Andrew Reid

Sony's picture profiles make it as difficult as possible to get decent all-round colour out of them but I think I've found a way. Will share it in a blog post later.

It only sounds impressive until you consider what the competition did years before when nobody was looking because it didn't reach the popular conscious yet and have a Canon or Nikon badge. The on-chip ADC converters were pioneered by Sony years ago and it has taken Canon, dragging their heels along the floor for 6 years, to implement the technology. and then only in a very small selection of high end models in 2016. By the way, we've moved waaaay beyond on-chip A/D per row, to gluing and integrating DRAM directly to the back of the sensor as seen on the latest 1" CMOS from Sony. So Canon are only just catching up to yesterday's advancement in CMOS deign. Yesterdays. The on-chip ADC cleans up the readout noise so you have more usable blacks. If people choose to interpret this as more dynamic range then fair play to them, that's their interpretation. I would never max out the dynamic range of any digital image, because it creates Digital Sick™ In reality for all the quoting of 14 stops by DXOmark for Sony and 12 stops for Canon, there's not as much difference as the specs imply. However as soon as Canon start doing sensors that might get closer to 14 stops on DXOMark like Sony have been doing for almost half a decade, everyone pisses themselves. The power of the brand manifest! As for the number of phase detect AF points, you need millions of them on the sensor because they get so little light and are so small, compared to the smattering of a few of them in the viewfinder of a DSLR. Needless to say I find the 400+ on the A6300 work better than the millions on the 80D, so go figure. It's as if Canon have turned up to a party 5 hours late with a 2 euro bottle of fizz. There's no denying Canon get the ergonomics right in a very solid way mostly, but as for the images... The facts are: 70D = shit video 80D and EOS M3 = slightly less shit 7DII = 2012 vintage softness C100 = Same, but very expensive 2010 vintage Panasonic GH2 resolution (albeit better in low light) C300 = exactly the same but even more expensive 1D X II = slightly worse than the 1D C's image quality, but $6k and will likely be superseded in under 6 months by the 5D IV, GH5, A7S III or any number of others And this my friends is why I will not be wasting my money on any of them. Although the AVCHD quality on the C100 is very nice given the specs, I must admit that much!

Olympus system uses magnetic fields and electric currents with voice coil elements Details of how it works are here: i suspect Sony and Panasonic use a very similar kind of technology too but so far neither have surpassed the E-M5 II as for gx80.... Well, we'll see....

You misunderstood my point a good DP makes a great shot in the first place, so it won't be so ordinary He maximises the tool all that is obvious However beautiful image quality can add 'spice' to just an 'OK' shot where the DP is limited in terms of his location, poor light, and boring subject matter... You have to work with what you've got sometimes and that's why a flexible and powerful image is important. Slow-mo, insane resolution and a wide dynamic range can have a wow factor in themselves, even if you're shooting very ordinary subjects on ordinary places as for the bad DPs, no hope for them, no matter what the camera. And yes even an Alexa can be mishandled and made to look rubbish. Meanwhile a drone shot of a spectacular volcano would look great on just about any camera, be it a small chip GoPro even or an iphone A challenging location which isn't so beautiful and is poorly lit demands more of the camera and absolutely more of the shooter too.

Olympus is electromagnetic (voice coil) its superior to the Sony implementation and the GX8 looks like Gx80 copies the Olympus voice coil system which is great news

No that's not the message I am trying to get across. I am just trying to help you guys make informed decisions about the relative image quality of cameras. A shame you feel the need to shove this back in my face, just because it doesn't quite align with your choice of purchase. The core EOSHD readers get it. You're just an ungrateful hanger on with 19 posts to his name who feels he can leech all the knowledge from others on the forum, without giving anything constructive back in return. Almost all of your posts have focused on annoying the hell of the forum owner himself, which I might add is a rather rude way to introduce yourself into somebody's house. Ah you have an FS7 in the office though! But I thought 80D is all you need?! Hmm moire. Hmm aliasing. Hmm clipped highlights. Lovely. Oh but it's "bashing". Bash bash bash!! Can't mention the moire! Oh noooo That's biased! (No I'll think you'll find it's just a fact)

Since when is mainstream considered a mark of success?!

Look guys, we established this YEARS ago, you can shoot with a T2i or any old shit like Kendy did and do great work, especially if it is a low-fi look in the first place that you're after and you rarely use a lens other than 50mm equivalent (a wider lens would show up the lack of resolution). We have also established that you can then upload this to Vimeo and if the content and shooting is compelling, the locations and characters cinematic looking, well lit and they kept the ISO below 800, when the viewer watches this at 720p on a laptop or TV, they won't notice that it isn't 4K wide dynamic range. But image quality advances exist for a reason, they help to evolve the art of story telling and make the tools more flexible so they can be used in more challenging circumstances and a wider variety of situations. I love slow-mo for instance, it's a great creative tool, and I love LOG as it is a substitute for raw when you want to apply a stylised look in post and get a couple of more stops dynamic range, without the much larger file sizes. I shot this in slow-mo and LOG for creative reasons and they made an interesting subject look beautiful - Couldn't have done that on a T2i or 80D, or indeed any Canon camera I can afford. Do they even have decent looking 120fps on their Cinema EOS stuff??! And when I shot this on the A7S, GH4 and Nikon D750, the pinsharp details and lack of moire, plus the slow-mo again, helped creatively bring out the look I needed. If you don't want to focus on this kind of thing then fine, get the 80D and enjoy your AF. Nothing wrong with that. You might tell some great stories and do it really stylistically. But in my view... image quality and frame rates and extra features are there to be USED. Pointless writing a blog about cameras otherwise. If everyone was happy to stick to 80D level of image quality and features then my job would be much easier and I'd have far fewer cameras!! And then there is also a lot to be said for the motion cadence of a global shutter and vintage super 16 lenses too, which is what gave this shoot the look I wanted, down to a tee... So before you write off all the exciting specs and just nerdy pixel peeping, consider what they give creatively and stylistically and consider what you are missing out on when you sacrifice all this for convenience's sake with the 80D!!

