Canon 5D Mk4 Review – Conclusions

Posted on January 4, 2017 by Andrew Astbury

Canon 5D Mk4 Review – Conclusions

So, this has been a long time coming, but I like to be thorough you know.

The question everyone wanted answering was “is the Canon 5D Mk4 ‘better’ than the 5D Mk3 Andy”..?

The short answer is, ‘in my opinion’ a very affirmative YES.

But of course I’ve got to justify the ‘yes’ and that can be done by stating the important improvements – better image quality and autofocus.

Just the same as with its high performance cousin the 1DX Mk2, the Canon 5D Mk4 has had an impressive IQ boost brought about by one thing above all else – the SENSOR and its recorded Output.

The auto focus system has had the same overhaul found on the 1DX Mk2, and so there’s another big improvement. Nope, the 5D Mk3 AF was NOT the same as that found on the original 1DX….

If you are a ‘tech slag’ then you’ll love the ‘touch screen’ menu, and the GPS too.

The touch screen drove me nuts when I first got hold of this camera – I hated it. But I’ve gotten so used to it now that when I turned it off the other day I soon turned it back on – changing settings is tedious without it!

The SENSOR.

Nikon have had the lead over Canon for quite a while when it comes to RAW recording:

Lower noise levels – especially at low to mid-range ISOs (100 to 6400)
Better shadow recovery
Option to shoot fully uncompressed 14bit RAW

Ok, so Canon (stupidly in my opinion) still refuse to allow you to shoot true uncompressed RAW, but on the other two counts they have at long last just about caught up with the boys from Minato.

For Canon users the sensor and its recorded RAW output on both the Canon 5D Mk4 (and 1DX Mk2) is something quite revolutionary; while as a Nikon user I’ve been used to it for ages!

What is it I’m talking about? The benefit of having the ADC ‘on sensor’ or ‘on die’ to give it the correct terminology.

Canon have previously had their ADC circuitry buried deep in their DIGIC chips which are separate from the sensor, and so require wired connection. This leads to two distinct problems:

Number of connections is physically limited.
Signal Entropy!

I’ll do a separate blog post covering sensor makeup shortly.

But now with the above two camera body sensors they’ve gone the Nikon way, using ADCs integrated within the sensors themselves.

It’s a well known fact that Nikon have used Sony sensors, or made sensors of Sony design by ‘special arrangement’, for ages.

In output terms, the Canon 5D Mk4 and Canon 1DX Mk2 sensors do bare such a spookily strong likeness to the Sony Dual Pixel Exmoor design – the coincidence is staggering!

What this means is basically:

A lower noise floor.
Greater potential shadow and highlight recovery over its predecessor.

Canon 5D Mk4 Dynamic Range

There are all sorts of reviews/claims plastered across the web that claim the Canon 5D Mk4 has a greater dynamic range than the class leader Nikon D810. These claims, all by ‘third party idiots’ mind you, not Canon, are based on test results published by DXO Mark.

If only the idiots could read a graph!

According to the graph, at base ISO the Nikon D810 kills it by well over a stop, and doesn’t fall behind until base + 2.5 stops – 300 ISO indicated.

For landscape and other high definition/resolution photography you are going to be using your camera at base ISO to maximize DR, so basically the 5D Mk4 doesn’t even come close in this respect.

Having said all that, the way DXO Mark conduct their testing is somewhat circumspect in a lot of folks opinions – mine included. Nonetheless, these results are being regularly misinterpreted and misquoted everywhere!

When it comes to actual ‘tripod on the ground’ dynamic range you will always and without fail find that the ‘real’ DR is lower than the ‘oft quoted’ version – why? Because the ‘testers’ try too hard and use complex methodologies that involve maths, or ‘scaling’ techniques that look test images as 13″x19″ prints – crazy!

All I’m interested in is how much of a scenes brightness range can I record on the sensor with one single exposure; and will I need to bracket exposures.

So let’s have a look at the performance of the 5D Mk4 sensor and see how much we can milk it for:

So here’s a scene outside ‘Chez Andy’ on a dull and rather overcast day – this gives the camera a better fighting chance than it would have on a bright blue sky day will full bore sunshine.

Evaluative metering gives a manual exposure reading of 1/30th sec for f8 at 100ISO (base ISO from what I can gather).

The two main regions of interest are obvious in any test of dynamic range – brightest highlights and darkest shadows, the areas indicated by the red circles, together with their spot metered values.

The indicated spot for the sky is a bit misleading – I actually pointed the camera straight up at the sky with the lens defocused and nothing but ‘sky’ in the frame!

Also, bare in mind that camera meters give you an exposure to record a tone as 50% grey!

So I shot a bracketed sequence from 1/250th to 4 secs, at 100ISO and f8.

The scene brightness range runs to a metered 11 stops, so if DXO Marks published test DR of 13.59Ev at 100 ISO (64 ISO as they would call it) is correct then one or more of these frames WILL contain detail in both the bright highlights and darkest shadows.

We might have to ‘recover’ that detail in post, but it should all be there within the recorded sensor output.

Guess what – it isn’t. Very nearly, but not quite. Feel free to download the raw files yourself by clicking here (approx 2mins download).

To save a ton of typing and image uploading I’ll run a short video on how I do a quick assessment of the images to obtain a ‘real world’ ball-park DR value:

And purely as an exercise, what can we pull out of this single frame?

Looks somewhat HDR-ish because of the dramatic highlight and shadow recovery settings, but it just goes to show what you can pull back on this Canon 5D Mk4 sensor – you’d never pull this off on a single frame shot done with a 5D Mk3.

If I run the same type of rough analysis on the Nikon D810 and a descent bit of Zeiss glass I get a DR approximating 11.5 stops, and pretty much the same for the D800E.

More importantly, for the Canon 5D Mk3 the result is no more than 9.5 stops, but I’ve only tested it using the older 16-35mm f2.8 Mk2.

Just to clarify the DXO Mark ‘thing’ – while I either question or argue the numerical value of most of their sensor tests, the ‘trends’ identified within those results are pretty much spot on.

A good place to view more realistic DR values for a large number of sensors/cameras can be found here.

And as a final caveat regarding ANY sensor DR test – the test is based on the RECORDED SENSOR OUTPUT. This is solely comprised of the ADC and image processors ‘digitised interpretation’ of the true ‘analogue output’ of the sensor.

Is this a distortion of reality? Maybe, but for the moment it’s what we’re stuck with!

So I think the Canon 5D Mk4 does pretty good on the dynamic range front, but the crazy high values the ‘third party idiots’ bandy about are just pie in the sky.

Frankly DR values of 13 to 14+ stops from a 14 bit ADC and a 36×24 sensor are something of a ‘step beyond’. A 16 bit ADC on a medium format sensor on the other hand……but then that’s what you pay the big bucks for!

But just so we’re clear, the Canon 5D Mk4 DR is very noticeably greater than that of its predecessor.

Autofocus Performance

Now I’ve already posted about this HERE. So if you haven’t already read that then do so first.

I find the Canon 5D Mk4 noticeably faster in AF acquisition the the Mk3, and a lot more responsive when tracking subjects moving directly towards the camera. It’s not a 1DX Mk2 under these circumstances, but I was surprised at just how close it came to its big brother in this respect.

However! Unlike the 1DX Mk2 which ‘sticks to a subject like glue no matter what’ in the tracking department, the Canon 5D Mk4 can sometimes chuck its toys out the pram when subjected to lens flare.

This means that back lit subjects CAN sometimes present a bit of a problem.

Back lit compositions against a dark background and without flare cause zero problems.

But introduce a bit of flare and things can go pear-shaped very quickly:

Please note: I said ‘can’ not ‘does’ – it doesn’t happen all the time. But when it does, even keeping the AF tracking active and on target doesn’t help you when it does ‘stuff up’ – if it’s not focused in the desired plane at frame 1 it stays that way for the entire frame sequence.

This can most likely be cured with a firmware update, but as it stands at the time of writing then this shot, done with the 1DX Mk2 could be problematic:

…when you consider it’s just one frame from a long action sequence with lens flare where every frame is sharp.

But then again, the 5D Mk4 isn’t trying to be a 1DX Mk2; it’s just trying to be better at everything than the 5D Mk3 is/was.

ISO Settings – Noise

Hopefully you will have already read my post Camera ISO Settings – The Truth About ISO

If you haven’t then may I suggest you do – pronto!

ISO, or ‘post exposure applied gain’ is all relative to the number of photons passing through the lens and being collected by the photosites on the sensor.

The net result is that a shot at base ISO can look like crap if you are trying to photograph the ubiquitous ‘black cat in the coal house at midnight’, and 10,000 ISO can look epic in the presence of huge photon counts:

Great Tit. Canon 5DMkIV, Canon 500mm f4 L IS II, ISO 10,000

The Canon 5D Mk4 IS less noise at any ISO setting than its predecessor 5D Mk3, again simply because of the ‘on die’ or sensor-integrated ADC.

As I said earlier, the older Canons – and that includes the crackpot 5DS and SR – have off dye ADC components, and this limits the number of connections between the sensor and the ADC. This number was (I’m fairly certain!) limited to 8 with cameras fitted with a single Digic processor, and 16 in those with twin Digics.

In order for the system to turn a respectable image processing time this low number of communications channels or buses had to carry all the sensor data to ADCs that needed to chew it up and spit it out at a great rate of knots – in other words they are high frequency ADCs.

And here is the kicker; there is a rigid and inflexible bond between operating speed/frequency and noise. This is the noise seen in your shadows – especially when you try to recover them by even a modest amount.

Moving the ADC ‘on die’ allows for more connections. This in turn allows for the use of ADCs with lower operating frequencies, which in turn results in a lower noise floor.

I’m not going to produce a raft of comparison shots between the Canon 5D Mk4 and its predecessor – hell, this post is long enough as it is, and there are plenty of them already on the net.

In Conclusion – Major Improvements over the 5D Mk3

The Canon 5D Mk4 IS a better camera than its predecessor in the two major attributes of a stills camera:

Faster Auto Focus with greater flexibility and control.
Improved Dynamic Range, Noise Floor and post-process latitude – all of which can be attributed to the switch by Canon to ‘on die’ ADC circuitry.

