Canon t5 to SL2?

Welcome to the Forum!

Chasingbutterflies wrote:

Any thoughts on changing from a Canon t5 to an SL2? I’ve been doing mostly macroish photography, and somewhat lured by the claims of higher resolution...

Absolutely worth the upgrade IMHO. I too made the jump from the 18 MP sensor through to the new 24 MP Dual Pixel sensor (Canon M5), and am very happy I did. Having that Dual Pixel Autofocus in Live View (and Video) is a real game changer. I now shoot all of my Macros using the back LCD with Servo Autofocus!!! But if you prefer to use the viewfinder it's a step up too.

But am unsure how much of a real world difference i will see and whether this is the best option.

In real world shooting you will get a full one stop increase in IQ. Meaning you can either shoot with a stop higher ISO, or you can use that increase in IQ to crop further into your images instead (a real benefit for us macro shooters! ).

I know some of the testing sites don't put it as high as a stop, but I don't think they take into account the effect that the finer-grained nature of the noise has on IQ (and subsequent noise reduction).

Below is an example of the sort of shot I take...so you can see a higher dynamic range would be nice.

Very cool froggy. Love the colors!

The types of scenes that would benefit from a higher dynamic range sensor would actually be those that had both very bright areas and very dark areas in it. The goal being to maintain detail in both extremes. For instance I had a hard time with this Monarch. That black body (and dark eyes) were very dark compared to the sunlit wings...

(Sorry, DPReview stripped the EXIF from the image upon posting. EXIF can be found in my Gallery if you'd like).

Click on "original size" for a larger view.  (Edit: I re-posted the image and EXIF is now intact)

But shooting in RAW provided the extra dynamic range necessary to tame both the brights and the darks during post processing (I use Canon's DPP software). Highly recommend shooting RAW (if you don't already) if you're looking to extend the dynamic range as much as possible. Sometimes jpegs just fall a little short.

The scene below does indeed exhibit low dynamic range, but it's not due to the sensor having too little dynamic range. (Actually any sensor would be able to record the scene below).

The cause of the low dynamic range below is either the exposure, or lighting, or composition, or camera settings, or processing, or choice of Picture Style, etc etc.

In other words, your choices as a photographer.

I did just a quick edit in Photoshop (if you don't mind) to produce a bit contrastier image.

I didn't see any EXIF, but you could increase the exposure some (in camera), and also increase the contrast (either in-camera or in Post) to add some of that punch (dynamic range) that you seek.

Well good luck with your decision. Be sure to try out the camera(s) before you purchase!

R2