gdanmitchell
Offline
Upload & Sell: Off
|
 Re: 5D3 did I waste my money? | |
It is true that I have not used the 5D3. I have also not been to the surface of the moon to personally verify that it is airless or that the effect of gravity is reduced. I take it on faith that Lincoln actually delivered the Gettysburg address, though I was not there to hear it myself. Although I did not drive all of the automobiles that are currently on the market before making my most recent purchase, I am confident that I made a good choice.
There is, indeed, some value in having experience with a thing. However, I\'m calling BS on the frequent \"gotcha\'\" posts that hope to utterly discredit the point of view of a person who knows a lot about something and has investigated it thoroughly, only to decide, based on evidence, that it is not something that he/she is going to purchase. In fact, I was watching the rumors about the 5D3 before it was released, and I had anticipated the possibility that I might get one, depending upon its feature set. I\'ve seen enough (excellent) photographs produced by the 5D3 to know that it is a fine camera, and I said as much in my post. That\'s not in dispute.
On the other hand, it is a well-known and even documented phenomenon that people who own a thing are not necessarily the most objective when it comes to assessing that thing. (A report on a well-known study of this situation is available here - it illustrates how the perception of the value of thing can drastically alter our assessment of its actual value in very non-objective ways.) I have had the experience of getting a new lens, for example, and being convinced that it was miles better than an earlier lens - only to find that once the thrill of the new acquisition wore off it ended up seeming much less remarkable than I first thought. ;-)
I would argue that in quite a few cases, the person who just spent over $3000 - perhaps a lot more - on the purchase of a new 5D3 kit is perhaps similarly biased toward believing that its objective value is as great as they had hoped. If nothing else, it would hurt a lot to admit that the improvement, while there, was not as life-changing as one believed when clicking the \"purchase\" button on that photo company web site.
In any case, please keep a few things in mind about my post:
- I left the conclusion open to the reader for the most part.
- I acknowledged that the 5D3 is a very fine piece of camera gear and that it \"improves\" on the 5D2 in several ways.
- The improvement here seems to be less revolutionary and earth-shaking than some of the breathless descriptions might suggest.
- That this is not unexpected, given what we know from watching many past introductions of new things that some described to be remarkably better, but which ultimately turned out to be better by a much smaller increment.
As to: \"The fact is the 5DM3\'s AF is significantly better than its predecessor and is apparent to anyone who has shot with both bodies.\" I\'ve often pointed out that the AF system of the 5D3 is improved. In fact, that is arguably the most significant change, since the pixel dimensions are essentially the same and any IQ improvements are marginal at best. As to how \"significant\" this better-ness is, there seems to be some disagreement among \"everyone who has shot with both bodies\" - almost all reporting some improvement, but with some disagreement about the size or significance of the improvement.
Take care,
Dan
snapsy wrote:
Tom K. wrote:
gdanmitchell wrote:
I can\'t analyze your issue specifically, but your report may be a reminder to all who read too much about gear in camera forums and other similar places and get swept up in the early reports.
In general, even when newer gear offers improvements over older gear, the real value of the improvements is far smaller than the hyperbolic reports suggest. We read things like \"camera X blows camera Y out of the water,\" \"the difference is stunning,\" \"X is miles better than Y,\" and so forth. In fact, X may be better than Y, but quite often by a smaller increment than we are led to expect and often in ways that don\'t really affect our work at all.
(To hear the initial reports we might sometimes imagine that new things are twice as good as old things. But with new things being introduced every couple of years, by now DSLRs would have to be - what? - about 30 times as good if that were true. They are better, but the increment is much smaller than that.)
In my view, the 5D3 is a great case in point. It is \"better\" than the 5D2 and is clearly a very fine camera. Canon did, more or less, what a lot of people often request - namely, take a good thing and improve it in areas where there is room for improvement. The 5D2, as those who actually shoot one know, is an excellent photographic tool that can produce truly wonderful image quality and which can work well in a wide range of shooting circumstance. It isn\'t perfect - nothing is - but it is very good.
In real world terms, the 5D3 is very similar in many ways and a bit better in others. However, if someone picks up a 5D2 and a 5D3 in twenty years from now and compares them, they will have to look very closely to identify the ways in which one is functionally different than the other, and they will regard image quality from the two cameras as being essentially indistinguishable. They are far more the same than they are different.
Dan
Man oh man you are soooooo right. Best post of the year.
It might be if Dan had actually used a 5DM3 and compared it, which based on previous posts I\'ve read from him he hasn\'t. I\'ve never understood the phenomena of people giving evaluations of camera equipment that they\'ve never actually used. The fact is the 5DM3\'s AF is significantly better than its predecessor and is apparent to anyone who has shot with both bodies.
|
