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Digital Photography Review with DPReview Panel

And now I'm very excited to be joined by four wonderful gentlemen from dp review, if you guys know the site, you know exactly how knowledgeable these folks are, and we are here to talk kind of about the recent trends in gear and exactly where we've been, maybe a little bit about where we're going, and so I would love first to start out guys want you just introduce yourself, let's, start right here in the good and the I'm dale baskin, I'm one of the editors over a digital photography review. I'm rishi sanyal, deputy and technical editor at dp review. I'm samuel spencer, studio manager at dp review. I'm richard, but for on one of the senior review is a dp review fantastic. So the way that we're going to do this, we are going to have we've got about four kind of main topics that we want to talk about throughout this hour, that we're going to be here, so I would love it if you guys would join us in the chat room. There's a chat button that is directly by the video player, jump in their sha...

re, your thoughts, and I can kind of read some of those as they come in, but also lived tow have your questions on the various topics that we are talking about as we tokyo so I'm going to be sort of moderating but allowing these guys to share their expert opinions and thoughts on the various subjects. So the first one ghez just in general do we even need yes solares anymore we're seeing the fearless cameras and the microphones authors this system kind of growing more and more being becoming really popular so do we as amateurs as professionals do we even need the solares anymore? Um it's a good question so yeah d s lars is you can see her significantly tend to be bigger than their marylise counterparts but they do still offer some advantages over marylise cameras. First of all there is the optical viewfinder for those who like shooting with optical viewfinders there's still some advantages in terms of shooting with the optical viewfinder in terms of being able to see the scene a cz you see it which can help for fast action stuff can also help in scenes that have a lot of contrasts and dynamic range where you might not be able to see that whole dynamic range through the electronic viewfinder of the lcd but you can see it through the optical viewfinder but probably the biggest arena where dslr they're still um for the most part better than their marylise counterparts is in auto focus the's dea solares have entirely separate module, so the light entering the lens actually bounces off of a mirror and then goes down into a autofocus module down usually at the bottom the camera and that module has an understanding of distance and depth um subject ist and so it can basically take a measurement and immediately figure out where to send the lens focus element to focus on that subject um so in that sense the these de solares tend to be faster at focusing as well as continuously focusing on subjects moving around so there's subjects moving towards a camera or away from the camera they have these predictive autofocus algorithms that can kind of predict where that subject will be at the time the shutters fired, so they're very good at that a lot of focus and uh marylise however eyes catching up and what we're starting to see on wireless cameras are on sensor phase detection elements basically these air elements on the image sensor itself that understand distance in depth so these cameras don't have that separate autofocus module they actually just use their image sensor to focus. Typically they'll do that just by looking at the image on the sensor and finding the point of maximum sharpness. But with these on sensor phase detection elements, they can also kind of understand how far away the subject is and jump to it, but they haven't quite caught up to the traditional models of these diesel ours first of all these on sensor elements that understand distance um collect very little light so because they're basically masked halfs of pixels, so because it clicked very little light, they stop working in the light, and so in low light, it just reverts back to just this this contrast detection of which hunts around to find the the the best focus, but one arena where the merlis cameras were actually really good at focus is that they can understand what to focus on because there's an image sensor in there that seeing the whole scene and taken that image sensor khun see faces it can detect faces if you identify that this is a subject I want to focus on, they can follow that subject around because it's basically reading the entire image off the image sensor, so they're really good at so it's, not a subject tracking, in other words, automatically moving the autofocus point to stay on the subject that you initially selected so in that in that sense, marylise has a potential advantage to offer, however, medias lawyers aren't just staying steady either. They're in fact, not cons have had a separate meeting sensor in the camera that also understands the scene it's, a low resolution image sensor of sorts that can try to understand what you initially focused on. Stick to that as well. Cannon is introducing it in their cameras they introduced in the one d x, actually and now it's in the seventy mark two and the upcoming five d s and this are a meeting sensor that also sees the scene and tries to follow the subject that you initially selected. So I think it's interesting in the context of what you've just presented here, we typically often tend to think of the dsr lars is more professional or more advanced cameras, and that gap is really narrowing. If we start looking at some of these muralist cameras, we're seeing that they're adopting some of the technologies of the performance characteristics I think we're very used to with the dsr lars and it's kind of ironic that we now see dslr is going back and trying to implement features that of where the fearless cameras really have strength, such as trying to identify the subject of the scene, you know? And if we acknowledge the fact that this camera was essentially designed around the concept of running film through it, there is this design that they're now going back and having to modify to do some of the things that the muralist cameras could do so I think that gap is definitely narrowing and the distinction between a mirrored camera and a mere lis cameras starting to get small very quickly, especially when you look at the fact that this kind of almost looks like a dslr yeah, it's scary how they do that? I don't think that's an accident just that just reminded me actually, well, yeah, because it's a form factor this worked, but a lot of people will walk into camera stores and pick up one of one of these guys and like, where is the face detection? Well, I can't automatically find faces and focus on it, so this one actually can using its meeting center, but a lot of yes, lars actually can't because they don't, they're not constantly scene the scene on the on an image sensor and finding your face the newer cameras can but that's somewhere inherently marylise cameras in your iphone for that matter start off doing well in terms of what that perception is. I know richard and I were having a conversation the other day about you know what people expect a camera to look like, particularly if your professional showing up for the job you don't show for a tank battle with a handgun, it maybe use a analogy and and if you show up to a say, a wedding with something like this and your wedding photographer this may be perfectly adequate these days to accomplish the job but there's this perception