite simply, ugly. I tend to use ND grads with the 60D more. I definitely 'shoot to the right' with Canon.
With the D7000, I simply expose to avoid blinkies in the highlights, because I know that I can push shadows 4~5 stops upwards and have acceptable shadow noise, no banding, and decent color saturation.
I have a D800, but not the 5DMIII. However, everything that people have written about the D800 and the 5DMIII just reaffirms the difference in sensor tech I see between the 60D and D7000.
It's just one of those situations where, you'll know you need it if you need it.
Just walk out to an average sunset. Spot meter the sky, then spot meter some shadow spot under the tree, or in a canyon. See the difference in stops.
Saying "I'll never need 14 stops of dynamic range" is like saying "there's never a 14 stop difference in lighting." Also, saying "I must have 14 stops of dynamic range" is like saying "there's ALWAYS 14 stops difference in every scene I shoot." Both are obviously untrue.
ggreene wrote:
They go hand in hand. How big of an impact it makes in real world shooting will tell you if you "need" greater DR or just "want" it. Ultimately, it also tells us about Canon's own list of priorities and where they want to spend their research funds. They seem far more concerned about high ISO noise then they do about low ISO DR and that seems to mirror what I hear when I talk to other photographers.
If your photography is dependent on DR perhaps you should be looking elsewhere.
I think the practical value of these discussions gets sidetracked by telling people to "just go buy a D800" because usually the people being told this are not actually seeking buying advice. The whole "need vs want" trope is getting a bit played out. In the end it doesn't matter, people make their choices based on needs or wants or whatever semantics they choose to apply. None of that will change a thing about the actual sensor performance.
The OP asked about real world performance differences. Some people claim such differences do not exist. I would offer evidence that is not the case. I'm not doing this because I need someone to advise me I should buy a D800, or because I have some personal vendetta against Canon. I think it's helpful to provide honest feedback on the practical limits of the gear, and why more DR would be useful.
(Also, Canon may be focusing on high ISO noise but I would observe that if you downsample a high-ISO D800 image to the size of a 5D3 image the noise levels are not much different.)
Shooting in daylight is where the benefit is greatest. Many weddings with white dresses in broad daylight and extremely dark shadows over the wrong parts of only one face...the shaded face too dark to recover without massive pattern/color noise OR the sunlit face too bright to recover. Professional photos should look their best, the shadows should not be filled with noise or have absence of detail from extensive noise reduction. The D800 sensor does great in this exact situation, providing the dynamic range to boost the underexposed shadowed face adequately without blowing out the sunlit face. This capacity makes the photos much more workable. Clients don't give a rat's rear about what camera was being used as long as it gives them nice results. It's up to the photographer to use the best tool for the job OR else learn how to compensate for the tool's deficiencies in the least objectionable way.
The second beneficial instance is when fast paced activities lead to accidental underexposure that needs to be boosted to be usable. If the boost leads to ugly noise and loss of detail, the image is worthless and an important moment may have been missed. However, if the boost is relatively painless with little detail loss, then it's...a moment successfully captured.
In other instances and with talented photographers who perfectly expose everything, the IQ loss of pushing images with a Canon sensor is obviously not an issue since they never have to.
For us ****ups who don't get everything right every time, there's Nikon...and someday, Nikon might actually come out with a set of lenses that keeps up with Canon in every respect. Not sure if that will be 10 or 30 years from now, but it might happen...
DR is huge to me because it grossly simplifies metering. I hate having to deal with spot/partial/whatever. Usually I leave the camera in evaluative, which inevitably screws up about one in four shots. With more DR, I could set the metering system to expose right in every shot and pull down the shadows on my own in post.
StillFingerz wrote:
I'd question these images also, the house referenced has a builder's or landscraper's crane just to the left of the largest roof peak, in the 1st photo it is clearly visible, in the 2nd it is gone...perhaps dogged/layered out in PS or LR?
On third look, it seems the crane has been cropped out the image. To be more effective, next time when demonstrating an issue such as DR, use the same image without any cropping just to be consistent and not raise an integrity question...leaving out little details tend to flock things up
What does one have to do with the other. What reason would I have to lie. I showed the same photo one edited one not edited. I never stated nor did I try and hide the fact that other edits were done. And if you must know the crane was cloned out.
alexdi wrote:
DR is huge to me because it grossly simplifies metering. I hate having to deal with spot/partial/whatever. Usually I leave the camera in evaluative, which inevitably screws up about one in four shots. With more DR, I could set the metering system to expose right in every shot and pull down the shadows on my own in post.
Look up exposure compensation. The metering doesn't mess anything up.
krickett wrote:
Saying "I'll never need 14 stops of dynamic range" is like saying "there's never a 14 stop difference in lighting." Also, saying "I must have 14 stops of dynamic range" is like saying "there's ALWAYS 14 stops difference in every scene I shoot." Both are obviously untrue.
Indeed.
Some other people shoot in very controlled environments and never need more dr. Take studio photographers. Why would they need more dr? They just change the lighting.
There are undoubtedly people who need more dr on every shoot. There are undoubtedly people who never need more dr. And there is everyone else in between who need it sometimes - either more or less often than each other.
As a wedding photographer I need more dynamic range maybe 1 in every 500 to 1000 photos. If I shot sunny landscapes that might be more like 1 in 1 or 1 in 10.
That's why all these "i need dynamic range and you say you don't but you do really you're just defending canon" and "I never need dr and if you use your camera properly you won't either" arguments are so amazingly false.
Outside of this place and a few other very techy boards, dr is discussed so very little because, on the whole, the amount of people who truly need it is far less than those who don't need it. That doesn't mean that canon should ignore that need, but it's still true.
PhilDrinkwater wrote:
Look up exposure compensation. The metering doesn't mess anything up.
That was a dumb comment. Of course it does. We're talking about evaluative metering. It's not supposed to require user intervention. It makes an 'intelligent' guess about the scene content. Throw it a high-contrast scene and it'll probably guess wrongly. Hell, it'll guess wrongly with a low-contrast scene. Try some snow.
How am I supposed to know how much compensation to apply? In theory, the meter will automatically recognize a backlit group and other common shooting scenarios. Shift half a degree and it may well make a different decision. EC doesn't make sense with evaluative metering unless your plan is to take the shot, chimp, hope you haven't missed the moment, and try again. Because really, you have no idea what random program the camera will decide to follow.
EC does make sense with spot/partial/center metering, but then we're back to square one: I have to second-guess the meter. If the camera had 20 stops of DR, metering wouldn't much matter and I could pay more attention to the subject.
