2015 Roundup: High-end Interchangeable Lens Cameras $2000+

I do not really understand the question... The idea of a 200% crop is to show the detail achieved by a camera, or to check whether you focused well... If you use Adobe Bridge, it will also show you 200% enlargements if you click on a photo...

100% magnification displays a part of the image at a resolution that one pixel in the image matches one pixel on your screen. This is the maximum magnification that gives you any sensible information about sharpness. At 200% you already see individual pixels in your image, and there is no point to that. You cannot judge sharpness any better in a 200% crop compared to a 100% crop.

Haha. This made me laugh. 'Sony drops the ball' he says... no other brand offers such AF with non native mounts do they? Unsure if you've used one at all or just a forum hero, but they focus other lenses pretty darn well.

I feel the opposite. Typically if the difference of 1 stop means do-or-die with your zoom, it seems like you're already using the wrong tool for the job and you should probably be using either a fast prime or artificial lighting.

Monstrous f2.8 zooms seem like a throwback to the film days, or when ISO 6400 looked like a bowl of skittles.

But, as they say, opinions are like a certain something - everyone's got one.

I know there's an inherent flexibility advantage in a zoom, but for the size and weight difference of a Nikon or Sony f2.8 zoom compared to the Zeiss 24-70 f4, you can almost carry a whole other A7 body and the 55/f1.8 or 28/f2.

I'm personally using 35&50mm fast prime lens mostly, but also zooms, and not F/2.8, and pretty happy with that. ;-)

To me, the fast 2.8 zooms are not so necessary on ff. As long as there is a quality f4 option. I think most could be pretty happy with f4 zooms and a good set of primes. I know I much prefer a 70-200/4 for the weight savings vs a 2.8 solution. One exception is probably for wedding photographers. A normal 2.8 zoom is probably invaluable in that line of work.

As a counterpoint, I buy F4 zooms and F2 or faster primes and skip F2.8 zooms altogether. Former for landscapes, latter for people shots. Just saying. Unwieldy large F2.8 zooms are not necessarily the end all be all. They're frankly just middle of the road for me.

If they released 2.8 zoom lenses, then they'd be the same size as DSLR lenses. Hence the perception of the smaller size of mirrorless goes out the door!

For those of you who have taken offense to the question, I can only imagine that you do not earn your living with your camera, and if you do, you have managed to do it without shooting event photography (weddings, concerts, etc), or sports photography. A 70-200 f2.8 and 24-70 f2.8 are indispensable tools when using autofocus in low light, in fast moving situations where you are constantly on the move and cannot afford (1) the time involved in constantly switching out prime lenses, and (2) the IQ loss of shooting at higher ISO.

Moreover, the lack of light makes for lost shots due to AF hunting, which, although improved on Sony's latest cameras, is still better with faster glass.

The bottom line is this: F4 inhibits ability to get top quality shots in a fast paced low light environment, vs f2.8. Just because you've seen great f4 shots from those environments says absolutely nothing about how many shots that photographer didn't get because of the slow glass.

Regarding f/4 vs. f/2.8 zooms. The elephant in the room is that many shots at f/2.8 look absolutely nothing like shots taken at f/4 when can make all the difference in the world when shooting on other people's property where the background is objectionable.

Objectionable or not, I much more prefer a fast wide angle zoom because when you're shooting a subject / portrait that's relatively close to the camera, the background is rendered considerably smoother at f/2.8 compared to the same shot taken at f/4.

Focus: Irrespective of the aperture you have selected, when it comes to shooting in low ambient light indoor or outdoors; faster aperture zooms really come into their own allowing the camera to focus (or even manual focusing) better with more light coming into the lens (or viewfinder if you're manually focusing); making focusing more expedient with less "hunting".

Studio: fast lenses often negate having to use ir assist or modeling lights to assist with focus.

Bit of an own goal if it is! I will be using VR lenses so will look into it on Nikon's site.

Cheers!

The wider the lens, the more light it collects, given that the absolute aperture is the same size. It is the F- (or T-) number that determines the shutter speed, not the absolute aperture size, all else being equal.

@pannumon: how is that f/t-stop determines the shutter speed? My camera allows setting them independently.
Of course, it's the physical aperture that collects the light. So the equivalent lenses with the same physical aperture collect the same amount of light, etc. etc.

@RichRMA:

Wrong. The light-gathering ability is the aperture TIMES the angle of view. So what you say is only applicable when the angle of view is the same.

@pannumon:

The f-number determines THE BRIGHTNESS of the image on the sensor. This was important in the time of film — but it is useless when comparing electric photo-sensors of different formfactors.

f/1.4 of a phone’s lens would create a much brighter image on the sensor than f/2.8 of a DSLR’s lens — but tiny sensels on the phone would collect much fewer photons, so the signal will be swamped by noise — comparing to the DSLR’s one.

   On the other hand, capacitance of small sensels
   is smaller, so the read noise would be smaller too
    — at least in units of captured electrons!

   But the shot noise is not affected by capacitance.