of your client that maybe it's not a you're not a pro if you have this on a richard I don't know if you have additional thoughts on that the thing I find really enlightening was I was at a friend's friend's wedding a few years ago on the photographer covering the event a chap called martin phelps was using to big nikon cameras for most of the most of the actual ceremony itself but during the reception suddenly he pulled out a few g x one hundred on because it's a much more a smaller, more discreet camera he was able to sort of dart in and out and get all of these candid photos but I really don't think he would have been able to get get if he'd have been just that bit more visible by having huge dear salah held up in front of him on dh you know, looking at the photos afterwards I have no no memories of him actually appearing during the reception but the photos suggests that he was essentially everywhere so although you know although the perception is you need to d s a lot to do certain jobs, there are times when actually a different type of camera may may even let you do things that you can't be with us along exactly and with a dslr you know, in most cases you gotta look through the viewfinder and if you're out shooting people when you bring a huge camera like this up to your eye that sort of puts the camera between you and a subject it kind of makes the interaction of a bit less candidate makes them aware of their photograph is being taken and one of the advantages of mirror lis cameras is they're starting to put in elektronik shutters that making zero noise whatsoever and then if you combine that with something like a tilt screen, suddenly you can you can hold the camera down low and not bring it up to your eye and break any sort of interaction between you and your subject and I've found with cameras like the a six sounds in the extra one I can shoot from the hip because the a f systems they're so smart and can use face detection of things like that I don't need to bring the camera up to my eye and make people aware that I'm shooting or anything like that and then add in the silent shutter and things like my sister's wedding ceremony coming up I'm probably going to choose the cameras electronic shutters so that there's not sugar noises happening when they say and now you may kiss the bride or anything like that watching the hearing, the discussion where the technology is kind of coming together whereas the perception is still kind of separating them for different uses natasha go taelon and one of the person we're wondering for someone that photographs running children, babies and families most of the time what do you recommend? Because that does kind of combine a lot of those issues where it sounds like marylise is getting really good at recognizing those moving and predictive movement but then you're also dealing with that kind of wanting to hi and so what your thoughts on that great question and I think a couple of years ago all of us probably would have looked to the center and dslr immediately and one of the trends we're seeing is these meritless cameras in many cases there's so much smaller, more compact and yet carry a lot of that same functionality and I'm thinking of the example of shooting running kids you know, one of the things that make a huge difference is really good face detection if you've got a busy birthday party with cakes and clowns and whatever and then there's kids these marylise cameras have great face detection systems that can zero in on those kids very fast and in some cases and I'm pointing to this one right here this is a camera by samsung it's the the samsung annex wanted scott screaming fast auto focus so you're not going to miss a shot for lack of auto focus speed so I think the variety of cameras that can accomplish the goal that you just described is so much whiter than it was a couple of years ago were not limited to a subset we really have a whole selection of different technologies that can get us there. I mean, actually on that subject that's exactly what I was trying to do over the christmas vacation I have I have a niece and my fiancee also has a niece and so we just spent two weeks with these, you know, eight month nine month old babies and for fun I took a dea ten and in a six thousand with me on a holiday to kind of try to pit the two against each other which is just, you know, a few years ago would have sounded crazy but there I love shooting fast primes I had a thirty five one four on the ten and twenty four one eight on the a six thousand does really trying to focus on the's babies just so erratic I mean, there you focus on them there they're moving back forth left right so that they present one of the most challenging autofocus in areas for cameras and with the great thing about cameras with subject tracking which both the dude ten and a six thousand do pretty well is that I would initiate focus on my nieces I and then just have the camera follow my niece and her eye around his automatic it's like the right point to stay on on her and it was pretty amazing at how like the three d a tender is the night cons have this mode called three d tracking which is basically three dimensional tracking is that'll automatically picked the right half point on the x and y two d access to stay on the subject and also tracked their death which is the three dimensional part of it but so of the a six thousand and it's it's crazy how well the a six thousand actually kept up it would I mean sometimes with the baby just crawling towards me going across the frame there were times a six thousand actually got me a certainly hire hit rate however as soon as the light levels dropped and I'm talking about just even like indoor lighting not not too low light just into relating um this camera typically tends to slow down and that's again because you're on sensor phase detection elements not face detection ends up you know, not working in low light and at that point it slows down and and they're the dea slurs we're going to have an advantage just in one of the intangibles you have when you compare to cameras like this is especially with kids the camera you have with you is the camera that's going to get the picture of your kids and if you can get ninety percent of the functionality of that camera in a camera this size that will fit in a purse or backpack there's a lot going for you as you're going to have it when you need it exactly all right so I think that we are time is flying this is really e really love this discussion people in terms of getting a lot of discussion in here too but I think that we want to go on and talk about about something that has been really kind of revolutionizing a lot of the video which is four k video this is something that just even like a little bit ago wasn't on anything and now it's suddenly seems like everything has four k video so question is what what is possible now that it is so ubiquitous? Yeah and I'm not even sure it's what is possible now that makes it so ubiquitous is it to me for k is a little bit like the new papers well I was going to say new mega pixel race but it's really not but new mega pixel race it's interesting when we compare this to how high def video eventually made his way onto cameras like this it was a fairly slow progression you know we have seven twenty we had ten eighty and those air kind of baby steps along the way to four k I think four k appeared in some of these cameras faster than most of us anticipated, we knew it was coming, but the speed at which it showed up in, you know, d s lars and mirrlees cameras and cellphones has really, really astounded us, but the neat thing is it it really