ACJC.S
Portal
....of nature.
With Ricoh GR, "only" 16mp and not even a full resolution upload at that.
The haven that is nature when people are cooped up at home due to the pandemic.
Been patiently waiting for the Oly 100-400mm f5-6.3 IS but unfortunately it’s actually heavier than Panasonic’s version (1,120gms vs 985gms) while being slower at the wide end. At the rumored price, one might as well just get a lightly used Oly 300mm f4 IS which is built to Olympus’ “Pro” specs. Reason why I preferred m4/3 for super telephoto needs is weight savings and crop factor coupled with highly effective IBIS.
Thus far FF IBIS on Sony and Nikon while very useful (5.5EV at 50-70mm) are not nearly as effective compared to m4/3 especially at the long end. This dramatically changed with Canon’s 2nd Gen mirrorless (both EOS R5 & R6), all of a sudden FF IBIS is as good as the m4/3 gold standard. Many have said that this was not possible given the much bigger FF sensor, just like Nikon which told its users it was not possible to fit in 2 card slots for their Z6 and Z7 only to recently release a Z5 with very similar dimensions but yet has 2 card slots, the internet shills who went into overdrive back then justifying why that 1 card slot on Z6 and Z7 was better and 2 was impossible yada-yada, where are they now?!
Canon advertised 6 stops of synced IBIS and IS for the R6 with RF 100-500mm f4.5-7.1 L IS! Canon R6 with RF 24-240mm f4-6.3 IS gets 6.5 stops, same as what I get on Oly E-M1 Mkii mated with Oly 12-100mm f4 IS Pro (equiv 24-200mm).
Personally, the effectiveness of the m4/3 IBIS mitigates the lower performance of the much smaller m4/3 sensor vs FF but with Canon’s 2nd gen mirrorless, this mitigating factor is gone!
It’s great to see Canon making such a strong foray and hopefully this will push Sony. Sony will seriously need to up their game on their IBIS and once and for all provide lossless compression and no dropping from 14bits to 12bits on certain shooting modes like continuous, LENR and silent shutter modes, all of which are totally unacceptable by now.
The new Bionz XR processor 1st used in the just announced A7SIII might just have all these fixed, hopefully. The preceding Bionz X was released 7 years ago in 2013 and used since the 1st Gen Sony A7 mirrorless cameras all the way till the A7R4!
The Japanese corporations tend to compete nondestructively and this is probably why m4/3 had their space with more effective IBIS coupled with compactness and lightweight. The pie has been shrinking fast and with Covid, perhaps there’s only the pie crust left available now, all gloves are off.
FF brands have also began to release much smaller and lighter lenses with slower apertures; Nikon Z 24-200mm f4-6.3VR (570gms) vs the Oly 12-100mm f4 IS Pro (561gms), at a shorter range we have the Canon RF 24-105mm f4-7.1 IS at a mere 395gms and capable of an incredible 8 stops of stabilization on R5 and R6. Then there’s that unconventional Canon RF 800mm f11 (1,260gms) capable of 4 stops IS vs the soon to be released Oly 100-400mm f5-6.3 IS (1,120gms) which in effect is equivalent to 800mm at the long end and no faster than f11 on an m4/3 sensor.
Suddenly the Oly 100-400mm doesn’t seem all that attractive anymore. With Canon’s 2nd Gen R5 and R6, the mitigating factors for m4/3 being stabilization and lightweight substantially diminished in one fell swoop.
Just speculation on my part but it’s plausible that the departure of Olympus in the m4/3 space meant brands like Canon no longer need to hold back.
Hopefully Sony will also get off their ass.
Not everything is perfect with 2nd Gen Canon though, the R5 8k video recording has serious overheating issues, on full electronic shutter 20fps drops to 6.8fps on low battery but no single camera available today can do all of what the R5 can and Canon should be applauded for that.
Postscript:
=========
It appears that the R5 applies some kind of sophisticated noise reduction in the RAW files at ISO lower than 800 giving it an apparent 2/3 stop improvement in dynamic range, not a good trend. Canon sensors traditionally have lagged behind Sony’s especially at low ISOs, at ISO800 and beyond the R5 sensor seems to match that of the A7R2 or A7R3.
Ricoh GR3 is another recent camera that appears to bake noise reduction into the RAWs and in this case at all ISO beyond ISO159. Not much literature on this regarding the GR3 strangely. Most of us prefer to perform our own noise reduction in post processing.
Some reports indicated the R5 sensor read-out speed to be around 1/60s which is similar to the Olympus E-M1 Mk2, highly respectable for 45mp!
