Canon Reimagined

[Ian]

Currently watching the Canon Reimagined YouTube press launch...

With my E-Group hat on (remember, I write about all systems) I have to smile wryly while I watch this. There are photographers starry eyed swooning at how 'small' the new EOS R5 and R6 are - seemingly oblivious of the massive lumps of glass attached to them.

Photographers loving the '8-stops' of stabilisation now there is in-body stabilisation (I was at several press conferences with Canon over the years where they said mirrorless and in-body stabilisation was not for therm )

Their new 100-500 (50-250 equivalent) is twice as big as the good old ZD 50-200 And it's slower (brightest at f/4.5 - not f/4 as I mistakenly posted originally)

They showed a climber wowing at how compact the R6 was - I'll bet she hasn't seen an E-M5 - yes it the R6 dangling precariously from her shoulder half way up the cliff face had a huge short zoom on it.

In conclusion I think they looked at old Olympus and Panasonic Lumix marketing and pinched the bits they could use (because clearly they can't claim everything possible with MFT) and... reimagined it.

Ian

[Ian]

Wow - if you thought the m.Zuiko 75-300 f/4.8-6.7 was slow - have a look at the two new Canon STM lenses:

600mm f/11
800mm f/11

That's not a misprint - they really are f/11 primes - with plastic bodies to make them lighter. They are quite 'narrow' but they are not short!

I hope they aren't expensive.

To be fair to Canon, there is logic - just as there is logic in the f/4.8-6.7 of the 75-300 because these lenses would be almost unusable in a DSLR, but with mirrorless the viewfinder can compensate.

Ian

[Ian]

And they have matching 1.4x and 2.0x extenders - 1200mm f/22 anyone?

[Invicta]

not so expensive: US $699 and $899 respectively, also fixed f11, fixed aperture.

[Ian]

I am always in awe of what Canon does - their products very rarely look bad or perform poorly. They have a high level of design and Canon proudly achieves a great deal. But I am left feeling sad that a lot of people will end up buying big and heavy Canon FF systems and lug them around without the need or the ability to produce better images than they would be able to with APS-C and of course MFT.

This is not a negative comment towards FF - certainly not. The designed-for-FF mirrorless systems are much better than the legacy FF DSLRs in so many ways, but when you used to use a 35mm film camera did you feel the need to use a Hasselblad or a Bronica medium format camera?

And I'm certainly not questioning those here in the E-Group who are likely to or already have switched to FF mirrorless - these individuals know what they are doing and have their own very tangible reasons.

Ian

[Graham_of_Rainham]

... when you used to use a 35mm film camera did you feel the need to use a Hasselblad or a Bronica medium format camera?

Ian

Yes, but only for special jobs. Sometimes we would even use a 5x4 or 10x8 Sinar...

95% of the time a 35mm was perfectly suitable, as are mft cameras today

[wanderer]

I just fancied a Hasselblad but the cost was way out of my league plus the cost of lenses, meters, etc.
I used to watch my colleagues in RCAHMS. They were very, very good and for the big important jobs they would leave the Hasselblad and go to the Linhof on a massive Gitzo tripod with battery lighting and bulbs.
That's when I really got into photography and realised how little I knew (and know).
These guys all had degrees in photography were FRPS and used to write books about photography.
And all before digital.

[pdk42]

Certainly it's a big splash for them. Almost as if the ESO R and RP models were just the pilot versions, with the R5 / R6 now being the real McCoy! Sony is at last getting some real competition for its A7 range. I hope they've upped their sensor game though - they've been consistently behind Nikon/Sony for a long time now. However, I think they're doing the right thing overall. These bodies look great and there are some nice lenses in the system - the 24-105 f4 looks superb for example. However, it's all pretty large, heavy, and expensive.

The big question now is what's going to happen to the cropped sensor formats (APSC and m43)? For the mass market, sensor size has become a sector-defining feature, and with low-end FF now coming in at about £1300, it'll really put the squeeze on the crop market. Of course, if buyers took the trouble to look at the whole system (lens ecosystem, cost, size, features) rather than just the bodies then the total value proposition would still be great for m43 - but when there's a Nikon Z6 + 24-70 for under £2k and the E-M1iii + 12-40 is a little over, it becomes a hard sell to convince people - especially newbies to "serious" photography.

[Internaut]

Add to that you see Sony A7 and A7II bodies selling significantly under £1000 on the used market (not to mention the 5D II, 5D3 and 6D), with the A7RII going for around the £1100 ballpark), the cost of entry to full frame just isn't all that expensive these days.

[Invicta]

And the Nikon Z5 to come in July will be a keenly priced full frame mirrorless entry level camera.

[Internaut]

With my full frame hat on, I'm seeing the launch from the same perspective as I saw at the Nikon Z7/Z7 launch. Are the cameras great? Of course. If I was buying my first every full frame kit, today, would I do it differently? Probably. Is what has been launched good enough for me to panic, cry into my beer and trade in my Sony kit for Canon's latest/greatest? Not really.