represents a interesting convergence between still photography and and videography, which have evolved from very different places and are converging very quickly and it's opening up new possibilities for how we use the cameras, right? You know, just the other day I was actually filming richard in a video we're doing about a product, and we shot him, you know, again, I'll point to this one because we haven't the using of the samson and it's one, and we're shooting four k video out on the deck of our building while he talked about this camera and I took it inside later, and I started pulling single frames off of this video and realizing I could print these at eight by ten I could easily make eight by ten prints from a single frame grab. And if you think about the implications of that for the way people approach photography, you know, could you potentially shoot sports in four k video? And as long as you've got a fast enough shutter speed, potentially get usable frames where you could literally pick any frame from the entire video and publish it in your magazine it really changes the definition of what a camera becomes so let's talk a little bit about the shutter speed considerations for for stills and video yes, I mean there is something of a tension between the two because if you're shooting sports and fast moving action, you'll tend to want to use a nice fast shutter speed to ensure that you sort of freeze the action. However in video whether they realize it or not, most audiences are very, very sensitive to the shutter speed at which you shoot the footage, so if you shoot twenty four p footage is a lot of we should wear a lot of cinemas shots you'll tend to use a shutter speed of one forty eight of a second or around the fiftieth on a stills and movie camera. As soon as you start using the really fast shutter speeds that required for sports, you can end up with very sort of staccato almost stop motion like video, which is which is like a gladiator yeah, a struggle public that basically s oh, there is there is that that hurdle still overcome on dale? I don't know whether you know whether you have any thoughts about whether that's just a creative choice or whether you think audiences will adapt to that look or maybe they'll be a technological it's interesting because I think some people in the film production business are trying to get audiences used to the idea of faster frame rates and shutter speed and under the classic is the recent hobbit movies were filmed, I believe was in forty eight frames per second. Audiences actually didn't respond that well, too, in a lot of places because we've been trained for one hundred years, that cinema looks a certain way and it's amazing how doubling the frame rating, cutting the shutter speed and half really throws that off for us when we suddenly feel like we're watching a soap opera. So I think there is a distinctive set of looks that we achieved to get with motion picture just for general acceptance of our audiences. Now, I think one of the things that's entirely possible is, you know, all of these cameras, they're just collecting data off the center there's nothing to say that we couldn't have cameras a few years from now. They collect two different sets of data using electronic curtains, one which has, you know, fast shutter speed, equivalence of one has more cinematic shutter speed equivalence, and I'm potentially seeing a time when they could accomplish both from the same footage is you could upgrade pretty much in software algorithmic lee, take high shutter speed shots and then look att. The adjacent frames and figure out which way the motion is going and introduce motion blur and each frame to simulate a slower shutters entirely possible that you someone's working on. Yeah, that there's already applications that do that and you can kind of tell if you're used to looking at motion it's been interpolated motion, but this will only get better on already, manufacturers are starting to include tools to help with grabbing still thirty four caven footage. Panasonic has what it calls for k photo mode, which I think bias is towards using faster shutter speeds. It frees you from being stuck with a sixteen by nine aspect ratio, so you don't have to, you know, you don't have to shoot everything wide screen, so using effectively the four k capability for sensor to grab high resolution images really quickly. And then it's got a load of tools you khun as you're shooting video, you can tap the shutter button to leave a marker for yourself. So when you're reviewing your footage, you think, ok, that the key moment was around there somewhere, so I'll jump back to their, you know, nudge one off one or two frames back, that's the shot, I wanted a hit, okay, and it produces. Produces an image with collects? If so, you've got all the shooting data there, which is another thing that I think one of the things that's really important to acknowledge when we talk about four k, however, is that all four k is not created equal. It depends on what kind of bit right you have, what kind of kodak you're using and there's a lot of different factors right down to the imaging sensor and as a videographer, who's done a lot of motion picture working editing I would much rather have really good high quality ten, eighty footage than mediocre four k footage as my starting material. Now that said, we've got three cameras here, the sony a seven ask the's samsung and its one and the panasonic gh for all of which can record four k video in a very small compact package and they're outstanding. You're really not making much of a compromise, you know it's not what you're going to get from a red camera if you're shooting red ron tended video, but considering the cost to get into this and the size of the the package particularly the sony a seven s it has a full frame dslr center is extremely light sensitive and a sam and I were testing at the other day in our lab and you can get kind of usable four k video recorded out to something like the ademas sugen at ice, a one hundred thousand and it's just blew us away to see that. And the funny thing is, we popped up excuse me, popped it up on screen, it looked good, we thought it was great, and then I realized I had it a quarter resolution, and then we went back and looked at it a full resolution and realize it looked even better. So it's amazing that you're not making a lot of compromises to get good four k video on these cameras good time to mention also that you know, you just said that all you know, four k video is not created equal, same goes for ten adp actually, just cause you have a ten eighty p mode on your camera doesn't mean that it's actually recording video at the full ten adp resolution a lot of time. What ends up happening is it read the camera reads every other line of the sensor, and so you get lower, effective resolution and worse noise performance because you're you're literally collecting less light. But these guys, if I remember correctly there, always reading the full sensor right and so it's the image, quality and video on these three particular cameras there's just astounding starts it's good to see you, good to see manufacturers really trying tio read the whole sensor and get the high resolution loughner's performance. It was like to mention one danger for k that I've come across space. Thirty seconds is over a gigabyte on some of these cameras I met with one d c was just a monster, and you had to buy a very expensive compact flash cards to get it to work and things like that. And so it's a question of, you know, is it better in the situation to be shooting stills, or is it better to be having the ability to