I have to admit, I have had a bit of sensor envy for the past few years. I have watched many people sell off all of their Canon gear and switch over to the Nikon D800, D810, and Sony AR7 and AR7II, many times never looking back. I have thought about it myself, but just didn’t want to go through the lengthy process of selling all of my cameras and lenses and then learn a whole new system. I just like my Canon gear, it is what I have always used, and it just feels right. Plus, the Canon 11-24mm F/4 is a really great lens and not something available from the other systems. But, I have to be honest, I would have loved to have some extra dynamic range from time to time, and my Canon 5D Mark II, and then Mark III, have definitely fallen short of the competitors in this category. Pulled shadows from both of these cameras just don’t look good. There is a clear loss of detail, exaggeration of noise, and some really ugly banding when going to extremes. I had been holding out with hope that Canon would come out with a new camera that could compete in the dynamic range category with the big guys. So, imagine my curiosity when I saw this posted online by DxOMark here:
From the graph, it appears that the 5D Mark IV, with its new sensor technology, can actually compete. The Nikon is the winner at the very lowest ISO’s, but the three cameras are almost exactly equal at a little above ISO 100 until about ISO 250. This is the range that I most often shoot in so this is good news! Even at more extreme ISO’s, the Canon and the Sony are very close, giving the Sony a slight edge. The Nikon falls behind both shortly after ISO 200, but not by much.
The next test that I came across by DPReview can be seen here, This tool allows you to choose between various different cameras and compare dynamic range while choosing ISO and how much the exposure has been pushed.
In this example, each shot has been pushed 6 stops at ISO 100. Pretty extreme but fun to compare. It looks to me like the Nikon and Sony have a noticeable edge here over the 5D Mark IV, but the 5D Mark III looks pretty terrible.
In this next example, each shot has been pushed 5 stops at ISO 200. Once again, very extreme. In this one, the Mark IV, Sony, and Nikon all appear pretty similar, with the 5D Mark III looking pretty terrible once again.
I have had my hands on a 5D Mark IV now for a week or two. Along with much improved dynamic range, the 5D Mark IV is showing improvements in high ISO over the Mark III, and the extra resolution is very nice for some added detail. I haven’t done any extensive shooting with it in the field yet, but so far so good. One more thing worth mentioning about this camera is the added Dual Pixel Raw technology. Here is an interesting writeup on what Dual Pixel Raw is and isn’t. Basically, Canon says that this technology “enables pixel-level adjustment and refinement for still photographs and includes Image Micro-adjustment to help maximize sharpness in detail areas, Bokeh Shift for more pleasing soft focus areas and Ghosting Reduction to help reduce aberrations and flare.“ None of this really sounds that useful to me as a landscape photographer, but digging around one day I came upon this article over on Rawdigger.com, and this article over on Imaging-Resource.com . Basically what they are saying is that there exists an extra stop of dynamic range in the highlights within images captured in Dual Pixel Raw mode. Now, at this time Lightroom doesn’t support Dual Pixel Raw, but they have said they are working on support and it will become available in the near future. It would be pretty cool if they also figured out a way to access that extra stop of dynamic range in the highlights!
Location: Spokane, Washington
Website: www.chipphillipsphotography.com
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Chip Phillips began his relationship with photography in 2006 when his father gave him his old Pentax Spotmatic film SLR camera. Chip was immediately hooked and soon made the transition to digital. Given his lifelong love of the outdoors, he naturally made the progression to focusing on landscape photography. A professionally trained classical musician, Chip also performs as Principal Clarinet with the Spokane Symphony Orchestra, and is Adjunct Professor of Clarinet at Gonzaga University. Chip resides in Spokane Washington with his wife and son.
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