These above two improvements are major, and possibly more far-reaching than a lot of you may imagine.

Other Improvements:

More megapixels if that floats your boat.
Frame rate increased from 6fps to 7fps – though I don’t like a fixed fps personally.
Touch screen menu system.
Built-in GPS – which can drain the battery BTW if not set properly in the menu.
Built-in Wi-Fi – which I have yet to get working!

Things I Don’t Like:

Dual Pixel Raw – God in Heaven what a crock! Dual pixel tech was created to give phase detection AF for video. But Still Camera Setting 2 on page 1 is like Canon thought “how can we turn this into a USP for the gullible stills-only camera buyer”.
SD media slot – come on Canon – twin CF (not twin C-Fast) or switch to XQD.
It eats batteries if you forget to turn off WiFi and GPS.
Pathetic lack of proper viewfinder blind – seriously Canon!
The persistent refusal of Canon to offer uncompressed RAW recording. It would take the smallest of firmware updates. To me it just seems ridiculous not to give the user the choice as Nikon and others do.

So yes, in my opinion, the Canon 5D Mk4 is a better camera than the 5D Mk3.

If you own a 5D Mk3 have you GOT to trade it in? That depends on what you want out of your camera and only you know that.

Would I trade in my D800E for one? Hell NO!

But if you do fancy the upgrade from the Mk3 then, based on the review example I have here, you will see a considerable beneficial difference in your images – unless of course your name is Neil Burton!

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Canon 16-35mm f2.8 Mk3

Posted on December 30, 2016 by Andrew Astbury

Canon 16-35mm f2.8 Mk3

Canon 16-35mm f2.8 Mk3

Wow, it’s a bit big! That was the first thought I had when getting hold of this lens for the first time – I thought for a second the lovely Leanne at Calumet Manchester had given me 24-70 by mistake.

It’s longer, fatter in the barrel and somewhat heavier than its Mk2 predecessor – but is it any better?

I suppose I can be a bit more objective than most reviewers of this lens when it comes to Canon wide glass because I never use it!

Canon has always seemed to have a different ethos to that of Nikon and TPMs such as Zeiss when it comes to wide glass design.

For sports/photojournalism they have always functioned perfectly well because they are usually quite light, fast to use, versatile, cheap(ish) and adequately sharp for the job -and they’ve sold millions over the years…and rightly so.

But if you wanted a high resolution wide angle with good micro contrast and superb sharpness then, as a landscape photographer for example, you’d be struggling.

Low resolution, poor contrast, vignetting, axial and lateral chromatic aberration, extreme corner distortion and coma are typical faults with wide angle lenses across the board, but Canon wide glass has had more exemplars of these faults than most.

Don’t get me wrong, Nikon have produced some real ‘dogs’ too – just not quite as many!

Let’s face it, no Canon wide could slip into a line up of of Zeiss glass and go optically unnoticed.

When Nikon brought out the 14-24 f2.8 why did Novoflex start flogging mount adapters to Canon shooters?

The only folk who will argue with me are those that have never tried Nikon or Zeiss.

As Canon WA glass goes, the 16-35mm f2.8 Mk2 does an OK job with landscapes, and for the most part produces results very much like the Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 when both lenses are shot at around 26mm to 32mm, but it leaves more than a bit to be desired when being shot wide open.

Its worst fault for me, shooting wide open, is the vile level of COMA. There’s been many a wide-field astro shot consigned to the bin because if it.

Canon 16-35mm f2.8 Mk3 with the Mk2 on the right.

So, is the new Canon 16-35mm f2.8 Mk3 an improvement – it needs to be for the price.

Canon 16-35mm f2.8 Mk3 with the Mk2 on the right.

The Canon 16-35mm f2.8 Mk3 takes the same 82mm screw mount filters.

There is a newly re-designed lens hood.

Typical of this style of wide zoom, even though its an internal FOCUS lens, like its predecessor, it’s not strictly an internal ZOOM. The front element moves in and out as the zoom ring is rotated, being furthest forward at 16mm, furthest back at around 26mm and then creeping forward again as we go to 35mm.

Designs like this have ‘compromise’ stamped all over them. The legendary Nikon 14-24mm does the same sort of external zooming with its front element group, but is furthest forward at 14mm and furthest back at 24mm. The Nikon is a super wide zoom while the Canon is a super wide to standard wide zoom. Standard wide angle requires a different element design and layout – so COMPROMISE!

This moving front element makes all lenses designed this way ‘suckers and blowers’ so the cautious among you might want to put one of those lens protect filters on the front.

If you do, then PLEASE, don’t pay thousands for a lens and then be a cheapskate. You lose light with every air/glass surface you place in the optical pathway. And a lot of these filters SAY they are optically correct when they are most definitely NOT. The finest lens in the world turns into a turd if you stick a cheap filter on it.

Canon 16-35mm f2.8 Mk3 with the Mk2 on the right.

So let’s take a look at vignetting. We’ll do that in two ways.

Firstly, let’s see how the vignetting at f2.8 changes with focal length, with the Mk2 on the left, and the Mk3 on the right:

Vignetting of the Canon 16-35mm f2.8 Mk II & III at various focal lengths at a constant f2.8

Next, let’s stay at 16mm focal length on both lenses and look at the vignetting through the aperture range:

Vignetting of the Canon 16-35mm f2.8 Mk II & III at various apertures and a constant 16mm focal length.

Now these vignette results didn’t leave me in a state of shock and awe in the slightest.

You need to view the images at 100% to see the subtle improvements in the Canon 16-35mm f2.8 Mk3.

In the first test – maximum aperture vs focal length, the new variant looks equal to or slightly worse than the Mk 2 at 16mm.

But things begin to improve a bit once we are getting towards 24mm.

On the second test – 16mm vs aperture range, again we see the awful maximum aperture vignetting compared to its predecessor.

From f5.6 to f16 it’s perhaps a sliver better than the Mk2. But, notice that the images are a bit brighter. This is most likely to do with the improvements made to the multi-coatings.

Canon 16-35mm f2.8 Mk3 vs Mk2 Image Comparisons

Let me begin by saying this – 16mm on the Mk3 is NOT the same 16mm that the Mk2 has!

[sciba leftsrc=”https://www.wildlifeinpixels.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1D9A6348.jpg” leftlabel=”Mk III” rightsrc=”https://www.wildlifeinpixels.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1D9A6347.jpg” rightlabel=”Mk II” mode=”horizontal” width=””]

Mouse over the slider – see what I mean?

Both shots are 16mm @ f11 on the Canon 5DMk4. The camera was locked down on my heavy Gitzo, and the camera was triggered with a Canon TC-80N3 – in other words NOTHING moved!

The images have not been adjusted in any way – no lens correction profiles – as shot.

Notice the Mk3 image has greater ‘contrast’ and is less flat-looking?

Okay, so let’s look at the ubiquitous ‘brick wall’ test.

We are doing shots on the 5DMk4 using both Mk2 and Mk3 lens variants.

at 200ISO
at f2.8, f5.6 and f11
at 16mm, 25mm and 35mm
at a fixed ‘Cloudy B1’ manual camera white balance
manual focusing
the camera has been re-focused using x10 live view between each frame.

IMPORTANT – CLICK IMAGE to view at full size in new window.

IMPORTANT – CLICK IMAGE to view at full size in new window. 16mm @ f5.6

IMPORTANT – CLICK IMAGE to view at full size in new window. 16mm @ f11

The above screen grabs give you a great ‘feel’ for all the differences in contrast and lens colour cast between the Mk2 and new Mk3 variants – these are quite significant. Even more so when when you look at the vignetting, distortion and AoV differences.

Moving on to the full resolution comparisons:

Again, no adjustments at all other than Lightroom standard profile sharpening, and we are looking at the frame centers at 1:1 ratio:

IMPORTANT – CLICK IMAGE to view at full size in new window. 16mm @ f2.8

At 16mm @ f2.8 (above) the Canon 16-35mm f2.8 Mk3 is noticeably sharper than its predecessor.

IMPORTANT – CLICK IMAGE to view at full size in new window. 16mm @ f5.6

Stopping down to f5.6 @ 16mm yields a better sharpness on the older Mk2 variant. Is there a tiny bit of improved sharpness on the new Mk3 – perhaps.

IMPORTANT – CLICK IMAGE to view at full size in new window. 16mm @ f11

Now at 16mm @ f11 both lenses seem ever so slightly less sharp. But that is not down to diffraction as you’ll see later with the 25mm and 35mm tests. I could be an error on my part when focusing, but for me to make the same mistake on two different lenses is a bit of a long shot. I’ve re-shot and got the same result – methinks it might have something to do with that ‘compromise’ I mentioned earlier on….or, it could be me!

Moving from 16mm to 25mm and 35mm:

IMPORTANT – CLICK IMAGE to view at full size in new window. 25mm @ f2.8

IMPORTANT – CLICK IMAGE to view at full size in new window. 25mm @ f5.6

IMPORTANT – CLICK IMAGE to view at full size in new window. 25mm @ f11

IMPORTANT – CLICK IMAGE to view at full size in new window. 35mm @ f2.8

IMPORTANT – CLICK IMAGE to view at full size in new window. 35mm @ f5.6

IMPORTANT – CLICK IMAGE to view at full size in new window. 35mm @ f11

Make sure you have viewed all the above screen shots at full resolution.

Okay, so we have visually covered iteration comparisons for the Canon 16-35mm f2.8 Mk3 and its predecessor in terms of distortion, vignetting, field/angle of view and sharpness.

In terms of stopped-down sharpness, on the Canon 5DMk4 at least, I’d expect to get into the realms of aperture diffraction around f14 to f16.

Wide open the Mk3 version stomps all over the Mk2, and I think it stays ahead through to at least f11 across the entire focal length zoom range.

Chromatic Aberration

The Mk2 16-35 f2.8 has a somewhat noticeable chromatic aberration problem, so how does the new Mk3 version measure up in comparison – both shots are 16mm @ f11:

Click the image and a full size jpeg (80% quality) will open in a new window.