pull your frame later on? Because when you do that, you're going to use up whole heck of a lot of data in a very short period of time? Well, your point show gun here, the ademas slogan it records direct toe ssd drives, you can put a terabyte sst driving here, and if you're recording out to four k programs, you're talking about five hundred megabits per second data rate. Yeah, I mean that from bob rae and a couple of people also wanted no photographers were focused on capturing that finding moment with the ability of the new four k cameras toe pull high resolution still, images from his video captures our dslr and portrait shooters facing a huge change, and so the think the theory that a lot of people are saying is they hear about this ability is that people are just going to stick their camera out, walk through the event for a few hours to record the whole wedding and then just pull out the images. So what should people be scared about? This should still photographer to be scared about this? Should they be excited on dh? The data considerations especially how does focus their affect her into that? You know, you shouldn't be frightened of this. This is a new opportunity on ball, so I think anyone who's, anyone who shooting professionally will realize the moment doesn't necessarily happen unless you put yourself in the right position unless you've engaged with subject in the right way, you know, we still need to create the conditions they give you the moment, and I said photographer knows how to do that I mean, compositionally you have to think about it, you have to actually before we even see the ability to just pull any still out of aa four k video. The auto focus capabilities we're going to have to advance is well to make sure that you can that your mailing focus as you're taking the four k video and technologies like on sensor faces action as well as cannons, dual pixel f, which we see in the seventy d and the seventy mark two technologies like that are really going to help because the olympics layoff allows you to continuously focus as your recording video, and it does so very well. So that's gonna be? I think, if we think back to when auto focus was first introduced on solares, there was a concern that suddenly are well, now suddenly everyone can be a sports photographer. Well, you know, no amount of technology has suddenly allowed everyone to be a sports photographer there's still all sorts of skills that no amount of technology can suddenly replaced. I'm sure I was going to say, but to give us an idea of where we're going, and I know this is something that we talked about before the show started. If you look at the high end cinema cameras today, say a red epic dragon right arm of the exact specs off the top my head, but you're able to capture roughly one hundred twenty frames per second at six k and each individual frames shooting, and the red raw format gives you about twenty megapixel wrong, not a j pig, but twenty megapixel raw file. You can push and pull and modify, just like you can a ross single file from any of these cameras and when you're talking about that kind of potential that's a game changing technology but if you look at all of the cameras we have here particularly the ones that shoot four k video we're really looking at a feature set that was the high end cinema cameras just a few years ago that would have cost tens of thousands of dollars and so I'm very excited about these changes because we can literally see the future it is there now it's just not migrated down to the types of cameras that we're dealing with here so where do you see that then if what are we looking at when we see that tended you know, tens of thousands of dollars cameras one of the features that you do foresee coming to the process umer professional market soon and I think one thing that videographers are constantly banging on these companies for is not necessarily higher resolution but better color depth better compression kodak's saving space to sam's point yeah generally one of the things you give up when you're shooting four k video on a camera like this is you're really getting a color essentially what you're getting is a stream of jpeg images oftentimes with key frame you never so many frames sometimes all intra but you don't have the ability to go in and edit the footage like you could a raw file from a single frame in most of these cameras once that ability comes along it it really opens the doors to it's a really easy post processing the danger now is if we don't get it right if we get the color balance off if the exposure is off, you've essentially cooked the result into your footage and it's hard to change this also just a sort of a computational problem is basically one of the things that has enabled for k and smaller cameras is, you know, good heat dissipation and processing power to be ableto just handle that data also read the sense of really quickly over and over again so all these things will be solved as vz increases in computational power than you know we might even get like full ross streams and video recorded where you can do all the things you do with ross stills next subject you actually mentioned it earlier it is the megapixel race we're seeing more and more cameras just increasing the number of megapixels and that's a good thing to put on the box but among photographers a lot of people see that as basically leading to a loss of quality more megapixels equals lower image quality. So question is if that's so why do we constantly see more and more megapixels being added? Well, first of all, it's just not true that's a problem? Yeah, the megapixel myth is called is um it's this this idea that image quality decreases with increasing resolution of sensors is it's just not true. Think about the fact that a twenty four megapixel a psc sensors like the one in the six thousand um, equates to a higher than like around fifty four megapixel full frame since sir, then you start to realize that you know, these high resolution, full frame sensors or not that it's not that high of a pixel density, because we're already seeing that sort of pixel density in a six thousand a d a ten thirty six megapixel full frame sensor is essentially a thirty six megapixel full frame camera in a sixteen megapixel a psc camera in one. So there are all these advantages to having those extra pixels in terms of cropping ability in terms of printing large, and this idea that the higher megapixel images are noisier. Um, it's a little misleading because, yes, at the pixel level, a high resolution camera might look noisier than a lower resolution camera, but we don't view images at the pixel level, right? We view them either scaled to your monitor either is a print, so we view them what we call normalized. So if you take thirty six megapixel full frame image and sixteen megapixel full frame image, and then you view them at the same exact size, they're not going to be really. Much if any disadvantages to thirty six megapixel image because when you re sample and downsides that image to the same resolution as a little resolution full frame sensor you basically automatically do some noise reduction and ultimately it's the size of the sensors that matters the most because um how noisy and images basically depends on how much light you collected and so a larger sensor collects more light than a smaller sensors so it's really the sensor size that matters if you have a high resolution full frame sensor in a low resolution full frame sensor they both almost captured the same amount of light because of technologies in the micro lenses on the pixel that tried to get as much light into the pixels as possible. So