The New York launch of the Sony A9 III was met with the kind of whooping and hollering US audiences love, but also a few gasps and astonished mutterings from people not quite prepared for Sony’s technological tour de force.
Opinion
This is where I offer thoughts on developments in photography and video, some of the context behind news stories and industry events, and how these might impact photographers.
Megapixels vs image size, and why we don’t always get what we think
When cameras come with a hike in resolution, we think about image size gains in megapixels or percentages, but actual image dimensions follow the inverse square law, so that if resolution increases by 37.5%, as in the case of the new Sony A7C II vs the existing A7C, the actual image width and height only increase by 17%.
The long goodbye of the Canon EOS M system
It’s been predicted since the launch of the Canon EOS R system and its APS-C models, but now Digital Camera World reports that the EOS M system is officially discontinued by Canon Japan. It’s still listed on some regional Canon websites, but it’s surely only a question of time before stocks finally dry up.
I can’t get close to Canon’s claimed stabilization figures
It’s not just Canon. I’ve been testing cameras and lenses for years, and testing lens IS as well as camera IBIS. I do it with informal real-world testing because there are no reproducible tests for stabilizers unless you are a testing body like CIPA.
Have the best stills cameras already been made?
There are lots of new cameras hitting the market all the time, and if anything the pace of development seems to be accelarating. But it’s all clustered around a couple of key areas, notably video capture, burst capture and AI subject-recognition autofocus.
The unfair stigma of Gear Acquisition Syndrome
Gear Acquisition Syndrome is a standing joke in the photographic community. It describes photographers who are constantly buying new gear instead of spending their time actually taking photographs. Well, I think it’s time to stop sneering and start accepting.
I need the extended depth of field of crop sensors more often than the shallow DOF of full frame
Often – very often, in my opinion – the shallow depth of field of a larger format can be a nuisance. It’s a nuisance for landscapes, for interiors, for close-ups and for any other kind of image where you want objects at different distances from the camera to all look adequately sharp.
Do you really need autofocus for video?
What a stupid question, you’re probably thinking. Would we have a trillion words written a day on the latest camera autofocus tech if we didn’t need it? The thing is, it all depends on who you ask – and whether you’re talking about vlogging or filmmaking. Because there’s a difference.
Do lenses matter more than megapixels?
We assume that megapixels matter more than anything, and that a good lens on a high-resolution full frame camera will still be better than an excellent lens on a lower-resolution camera, right? Well, I thought I’d check.
Can you trust your EVF?
I’m not sure you can. The theory goes that because an EVF relays exactly what the sensor is capturing, it is by definition an accurate representation of the image you will record. But I think it’s leading us to trust EVFs altogether too much.