Compare the lamp post on the right and the window and alarm box on the left of the shots.

Though still present, chromatic aberration is much reduced on the new Canon 16-35mm f2.8 Mk3. Along the middle axes of the image – especially the horizontal – there have been big improvements.

The Lightroom ‘remove chromatic aberration’ function cleans the raw file up beautifully without having to go anywhere near the manual corrections – just tick the checkbox. But doing the same to a Mk2 image usually leaves vestiges of both red and green fringing at the frame edges at 16mm.

Coma Test:

What’s Coma? It’s a lens design flaw which renders ‘tails’ and ‘wings’ on off-axis points of light.

And here is a shining example, courtesy of the Mk2 16-35:

Coma on the Canon 16-35mm f2.8 Mk2 variant.

Mmmm…yummy!

It’s not exactly the best time of year for Milky Way astro shots here in the UK – New Year as it is. But we ventured out at midnight the other night just to test this Mk3 version of the lens.

The area is fairly local and surrounded on all sides by huge light polution but it served the purpose of the test.

Shooting wide open f2.8 @ 6400ISO, stacking 8 shots done in quick succession here’s the truth about the coma on the new Mk3 16-35mm variant:

Click the image and a full size jpeg (80% quality) will open in a new window.

It’s not the best astro you’ll ever see, but it does show that the coma is still there, but it’s a lot less intrusive.

In Conclusion

So there we have it – the new Canon 16-35mm f2.8 Mk3.

Is it better than it’s Mk2 predecessor? Well yes, it is – and in pretty much every aspect I’d say.

The vignetting at 16mm f2.8 is quite strong – nearly 4 stops darker than the image center. This WILL cause you problems if you have peripheral deep shadow areas, as even on the 5DMk4, pulling 4 stops will make the shadow areas go a bit noisy.

I also think that 16mm is now more like 18mm, but what’s a couple of mills between friends ehh!

Would I buy one? Well, that depends.

If I had a Mk2 variant and needed the lens format then I would be looking to trade in immediately.

Wedding, street, sports/photojournalism and events photographers would be mad if they didn’t have one of these in their bag. And I think wildlife photographers would benefit as well – I reckon it would be perfect on the 1DX Mk2 for just about anything.

Not being a Canon shooter for anything below a 200-400 I won’t be putting it on my ‘wants’ list at all, but if you are ‘Canon-only’ then I strongly recommend you have a look at this lens.

As for landscapes and wide field astro, erm…..let’s just say there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and some are better than others. Having said that, if you are a landscape shooter with a Mk2 variant and you can’t afford/ just don’t want a plethora of glass for specific tasks then it’s a big improvement on what you’ve already got.

Many thanks to Reece Piper, Leanne and Richard from Calumet for loaning this lens for the purposes of review.

And a big thanks to June Lown for the loan of the Mk2 to make the comparison.

17.5 hours that’s taken – Jesus, it’s like having a full-time job! If this review has been useful to you then please consider supporting me via Patreon.

Many thanks to the handful of readers who contributed over the last week or so – you’ve done your bit and I’m eternally grateful to you.

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Camera ISO Settings

Posted on December 27, 2016 by Andrew Astbury

The Truth About ISO

The effect of increased ISO – in camera “push processing” automatically lift the exposure value to where the camera thinks it is supposed to be.

Back in the days of ‘wet photography’, we had rolls and sheets of film that carried various ISO/ASA/DIN numbers.

ISO stands for International Standards Organisation

ASA stands for American Standards Association

DIN – well, that’s ‘Deutsches Institut für Normung’ or German Institute for Standardisation

ISO and ASA were basically identical values, and DIN = (log10)ISO x10 +1, so ASA/ISO 100 equated to DIN 21….nope, I’m not going to say anything!

These numbers were the film ‘speed’ values. Film speed was critical to exposure metering as it specified the film sensitivity to light. Metering a scene properly at the correct ISO/ASA/DIN gave us an overall exposure value that ensured the film got the correct ‘dose’ of light from the shutter speed and aperture combination.

Low ISO/ASA/DIN values meant the film was LESS sensitive to light (SLOW FILM) and high values meant MORE sensitivity to light (FAST FILM).

Ilford Pan F was a very slow mono negative film at ASA 50, while Ilford HP5 was a fast 400 ASA mono negative film.

The other characteristic of film speed was ‘grain’. Correctly exposed, Pan F was extremely fine grained, whereas correctly exposed HP5 was ‘visibly grainy’ on an 8×10 print.

Another Ilford mono negative film I used a lot was FP4. The stated ASA for this film was 125ASA/ISO, but I always rated it (set the meter ASA speed dial) to 100ASA on my 35mm Canon A1 and F1 (yup, you read that right!) because they both slightly over-metered most scenes.

If we needed to shoot at 1/1000th and f8 but 100ASA only gave us 1/250th at f8 we would switch to 400ASA film – two stops greater sensitivity to light means we can take a shutter speed two stops shorter for the same aperture and thus get our required 1/1000th sec.

But, what if we were already set up with 400ASA film, but the meter (set at 400ASA) was only giving us 1/250th?

Prior to the release of films like Delta 1600/3200 we would put a fresh roll of 400ASA film in the camera and set the meter to a whopping 1600ASA! We would deliberately UNDER EXPOSE Ilford HP5 or Kodak Tri-X by 2 stops to give us our required 1/1000th at f8.

The two stops underexposed film would then be ‘push processed’, which basically meant it was given a longer time in the developer. This ‘push processing’ always gave us a grainy image, because of the manner in which photographic chemistry worked.

And just to confuse you even more, very occasionally a situation might arise where we would over expose film and ‘pull process’ it – but that’s another story.

We are not here for a history lesson, but the point you need to understand is this – we had a camera body into which we inserted various sensitivities of film, and that sometimes those sensitivities were chemically manipulated in processing.

That Was Then, This Is Now!

ISO/ASA/DIN was SENSITIVITY of FILM.

It is NOT SENSITIVITY of your DSLR SENSOR….!!! Understand that once and for all!

The sensitivity of your sensor IS FIXED.

It is set in Silicon when the sensor is manufactured. Just like the sensitivity of Kodak Tri-X Pan was ‘fixed’ at 400ASA/ISO when it was made at the factory.

How is the sensitivity of a digital sensor fixed? By the SIZE of the individual PHOTOSITES on the sensor.

Larger photosites will gather more photons from a given exposure than small ones – it’s that simple.

The greater the number of photons captured means that the output signal from a larger photosite is GREATER than the output signal from a smaller photosite for the same exposure value (EV being a combination shutter speed and aperture/f number).

All sensors have a base level of noise – we can refer to this as the sensor ‘noise floor’.

This noise floor is an amalgamation of the noise floors of each photosite on the sensor.

But the noise floor of each photosite on the sensor is masked/obscured by the photosite signal output; therefore the greater the signal, the larger the signal to noise (S/N) ratio is said to be.

In general, larger photosites yield a higher S/N ratio than smaller ones given the same exposure.

This is why the Nikon D3 had such success being full frame but just over 12 megapixels, and it’s the reason that some of us don’t get overly excited about seeing more megapixels being crammed into our 36mm x 24mm sensors.

Anyway, the total output from a photosite contains both signal and noise floor, and the signal component can be thought of as ‘gain’ over the noise floor – natural gain.

As manufacturers put more megapixels on our sensors this natural gain DECREASES because the photosites get SMALLER – they have to in order to fit more of them into the finite sensor area.

Natural gain CAN be brought back in certain sensor designs by manipulating the design of the micro lenses that sit on top of the individual photosites. Re-design of these micro lenses to ‘suck in’ more tangential photons – rather like putting a funnel in a bottle to make filling it easier and more efficient.

There is a brilliantly simple illustration of how a sensor fits into the general scheme of things, courtesy of digital camera world:

The main item of note in this image is perhaps not quite so obvious, but it’s the boundary between the analogue and digital parts of the system.

We have 3 component arrays forward of this boundary:

Mosaic Filter including Micro Lenses & Moire filter if fitted.
Sensor Array of Photosites – these suck in photons and release proportional electrons/charge.
Analogue Electronics – this holds the charge record of the photosite output.

Everything forward of the Analogue/Digital Converter – ADC – is just that, analogue! And the variety of attributes that a manufacturer puts on the sensor forward of this boundary can be thought of mostly as modifying/enhancing natural gain.

So What About My ISO Control Settings Andy?

All sensors have a BASE ISO. In other words they have an ISO sensitivity/speed rating just like film! And as I said before THIS IS A FIXED VALUE.

The base ISO of a sensor photosite array can be defined as that ISO setting that yields the best dynamic range across the whole array, and it is the ISO setting that carries NO internal amplification.

Your chosen ISO setting has absolutely ZERO effect on what happens forward of the Analogue/Digital boundary – NONE.

So, all those idiots who tell you that ISO effects/governs exposure are WRONG – it has nothing to do with it for the simple reason that ISO effecting sensor sensitivity is a total misconception….end of!

Now I’ll bet that’s going to set off a whole raft of negative comments and arguments – and they will all be wrong, because they don’t know what they’re talking about!

The ‘digital side’ of the boundary is where all the ‘voodoo’ happens, and it’s where your ISO settings come into play.

At the end of an exposure the Analogue Digital Converter, or ADC, comes along and makes a ‘count’ of the contents of the ‘analogue electronics’ mosaic (as Digital Camera World like to call it – nice and unambiguous!).

Remember, it’s counting/measuring TOTAL OUTPUT from each photosite – and that comprises both signal and noise floor outputs.

If the exposure has been carried out at ‘base ISO’ then we have the maximum S/N ratio, as in column 1.

However, if we increase our ISO setting above ‘base’ then the total sensor array output looks like column 2. We have in effect UNDER EXPOSED the shot, resulting in a reduced signal. But we have the same value for the noise floor, so we have a lower S/N ratio.

In principal, the ADC cannot discriminate between noise floor and signal outputs, and so all it sees in one output value for each photosite.

At base ISO this isn’t a problem, but once we begin to shoot at ISO settings above base, under exposing in other words, the cameras internal image processors apply gain to boost the output values handed to it by the ADC.