even if you have more pixels the's sensors have these technologies that allow you to still capture almost the same amount of total light as a lower is the resolution full frame sense relying to capture so I'm all for more pixels you know the five gs claudius are fifty fifty three megapixel seamus sensors and give me fifty point six megapixels and effective resolution again there you have ah fifty megapixel full for a minute twenty two and a half megapixel cpsc camera in one and I think it's great the only thing that really actually one of the one of the trade offs here is the higher resolution censor the more data you're collecting and the more processing power you need you know, it's it's difficult to read out all those pixels really quickly so you are going to pay some frame rate costs in that sense, but against space issues david space really? I mean, people talk a lot about the mega pixel race, so I did a quick look att when the pixel counts of different sensor sizes increased on if you plot it, plus the trend line through than we realized that actually was we're pretty much with the exception of maybe four third size center were pretty much on trend. The megapixel racist never stopped there's never been a lull. We're still exactly where you'd expect us to be. In terms of trend, the improvements in sensor technology have meant that each year we can make senses with similar or better performance, but with more pixels. When rishi was saying that the new five d s no from callen will have will be fifty megapixel full frame sensors or but you could also think of him as being twenty two megapixel a b a c well, that's basically a seventy mark two so if you take the same image side by side and they've got same pixel level performance, then the one with the largest sense when you scale it down to view them in the same size to normalize them will be cleaner so so you know there's a perception of the mega pixel racist stopped? It just hasn't but also good but this is nothing necessarily to fear. So as the the sensors increase as the high pixel council increase, it seems like other aspects of the camera need to be changed as well. So what are some of the other things around the sensor that are being affected by that high pitch count? Well, at our studios scene, richard told me a story about when the g eight hundred eighty first came out thirty six megapixels and things like that are studios scene is lit with continuous light and so during the tests you know we're doing longer shutter speeds tio get the exposure is correct at lower I isos and there was a problem with shutter shock on that camera and they ended up having like the studio scene with strobes to get it at maximum sharpness. The d eight ten came out and introduced things like mirror lockup and it's elektronik front curtain shutter where the shutter moves out of the way and the exposures initiated electronically. Teo prevent any of the movement or anything like that from vibrating the sensor because we did a test on it actually less weaken showed that both the mirror and the shutter can impact sharpness when you're at such high resolutions and uh so we'll see how cannon does when the fifty two megapixel sensor comes out they are you have camera manufacturers are also addressing this by putting in technologies like the dea ten has a redesigned mirror mechanism to try and help the mirror shock or whatever you want to call it the seventy mark two from cannon as well as the five d s and five s are have different mirror mechanism as well that is motor driven so the idea here is to try to lessen the impact of that mirror going up and hitting the top and shaking your entire camera and shaking her image. Also cannon has introduced a number of what they're calling pre delays which is basically you khun set different preda weighs one eighth of a second one fourth of a second half a second not going also has its exposure delay which you can set one or two or three second delays basic. What that does is it introduces a delay between the mirror going up and the shutter firing so that allows thie vibrations from the mirror to dampen before the shutter is fired. But even then that's not always enough which is why the dea ten introduced elektronik front curtain so that gets sort of both the mirror as well as a mechanical shutters and sort of having a mechanical shutter open to initiate the exposure the shutter goes up with the mirror and then the exposures in the initiated electronically and the cannons can do that as well in live you so there are all these things that camera manufacturers have to do to ensure that you're getting the most out of that high resolution sensor otherwise, you know why I even make the high resolution sense if you're just going to blur the end and what we're discussing the mirror need to move out the way that might lead one to think that mere list then would have an advantage but the a seven r, which is also thirty, maybe thirty six mega pickles make thirty six let me try that again thirty six megapixel sensor it still has sugar shock issues and they haven't introduced things like electronic front curtain or anything like that for that camera needs are at least, but I think what's what's worth noting is that the high makes megapixel count in itself doesn't introduce these problems you know internal shake hasn't become suddenly become a problem or at least hasn't become any more problem equally the demands on lenses are becoming any higher. The problem is that we're seeing any floor or any vibration in much greater detail, so the challenge really is get, you know, being able to see the value of those extra megapixels because otherwise they will harm highlight all the inherent problems that you just couldn't you know you weren't looking in close enough to tell to see before that's a really good point, because it's it's, if you again normalization like what I was saying with noise, then downscale the image back to like a twenty megapixel image, you know, it's not going to look any worse because of shutter shocked that a twenty megapixel camera would've it's just that we can see at the full thirty six megapixels pixel level detail. On that point, you notice things like shutter shock and and lower resolving power lenses, and actually I wanted to finish this thought that sam brought up, which is theeighty seven r and these marylise cameras, so the a seven r would be fine if it can electronically initiated its exposure, which a lot of marylise cameras actually do so it's here? Actually, marylise cameras have potential advantage because they don't have a mirror to flip out of the way you've removed that from the equation is a potential source of shake, so it almost be whose marylise cameras, too, to take advantage of that and get rid of the mechanical shutter and always a initiate electronically. Because that way there's no source of shake when you initiate exposure, and in that sense, the marylise cameras again have a potential advantage and decide we love silent modes. Yeah I mean this is so like was great I mean this is not just an electronic first curtain you have to have actually two curtains you call one toe start the exposure and one two and the exposure most wireless cameras we've seen having electronic first curtain so it doesn't use the shutter to initiate so there's no source of shake but they still use the shutter to end the exposure which is ok you can shake the camera you wanted the end the exposure but fiske I actually has elektronik on both so I just took a photo take a photo and you can't even hear it which by the way is scary close toe how motion picture works right the shutter has not go up and down