A camera with subpar autofocus, but a lens with unbeatable clarity....
or...
A camera with no IBIS (so less clarity), but with unbeatable autofocus?
I'm a Sony shooter addicted to autofocus, clarity, compact sizes, and super clean photos that I sometimes degrade in post.
I'm trying the Sony RX1R III and considering again the Leica Q3.
The RX1R experience has been disappointing. I didn't remember the lack of IBIS being an issue at all, but now I'm seeing that it's a huge problem for me (I have tremors in my hands sometimes and can't always shoot perfectly still). Could be user error or skills issue, but I've tried many adjustments to my settings and approach, but still get way fewer keepers than with my other Sony cameras.
I previously got rid of my Q3 because I wanted better autofocus. But the optical clarity was very pleasing and noticeable.
At similar price points (used), the one with no IBIS is starting to lose to the one with slightly less reliable autofocus.
Any feature that doesn't perform as well as expected is a problem. If a camera has AF, it needs to work accurately. When a camera tells me it is focused I expect it to be accurate. If a camera lacks a particular feature, you can't complain about a lack of functionality that was never promised. I find IBIS and OIS very helpful. Stabilization tech helps up to a point but is not always enough. For me, IBIS helps with wide and normal focal lengths when shooting around the 1/(focal length) shutter speed +/- 1 stop. 2+ stops faster shutter speed negates any stabilizing effect for me. 2+ stops slower and I need a tripod.
Much of what I shoot is manual focus and no IBIS. Ah, also have a bit of a tremor. I shoot like this because I enjoy the ‘M’ series and lenses and MF rangefinder film cameras. It is up to the photographer to adjust to the strengths and weaknesses of the camera system. In fact, sometimes shooting without a light meter. I prefer quality optics in that this aspect of the camera system provides an upper limit to performance. Your technique might degrade optical performance, but can’t exceed lens limitations.
For me, if I’m using AF and it’s not accurate…that’s a huge issue. I can always compensate for the lack of ibis by upping the iso and shutter… but if AF misses…you are done.
I really didn't expect not having IBIS to be an issue at all. Researching it online offered a lot of strategies for getting clear shots without it. But I didn't take into account how sensitive a 61 megapixel camera can be when my hands tremor.
christopher_icu wrote:
A camera with no IBIS (so less clarity), but with unbeatable autofocus?
I’m confused by this part of your post. What is the association between no IBIS and “less clarity?” That’s not my experience.
Perhaps you mean more susceptible to camera motion blur at longer shutter speed? “Clarity” is a different thing than resolution or sharpness.
As to whether you would prioritize better AF or better “clarity,” that probably depends a lot on what and how you photograph, right?
In your case, given the issue with hand tremors, I think that IBIS might be ever more useful to you than to some other photographers. Perhaps these two cameras are not the only options you could consider, since there are other cameras that can give you both excellent AF and IBIS…
Two other related things:
1. Some people have pooh-poohed IBIS, for example saying “I shot without it for decades, so what do I need it now?!” Well, yes, we all did… because it wasn’t available. So we did the best we could with cameras that did not have IBIS or even any image stabilization at all. But IBIS not only has no significant downside (other than possibly a miniscule increase in camera weight) and real world upsides in a lot of circumstances that we regularly encounter. When we shoot handheld we’ll get a greater percentage of keepers at the lower end of the shutter speeds that we could have handheld without it… and we can use even longer exposure times (sometimes shockingly longer) in certain low light situations or when we want motion blur.
2. There’s a myth that having more MPs increases the need for camera stability. It isn’t quite that simple. If we made two photographs, say with a 10MP camera and a 50MP camera where both were handheld at the same shutter speed, and we reproduced the photographs at the same size… they would have exactly the same amount of motion blur. So there’s no downside to the higher MP camera relative to motion blur. There are only upsides — when we do manage to keep the camera stable we can probably produce even larger prints or other reproductions from the higher MP system.