Yes, this boosts the signal output, but it also amplifies the noise floor component of the signal at the same time – hence that perennial problem we all like to call ‘high ISO noise’.

So your ISO control behaves in exactly the same way as the ‘gain switch’ on a CB or long wave radio, or indeed the db gain on a microphone – ISO is just applied gain.

Things You Should Know

My first digital camera had a CCD (charge coupled device) sensor, it was made by Fuji and it cost a bloody fortune.

Cameras today for the most part use CMOS (complimentary metal oxide semi-conductor) sensors.

CCD sensors create high-quality, low-noise images.
CMOS sensors, traditionally, are more susceptible to noise.
Because each photosite on a CMOS sensor has a series of transistors located next to it, the light sensitivity of a CMOS chip tends to be lower. Many of the photons striking the sensory photosite array hit the transistors instead of the photosites. This is where the newer micro lens designs come in handy.
A CMOS sensor consumes less power. CCD sensors can consume up to 100 times more power than an equivalent CMOS sensor.
CMOS chips can be produced easily, making them cheaper to manufacture than CCD sensors.

Basic CMOS tech has changed very little over the years – by that I’m referring to the actual ‘sensing’ bit of the sensor. Yes, the individual photosites are now manufactured with more precision and consistency, but the basic methodology is pretty much ‘same as it ever was’.

But what HAS changed are the bits they stick in front of it – most notably micro-lens design; and the stuff that goes behind it, the ADC and image processors (IPs).

The ADC used to be 12 bit, now they are 14 bit on most digital cameras, and even 16 bit on some. Increasing the bit depth accuracy in the ADC means it can detect smaller variations in output signal values between adjacent photosites.

As long as the ‘bits’ that come after the ADC can handle these extended values then the result can extend the cameras dynamic range.

But the ADC and IPs are firmware based in their operation, and so when you turn your ISO above base you are relying on a set of algorithms to handle the business of compensating for your under exposure.

All this takes place AFTER the shutter has closed – so again, ISO settings have less than nothing to do with the exposure of the image; said exposure has been made and finished with before any ISO applied gain occurs.

For a camera to be revolutionary in terms of high ISO image quality it must deliver a lower noise floor than its predecessor whilst maintaining or bettering its predecessors low ISO performance in terms of noise and dynamic range.

This where Nikon have screwed their own pooch with the D5. At ISOs below 3200 it has poorer IQ and narrower dynamic range than either the D4 or 4S. Perhaps some of this problem could be due to the sensor photosite pitch (diameter) of 6.45 microns compared to the D4/4S of 7.30 microns – but I think it’s mostly due to poor ADC and S/N firmware; which of course can be corrected in the future.

Can I Get More Photons Onto My Sensor Andy?

You can get more photons onto your sensor by changing to a lens that lets in more light.

You might now by thinking that I mean switching glass based on a lower f-number or f-stop.

If so you’re half right. I’m actually talking about t-stops.

The f-number of a lens is basically an expression of the relationship between maximum aperture diameter and focal length, and is an indication of the amount of light the lens lets in.

T-stops are slightly different. They are a direct indicator of how much light is transmitted by the lens – in other words how much light is actually being allowed to leave the rear element.

We could have two lenses of identical focal length and f-number, but one contains 17 lens elements and the other only 13. Assuming the glass and any coatings are of equal quality then the lens with fewer elements will have a higher transmission value and therefore lower T-number.

As an example, the Canon 85mm f1.2 actually has a t-number of 1.4, and so it’s letting in pretty much HALF a stop less light than you might think it is.

In Conclusion

I’ve deliberately not embellished this post with lots of images taken at high ISO – I’ve posted and published enough of those in the past.

I’ve given you this information so that you can digest it and hopefully understand more about how your camera works and what’s going on. Only by understanding how something works can you deploy or use it to your best advantage.

I regularly take, market and sell images taken at ISO speeds that a lot of folk wouldn’t go anywhere near – even when they are using the same camera as me.

The sole reason I opt for high ISO settings is to obtain very fast shutter speeds with big glass in order to freeze action, especially of subjects close to the camera. You can freeze very little action with a 500mm lens using speeds in the hundredths of a second.

Picture buyers love frozen high speed action and they don’t mind some noise if the shot is a bit special. Noise doesn’t look anywhere near as severe in a print as it does on your monitor either, so high ISO values are nothing to shy away from – especially if to do so would be at the expense of the ‘shot of a lifetime’.

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Canon 5D Mk 4 Auto Focus Performance

Posted on November 24, 2016 by Andrew Astbury

Canon 5D Mk 4 Auto Focus

Canon 5D Mk 4

Like Nikon, Canon never do me any favors!

But I do feel that I must say to the world that it ought to give this camera a bit of a break. It’s had a good mauling in a lot of places, usually by idiots and no-nothings, who keep comparing it to its big brother the 1DX Mk2 – a camera not without its very own set of unique foibles!

The Canon 5D Mk 4 is NOT designed to be a “poor mans” 1DX Mk2.

It’s hardly what I’d call ‘cheap’ in the old purchase price department for starters, so ‘poor mans’ and ‘budget’ are not terms I can easily associate with it.

There are lot’s of things I need to delve into further on this camera to give you guys a fuller picture of the cameras overall performance – most of which is going to involve Calumet or Canon lending me more lenses.

But I can say that I’ve formulated a solid opinion on the Canon 5D Mk 4 Auto Focus performance, and it’s turned out to be a lot better than I’d first imagined.

These are the style of shot that really tells you if your auto focus is working and up to the job:

“Joey” 1/3200th, f7.1, ISO5000

“Joey” 1/3200th, f7.1, ISO4000

But before you can start producing the shots you have to go through the tedious bit of testing the AF first. It was while testing the overall sharpness and accuracy of the AF system that I came across a little problem.

When photographing the old ‘brick wall’ static target I found the system was front focusing by around 40 centimeters at 30 meters. If I added +4 on the AF micro adjustment (using the 500mm don’t forget) then everything was razor sharp.

This didn’t seem right in my eyes – I’ve never felt the need to use micro adjust on Canon gear to achieve sharp focus on a static target – perhaps I’ve just been lucky!

But after testing this body with another 500mm L IS II, and Calumets lens on 3 other bodies, all tests revealed the same necessary +4 adjustment.

The difference is quite marked!

Bare in mind that all these ‘static tests’ MUST be done with the aperture WIDE OPEN (in this case f4).
I always use the high ISO capabilities of a camera to the maximum, which allows me the luxury of shooting at between f6 and f8 to maximise DoF and use a high enough shutter speed to stop the action. Manual exposure with Auto-ISO is my usual method of shooting with long glass. A noisy image that is razor-sharp will ALWAYS out-sell a low noise image full of motion blur!
At f8 hardly any of the ‘poor sharpness’ (above left) is visible in the image because DoF is doubled from 40cms to over 80cms behind the plane of focus at this distance.
If I was to swap out to a shorter lens then the required amount of micro adjustment would be less, and with a longer lens MORE!

However, when we come to photograph the likes of ‘Joey’ we have a BIG problem!

Adding positive micro-adjustment values is basically like adding BACK FOCUS – you are telling the system to focus BEHIND where it perceives sharp focus to be – in other words ‘focus further away’.

So with a head on closing target/subject the resulting AI Servo sequence of frames will all be back focused. The camera will be focusing behind a subject that’s getting closer – it’ll never work!

What we need is the system to move the plane of focus AHEAD of the subject, so that when the shutter opens for the next frame, the subject and plane of focus are hopefully in the same place. This is how PREDICTIVE AF works, and cameras like the 1DX Mks 1 & 2/Nikon D4/4S truly excel at it.

Dialing in an opposite value of -4, and using AF Case 4 settings with Zone AF for the AI Servo sequences of little Joey yielded good results, but the level of consistency was still below what I thought was possible.

And it certainly got even less consistent when I changed to Point Expansion or Point Surround AF modes.

But now I’ve settled on a custom setup that is NOT obtainable on any of the fixed AF cases; TS & ADT both at +2 together with -3 AF micro adjustment:

‘Morgan’ 1/4000th f8 ISO4000 & -3 AF micro adjustment

I’ve just uploaded a new video to my YouTube channel where I discuss the performance of the Canon 5D Mk 4 Auto Focus system, and go through A LOT of full resolution images.

Note, some of you may get bored and think I examine too many images – shame on you! There are 4 sequences, and each one represents around 4 seconds in real time and are a ‘buffers worth’ of shots. So all those boring shots took less than 20 seconds to acquire – I have to show all the shots in a sequence to illustrate the level of consistency, and I show 4 sequences to prove none of them are a fluke – I DO THE JOB RIGHT – unlike some other reviewers!

You can view it at full size by clicking the YouTube icon bottom right once you press ‘play’, but be warned it’s 36 minutes long!

I’m not finished with this camera just yet I don’t think; I must admit that I do quite like it!

Is the Canon 5D Mk 4 Auto Focus capable of better performance than that of the venerable old 5D Mk3 ? Yes, it is.

Is the image quality better than the 5D Mk3 – oh you betcha it is, by a country mile and just like the 1DX Mk2 advantage over the 1DX.

Are the G/T algorithms (ISO), sensor and ADC output better – from what I can see that’s a ‘yes’ too; but then I’ve not done any dynamic range testing yet – kinda hard when the only lens you’ve got is a 500mm!

I’m getting used to the ‘touchy-feely’ screen now, but the fixed 7fps HS frame rate pisses me off a bit, I’d like to be able to drop it to 6 or 5 to the AF system even further.

Take my advice and don’t be impressed with the ‘Duel Pixel Raw’ feature – it’s CRAP. It does absolutely bugger-all apart from slow the camera down and produce massive files that are not worth the time or effort. And you can only ‘work’ them in that clunky DPP software which is a total abomination to try and use!

And old UHS1 SD card tech? The camera would be better with a CF slot in conjunction with a CFast2 slot ‘a la’ 1DX Mk2 – in my opinion of course.