[Ian]

Certainly it's a big splash for them. Almost as if the ESO R and RP models were just the pilot versions, with the R5 / R6 now being the real McCoy! Sony is at last getting some real competition for its A7 range. I hope they've upped their sensor game though - they've been consistently behind Nikon/Sony for a long time now. However, I think they're doing the right thing overall. These bodies look great and there are some nice lenses in the system - the 24-105 f4 looks superb for example. However, it's all pretty large, heavy, and expensive.

The big question now is what's going to happen to the cropped sensor formats (APSC and m43)? For the mass market, sensor size has become a sector-defining feature, and with low-end FF now coming in at about £1300, it'll really put the squeeze on the crop market. Of course, if buyers took the trouble to look at the whole system (lens ecosystem, cost, size, features) rather than just the bodies then the total value proposition would still be great for m43 - but when there's a Nikon Z6 + 24-70 for under £2k and the E-M1iii + 12-40 is a little over, it becomes a hard sell to convince people - especially newbies to "serious" photography.

In terms of semiconductor manufacturing, a FF sensor is four times the area of a MFT sensor but that also means it significantly more than four times the cost to manufacture. It's already a humungous piece of silicon and costs rise exponentially with size. This inevitably means the margins on FF bodies at low prices will be relatively small.

Olympus and Panasonic can do £500-600 budget MFT models but that's impossible with FF.

So maybe MFT will be pushed to the budget end of the market? But if you do that you threaten sales of Pro lenses. There may be more emphasis on budget models but the high-end models remain important, especially as they will earn a lot more for Olympus and Panasonic simply by having a low sensor component cost in relation to the overall build.

Ian

[Internaut]

The Pro lenses are a conundrum. The most expensive of these can, I assume, be pretty much made to order and sold at a high margin. Keeping these desirable is going to be important for the long term. Simple fact is that for those who need long reach and decent image quality, the smaller format remains unbeatable.

[Ian]

I made a small mistake in my original post, the RF 100-500 (50-250 equivalent) is f/4.5-7.1, not f/4 at the brightest end of the zoom range.

It weighs 1530g, as well, and is 207mm long. The good old ZD 50-200 f/2.8-3.5 SWD is 995g and 157mm long - remember this is a lens that is very significantly brighter.

Panasonic Lumix G Leica 50-200 f/2.8-4 is only 655g (less than half the weight of the Canon lens) and 132mm long.

The Canon RF 100-500 even dwarfs the Panasonic 100-400 f/4-6.3 (which has the reach of a 200-800 FF lens) and the Panasonic is brighter throughout its Zoom range.

Ian

[blackfox]

price wise those two F11 tubes come in at under a grand a piece . and the cameras will apparently a/f at up to f22 (candlelight) and the a/f points cover the full screen , had all this drummed into me today by my presently camera less son . probably trying to argue himself into spending some money .. yes there catching up and some features are extremely good especially if you do movies , the the lower priced body is still only 20mp though the higher priced one 46mp . but as one reviewer commented make sure your computer system can handle the files ,these definetly aint going to be windows ten compatible files . will they become the the last nail in nikons coffin ,possibly ?
its a step in the right direction but might be two years to late coming to market and might be a bridge to far in light of covid19 ..we shall see

[pdk42]

Nikon have updates to the Z6 & Z7 planned ("s" models) and also some new Zeds - a low-end Z5 and a high end Z8 or 9. I suspect there will now be a three-corner fight for FF - Sony, Canon, & Nikon (I think Panasonic are too late and too niche). I wonder if all three will survive. If I had to put money on third place, it would be Nikon.

[Mark_R2]

price wise those two F11 tubes come in at under a grand a piece . and the cameras will apparently a/f at up to f22 (candlelight) and the a/f points cover the full screen , had all this drummed into me today by my presently camera less son . probably trying to argue himself into spending some money .. yes there catching up and some features are extremely good especially if you do movies , the the lower priced body is still only 20mp though the higher priced one 46mp . but as one reviewer commented make sure your computer system can handle the files ,these definetly aint going to be windows ten compatible files . will they become the the last nail in nikons coffin ,possibly ?
its a step in the right direction but might be two years to late coming to market and might be a bridge to far in light of covid19 ..we shall see

I can see that the f11 lenses are trying to overcome the big disadvantage of FF, which is making a long lens that is affordable and reasonably compact. However, an f11 lens is only going give you a resolution of about 32MP on FF due to diffraction. So they are a joke on the R5. And as for putting a 2x TC on them, well that gives you f22 and 8MP resolution.

