The Image Quality dragon has been slayed.
What I mean is that just about any dslr from any manufacturer made in the past couple years can produce fantastic image quality. Certainly sufficient to make beautiful album spreads and 30×40 canvas gallery wraps.
Yet photographers still are always fretting about IQ. “OMG, brand x now has slightly less shadow noise at ISO 12,800 than brand y!” Please. In my book, IQ is no longer a relevant issue. Every entry-level dslr on the market can produce stunning images in the right hands.
In fact, I think we were “there” in terms of image quality 5 years ago – back when Canon introduced the 5D and even before that the 20D.
How’s the IQ of this image? It was taken with a vintage 2005 Canon 30D at ISO 1600 straight from the camera. No post processing other than a little bit of sharpening. No extra noise reduction was used.
Or how about this one? (taken with a G11 point-n-shoot)
Okay, if we are beyond IQ, then what’s the next important thing? One word: focus. It’s all about the focus. A bad focusing system (like the one on my 5D and 30D/20D) means that your “hit rate” for sharp images is less than it should be.
My hit rate is lower than I would like because of out-of-focus shots and because of missed shots while fiddling with the focus. It also means I shoot a lot at f4.0 when I’d rather be shooting at f1.8 simply because I need the depth of field to mask the inaccurate focusing.
To compensate it means I’m shooting 4x the number of frames I really need just to ensure one is sharp – thus increasing downloading time, editing time, and wear and tear on my camera.
That’s one of the frustrating things about Canon. The 5D produces gorgeous image files. In fact, I prefer the files from the 5D to any other dslr. But it’s saddled with a crappy focus system. So they come out 3 years later with the 5DmkII – more megapixels, better high ISO, video mode………..but still the same crappy focus system!
It’s not hard to understand what’s going on. Clearly, Canon wants to protect their flagship 1-series by deliberately crippling all of their “lesser” camera bodies. By contrast, look what Nikon is doing. They put their best professional focusing system in the D700 (their equivalent to the 5dMkII). Hell, they even put nearly as good a focusing system into their D7000 – a body that matches up against Canon’s 60D! To quote Thom Hogan, it’s as if Canon missed a memo somewhere.
If you want a great focusing Canon, you are forced to pay $5k for their (crop sensor) 1DmkIV. So in other words, there is no such thing as a full-frame camera with a top-notch focusing system from Canon!
So this leaves me with some big decisions to make in 2011. I have not bought a camera body or lens in 4 years, and it’s finally time. I’ll either have to buy the 1DmkIV or *gasp* switch to Nikon. Or maybe hope beyond hope that somehow Canon decides to put a pro focus system in the 5DmkIII. Given their history, I somehow doubt it. We’ll probably just get more useless megapixels. Either way, it’ll be an interesting year for me gear-wise.
Update – July 15, 2011: Based on the significant upgrade to the autofocus system that went into the 7D, I’m fairly confident that the 5DmkIII autofocus will be at least as good. It should be a significant step up from the 5DmkII.
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I think you are right about image quality from most modern DSLRs. I use D700s and needed a new body recently. I sweated for a few weeks wondering whether I should wait for a new and even more marvellous D700s/D800. In the end I just bought a new D700, figuring that if I´m not getting good IQ from a D700 it´s probably not the camera causing the problem. (December 19, 2010 | 02:12am)
I see. So you are saying my out-of-focus shots are because my camera doesn't auto focus well enough. And all this time I thought *I* was the problem. ;-) But seriously, I can use some advice. I take lots of shots of my kids playing sports and lots of candids at parties. Too many shots are out of focus because I like the aperture set at f/2.8. Even if my camera's auto focus is not that great (the XTi) what are my options? Increase the aperture (and give up light)? Switch to AI Servo (which I never liked)? Thanks! (February 03, 2011 | 08:53am)
@Howard: Stopping down to a smaller aperture will indeed give you a larger DOF and thus a greater margin for error. I wrote a blog post about this topic. Go to the index page and under "shooting tutorials" click on the post "shooting fast moving kids". However, lots of pro sports shooters shoot very fast moving subjects (try Formula 1 racing!) at f2.8. Most of them are using continuous focus modes. I dislike Ai Servo as well, but I am going to force myself to learn how to use it. (February 03, 2011 | 09:20am)
@Laurence: Thanks for the response! Great answer. The tutorial is great as well. I will keep practicing. I like your tutorial on output sharpening as well. very good advice. Thanks. (February 04, 2011 | 12:16pm)
Hi Laurence, fist time visitor to your site...like it a lot! This is a terrific post. (May 27, 2011 | 08:01am)
[...] what photographer Laurence Kim had to say recently: That’s one of the frustrating things about Canon. The 5D produces gorgeous image files. In fact, [...] (June 10, 2011 | 04:43pm)