Great Tit. Canon 5DMkIV, Canon 500mm f4 L IS II, ISO 10,000 +4 AF Micro adjustment

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Canon 5D Mk 4 – First Thoughts

Posted on October 21, 2016 by Andrew Astbury

The Canon 5D Mk 4

Looking at the Canon 5D Mk 4 for Wildlife & Bird Flight Photography.

Part 1 – First Thoughts.

Canon 5D Mk 4

The other day Calumet asked if I wanted to test the new Canon 5D Mk 4. I’d just done an autofocus workshop in Birmingham and had been asked about this camera, so I thought it would be a good idea to take up the offer.

I’ve deliberately stayed well clear of any reviews of this camera while waiting for its delivery – don’t want to unbox it with any preconceived ideas do we??!!

I picked the camera up yesterday from Calumet Manchester, replete with the stunning 500mm f4 LIS Mk 2 lens – “Leanne, where’s the other two spare batteries you promised you’d ordered for me?”

The only Canon DSLRs I’ve used over the past couple of years are the 1DX marks 1 & 2, with the occasional ‘smattering’ of 5DMk3 when I’ve been out with clients – so this new offering from Canon has something of a ‘clean slate’ to start with in my eyes.

So it’s a bit of a shame it got off to a bad start when I pulled it out of its case last night and found that Canon STILL haven’t added a viewfinder blind – a major fault with the 5DMk3 in my opinion.

Canon 5D Mk 4 What the heck are they thinking?

Canon 5D Mk 4 This camera is no 1DX Mk 2, and it’ll be bought by folk who want to shoot landscapes, seascapes, wide-field astro, a bit of studio work perhaps – it won’t be bought by folk like me who shoot big hairy-arsed beasties in zero light at ISO-stupid; yet the 1DX has one!

Come on Canon – think about the little things chaps.

Anyway, here’s the rig Calumet have supplied to me, just to see how far we can penetrate the domain of the 1DX Mk2/Nikon D5…

Canon 5D Mk 4 All those stupid straps can bugger off for starters – Jesus, they are a recipe for disaster. But WAIT – if I take the camera strap off I’ve not got my stupid rubber flappy thingy viewfinder blind….

Now imagine I’m using this Canon 5D Mk 4 camera with a wide-angle lens shooting a low light seascape with a 10 stop ND and a 2 minute exposure. That strap flapping in the wind and rattling on the tripod legs isn’t going to do much for image sharpness is it…it’s pathetic.

As a Nikon shooter the lack of a proper blind irks the heck out of me, but we’ll put it aside as I’m sure older 5D users are well used to the problem by now.

So moving on…

My two main interests in the Canon 5D Mk 4 are autofocus performance first, and ISO/low light performance a close second – being good at both is a prerequisite for wildlife photography, and in my mind this 5D Mk 4 is pitching its tent on the lawn belonging to the Nikon D810, so there’s a benchmark for it!

Setting the Canon 5D Mk 4 to my normal ‘Canon settings’ I nearly came a cropper before I started!

Not being used to the, shall we say ‘cheaper’ Canon DSLRs I pressed the DRIVE AF Mode button and flicked the front dial one click, assuming that this would shift the camera from the ONE SHOT mode the previous user had left it, to AI SERVO:

Canon 5D Mk 4

But NO…..WTF is this:

Canon 5D Mk 4 AI FOCUS…..what’s that all about then? So I did something that pained me greatly – picked up the manual – and wished I hadn’t.

So we hit the internet, and the the first hit in a Google search was:

Canon 5D Mk 4 That sounded so interestingly unreasonable that I tried it – and soon stopped!

Nahh… it’s not for me – unless I’m missing something major!

So just make sure you are in AI SERVO if you or your subject, or both, are moving.

It’s cloudy outside and about 1.5 hours before sunset, but let’s step outside and do my basic ‘car number plate’ AF test in CASE 1, just to see ‘the lay of the land’ with this Canon 5D Mk 4:

If you want to download the full resolution jpegs – 700Mb zip file – please click here. The file is at my Dropbox, so if this post goes a bit viral then it may take a while to download.

So there are 30 images, no processing done to them at all, and they are all either 5000 or 6500 ISO.

Shot hand held, 1/2000th, f6.3, manual exposure with auto ISO and back-button-only focus. Maximum frame rate was not quite 7fps (well it didn’t sound like it anyway), and I tried to shoot bursts of around 5 or 6 frames. It was only on the last of these that I was concious of shooting in buffer overflow.

Single Point AF was being used, in Case 1 – which isn’t best suited to this particular job. But it’s my standard test with any Canon, just to see how far off the ball the camera/lens combo is.

Shutter release priority was set to FOCUS for the first frame, and +1 focus priority for the second and subsequent frames.

And I have to say I’m pretty impressed. It’s done a heck of a sight better than I was expecting in Case 1.

Yes the shots have some noise and it certainly can’t hold a candle to its big brother 1DX Mk2 in that department, but then again its not been designed that way. Neither do I regard the noise as much of a problem either because it’s evenly distributed and not overly present in shadows.

But from an autofocus point of view the biggest percentage of those shots are on the money so to speak, and where it has gone wrong it’s only by a whisker; always slightly behind the target – that’s to be expected with an accelerating subject and Case 1 Accel/decel tracking of ‘0’, using a long telephoto.

A considerable improvement over the 5D Mk 3 in both noise and AF performance in my opinion, neither do I think the Mk 3 would have managed 30 frames in the same amount of time.

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be posting more of my thoughts and findings about the Canon 5D Mk 4. Tomorrow I’ll do some ISO testing and a bit more on the autofocus if the weather and time permit, so expect another post shortly!

And yes, it’s official, Andy HATES the bloody touch-screen! Boy am I going to get myself in trouble with that – perhaps I’m too old to cope with such fangled gadgetry!

But that is balanced out by the pleasant surprise that the camera allows exposure compensation in manual mode – up to now a luxury presented to nearly all Nikon users, but only 1DX and 1DX Mk2 Canon owners (to my knowledge anyway) – nice one Canon, it’s about time!

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Workshop Report and Canon 1DX Mk2 first thoughts

Posted on September 24, 2016 by Andrew Astbury

Workshop Report and Canon 1DX Mk2 first thoughts

September 9th to 16th, Norway Musk Ox and Sea Eagles.

Left to Right: Mark Davies, Sigbjorn Frengen (our specialist Musk Ox guide for Dovrefjell), “Some Bearded Fat Git”, Mohamed Al Ashkar, Paul Atkins and Malcolm Clayton.

All four clients have been on numerous trips to Norway before, but for everyone, including myself, it was our first time in the Dovrefjell–Sunndalsfjella National Park and the magnificent Musk Ox that call the place home.

Firstly, I have to say a massive thank you to our specialist guide for the Musk Ox, Sigbjorn Frengen.

He’s a superb guide, the font of all ecological knowledge, has a driving passion for what he does, is as fit as the proverbial Butchers Dog, and is only in his mid 20’s. He took guiding a bunch of geriatric old farts like us well in his stride; totally oblivious to the fact that we were all mighty jealous of his youth and fitness and secretly wanted to kill him for it!

And yes, I immediately booked him for the Dovrefjell part of my September 2017 workshop!

Musk Ox are animals not to be trifled with – they may look very benign but they weigh in at between 400 and 600 kilograms and can outrun Usain Bolt with very little effort. They are quick to temper, but the signs of the oncoming rage are subtle and difficult to spot even at 60-70 metres. Subtle head-shaking and snorting are the main give-aways that you are causing some displeasure:

A lone female Musk Ox snorts her displeasure at the presence of the photographer. She wants to rejoin the herd but the camera is in her way, so she blows mucus out of nose as a sign of annoyance. Canon 1DX Mk2 + 200-400 @ 560mm 1/2500th sec @ f7.1 and 16,000ISO – YES SIXTEEN THOUSAND!

The above image shows brilliantly my other main task for the week – testing the Canon 1DX mark 2.

Most people know me as a Nikon shooter, and that I have a love-hate relationship with Canon – yes, I’m a troubled person!

I’ve waxed lyrical about the Canon 200-400 f4 many times on this blog and elsewhere, and the fact that I consider the Canon 61 point Reticular AF System to be the best on the planet.

You will also know that I loathe the sensor output of the original 1DX, and Canons daft refusal to give us the Uncompressed RAW Recording capability – spoilt see, Nikon user!!

I managed to get a couple of hours on the Canon 1DX Mk2 back in July and promptly set about testing the improved AF algorithms – by jingo was I impressed. I was getting 40% less dropped shots on the Canon 1DX Mk2 at 10 frames per second than I was used to at 6 frames per second on the Mk1.

And as for the sensor output in general, the shadows adjustment latitude and high ISO performance – well, it was a revelation.

The Musk Ox above (click the image to view the full rez) has virtually ZERO noise reduction on it – none in post, and LOW on the in-camera High ISO NR menu setting.

A baby Musk Ox lying by its mothers side on a soft bed of lichen, Erica and rare alpine plants. ISO 2500, 200-400 @ 560mm, 1/2500@f7.1

Why use such a high shutter speed Andy?

It’s brain-in-gear time folks – breezy conditions, lowish light levels, hair on the subject that’s over 1metre long, and wispy grass stems – all these move way faster than the bulky Musk Ox itself – under peaceful circumstances of course!. If these little tiny details suffer with motion blur it ruins the image – provided you have a sensor that can ‘deliver the goods’ at the resultant ISO-stupid.

I’m also shooting hand-held off the knee, with and effective 560mm angle of view on a 20Meg+ sensor, so I’ll need at least 1/1600th to combat the shakes, and I am indeed ‘testing’ a camera, so shooting at sub 1600ISO is not doing the job.

I’m using ‘spot AF’ and partial metering, and my AF point is bang in the middle of the point pattern.

This all neatly brings me to my first problem with the Canon 1DX Mk2 – or at least the one I was using – look at this image from a few frames before:

A baby Musk Ox lying by its mothers side on a soft bed of lichen, Ericas and rare alpine plants.

If you examine the two shots closely you see something odd.

At this distance, around 70 metres, the f7.1 aperture should be generating around 1 metre of DoF.