between each frame that's amazing. So when we were talking a little bit before this you guys told me a little bit how this affects how you actually have to test these cameras like do you want to talk just briefly about that? Because it was it was kind of funny yeah that's normal normally it's single shot with a two second time and everything like that you know so that you don't bump the camera everything like that d a ten you have to turn on elektronik front curtain shudder and you have to turn on a two second delay so that the mayor flips out of the way and it waits before moving to shut her out of the way and then initiating the exposure. So there's a there's a big list of settings that you got to make sure that you have set on a d ate tend to really get maximum sharpness when you're on a tripod, shooting a studio scene with a drag shutter and, indeed, using a good quality heavy tripod sometimes weighted down the camera stand we were using previously simply wasn't stable enough to absorb and to lock the camera down on dh help to prevent these prevent this vibration sort of propagating through the camera, so it's pretty challenging things t get the most building in what is arguably the most exciting construction zone and the city of seattle. You guys basically around the corner from us in there, five cranes within a stone's throw distance. So you get that you were mentioning, like somebody flushes the toilet, moral on the wrong floor of florida and suddenly it's affecting the way that you're perceiving exactly when we were doing the shutter shock tests were using along two hundred millimeter lens in the back of the studio on the a seven r, and I was standing behind it, watching the rear screen hands off the camera, everything like that and there's just still constant little vibrations from age back system construction, who knows what? But in terms of changing the way we have the test cameras it's also in ways changing the equipment that we have to use the olympus o m g m five two introduced a forty megapixel sensor shift mode uh end we try to standardize the lenses that we use in our studios cnn so in that mode we use the olympus forty five millimeter one point eight prime it's a great lens very affordable but in the forty mega pixel mode it seemed a little soft and so then we pulled out a unicorn of the lens that costs somewhere in the absurd realm of over a thousand dollars for micro for thirds that produce the beautiful shot and so it's changing the equipment that we have to use to which could change if somebody wants to use that mode in the real world someone who can't afford like a knock dacron unicorn video site as well because our studio seen historically has been what can we point a high resolution make a pixel camera at that we can start to discern tiny details well with ten eighty video the whole thing is blurry right so you four k is starting to get closer but we're now having to start thank you know how do we test the resolution of something like four k video when it's really a different set of problems that are being solved in in every frame it's also interesting because like you we don't we also don't want to just do a completely lab tests that is irrelevant to real role usage, right? Like the fact that with this camera I have to get to make sure we have no source of shape we have toe put in this motor the first button press locks up the mirror second button press initiates a delay and then fires electronically and then and then stops with the mechanical shutter that's not really aware person is going to use this in the real world, right? So we are wear one of the one of the test we're doing now is actually testing all these mose and testing them at a whole bunch of different shutter speeds try to give you an idea of what kind of shutter speed you need to avoid the's sources of shake if you want to maximize your image, quality and resolution and typically people are used to this whole one over focal length shutter speed rule and, you know, with cameras of this resolution, you know we're finding not very surprisingly that you have to use ah higher shutter speed than just following the one over off focal length rule and that's valuable information we're getting out of these sorts of tests to try to help people figure out what they should do in the real world to maximize the sharpness out of these cameras I think one of the things that is important to remember is we and when I say we I don't mean us but I mean everyone who's a consumer of cameras is to a certain degree spoiled by how good cameras have becoming honestly every camera on this table is a great camera if you're using it for the right thing and so one of the ways we need to adapt our testing to make the tests more relevant is to get out do more in the real world no great example we've been testing the the five to down there that richard has way went out last week and richard did a bunch of mountain biking and we tested the camera in real world conditions with different kinds of optics different types of support and we're trying to give them more real world example of how the camera works in the field because I think both have their value you know it's good to know the technical limitations the exact technical specs but then how does that apply to may when I'm out shooting my and by the way if you want to see richard mountain biking and I understand it's a very good mountain bike to got a dp review dot com and it should be near the top of the page right now perfect I got a couple quick questions that I want to hit just on general subjects before removing the kind of our final wrap up first of all this camera that you were holding up that was the almost completely silent one christine sergio was wondering which one that wass that is the sun ae eighty seven s one e a seven s they understand with quite a few quite a few of the current generation of marylise cameras do have the full electronic shot a mode so it can be operated totally silent the yeah, the empire to the explanation nancy I believe thie xy one graphite edition introduced the elektronik shutter mood closing yeah, completely something to keep in mind that actually this is something we're trying to look into to is that when you do use a fully elektronik shudder for both initiating and ending your exposure we have noticed in some cases I know with the seven us you actually increase your noise levels so if you're looking for the lowest noise low light performance you might not want to be shooting in philly elektronik curtain road good no cake apologised kind of quick ones I know that obviously people can go to deeper view dot com to check out in depth reviews on some of these grocer wants to know some of your thoughts on the cannon five d s and five s our which has of course, the fifty point six megapixel sensor when do you think it's suitable to change to those types of high pixel cameras were suitable, suitable to change to the position. What is it they would won't make you want to advance to that level? Um, well, I find that the high resolution count it's really help in when you go to post, process your your files there times where I want to actually crop rotate, change my field of view a little bit, and having the extra pixels really helps because you get a high resolution image in the end, even after you've significantly cropped. Um secondly, I I like to print large, so, you know, you, especially when you shoot landscapes, you know, landscape photographers will literally go to the same spot one hundred times or more until you get that one, you know, perfect sunrise or sunset with the amazing lighting, because that's, just not something you