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Quote: The £3k price tag
I honestly can't see it staying at that level when the excellent Nikon D800 is quite a bit cheaper.
Well I've a fair bit of dosh tied up in L lenses, but that built in inertia aside in this sector of the market, I can see the 5DIII ultimately being absolutely mullahed by the Nikon camera, particularly if the [albeit now a bit closer] price differential remains.
Quote: That's not necessarily all bad news because it means the gear you already own doesn't compare so unfavourably with newer models.
Well it took Canon the best part of 4 years to come up with a replacement for the 5D Mk II. And even that has had a lukewarm reception, with (one suspects) few Mk II owners rushing out to replace their existing camera.
So, yes perhaps the pace is slowing and we can all concentrate on taking photos again! 
Quote: That's not necessarily all bad news because it means the gear you already own doesn't compare so unfavourably with newer models.
Well it took Canon the best part of 4 years to come up with a replacement for the 5D Mk II. And even that has had a lukewarm reception, with (one suspects) few Mk II owners rushing out to replace their existing camera.
So, yes perhaps the pace is slowing and we can all concentrate on taking photos again!
Nope I wont be either ! we have two 5D2s and was eagerly awaiting the next step , as a wedding photographer the new 5D3 has little in the way of sweeteners for me especially at that price and at the moment as soon as funds allow I will be looking at purchasing another low shutter count 5D2 as a back up. I think they have produced a nice new line aimed at new wedding togs or those upgrading from crop sensor or high end amatuer bodies but very much doubt they have cornered as much of the market of exisiting 5D2s as they thought ( which is a really bad move considering how many of us there are )
Quote: The £3k price tag
I honestly can't see it staying at that level when the excellent Nikon D800 is quite a bit cheaper.
Well I've a fair bit of dosh tied up in L lenses, but that built in inertia aside in this sector of the market, I can see the 5DIII ultimately being absolutely mullahed by the Nikon camera, particularly if the [albeit now a bit closer] price differential remains.
I like the term "mullahed" - much more appropriate than "mullered". I guess it means being blown to smithereens rather than just being slammed into the back of the net.
The pace of sensor improvement has certainly slowed, but I don't think it's necessarily levelling off - it's awaiting the next big technological breakthrough. You can bet your life that there's stuff in the pipeline right now that is being developed for future production. I don't think we've yet seen these back-lit CMOS sensors in DSLRs.
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The pace of sensor improvement has certainly slowed, but I don't think it's necessarily levelling off - it's awaiting the next big technological breakthrough. You can bet your life that there's stuff in the pipeline right now that is being developed for future production. I don't think we've yet seen these back-lit CMOS sensors in DSLRs.
I recall reading somewhere an explanation of why backlighting sensors didn't offer much in terms of practical gain in larger formats, but to be honest I can't remember what the rationale was.
I don't imagine that development in imaging will stop - just that at the moment, with the present approach to light-gathering, it seems to have stalled. There is research going on at the moment into alternative paradigms - the Lytro stuff springs to mind, but there are others - which are still fairly nascent technologies. The door isn't going to shut on expanding the capabilities of image-making machines, but I think the sort of pipeline that's used for stills (which is possibly why we're seeing much more movement [no pun, etc] in terms of the motion-capture capabilities), seems to be approaching a number of physical limits for the current type of sensor/lens configurations.
On back lit sensors the relevance depends on the size of the pixel and also the micro lens design. for example on most SLR sensors it is true that there is pixel area lost to tracking connections to the sensors, but the micro lenses gather from a larger area than the pixel footprint so the light loss is small. On a smaller sensor like a compact camera the metallisation tracking widths are more significant WRT the pixel size and its not as easy to get the micro lens to gather the light that would miss the sensor.
So to my understanding it comes down to physical size of the pixel and micro lens performance/design as to whether back lit sensors offer a significant advantage or not.
The Nikon D800 seems to be the only DSLR which has captured any attention this year, so far. Not just because of its megapixels, but its all-round competence.
Canon's high-end efforts (5D3 and 1D X) have been relative damp squibs. Canon badly needs a 'blockbuster' to act as, what I believe is known, as a halo product. Or they could belatedly go mirrorless (with an EF-S mount), which is probably a better bet the way things are going.