In the first shot the AF pont was pretty much on babys head, but the DoF run-out is a lot greater beyond that distance than it is closer to the camera. If the shot had been taken wide open at f5.6 then the subject would not be as sharp as it is. More of babys body should be sharp, and less foreground sharpness.

In the second shot I’ve wavered slightly right, so now the focus point is on mums ass. This SHOULD push the plain of focus further back – and thus that 1 metre DoF. And it does – a bit! There is still too much foreground DoF.

The point is this, the focus tends to ‘bounce a little’ rather like the fault with the Nikon D4. This was caused, in the D4, by ‘mirror bounce’. But in the Canon 1DX Mk2 I get the feeling that it’s due to a nano-second miss timing between the AF sensor and the mirror starting to move for the next frame.

Why do I think this? Because if I drop the frame rate from 10fps to 7fps the ‘AF bounce’ disappears completely.

I could put more images up to illustrate my point further but that would be pointless as it could be a fault unique to the camera I was using. Having said that, there was another Canon 1DX Mk2 with a 200-400 shooting right next to me, and that showed exactly the same characteristics!!

But there is ONE thing I truly loathe on the Canon 1DX Mk2 – and the D5 and D500 come to that – the rear screen resolutions.

They are all too high in resolution.

I understand WHY they have such high resolutions, but when you are shooting stills at long distance, where focus placement is super-critical, they CAN lull you into something of a ‘false sense of security’ when you use them to check fine focus tolerances at 1:1.

You check the images on the camera and they look sharp. You get back to base and offload the images to your storage drives then review them on a 13″ MacBook Pro with a damn 227 dpi Retina display and the still look sharp. You get home and view them on your 90-odd dpi 24″ Eizo – and some of them look a lot less perfect!

I suppose with use it’s something you’ll get used to, but if you are moving to a Canon 1DX Mk2 from an older Mk1 or 5DMk3 then bare it in mind and check your images VERY carefully if you’re using big glass under critical conditions.

Anyway, back to the stunning Musk Ox again:

A solitary bull Musk Ox stands watch over his harem of females under the gloomy light of late afternoon in the Dovrefjell National Park in Norway.

Stormy skies form a backdrop to a bull Musk Ox standing watch over two females in his harem, ready to chase away any other bull that he may consider a threat to his dominance.

“Bam-Bam does Lunch”

Lack of Lemmings meant the Arctic Foxes were still up in the high ground, so with that and a very wet forecast for Sunday we elected to leave Dovrefjell a day early and do the 7 hour drive to Lauvsnes in order to gain an extra day with the Eagles.

Monday morning saw us in the boat at just after 6.30am and myself an “Mad” Mark Davies had one shot weighing heavily on our minds – Backlit Eagle!

Over the remaining days I have to say that we were spoilt something rotten with opportunities for this most enigmatic eagle shot, here is a tiny fraction:

The Canon 1DX Mk2 performed perfectly on this job, no one could have asked it to do more. Shooting this at 10 frames per second was epic as it captures more of the ‘money shots’ with the spray trails.

Here is a continuous burst of 77 raw files at 10 frames per second, from when the eagle begins its approach to when I can’t basically be bothered any more:

And they are tack sharp from the first:

To the last:

I won’t say that by the end of the Thursday session it was getting boring, because I never cease to marvel at these awesome birds – but the hit-rate of the Canon 1DX Mk2 was getting a tad monotonous.

While a ‘crossing’ subject is not so taxing on the AF system as head-on subjects, the huge amounts of lens flare you encounter when shooting the style of image are notorious for playing havoc with auto focus. When you get to the point of maximum rim lighting neither you or the camera can see very much of anything at all, and most older systems will hunt focus for a frame or two if you are not careful with your settings.

I shot sequences like this using both AF Point Surround and 9 point Zone AF – both of which performed superbly.

I’ll have to add a caveat though – the camera only performs this well if your technique is SOLID. If you struggle to keep your AF group on target, or are just plain bone-idle, and try Large Zone AF or God forbid Auto, the cameras AF system goes into melt-down doing this sort of shot.

And yet AUTO on the Nikon D5 does a very good job at these sequences – weird!

So after a week of working the Canon 1DX Mk2 quite hard here’s what I think:

First, if you own a Mk1 1DX you NEED to upgrade, if only for the much superior IQ of the sensor.

Canon will probably hate me saying this, but the Canon 1DX Mk2 is ‘a bit of an animal’. You could ‘wobble around’ a bit on the AF tracking with the Mk1 and get away with it. But the Mk2 will bite you in the bum for doing the same thing – and when you least expect it.

With head-on targets the AF can both surprise and disappoint, methinks there will be a firmware upgrade at some point that will tidy the systems response to rapidly closing subjects at shortish distances. That’s what happened with the Mk1.

There some other settings I need to play with on this beast of a machine before I feel I can formulate a descent opinion, things that I never had a chance to try in Norway, and others that only occur to me when viewing images on a PROPER SCREEN!

There is more to this ‘box of tricks’ from Canon than meets the eye!

And has anyone noticed just how CRAP the manual is – Jesus, I don’t think I’ve seen such a ‘sketchy’ document since I perused the Nikon D5 manual….sometimes I get the impression that both Nikon and Canon are a little clueless as to how there own gear works!

Makes me smile – and that’s a good thing! But then again, it’s not my money being spent here – it’s yours.

A big thanks has to go to Paul Smith for supplying his camera and lens for this first evaluation – Cheers Matey!

And as always a big thank you to my clients, Mark, Malcolm, Mohamed & Paul for being such good sports, making a fun group dynamic, and for having a damn good laugh for week – usually at my expense! Cheers for your continued support guys.

And lastly, Ole Martin – thanks again for yet another great week. Only another 9 months and I’m back for two weeks solid – Christ, won’t that be fun!!!

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Canon 1DX Mark 2

Posted on May 28, 2016 by Andrew Astbury

Canon 1DX Mark 2 – a Game Changer?

A couple of weeks ago I posted on my Facebook page that I had been playing around with some RAW files shot with the new Canon 1DX Mark 2 – and my initial conclusion was that the new speed master from Canon was, in my opinion, something of a GAME CHANGER.

Canon 1DX Mark 2

Boy did I get a bit of a thrashing – from Nikon D5 users who have little to no experience of the pre-existing 1DX system, let alone the new one; in other words folk trying to justify the giant lump of cash they’ve just handed over………

What GAME is it that I think the Canon 1DX Mark 2 potentially changes?

For me it breaks down quite simply:

Auto Focus: The Canon 1DX Mk1 61 point Reticular AF system BEATS THE CRAP out of all variants of the Nikon Multi-Cam 3500 AF system when it comes to using long glass on fast-moving targets.

With the caveat that you need to know and understand how to set it up of course!

Image Quality: Any Nikon pro-body RAW file kicks a Canon 1DX Mark 1 .CR2 file into the middle of the last century.

The Nikon D4/4S sensors produce RAWs that are cleaner in respect of ISO/Noise, greater Dynamic Range (up to a point) and are just plain “more tractable” when it comes to post process; especially in shadow and highlight recovery.

And so “The Game” is quite simple – AF Performance v Sensor Output IQ – it’s simple and straight forward enough that anyone can understand where I’m coming from!

Let’s get something clear from the start – neither Canon or Nikon have seen fit to let Uncle Andy get his hands on either of the new cameras! The other week I went to a Canon day in Manchester and actually got my hands on a Canon 1DX Mark 2 – but when I went into my pocket and pulled out a 64 Gb CF card the guy from Canon had a hissy-fit and wouldn’t allow me to take any shots – “we can’t allow them to get into the public domain” was his excuse, and he wouldn’t budge.

But one of the speakers, Simeon Quarrie, was kind enough to let me have a play with some of his .CR2 from a project in Africa he’d just completed on the new Canon 1DX Mark 2 – and my chin hit the floor.

I could not believe what I was seeing – the amount of shadow and highlight recovery over-head was insane. Overall, the shadow and highlight RAW IQ is right up there with the Nikon D4/4S. Now let’s not get too carried away here; the Canon 1DX Mark 2 .CR2 file is still lossless compressed ( see blog article HERE) and so isn’t offering QUITE what it could do in respect of post-process, but it is A MASSIVE jump in IQ from the original Canon 1 DX.

FFS Canon, grow a pair will you – give the Canon users a firmware upgrade to allow them the option of keeping the uncompressed RAW will you! It’s not going to cost you anything…

Austin Thomas kindly sent me a couple of RAWs from his new Canon 1DX Mark 2 a couple of days after the Canon Open day in Manchester:

Screen grab of basic raw file adjustment from the new Canon 1DX Mk2 – shot taken by Austin Thomas.
Note Shadow Recovery slider position.

In this Kestrel image note the position of the Shadow slider in the Lightroom Basic panel – 100% to the right. The shot is 3200ISO so yes there is a bit of noise, but I’ve not made any attempt to remove it – the ONLY adjustment made is to the shadow recovery. Just look at the eye, there’s NO colour noise or pattern noise.

Screen grab of my processing of a raw file from the new Canon 1DX Mk2 taken by Austin Thomas. Note Highlight & Shadow Recovery slider positions.

Screen grab of basic raw file adjustment from the new Canon 1DX Mk2 – shot taken by Austin Thomas.
Note Highlight & Shadow Recovery slider positions.

In the Little Owl (L’owly!) shot I’ve pushed things further by putting the Highlight Recovery slider 100% to the left for maximum effect.

This extreme shadow and highlight recovery is almost impossible with Mark 1 RAWs without incurring massive penalties in the form of colour noise and sensor pattern noise, especially in the shadow areas:

1DX Mark 1 raw file with 100% shadow recovery – note the huge amounts of pattern noise and false green/magenta colour artefacting. This shot is mine BTW – Austin doesn’t get many of these up his way!

And now it appears that DPReview have done something useful – they’ve been shooting a head-to-head between Canon 1DX Mark 2 and a Nikon D5 (which in itself is NOT useful), but they’ve put some RAW files up that folk can download.

A couple of these files do a very good job of illustrating my point about the Canon 1DX Mark 2, and you can download them HERE and HERE.