[Ian]

I can see that the f11 lenses are trying to overcome the big disadvantage of FF, which is making a long lens that is affordable and reasonably compact. However, an f11 lens is only going give you a resolution of about 32MP on FF due to diffraction. So they are a joke on the R5. And as for putting a 2x TC on them, well that gives you f22 and 8MP resolution.

I hadn't thought of diffraction for some reason! D'Oh! I will have to check the figures but sounds plausible.

Ian

[Mark_R2]

My calculation is based on the diagonal spacing of two pixels. In the Bayer pattern array, the closest spacing of two pixels of the same colour (green) is the diagonal. I used 550nm for the wavelength. Realistically, a 45MP sensor will not give 45MP of resolution. So, the f11 lens on the 45MP R5 may be not limiting the resolution by a lot.

[blackfox]

It’s a sit back and wait for the brown stuff to hit the fan situation , having seen a slice of the average users computers when doing topaz comparisons on here. The main bugbear in having a 46 mp sensor is going to be with p.c power . . I might well be wrong .. but I can’t see anyone wanting to take 30 minutes to process one picture ... I already have a good friend that struggles with larg3 files from Sony

[Mark_R2]

I quite agree. I really do not want 45MP images.

[pdk42]

Well, I've played around a lot with Z7 files recently and my 2016 Macbook Pro handles them fine in LR. I haven't noticed the editing performance much different to Z6 files (which are 24Mp). I also often edited 150MB tiff files produced from stitched or stacked EM1 files and they don't seem to cause any issues either. I suspect it'll have a bigger impact on RAM usage, and of course storage will take a hit - but the cost of storage really is pretty low these days.

[drmarkf]

Those reduced prices for the old Sony A7 and A7ii are IMHO still too high for their limited capabilities.

Id say A7 and 7ii are classic examples of old and now fairly cr@ppy products in use, that have FF sensors that gullible people have been told are the things to have.

To mention just a few of the issues: the 7 has a self-destructing bayonet; both have sensors that are dust magnets; neither fits the hand at all comfortably; both have limited weather and dust resistance; neither has silent shutter;IMHO the menus are slow to navigate and even harder to memorise than Olympus’, while the cameras are less configurable; as you adjust the aperture the readout in the EVF and rear screen changes from yellow to red and is therefore almost invisible... And so the list goes on, but who cares how clumsy they are to use, because they’re FULL FRAME, so they must be better ;-)

(BTW I speak as a happy owner of an A7S, which is a very specialised beast for high ISO work - it does have silent shutter that even works in drive mode, and a redesigned bayonet, that no longer shreds all over the sensor)

[Phill D]

, and a redesigned bayonet, that no longer shreds all over the sensor)

gosh how did they sell any with a problem like that just shows the power of marketing .

[drmarkf]

It’s a well-recognised problem with the 7 and 7R, although seen normally only on high-use bodies (ie when they have had a lot of lens changes).
They changed the design before release of the next body, the 7S, and people sell DIY bayonet repair kits on eBay (well, they used to and I assume they still do).
Sony have got a reputation for fragility in some peoples minds (remember also the Lensrentals A7iii 8% rate of sensor mount fractures, and I know 2 people who’s A7Rii shutter buttons froze up in Iceland) and I suspect this is why their penetration to ‘outdoors’ pros has been quite limited so far. However, they bask in a rosy, full frame glow of image quality, and this seems to work in the minds of lots of amateurs on the forums who don’t appear to care much about anything else.

[Mark_R2]

gosh how did they sell any with a problem like that just shows the power of marketing .

To me, the Sony FF mirrorless is a huge triumph of marketing over engineering and science. They crammed a FF sensor behind the pokey NEX mount that was barely big enough not to obscure the corners. (Canon and Nikon have both gone for a decent sized mount). The small mount compromises corner performance for every lens you buy due to aberrations from the micro-lenses. Olympus knew this when they designed the 4/3 system and designed lenses to be telecentric in the image plane. This gets over a whole load of problems with aberrations from the sensor micro-lenses. It does require a mount noticeably bigger than the sensor diagonal though.

I remember when the first Sony Alpha mirrorless cameras were launched. People rapidly found that corner performance went down the toilet with legacy lenses. I believe Sony had to quickly develop technologies to angle the micro-lenses to reduce the obliquity of illumination. But this can only ever be a compromise since the angle of obliquity will be different for every lens. To me, this is an engineering bodge to fix an engineering cock-up.

If I ever go FF, it won’t be Sony.

[Internaut]

Looking at the Sony GM lenses, the mount diameter doesn't seem to have had much of an effect. However, Some of the trolls who suddenly popped up in various Sony places, around the Canon launch, did suggest the diameter limits how effective Sony IBIS can ever be. I've no idea how true that is but it is fair to say Sony mirrorless (both APS-C and full frame) has been a marketing led, engineering compromise from the start (and it has a ring of truth to it). That said, the death of Sony was announced on the day Nikon launched the Z. Sony responded with the 24mm f1.4GM.