can create in photo shop, you know, the really nice lighting and those conditions, and, um, you know, after all that effort to get that one shot, you really don't want to go back, you know, months or years later and be like, man, I wish that were a little high resolution so that I could print out larger and so it's, just nice to have that data I mean, as we go forward, t this realm of computational photography, where you captured a lot of rich data and then you create the image you want out of it. The more information you start off with, the better just the more flexibility you have, the more future proof it is, even if you're not using the full resolution at its native size. If you don't scale it, you're essentially over sampling the scene, which means you you're likely to be you know you've captured more data, but also it reduces the risk of the risk of error of moray of other other aberrations that, again, too impact your image. So since the technology allows you to do it, I mean, there are some kinds of photography that will particularly benefit from the resolution now, but since the technology is available that you can shoot these resolutions well, why not? And when you're cropping, it also gives the ability to if you're shooting something various monet have a razor thin debt, the field even at five six, which is in many cases limited diffraction. You wouldn't want to stop down too much further toe reid start losing sharpness. It gives you the ability to pull out and increase your depth of field and then crop in on something really small without having to stop down so far that you start to lose sharp it's like you get extra, your lenses actually get extra reach because you can crop as long as your lenses actually do have very high resolving power and allow you to get the detail out of those of those pixels let's talk a little bit about the recent past in the near future so first of all I would love for each of you to kind of share what's one of the there's been a lot of cameras that have been released in the past couple months maybe the last quarter so what's your favorite what do you like about it in the last couple months? May well, go down the line it's you I started this and you know, I could probably pick half the cameras on this table that I'm really excited about one that really really jumps out at me and and partially because I've been testing at the last couple of months is this camera here this is the samsung and x one and it's kind of interesting for me to shoot the samsung because I think I'm like a lot of photographers I don't historically associate samsung with high end professional quality cameras and this is really the first one I've used after using most of the other types on the table here and it's it's interesting what samsung has done with this they put a stake in the ground and they basically tried to best every other camera on this table in every category in which it competes whether it's the fast auto focus issues fifteen frames per second in continuous shooting mode it has amazing four k video and I'm not convinced yet that it actually does better in every category than every camera on this table but considering that this is a relatively new business for panasonic, excuse me for samsung and they've jumped into it too feet first into the pool this is a very impressive camera and they've got some very nice optics that go along with it so the samsung annex one if you haven't shot with samsung cameras before and you're doubtful I would say it's worth the effort to go down to a camera shop, pick one up and try it because you may be impressed and coming up is the annex five hundred absolutely which is going to offer a lot of that in a smaller mirror lists style of experience is you're quite quite often confusing that with a dslr practically because its foreign factors so simple it's worth noting that we've mentioned this in the context of a dslr and I didn't even think to mention that it's a miracle is camera because I treat it like a dslr form factor. It looks like the form factor is very good but one of the things that really stands out about this camera is the elektronik viewfinder is hands down one of the best I've used and I think there's been challenges with e v f sir elektronik viewfinders is they've evolved over time the thing that makes this one amazing other than the fact that this is really bright and chris is there's essentially zero lag so the effect that we're used to on electronic viewfinder for what's going on out there and what's going on up in your eye, our separation by a significant portion of time this doesn't happen on this camera, and so it just feels like you're looking not quite through an optical viewfinder but close enough approximation that you really stop worrying about it that's often, yeah, I would actually say even though I personally on a dea ten I love its resolution and dynamic range probably one of the cameras I'm most excited about in terms of ah very well rounded camera that a lot of people will appreciate is the nikon d seven fifty and this is a full frame dslr and a pretty small body as you can see um and it has just a fantastic twenty four megapixel sensor in here with incredible dynamic range incredible low light performance and its autofocus system is it is fantastic it's one of those systems that combines a traditional phase detection may of module here in the bottom of the camera along with data from a ninety one thousand pixel metering sensor that understands the scene and tries to do face detection and contract your subjects really well and automatically pick one of its fifty one a half points just stick to your subject which works really well for shooting fast crimes including probably my favorite lens which is the signal thirty five one four lines on there to get those shots sharp shots and focus even though at one point for it's it's a very well rounded cameras autofocus system works down every single point works down to minus three e v s is very very low light so it'll continue to focus in low light and yeah it's just just fantastically well rounded camera uh this is a camera that I both love and hate I love the x one hundred system it's a beautiful classic well made simple enjoyable to use camera and I own an x one hundred s which is why I hate the x one hundred t because every little thing that I I could complain about on the x one hundred s was addressed and made better with the x one hundred tea and that's what makes it so great it takes it took a great experience and just improved it just the right amount it fixed problems with focusing using the brilliant optical view fighter by introducing that little range finder window quote unquote that pops up and just nicer controls everything like that it just makes me mad that I bought the x one hundred as too soon for anyone not familiar with the model names that's the fujifilm yes, one hundred three dimensional fuji there actually was attempted to fight some of the x one hundred t because it is a lovely camera to use, but for the last couple of weeks have been shooting with the olympus of mdm five too on dh the thing that catches everyone's eyes it offers a forty mega pixel mode so low it's only got a sixteen megapixel sensor it can, it can rattle through eight different positions it'll it'll shoot eight shots in very quick succession on, then combine those images to produce a very high resolution a single image so forty megapixels and j peg sixty four megapixels and roll but weirdly actually that's the thing I find least interesting about the camera I mean it's it's an incredibly clever mode and there are certain types the photography particularly