Go and download these two files:

Canon 1DX Mark 2

Bring them into Lightroom and drag the Highlight Recovery all the way to the left, and the shadow Recovery all the way to the right:

Canon 1DX Mark 2

Now go and look at those tyre barriers – no colour noise or sensor pattern noise.

As a long-time Nikon shooter I find lots of thing that irritate me about Canon – the crackers menu system and the God-awful ergonomics. But then a lot of Canon users will say the same about Nikon – it’s what you are used to that makes the ‘stuff’ on the other side of the fence look crazy.

But all that is totally irrelevant really – all I’m ever concerned with is AF performance and sensor IQ. And sensor IQ was the Achilles Heel of the original 1DX in my opinion – simply because I’m used to Nikon sensor IQ.

I choose to use a Mk1 1DX – with its somewhat inferior IQ – over my D4 or 4S – with the better IQ but poorer AF performance – when “the chips are down”. The chips are down when I know I’m going to be in a situation where “THE shot” could come at any time, and is not going to be easily repeatable.

Seeing as adopting this course of action involves me begging, stealing, borrowing, or God forbid HIRING the gear, it’s a decision I never take lightly!

But the Canon 1DX Mark 2 has alleviated my IQ concerns, and so makes the option a little easier.

FOOT NOTE

The main fault with the Nikon Multi-Cam AF system is a missing user control – Canon call it Acceleration/Deceleration Tracking. It’s a mission-critical control, and Nikons steadfast refusal to give us access to it means that either THEY are stupid, or that they think their users are.

But the new D5 AF system gives Nikon users access to a control Nikon call Subject Motion – you guessed it, it’s Acceleration/Deceleration Tracking.

Does it work as effectively as Canons – who have been honing and developing it for years? Who knows….perhaps I would by now if it weren’t for the earthquake in Japan a few week ago.

I seriously hope that Nikon HAVE got it right; but at the end of the day it still doesn’t help me all that much because I can’t put a D5 on the back of a Canon 200-400 – the best all-round wildlife photography lens on the planet!

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Raw File Compression

Posted on March 14, 2016 by Andrew Astbury

Raw File Compression.

Today I’m going to give you my point of view over that most vexatious question – is LOSSLESS raw file compression TRULY lossless?

I’m going to upset one heck of a lot of people here, and my chances of Canon letting me have any new kit to test are going to disappear over the horizon at a great rate of knots, but I feel compelled to post!

What prompts me to commit this act of potential suicide?

It’s this shot from my recent trip to Norway:

Direct from Camera

Processed in Lightroom

I had originally intended to shoot Nikon on this trip using a hire 400mm f2.8, but right at the last minute there was a problem with the lens that couldn’t be sorted out in time, so Calumet supplied me with a 1DX and a 200-400 f4 to basically get me out of a sticky situation.

As you should all know by now, the only problems I have with Canon cameras are their short Dynamic Range, and Canons steadfast refusal to allow for uncompressed raw recording.

The less experienced shooter/processor might look at the shot “ex camera” and be disappointed – it looks like crap, with far too much contrast, overly dark shadows and near-blown highlights.

Shot on Nikon the same image would look more in keeping with the processed version IF SHOT using the uncompressed raw option, which is something I always do without fail; and the extra 3/4 stop dynamic range of the D4 would make a world of difference too.

Would the AF have done as good a job – who knows!

The lighting in the shot is epic from a visual PoV, but bad from a camera exposure one. A wider dynamic range and zero raw compression on my Nikon D4 would allow me to have a little more ‘cavalier attitude’ to lighting scenarios like this – usually I’d shoot with +2/3Ev permanently dialled into the camera. Overall the extra dynamic range would give me less contrast, and I’d have more highlight detail and less need to bump up the shadow areas in post.

In other words processing would be easier, faster and a lot less convoluted.

But I can’t stress enough just how much detrimental difference LOSSLESS raw file compression CAN SOMETIMES make to a shot.

Now there is a lot – and I mean A LOT – of opinionated garbage written all over the internet on various forums etc about lossless raw file compression, and it drives me nuts. Some say it’s bad, most say it makes no difference – and both camps are WRONG!

Sometimes there is NO visual difference between UNCOMPRESSED and LOSSLESS, and sometimes there IS. It all depends on the lighting and the nature of the scene/subject colours and how they interact with said lighting.

The main problem with the ‘it makes no difference’ camp is that they never substantiate their claims; and if they are Canon shooters they can’t – because they can’t produce an image with zero raw file compression to compare their standard lossless CR2 files to!

So I’ve come up with a way of illustrating visually the differences between various levels of raw file compression on Nikon using the D800E and Photoshop.

But before we ‘get to it’ let’s firstly refresh your understanding. A camera raw file is basically a gamma 1.0, or LINEAR gamma file:

Linear (top) vs Encoded Gamma

The right hand 50% of the linear gamma gradient represents the brightest whole stop of exposure – that’s one heck of a lot of potential for recording subtle highlight detail in a raw file.

It also represents the area of tonal range that is frequently most effected by any form of raw file compression.

Neither Nikon or Canon will reveal to the world the algorithm-based methods they use for lossless or lossy raw file compression, but it usually works by a process of ‘Bayer Binning’.

Bayer_Pattern

If we take a 2×2 block, it contains 2 green, 1 red and 1 blue photosite photon value – if we average the green value and then interpolate new values for red and blue output we will successfully compress the raw file. But the data will be ‘faux’ data, not real data.

The other method we could use is to compress the tonal values in that brightest stop of recorded highlight tone – which is massive don’t forget – but this will result in a ’rounding up or down’ of certain bright tonal values thus potentially reducing some of the more subtle highlight details.

We could also use some variant of the same type of algorithm to ‘rationalise’ shadow detail as well – with pretty much the same result.

In the face of Nikon and Canons refusal to divulge their methodologies behind raw file compression, especially lossless, we can only guess what is actually happening.

I read somewhere that with lossless raw file compression the compression algorithms leave a trace instruction about what they have done and where they’ve done it in order that a raw handler programme such as Lightroom can actually ‘undo’ the compression effects – that sounds like a recipe for disaster if you ask me!

Personally I neither know nor do I care – I know that lossless raw file compression CAN be detrimental to images shot under certain conditions, and here’s the proof – of a fashion:

Let’s look at the following files:

Image 1: 14 bit UNCOMPRESSED

Image 2: 14 bit UNCOMPRESSED

Image 3: 14 bit LOSSLESS compression

Image 4: 14 bit LOSSY compression

Image 5: 12 bit UNCOMPRESSED

Yes, there are 2 files which are identical, that is 14 bit uncompressed – and there’s a reason for that which will become apparent in a minute.

First, some basic Photoshop ‘stuff’. If I open TWO images in Photoshop as separate layers in the same document, and change the blend mode of the top layer to DIFFERENCE I can then see the differences between the two ‘images’. It’s not a perfect way of proving my point because of the phenomenon of photon flux.

Photon Flux Andy??? WTF is that?

Well, here’s where shooting two identical 14 bit uncompressed files comes in – they themselves are NOT identical!:

The result of overlaying the two identical uncompressed raw files (above left) – it looks almost black all over indicating that the two shots are indeed pretty much the same in every pixel. But if I amplify the image with a levels layer (above right) you can see the differences more clearly.

So there you have it – Photon Flux! The difference between two 14 bit UNCOMPRESSED raw files shot at the same time, same ISO, shutter speed AND with a FULLY MANUAL APERTURE. The only difference between the two shots is the ratio and number of photons striking the subject and being reflected into the lens.

Firstly 14 Bit UNCOMPRESSED compared to 14 bit LOSSLESS (the important one!):

14 bit UNCOMPRESSED vs 14 bit LOSSLESS

Please remember, the above ‘difference’ image contains photon flux variations too, but if you look carefully you will see greater differences than in the ‘flux only’ image above.

The two images above illustrate the differences between 14 bit uncompressed and 14 bit LOSSY compression (left) and 14 bit UNCOMPRESSED and 12 bit UNCOMPRESSED (right) just for good measure!

In Conclusion

As I indicated earlier in the post, this is not a definitive testing method, sequential shots will always contain a photon flux variation that ‘pollutes’ the ‘difference’ image.

I purposefully chose this white subject with textured aluminium fittings and a blackish LED screen because the majority of sensor response will lie in that brightest gamma 1.0 stop.

The exposure was a constant +1EV, 1/30th @ f 18 and 100 ISO – nearly maximum dynamic range for the D800E, and f18 was set manually to avoid any aperture flicker caused by auto stop down.

You can see from all the ‘difference’ images that the part of the subject that seems to suffer the most is the aluminium part, not the white areas. The aluminium has a stippled texture causing a myriad of small specular highlights – brighter than the white parts of the subject.

What would 14 bit uncompressed minus 14 bit lossless minus photon flux look like? In a perfect world I’d be able to show you accurately, but we don’t live in one of those so I can’t!

We can try it using the flux shot from earlier:

But this is wildly inaccurate as the flux component is not pertinent to the photons at the actual time the lossless compression shot was taken. But the fact that you CAN see an image does HINT that there is a real difference between UNCOMPRESSED and LOSSLESS compression – in certain circumstances at least.

If you have never used a camera that offers the zero raw file compression option then basically what you’ve never had you never miss. But as a Nikon shooter I shoot uncompressed all the time – 90% of the time I don’t need to, but it just saves me having to remember something when I do need the option.

raw file compression

Would this 1DX shot be served any better through UNCOMPRESSED raw recording? Most likely NO – why? Low Dynamic Range caused in the main by flat low contrast lighting means no deep dark shadows and nothing approaching a highlight.

I don’t see it as a costly option in terms of buffer capacity or on-board storage, and when it comes to processing I would much rather have a surfeit of sensor data rather than a lack of it – no matter how small that deficit might be.

Lossless raw file compression has NO positive effect on your images, and it’s sole purpose in life is to allow you to fit more shots on the storage media – that’s it pure and simple. If you have the option to shoot uncompressed then do so, and buy a bigger card!

What pisses my off about Canon is that it would only take, I’m sure, a firmware upgrade to give the 1DX et al the ability to record with zero raw file compression – and, whether needed or not, it would stop miserable grumpy gits like me banging on about it!

