I sometimes do tests like that — and they can be quite useful when trying to \"come up to speed\" with new gear quickly — but I haven\'t done anything that methodical with my 5DsR and my four L zooms.
However, I have now had the opportunity to do some serious field photography with the new body. Shooting entirely from the tripod, using live view for all photographs (except a few wildlife subjects that walked into my view), and doing things like waiting for the breeze to stop before activating the shutter, the results are very, very good.
I use four lenses for car-based landscape photography, including work that involves day hiking. (I use a slightly different setup sometimes when backpacking.)
16-35mm f/4L IS — I had no occasion to use this lens on the recent shoot. Stay tuned.
24-70mm f/2.8 L II — A few people \"who know things\" had expressed concern that this lens might not be able to resolve as much detail as some of the others. I did not believe this would be the case, and the many photographs I made with the lens confirm this. It is more than \"up to the\" (so-called) \"challenge\" of the 50MP sensor.
70-200mm f/2.8L IS II — I had no doubts about the ability of this lens to produce excellent resolution results, and no doubts are warranted. Results are excellent.
100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II - Throughout most of its focal length range this lens is also top notch. In fact, in cases where I might have switched to the 70-200 for the best resolution, I usually ended up just using the 100-400 and the results are great. The lens becomes slightly softer at 400mm. It still resolves detail very well, but slightly less so at 400mm — though I don\'t hesitate to shoot it at 400, and I\'ll be happy to make very large prints from 400mm shots.
There has been a lot of talk about the need to shoot at the so-called diffraction limited aperture with the 50MP sensor. I\'m more oriented to practical and experience-based decisions about such things. When no other particular aperture was called for I tended to shoot this camera at f/8 for landscapes. The results are excellent. I was interested in what I would see when stopping down a bit (I had no occasion to open up larger this time), which I had to do in a number cases for DOF reasons, particularly when shooting with longer focal lengths. I can report that results at f/11 are excellent, and I don\'t think that photographers should hesitate to shoot at f/11 over sharpness concerns. At f/16 and 100% magnification I can see that the images are slightly softer — but I won\'t hesitate to use f/16 if I need it, and sharpening in post produces very good image quality. I tended to steer clear of f/22 and smaller except in very rare situations in the past, and that won\'t change.
If anything, at this point the camera with these lenses is actually exceeding my expectations.
Once you take the files through post and apply CA corrections and typical sharpening... the output is truly excellent.
In other news, the 5Ds R seems to chew through batteries faster than my 5DII in live view mode. I\'m not thrilled with that realization, but I\'ll pick up and extra battery or two.
Dan
Jul 16, 2015 at 08:10 PM
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