studio in landscape work that that's grateful but actually the thing I like about it is very much like the ex one hundred t olympus has gone back and looked at the m five and looked at what users were asking for looked at what they could polish compared to the existing camera. Eso whether it's the fact it just feels a bit more solid in my hand whether it's the fact that you know has a microphone socket on a flip out monitor and consume much better quality video little tweaks to the options available for the different function buttons, everything is just being tweaked and polished and improved andi viewfinder much very much like the one in the next one it's much higher resolution very fast refresh rate just everything is being made that bit nicer. Andi, I really like the p m five s o the empire to it's going to take something tio get it out of my hands to be honest, yeah, now I'm kind of feeling like sam because I about the m five past six months and I'm kind of annoyed of myself. That's ok, but have you enjoyed those six loved its defense has to camp, so yeah, so for those of us who do want to have a little bit of sadness as far as what we've bought recently, let's talk about what is coming out soon love to hear what you guys are looking forward to the most. Maybe this kind of our final question before we do a little bit of from of some other, I think, setting up sure why I think one that I'm very excited about and again having than working with the samson annex one here a lot recently, I keep referring to it as a dslr because it really is a big dslr type camera and it's great for that, but one of the standout features of this camera is it's amazing video quality what's coming out is the samsung and x is that the five hundred the index five hundred which is essentially this camera but in a smaller form factor it doesn't have the the optical viewfinder and the mirror prison faux bump here it's a much smaller package probably more on par with maybe something like the sony camera possibly even smaller than that and yet it has all of those capabilities for shooting high rez four k video that make this camera so attractive for a videographer price difference huge price difference right? And I think the mx five hundred is around eight hundred dollars that I forget, but one difference is you can't stream four k video on external recorded the elephant in the room or roll that's what object on the desk thing that looks like a big gps unit is actually I think we mentioned earlier but this is a atmos ademas show gun which can record four k video out from the cameras and a lot of them actually do give better color or better rate when they feed out to the extra recorders you know, I I'm probably most excited right now by what we're hoping to see from sony uh you can read the rumor mills tio kind of guessing what's coming next that's all that's all we know is that you know too but what we've seen from sony recently has been really impressive there really I mean, they're trying to bite into the market, right? That's dominated by canon and nikon and sony has been doing a lot to try to offer a lot of photographers, and so this is the a seven to hear and it's it's, a full frame camera within body image stabilization in the package this small. So where hoping hopefully to see this and in future cameras from sony in and this camera itself is a is a really it's, just fantastic in the fact that it offers full frame image quality and something this small I love I love a lot of trips of photography, but I mainly like landscapes and wedding photography on dso I want a camera that can kind of do a lot, so focus really well as well as have a lot of dynamic range in a really good quality sensor, and also I like to travel and I want something that small, so basically I want it all on and then and this it's really what they're trying to do here, they're sony's autofocus technologies, they're iterating on or really, really fantastic we're seeing that in here to where? It uses that image sensor to try to understand what to focus on and then uses on sensor face detection elements to quickly go and focus on them and improvements there making there that we see actually in the a six thousand what sony's calling forty focus which is really just three focus continuous in continuous mode is really impressive and if they can solve the problem of being able to continue to focus in the light, I think we're going to be very excited by what they're what they're gonna make the future well and we have consumers only win when more people can enter that race and really start challenging each other to do more and better with samsung and sony, they're forced to innovate fantastic, I'm really excited about the cannon five d s and s r not necessarily because I'm excited about fifty megapixels or anything like that. I'm more excited about getting to use some of the new cannon glass that's coming out to I've been using the sixteen to thirty five I s lens and it's a massive improvement over the old one the old one was really mostly only usable in the center as you got to the edges of with that, but this one they fixed that and they added a really brilliant ice system I got a sharp shot at a third of a second the other day handheld which is just unheard of and then they also have the eleven to twenty four two eight isn't it's enough for a cz well but incredibly wide and I'm sure that's going to be a beautiful lens as well and I shot can infer at my previous job for a number of years and I picked up the seventy mark to recently with that lovely little twenty four of millimeter paying cake on and you know, I just felt really good to use cannon again so I'm really excited to kind of see you know how things go for them this year that's correct I think for me it's probably going to be the thie the long promised pentax full frame camera pentax has a history of making really nice photographers cameras with really well positioned controls they take a very sort of traditional approach to the design of their cameras on dh frankly, any competition, any additional competition in the full frame space I think is interesting on also it's nice to be nice to see a company responding to its its user base because a lot of people have bean, you know, asking for a full frame pantex dear slough off a long time so it's good to see the under the under the new owners rico that that's that's gonna happen but I think to be honest, if you look at any of these systems I really enjoy the fuji film x syria's I'm quite a big fan of mike four thirds a lot of manufacturers have bean doing really interesting things on each generation has bean has been better than the last whether it's in terms of the lenses that promised on road maps or you know why will what's going what's, the next generation of this technology is going to look like I think I think they were going to be a thief, cameras that we have today better than they've ever seen. But tomorrow I e I want to thank everybody for coming here. And it's been great here and there. Very, very knowledgeable thoughts on this. Maybe let's talk briefly just about the site. Maybe tell folks where they can go to find you guys and even more info from you. Well, I think the obvious places go to www. Dot dp review. Dot com it's digital photography review. I believe we are the world's biggest camera website there's discussion forums, there's, news articles, there's camera reviews have I missed anything, guys, and we have well, for more on the questions we got, we had a lot of people coming in and asking, should I get this one or this one for this thing should get this one that's where guys go, they do an amazing job at that