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Canon 1DX MkII

Posted on February 3, 2016 by Andrew Astbury

Canon 1DX MkII versus Nikon D5?

700x350

Holy Smokes – I’m getting inundated with questions since yesterdays launch announcement regarding the Canon 1DX MkII.

Everything is hypothetical at the moment because I’m not expecting to see a D5 until mid-March, and the 1DX Mk II around mid-April to May.

Trying to compare, or do an ‘X versus Y’ is really something of a pointless excercise, even if the two bodies were ‘on the shelf’ right now, and I say this because:

Most potential purchasers of either body are already heavily invested in one system or the other.
A direct comparison is only of real use to someone who isn’t heavily invested in glass from one system or the other – in which case you shouldn’t be looking at either camera body because both of them will chew you up and spit you out in bubbles.

Remember, a good camera is only as good as the glass that feeds it AND the twat that’s doing the driving!

But the perenial Canon v Nikon question will always be there like the elephant in the room, so here are the general specs for the two camera bodies:

Sensor Format

Canon 1DX MkII: Full frame
Nikon D5: Full frame

Megapixels

Canon 1DX MkII: 21.5 megapixels (20.2MP effective)
Nikon D5: 21.33 megapixels (20.8MP effective)

Max Resolution

Canon 1DX MkII: 5472 x 3648
Nikon D5: 5568 x 3712

Aspect Ratios

Canon 1DX MkII: 3:2
Nikon D5: 3:2 and 4:5

File Formats

Canon 1DX MkII: JPEG, RAW for stills. MJPEG, MOV, MP4, MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 for video.
Nikon D5: JPEG, RAW, TIFF for stills. MOV, MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 for video.

Bit Depth

Canon 1DX MkII: 14-bit
Nikon D5: 14-bit

Memory Card

Canon 1DX MkII: 1 CFast and 1 CompactFlash
Nikon D5: 2 XQD or 2 CompactFlash

Autofocus Points

Canon 1DX MkII: 61 phase detection points, with 41 cross-type
Nikon D5: 153 phase detection points, with 99 cross-type

Viewfinder

Canon 1DX MkII: 100% coverage and ~0.76x magnification
Nikon D5: 100% coverage and ~0.72x magnification

Rear Display

Canon 1DX MkII: 3.2-inch touchscreen with 1.62 million dots
Nikon D5: 3.2-inch touchscreen with 2.359 million dots

ISO Range

Canon 1DX MkII: 100-51200 (50-409600 when extended)
Nikon D5: 100-102400 (50-3280000 when extended)

Metering Methods

Canon 1DX MkII: Evaluative metering, partial metering, spot metering
Nikon D5: 3D Color Matrix metering, center-weighted average metering, spot metering, highlight weighted

Continuous Shooting

Canon 1DX MkII: 14FPS at 20.2 MP for up to 170 RAW photos (16FPS with mirror lockup)
Nikon D5: 12FPS at 20.8 MP for up to 200 RAW photos (14FPS with mirror lockup)

4K Video Recording

Canon 1DX MkII: 4096 x 2160p at 59.94 fps, 50 fps, 29.97 fps, 25 fps, 24 fps, 23.98 fps
Nikon D5: 3840 x 2160p at 30 fps, 25 fps, 24 fps

4K Clip Length

Canon 1DX MkII: 30 minutes
Nikon D5: 3 minutes (though rumour has it this will be extended).*

Weight

Canon 1DX MkII: 3.37 lb (1530 g)
Nikon D5: 3.11 lb (1415 g)

Price

Canon 1DX MkII: £5199
Nikon D5: £5199

*Nikon have been denying this being down to weather-sealing and over-heat problems, but the D5 uses the power-hungry H.264 video codec – 30 minutes record time might result in an overheat problem similar to Chernobyl.

The Canon 1DX II uses the motion jpeg (MJPG) codec – easier on the camera but needing BIG transfer bandwidth, hence the need for those rather expensive C-Fast 2.0 memory cards!

But from a stills photography PoV there isn’t generally a lot between the two cameras in terms of image size and megapixel count.

Both cameras are more than capable of shooting long continuous burst of RAW files at very high frame rates – useful for the long-lens sports photographer where depth of field even wide open is measured in meters. Any marginal errors in the predictive autofocus calculations made by the camera become masked by the available DoF – even with wide open apertures. see HERE for more explanation!

But when it comes to wildlife photography, birds in flight, and birds flying directly at the camera in particular, one does need to ‘beware of Greeks bearing gifts’….

As I have pointed out many times in the past, two of the biggest contributors to poor AF performance with fast moving, closing subjects at sub 25 metres are:

High Frame Rate
Too many active AF points

So unless I’m shooting a ‘manual focus trap’ like this:

wildlife photography, common Kestrel, photography technique

I’m not really interested in shooting at 3 trillion frames per second – buy my AF Guide for Nikon and Canon for further explanation!

The Canon 1DX II is described as having new predictive AF algorithms working with the new EOS Intelligent Tracking and Recognition AF – this might increase the effective ‘sharp capture’ frame rate in AI-Servo from the 1DX Mk1 sweet-spot of 5 or 6 fps with an f4 lens; then again it might not! The sooner someone lends me one then the sooner I’ll be able to find out and let you know…..

I’m also pleased to see an increase in frame coverage of the 61-point High Density Reticular AF II system – this seems to be up by 24% on the original 1DX.

The overall mark changes to the 1DX stills AF system are not quite as radical as those between the Nikon D4/4S and new D5 – I’m still trying to get my head around the idea of all those AF points.

So before we all get too excited I’ll just say this: 90 percent plus of people who take pictures using autofocus DON’T actually know how it works.

Predictive AF is exactly what it says on the tin – it ‘predicts’ where the subject WILL BE when the shutter opens for the NEXT frame; and while the mirror is DOWN the AF controller/motor MOVE the lens focus to THAT PREDICTED position.

For a closing subject, the lens focus is physically AHEAD of the subject prior to the shutter opening – that’s right, a bird flies into the plane of focus….and don’t confuse plane of focus with focal plane either!

So there’s a lot going on when we shoot in Canon AI-Servo or Nikon CF, and to get a sequence of sharp continuous frames….

GX2R1981 GX2R1985 GX2R1989 GX2R1990 GX2R1991 GX2R1994

we have to regulate the amount of subject information that the camera tries to handle. And the commonest error people make is to supply TOO MUCH of that information by using too many AF points. That mistake is often further compounded by allowing the camera to ‘decide’ what it thinks it needs to focus on by using some form of auto-area focus mode.

This ‘overhead’ of information takes time to process. And the only time the camera has available to process this information AND move the lens focus is that split second when the mirror is down between frames and the shutter is closed. So the general and fairly fool-proof way of working is to use as few AF points as you need to cover the part of the subject you want sharp focus on; and then help the camera out further by giving it that extra bit of processing time/ more mirror down-time – lower frame rate!

So some of what these two cameras are offering isn’t exactly beneficial on the face of it.

But time will tell!

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Prospec USB 3.0 card reader

Posted on October 8, 2015 by Andrew Astbury

Prospec USB 3.0 card reader.

A few weeks ago I decided that my Mac Pro4.1 early 2009 needed to be upgraded to USB 3, seeing as I’d not long since fitted it with an SSD for the OS – yes, I found myself in the mood to spend money; obviously I was unwell!

So I bought a 4-port expansion card from Mac Upgrades, installed it in the Mac and connected my 8TB G-drive – and all has worked perfectly ever since.

Being a mainly Nikon user, the XQD reader showed an instant improvement in transfer speed too, but for all my CF cards I was still stuck with my ancient Sandisk USB 2 reader.

I perused a few USB 3 reader prices in was left gasping – obviously I was now feeling a little better!

But then I spied this:

Prospec USB 3.0 Multi-Card Reader

Twenty quid! That’s right, just £20 – bargain!

Real world read-speed testing using Black Magic, and 32 GB Prospec 1010x CF cards yield the following results:

Sandisk USB 2 reader – 36.9 MB/sec
Prospec USB 3.0 reader – 112.7 MB/sec

and just as a comparison, the Sony XQD reader and H-series card averages 139.2 MB/sec.

Previous blog posts have shown you that I’m a fan of Calumet Prospec CF cards; mainly because they are re-badged Delkins, and in my experience simply bomb-proof and good VFM.

I can’t say for sure without checking, but this Prospec USB 3 reader looks VERY much like a re-brand of the Delkin USB 3.0 multi-card reader, but is basically £10 cheaper.

It certainly sucks up uncompressed D800E 14bit RAW files at an impressive rate of knots I can tell you.

In my earlier Prospec CF card post I did allude to the slightly odd fact that the larger the CF card capacity was, the faster its read speed became. I also bought a 64Gb Prospec 1010x, just to give the D800E more capacity for shooting HQ time-lapse – this card clocks a read-speed average of 119.8 MB/sec – basically 7MB/sec faster than its 32GB cousin.

Yes, there’s cards and readers out there that might yield faster results; but at what cost to your pocket?

But this level of “REAL WORLD” performance is plenty fast enough for yours truly – especially if, like me, you have short arms and long pockets!

You can view the product HERE – BUY one!

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Andy Astburys' Photography Blog

A general photography blog

Category Archives: Canon

Canon 5D Mk4 Review – Conclusions

Canon 16-35mm f2.8 Mk3

Camera ISO Settings

Canon 5D Mk 4 Auto Focus Performance

Canon 5D Mk 4 – First Thoughts

The Canon 5D Mk 4

Workshop Report and Canon 1DX Mk2 first thoughts

Canon 1DX Mark 2

Canon 1DX Mark 2 – a Game Changer?

FOOT NOTE

Raw File Compression

Raw File Compression.

In Conclusion

Canon 1DX MkII

Canon 1DX MkII versus Nikon D5?

Prospec USB 3.0 card reader

Prospec USB 3.0 card reader.

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The Canon 5D Mk 4

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Canon 1DX Mark 2 – a Game Changer?

FOOT NOTE

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Raw File Compression.

In Conclusion

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Canon 1DX MkII versus Nikon D5?

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Prospec USB 3.0 card reader.

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