Portal
....of nature.
With Ricoh GR, "only" 16mp and not even a full resolution upload at that.
The haven that is nature when people are cooped up at home due to the pandemic.
Been patiently waiting for the Oly 100-400mm f5-6.3 IS but unfortunately it’s actually heavier than Panasonic’s version (1,120gms vs 985gms) while being slower at the wide end. At the rumored price, one might as well just get a lightly used Oly 300mm f4 IS which is built to Olympus’ “Pro” specs. Reason why I preferred m4/3 for super telephoto needs is weight savings and crop factor coupled with highly effective IBIS.
Thus far FF IBIS on Sony and Nikon while very useful (5.5EV at 50-70mm) are not nearly as effective compared to m4/3 especially at the long end. This dramatically changed with Canon’s 2nd Gen mirrorless (both EOS R5 & R6), all of a sudden FF IBIS is as good as the m4/3 gold standard. Many have said that this was not possible given the much bigger FF sensor, just like Nikon which told its users it was not possible to fit in 2 card slots for their Z6 and Z7 only to recently release a Z5 with very similar dimensions but yet has 2 card slots, the internet shills who went into overdrive back then justifying why that 1 card slot on Z6 and Z7 was better and 2 was impossible yada-yada, where are they now?!
Canon advertised 6 stops of synced IBIS and IS for the R6 with RF 100-500mm f4.5-7.1 L IS! Canon R6 with RF 24-240mm f4-6.3 IS gets 6.5 stops, same as what I get on Oly E-M1 Mkii mated with Oly 12-100mm f4 IS Pro (equiv 24-200mm).
Personally, the effectiveness of the m4/3 IBIS mitigates the lower performance of the much smaller m4/3 sensor vs FF but with Canon’s 2nd gen mirrorless, this mitigating factor is gone!
It’s great to see Canon making such a strong foray and hopefully this will push Sony. Sony will seriously need to up their game on their IBIS and once and for all provide lossless compression and no dropping from 14bits to 12bits on certain shooting modes like continuous, LENR and silent shutter modes, all of which are totally unacceptable by now.
The new Bionz XR processor 1st used in the just announced A7SIII might just have all these fixed, hopefully. The preceding Bionz X was released 7 years ago in 2013 and used since the 1st Gen Sony A7 mirrorless cameras all the way till the A7R4!
The Japanese corporations tend to compete nondestructively and this is probably why m4/3 had their space with more effective IBIS coupled with compactness and lightweight. The pie has been shrinking fast and with Covid, perhaps there’s only the pie crust left available now, all gloves are off.
FF brands have also began to release much smaller and lighter lenses with slower apertures; Nikon Z 24-200mm f4-6.3VR (570gms) vs the Oly 12-100mm f4 IS Pro (561gms), at a shorter range we have the Canon RF 24-105mm f4-7.1 IS at a mere 395gms and capable of an incredible 8 stops of stabilization on R5 and R6. Then there’s that unconventional Canon RF 800mm f11 (1,260gms) capable of 4 stops IS vs the soon to be released Oly 100-400mm f5-6.3 IS (1,120gms) which in effect is equivalent to 800mm at the long end and no faster than f11 on an m4/3 sensor.
Suddenly the Oly 100-400mm doesn’t seem all that attractive anymore. With Canon’s 2nd Gen R5 and R6, the mitigating factors for m4/3 being stabilization and lightweight substantially diminished in one fell swoop.
Just speculation on my part but it’s plausible that the departure of Olympus in the m4/3 space meant brands like Canon no longer need to hold back.
Hopefully Sony will also get off their ass.
Not everything is perfect with 2nd Gen Canon though, the R5 8k video recording has serious overheating issues, on full electronic shutter 20fps drops to 6.8fps on low battery but no single camera available today can do all of what the R5 can and Canon should be applauded for that.
Postscript:
=========
It appears that the R5 applies some kind of sophisticated noise reduction in the RAW files at ISO lower than 800 giving it an apparent 2/3 stop improvement in dynamic range, not a good trend. Canon sensors traditionally have lagged behind Sony’s especially at low ISOs, at ISO800 and beyond the R5 sensor seems to match that of the A7R2 or A7R3.
Ricoh GR3 is another recent camera that appears to bake noise reduction into the RAWs and in this case at all ISO beyond ISO159. Not much literature on this regarding the GR3 strangely. Most of us prefer to perform our own noise reduction in post processing.
Some reports indicated the R5 sensor read-out speed to be around 1/60s which is similar to the Olympus E-M1 Mk2, highly respectable for 45mp!