ESFotoClix Blog

Sony’s recent release of their new NEX mirrorless interchangeable lens camera line may come across as Sony doing what they have to do to keep up with the Joneses, namely Olympus and Panasonic with their much-acclaimed micro-4/3 line. But I think Sony is besting the Joneses on at least two counts.

First, not only have Sony produced a smaller mirrorless interchangeable lens body, but they have done so with a larger APS-C sensor. While Olympus’ and Panasonic’s micro-4/3 sensor comes at 18.0×13.5mm, Sony’s sensor features the APS-C dimensions of 23.4×15.6mm. This means more potential for improved noise performance. At 14MP some are already saying that Sony didn’t do so well in the high ISO, low noise department. Nonetheless, the exciting prospect here is that others (Canon and Nikon) have shown they can do better in this format. Some have predicted a development like this would spell the end of the entry level DSLR, and that may well prove true in short order.

Second, and perhaps just as exciting are Sony’s plans to release a camcorder line using the same E mount system that they developed for the NEX cameras. This at a minimum renders DSLR video irrelevant, if not altogether obsolete. Some folks have been clamoring to DSLR video as an affordable option to shoot high quality HD video with all the creative advantages of using DSLR lenses. The problem with this approach is that hand-holding a DSLR for video isn’t the most user-friendly path to win a cinematography award, and other DSLR video gotchas (rolling shutter effects), make it at best a compromise. Sony now gives us all those nice depth-of-field creative choices in a proper camcorder package. Independent and/or low-budget film makers and videographers will likely jump on this with as much if not more enthusiasm than they showed with DSLR video.

We will have to wait to see some results and reviews before we decide how good of a system Sony can put together, but it appears that this E mount will indeed be a game changer — and perhaps more so than just for DSLRs.

References: Sony NEX-5 review.

Today DPR published its Canon 7D review. As I usually do, since I’m a bottom-line-first kind of guy, I jumped to the conclusion, which glows quite favorably for Canon. Just look at the number of items under “Cons” — it almost looks like DPR reviewers were straining to find something negative to say.

Since the Canon 7D has 50% more megapixels than its toughest competitor, the Nikon D300s (18mp vs. 12mp), I jumped over to the Noise section. Low and behold, more megapixels doesn’t mean more noise. The answer(s) to the question, Why all the noise about noise we saw here a while ago may have something to do with it. Canon won’t tell us what they did, but suffice it to say, very clever engineers have figured out how to pile on a log of megapixels and keep noise to acceptable levels. The shame in this, however, is that one wonders what these same clever engineers could have done with noise performance if they put their know-how and innovation to work on a 12mp sensor. Maybe Nikon will show us that, but don’t hold your breath.

Returning to the review, we should note that the first chroma graph shown on page 15 does show the D300s besting the 7D from around ISO640 all the way out to ISO3200, though for most of that trip, the difference isn’t all that great. Note that this first graph includes in-camera noise reduction (NR) applied to the RAW capture post-capture. The second noise graph, for RAW data without NR, shows the D300s besting the 7D all the way from low ISO out to around ISO2500 in chroma noise, where the 7D takes over and actually bests the D300s at high ISO! Chroma noise, incidentally is the nastiest part of sensor-produced noise that shows up as a “fireworks show,” or as I like to call it, a green/cyan/magenta mess, which unlike Luminance noise, is much more distracting and disruptive in a photo.

Next, having read various reports that the 7D lags the D300s in Auto-focus (AF) performance, I jumped to page 13 of the review. There I see that “[t]he EOS 7D’s Auto Focus performs very well under any condition. The camera locked the focus very quickly with with Canon’s standard and Ultrasonic lenses alike…” More glow. Unfortunately, DPR doesn’t compare one camera’s performance to its competitors (admittedly a difficult test to perform), so the closest thing to an objective performance measurement is DPR’s statement that “we have used the EOS 7D at a sports/action event and even with our limited sports photography skills got a decent proportion of usable shots.” It appears we will have to sort this out at the OK corrale. Let the best forum arguer win.

All in all, it appears that Canon have done a very nice job with the 7D. They even get “per-pixel sharpness kudos” from DPR, something the Canon 50D failed to garner — even though I think I’ll understand Quantum physics before I understand what “per-pixel sharpness” means. For those of us who have cast our lot with Nikon, we should hope — with some confidence based on Nikon’s track record — that Canon’s latest offering will be a clarion call to Nikon that they must respond, and soon. No doubt, Nikon has been working on their counter-punch since before the 7D’s unveiling.

I have been meaning to try out ViewNX, version 1.5, and today, I finally got the chance to take it out for a spin. As is my usual practice, I uninstalled my previous version (1.3), rebooted my PC, and installed version 1.5, then rebooted again. It’s just a little ritual I’ve developed after reading about the troubles people run into with ViewNX installations.

So far, everything seems to work as expected. A bug I reported previously with version 1.4 appears to have been resolved. Here’s the blurb at the Nikon USA download site: “An issue that sometimes resulted in decreased resolution, depending upon the pixel count entered, of image copies created using the ‘Convert Files’ function has been resolved.”

At any rate, no huge improvements with this version, but for those of us who have gotten some mileage out of ViewNX, a few minutes to upgrade seems to be a safe if not worthwhile effort.

Updates:
Nov-04-2009 — More problems are being reported with this latest version, but for the Mac OS.

Nov-02-2009 — At least one user is reporting problems with operation under a 64-bit environment.