Here’s something to chew on. If you don’t want to buy a new camera, you might alternatively think about what processing you need to make the old camera palatable. In that regard, older noisier cameras need decent denoise, and the good algorithms for that operation are really compute-intensive. My limited experience coding these intuits that CPU-based denoise can be made digestible (> 30sec), but GPU-based alternatives can cut that by an order of magnitude. If the majority of your old-camera images need denoise, you might at least be buying a GPU and selecting software that uses it.
My old D7000 would put me in that bucket. My “new” Z 6 not so much; I think I’ve only had one image from it so far that suggested denoise, and it was a salvage operation for a mis-calculated exposure. Otherwise, it’s pretty clean in the shadows, keeping my feeble hack software in business…
Yes, this a veiled PSA for vkdt. It only makes sense, load the image in the GPU from the gitgo, only pull it out for export after all the ops are done as GPU shaders. Well-worth the $300US investment for the card. The CAD software I use is on the cusp of adopting a GPU-based mesh library, which will knock-down my longish render times significantly.
I have a relatively budget-level GPU NVIDIA Corporation TU116 [GeForce GTX 1660] (rev a1)
and on a 4k monitor (3840x2160) vkdt is instantaneous on most operations
Also, I’m too invested in bodies and lenses to change to mirrorless.
… i really hope on your machine vkdt doesn’t take a whole second to denoise images! on a 24MP image i get: [perf] sum denoise: 2.985 ms
so that’s a couple orders of magnitude.
I don’t think there is a single “pro perspective”. All major camera makers have pro models, and somehow they sell enough of them to justify R&D and manufacturing. So it follows that pro photographers use a wide range of cameras. And some of those cameras are actually not in the pro line of the manufacturer — yet they still help these photographers make great photos.
I find these videos somewhat arrogant, and, consequentially, pretty irrelevant. People who do photography for a living still have diverse preferences and requirements.
Personally, I find reviews informative in general. They help me narrow down choices to the 2–5 models that I want to try out when I go into a store to buy one.
Largely agree. But, I guess (and I say this as someone who spent years writing headlines for a living) that he’s simplifying for impact. He’s a studio photographer and I see his point that what you use is going to be influenced by what the rental companies have in large numbers. And along with this, the point that, beyond sensor sizes, basically cameras are much more similar than people seem to think and than manufacturers would want them to think. I always wonder when you see people saying they switched system and sold all their gear, why? To take a massive depreciation loss, for what? I’m not saying this would never be justified but in many cases it just seems like fashion and not much different from buying some sports car you will never take advantage of or a Birkin handbag. That’s fine but just call it what it is, consumption and status acquisition. Same with carbon racing bikes or whatever
The last youtuber I heard did this was Nick Pagez who said he was with a client standing in the middle of a river, the client’s new canon R series goes plunk in the river. They fish it out, dry it off, and it works fine the next day. He said Sony’s weather sealing and professional services are not nearly as good as Canon’s, so good by Sony.
Reasonable. And notably nothing to do with IQ, autofocus, shutter speed and other stuff that dominates reviews (ok, they mention weather sealing but only mention, generally)
He also said the Sony in general just wasn’t holding up too well, physically, IIRC. I think the straw that broke that camel’s back was when he asked the Sony reps at a trade show if they could reattach the “ID ring” (with name, focal length, etc.) back on a Sony lens of his. It had popped off (probably just glued on) but they shrugged and told him to send it to Sony, who would do it for $350…
In the last few years Sony(Or as far back as 2005, remember the rootkit?) as a company, not just their imaging division, has been like this and worse. Not to say Canon(specially Canon) and others are not equally bad of course.
What do you expect from reviewers? It is something that can be summarized in a sentence in most cases. Testing it would be difficult — one would have to expose the camera to the elements, then disassemble and check for leaking/dust. For one thing, the latter would surely void the warranty, and takes professional skills (and a very, very clean room if you want to use the equipment again).
For some aspects, yes they are, but each manufactures has one or more strengths that stand out from the crowd. Eg Olympus has excellent IBIS, Sony has great tracking AF, Panasonic focuses on video, etc. Whether these are relevant for someone depends on the use case. And of course some people like the interfaces from some manufacturers, which is a personal preference, similar to how some people like a car brand.
I think that digital cameras underwent an amazing development in the past decade, but one has to step back to notice this since it is not happening on a monthly or even yearly timescale. Just to mention a few things:
dynamic range is now generally decent even for entry-level cameras,
smaller sensors, especially APS-C, now have great resolution and low noise in some bodies, so for a lot of applications you do not need full frame anymore, and micro 4/3 can now do the job of an APS-C sensor from 5 years ago,
which means smaller and cheaper lenses, with new mount standards in some cases
mirrorless effectively replaced DSLR
some manufacturers standardize mounts and open them up for third-party lenses (micro 4/3, L, X)
IBIS becoming more accessible in entry-level cameras, and better in pro cameras; which means smaller and cheaper lenses for focus lengths where in-body IS is sufficient
weather sealing coming to entry-level cameras
When people decide to switch systems and sell all their lenses it usually does not mean that they buy the equivalent set from some other brand, but that they upgrade to a new generation. These days you are lucky to have a lens mount standards last a decade (physically they may accept an old lens, but functionality will be degraded).
I don’t really disagree with any of what you say here. In all things, follow the money. It’s not reasonable to expect YouTubers to conduct proper weather sealing tests or to test multiple copies of lenses that haven’t been cherry picked by the manufacturer as, say, lensrentals.com can. There’s no incentive or financial capability to do that, in the way that there is definitely an incentive to produce oodles of content and advertising revenue. And that’s quite convenient for manufacturers who have an incentive to participate in and develop this ecosystem in a way that helps them. It’s not some natural order, it’s an order created by economic incentive, from the lowly YouTuber to Google executives.
Of course there have been improvements in imaging tech, though I think less that matters for most photographers than the endless parade of specs would suggest. I have a suspicion that there’s a lot more “new handbag and shoes” going on in camera purchases than most of us like to admit. Because let’s face it, it’s a complete sausage party in this hobby/business and men aren’t supposed to make trivial purchases based on fashion or identity (Hi Fuji!) but on rational specifications. So that’s what gets sold to us. That’s our identity
I think you are mistaken, see some references here. Around 1/3–2/3 of photographers are female, depending on what statistic you look at.
If that’s yours, it is fine. But speculating about the identity of others is generally unproductive, especially if you want to argue that they are irrational. We have little data on people’s choices, and even less about their reasons.
Hi. I think we’re getting way off topic (my fault) so we should probably stop. I’m slightly surprised by some of the industry stats in that link as, yes anecdotally, my direct experience in newsrooms over decades is that women exist there but are extremely underrepresented. The hobby data, relating to Darktable usage and watching YouTube tutorials, of women making up 1% or less of the population is only a proxy but the skew to men is truly massive. Also, more straightforwardly, I have functioning eyes.