@CMB - rivalling the Alexa at a fraction of a cost is what this website is all about!! I am not calling out your quality of work, so no need to jump on the defensive there. Clearly though your clients don't notice heavy moire and aliasing, a lack of detail and a lack of dynamic range, otherwise they would have asked you to reshoot it with a proper camera like a RED or Arri, or even an A7S II Maybe you should hang out at JustATool.com instead, and you might find more people who agree with you. I heard they moved the mic and headphone jack out of the way of the pivoting screen too. For me those at JustATool.com this would be music to their ears, who cares about 4K for $700 when you have that kind of innovation from Canon. I think we should just STOP with the image quality increases... people just want the mic slot well positioned. Here is how image quality works... A good camera makes an ordinary shot look nice, with creamy smooth roll off, no noise, tons of detail and a wide dynamic range at the same time as doing very richly saturated natural looking colour. A bad camera does none of that. That's the 80D. But you can make it look good with the right subject and light and composition. So the 80D can look good and especially at longer viewing distances on a large screen, just a TV in the home will be enough, you won't notice the moire and aliasing as much, but when you get a scene that challenges it - say wide angle shot with lots of hard lines and high contrast detail with very large variations between the brightest and darkest parts of the frame you are going to have something that looks like it crawled from Donald Trump's toilet after a particularly hot curry.

Maybe his work doesn't demand high performance. I haven't seen it, so couldn't know.

GH2 was 2010 (October) 6 years later and Canon haven't matched its video quality, overall. Like I say time and time again, only Canon seem to be able to get away with this year after year. If it were any other company, people would be astounded. At the same time, since 2009 their APS-C stills quality has inched forward only a bit from 18MP to 20MP and now 24MP with a tiny bit cleaner shadows.

Seems you have just contributed to the 30% misinformation. Oops. The XC10 article was my first impression of the announcement (paper specs) from almost a year ago. I have bought one recently for a specific purpose, you'll see soon on the blog. Here's a factoid for you....80D video quality ranks below almost everything else on the market, but hey... AF.

Douglas is All Chin and no mouth.

Going to be either a crop or pixel binned from that 100MP sensor, so it's not going to go challenging RED for image quality any time soon. Besides they have by far the better raw codec and 8K raw coming soon as well.

It's always a balance between convenience and image quality. I'd love every camera to have the great colour science, AF and ergonomic simplicity of a Canon. However I'd love every affordable Canon camera to have decent image quality compared to the 4K competition, something they lack. We'll get there one day.

Maybe I have been living in Germany far too long.

Props to you and JG Harding for recognising a dark horse of a camera.

Also I just bought an XC10!

@CMB the T2i was around for a long time and it had its day, a lot of great stuff shot on it, in the same way there were great Pixar animations developed on very old 90's workstations. This does not excuse Canon in any way. If Apple for example had neglected the quality of their stills on iPhones since 2009 as Canon have done with video on their APS-C DSLRs, it would be seen as totally strange behaviour, really bizarre and unacceptable to all iPhone users interested in photography. The only reason content producers and YouTuber's still care about the 80D is that a lot of people don't care about perfection or the details. They just want to grab a brand they trust and make content as quickly and as easily as possible with the lenses they already have. The other companies have put in a less than solid showing to be honest, in fighting back against Canon and Nikon. Flakey and disjointed. Panasonic only have the GH line, which doesn't have a broad appeal to the masses due to the lenses being massively overpriced, complexity of the spec, odd sensor crop vs the rest of the market and less than stella ISO 1600-6400 performance indoors. Meanwhile Sony have too many models, very confusing, reliability issues on top of that like overheating, over complex specifications and menus, poor usability and again incredibly expensive lenses. Canon have had it easy. The people who will buy a 80D probably see 4K as slowing them down in the edit, when a lot of the material is quite time critical. I can't see them lusting after an A7S II any time soon.

eBay is your friend.

Wow that seems to make a difference with the Video Mic Pro, I've never had good results with it on a DSLR. NX1 preamps especially seem pretty poor. Nice job sir.

Talking about Special Purposes.... how about being the only $1000 camera with Super 35mm 4K recording, 13 stop dynamic range with LOG, small file sizes, built in EVF, 120fps in full HD and the best autofocus system under the $6000 1D X Mark II pro DSLR.

Well the A7S colour weaknesses are sadly all too clear in that clip. Noisy, compressed, inaccurate, thin and dreadful on the Rec.709 conversion, only the custom LUT (with a lot of expertise efforts) can save it even after that dodgy white balance, mixed light, exposure all remain difficulties faced by Sony users. Sony need to make it EASY to get Canon or Nikon like colour from their cameras. They should really trash their entire picture profiles line-up and start again.

I should get paid for this babysitting work!

No framing differences if you set stills to 16:9 and shoot raw, then you can claim back the 3:2 in Photoshop.