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I haven't seen any direct comparisons of the 1Dx's high ISO output - doesn't seem to be up on DPReview yet.
I see maybe a stop [at best] improvement at ISO 25,600 in the 5DIII vs the MkII [in RAW, which is what matters IMO]. I see no improvement at all at higher ISOs between the D3s and D4 [and I'd hazard to say that's even if the latter's image was downsampled to 12mp].
The one stop higher maximum of the D4 is just a total joke SFAIC - I just can't see any scenario where anyone in their right minds would use that setting. So it remains to be seen what Canon can do in actually pulling something useful out of the bag at that setting with the 1Dx. Treating consumers to such overly ambitious or 'optimistic' settings is one thing - I think asking Pros to swallow such marketing bullshit could backfire... I hope it does - lessons need to be learned.
The output from the 1DX is certainly going to be interesting to see. I have a gut feeling its not going to be able to compete with the D4 on noise though, perhaps this is why we are seeing such huge delays to review samples being sent out etc. I really do hope I am wrong on this though.
Sensor development will undoubtedly progress significantly further with silicon chips, I still think we will see massive increase in resolution to well over the 150 and even 200 MP mark in full frame before it trails off. Some development will come in pixel binning so we the output will be a lot lower than the core resolution. If you look at sensor metrics from sites like DXO, Sensor Gen & Roger Clarke etc it becomes apparent that compact camera sensors actually perform closer to the predicted physical limits than APS-C or full frame sensors do. This suggest we will see quite big improvements in the pixel quality for the larger sensors as time passes.
There is also suggestion of graphene being a candidate as a substrate for CMOS and CCD sensors, who knows what advances will be made with this. We are still at a very early stage of development in imaging chips, to suggest it has stalled is nonsense. Progress may have hit a little plateau but it is still very much in keeping with Moore's Law and will be for the foreseeable future.
Just look at the speed of processors in your PC. They hit the 3Ghz mark a good 7 years ago yet performance has risen hugely in those years at the same clock speeds. People were predicting at the time that CPU's would stop improving along with Moore's law at this stage yet actual computing power has adhered very closely to Moore's predictions.
I'm sure the same will happen with imaging over the next 20 to 30 years! Hope so
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There is also suggestion of graphene being a candidate as a substrate for CMOS and CCD sensors, who knows what advances will be made with this. We are still at a very early stage of development in imaging chips, to suggest it has stalled is nonsense. Progress may have hit a little plateau but it is still very much in keeping with Moore's Law and will be for the foreseeable future.
Quote: Moore's law is a rule of thumb in the history of computing hardware whereby the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years.
(Wiki)
Care to explain how the 5DII>5DIII [almost four years] stacks up against Moore's Law?
You'd be a bit closer on the D700>D800, but then you'd have to conveniently 'forget' the D3x and the D7000 [which has a similar pixel density to the D800].
But more pertinently, Moore's Law is about performance. In terms of imaging performance it's a very long time since we've seen a doubling in either absolute resolution or sensitivity in a two year span. Arguably the only thing that's actually significantly improving at all at present are the processing pipelines, which are of course directly linked to what Moore was talking about in the power of shrinking transistors.
I'm sure we will see very exciting developments in imaging over the next few decades - but not by merely extending existing paradigms.
There are always going to be bumps along the path. The 5Dmk3 vs Mk2 does not hold up to Moore's law as far as direct performance increase goes BUT are you suggesting that a 4 year sampling window is wide enough to predict industry trends?
As with the CPU analogy where Moore's law has held more or less true there have been many bumps along the road. With the world economy in crisis over the last 3 years there is an inevitable slide in the R&D budgets for tech companies as well. One things for sure whatever trends or laws the industry follows it will throw up some staggering along the way. I think that the Nikon D800 just happens to be one of those. In time perhaps it will become a classic.
have a look at this link some more problems for the D800 and the D4
http://nikonrumors.com/2012/05/03/nikon-acknowledges-the-d4d800-lockup-issue-off...
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