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Canon vs. Sony FF sensors comparison for capturing *action*

Started 4 months ago | Discussions thread
Alastair Norcross
Alastair Norcross Veteran Member • Posts: 9,874
Re: Canon vs. Sony FF sensors comparison for capturing *action*
5

PAntunes wrote:

Tom Bak wrote:

PAntunes wrote:

Tom Bak wrote:

Hi all,

it is quite interesting to see what value different brands bring to the table with their camera sensors, when looking at the one topic where ILCs (could) have a big advantage over smartphones: capturing action / fast moving subjects.

Canon sensors for capturing action.

* Please note that the readout time for the R6 II obviously today only is an assumption based on the 40 FPS. Sony for the a7r5 also seems unwilling to officially share even the FPS rates when shooting lossless raw, so the figures are based on preliminary dpr review.

Pretty massive performance differences if you ask me.

What is the point of a silent shutter, if it usefulness indoors with artificial light and outdoors for capturing action is seriously hampered by super slow readout speeds?

I can even ask: What is the point of the last tiny bit of AF improvements if your missing the shot due to low FPS ?

And I guess nobody is spending this amount of money in the $2000+ class just for JPGs or lossy un-raws.

Ok, so what's the slowest readout speed to have acceptable action images?

That is the photographers choice and relative to the budget.

In the enthusiast camera range listed any buyer can make a choice.

What is your answer?

Having distorted elements in a photo is not relative to the budget. It either works or it doesn’t.

Even before anyone talked about rolling shutter, action cameras already had a faster sync speed than most. 1/250 was ideal. Now some cameras can do 1/400.

A camera with a readout speed of 1/60 isn’t an action camera. Real world usage, anyone wanting a camera on this segment to shoot sports still needs to rely on mechanical shutter.

That's simply not true. It all depends on the sport, whether it involves the kind of movement that will actually get distorted by rolling shutter, whether the photographer pans with vertical lines in the background (for a landscape orientation shot), etc. For example, I have so far taken several thousand shots of runners, on the track and on a cross-country course, with e-shutter on my R7, which regularly gets bashed for having too much rolling shutter. Not a single one of my shots so far has shown any rolling shutter distortion. I'm sure, if I'd wanted to get some distortion, I could have, by shooting differently from how I usually shoot. But, for my purposes, the readout speed with the possibility of rolling shutter distortion, is simply not a factor (so far). I have also taken a few thousand shots of football (soccer), but I used EFCS for that. But not because I was nervous of rolling shutter in e-shutter, but because I didn't want 15fps. 8fps was plenty.

There is a tendency on these forums for people to get fixated on one feature of a camera, and use it as a badge of honor, or a cudgel to bash other brands with. For many years, it was the overblown fixation on dynamic range, to the exclusion of everything else (including far more important features of cameras). Now, it's all about sensor readout speed and rolling shutter. People are quick to pronounce that certain cameras are simply 'unusable' in e-shutter, if they have relatively slow readout speeds, while totally ignoring the fact that it all depends on what you are shooting and how. For many photographers, yes, including some action shooters, slow readout speeds in e-shutter don't make them anywhere near to being unusable. And even in situations where you do see some rolling shutter distortion, often a burst will contain many shots that don't show any. If you're shooting at 15, 20, 30, or even 40fps, you could still get plenty of shots that are not distorted, probably more than you would get by using mechanical shutter at a slower burst rate.

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Alastair
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