@fenceSitter
Considering the sensor size, a Pentax 645 F2.8 lens has an equivalent aperture than a F2.2 lens in the FF sensor format. Still not impressed? You have to know that the lensed named FA or DFA (with an "F") cover the size of a 6cm x 4.5cm sensor (explaining the 645 name) that may be produced in the future. In that case, the equivalent aperture would be even greater. Therefore the Pentax 645 lenses are big. I copy here again that link to judge the 645Z sharpness:
http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/119553924/albums/pentax-645z

Pentax 645D/Z has 1.6x more sensor area, and a crop factor (in 35mm FF terms) of 0.8.

So a 35mm F2 lens on FF is equivalent to approx. a 45mm F2.8 lens on Pentax. In situations where the equivalent lens on FF is more than a stop faster than the 645 optic, the FF dSLR operates with a technical advantage in DOF control and low light performance.

However, in terms of distortion and, critically, sharpness, I would not write off the possibility of the 645 giving superior IQ at any given equivalent FL.

Here is clarity; A FF camera will not match a medium format camera when printing a same-sized enlargement of any image.

As I said: no, it is not necessarily a good bet.

These are small sensels, about 4µ. The lithography process for the larger area cannot be the same — and with the small sensels, every 10nm may matter!

The 645Z uses a modern Sony CMOS sensor (released in 2014), with a pixel pitch of 5.3 μm. It has the same base ISO (100) as almost all semi-modern FF sensors and among the Sony FF sensors only the D810 deviates from this (the Nikon sensors in the D3/D3s/D700 started at ISO 200, the Leica M9 with a Kodak sensor at ISO 80 and Leica SL with a CMOSIS (?) at ISO 50). While ISO ratings have a lot of leeway, past experience shows us that they do indicate roughly the saturation capacity.

But going beyond that, we have many reports from serious testers that the 645Z, ISO for ISO, fares better than (almost) all of the current FF sensors (the D810 potentially coming close).

We also have measurements by Bill Claff that put the 645Z ahead of all FF cameras at base ISO (again with the D810 coming close):
http://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm

@noirdesir:

Sigh… We were discussing the fact that Rishi changed the subject of arguments — and now you are changing the subject again? PDR is a very nice metric of “sensor’s quality” — but it is NOT directly related to the total full well!

About 4µ vs 5.3µ: I did not realize it is 4:3 sensor. Sorry!

And — please — do not start me on the topic of “ISO in the context of sensors”. This notion just does not make any sense (unless you are discussing the auto-exposure system). And just the fact that this notion is a part of the discourse leads to severe penalties: why highlight of ISO100,000 shot should be cut of earlier than of ISO6,400 shot?

  (All I need is to have a certain analogue boost
   applied during the sensor readout, and a certain
   digital boost applied DURING PREVIEW. Instead,
   the digital boost removes the highlights from
   RAW!)

Likewise, do not start me on “base ISO”. Different people have different ideas what “base” means here!

@Johnathan
yes, but i don't have any type of MF kamera. :)

@noirdesir: You wrote “very likely is”.

This is EXACTLY what I’m not interested in. If you double-check, my question was “do you KNOW the total full well”….

   (And, as I said, your logic of “likely” is flawed — 
    unless you KNOW that all the Sony fabs are at
    the same processing nm-wise.

    My guess: 180nm vs 300nm would change the
    size of the sensel’s capacitor about 1.2µ.
    Microlenses can’t compensate this.)

About circle of confusion:

Burn anything which discusses sensor sizes, magnification, circle of confusing on the sensor, etc. Equivalence is a very simple concept. All that matters is the entry pupil; whatever is BEHIND the entry pupil DOES NOT MATTER — so it makes no sense to include this into the picture.

Consider the human eye. Its best resolution is about 1' when the entry pupil is about 2mm large. This makes a circle of confusion about 1mm at distance of 3.5m. Do we need to know the details of eye construction to explain this?

No, it is almost purely due to diffraction. EVERY entry pupil of 2mm makes the same amount of diffraction: about 1' resolution — or about 1mm at 3.5m. Again, we do not care about the details: by picturing the diffraction circle ON THE SUBJECT we avoid all such details.

What about DOF? Same thing! One CAN draw the defocus circle of confusion ON THE SUBJECT — and it does not depend on the detals of the lens! Suppose we focus at 3.5m.

ToBeConted…

I agree, Leica is not the ugliest camera -- Hasselblad was uglier.

But his conclusion is simply "the days of the D8xx are over" which as a general statement is total garbage. The D810 is regarded by many to be the best current Nikon camera (and by extension, I guess, the best Nikon camera ever).

The existence of a high-resolution semi-pro dSLR could be considered precarious, as a native live view mirrorless design has fundamentally more accurate focus as well as less vibration. For speed and tracking, dSLRs are still the go-to format, but if resolution and focus accuracy is what you are after the Dxx is no longer the go-to model that it was at the D800 release.

I said the D800 was the worst of my semi-pro cameras. After trying out the d810 for approximately two weeks, it was clear to me that ANY d8xx camera is a speciality/niche camera -- for fine detail work only. Period! My D800 is a horrid camera.

Why are the days of the d8xx over? It's absolutely no longer a high resolution race. Sony branded sensors are amazing with hi resolution, great dynamic range, and superior high ISO capabilities. Additionally, Sony simply raised the bar for hi Rez cameras by adding so many must have features in addition to its sensor. Like I said, it's a feature ritch camera. As it stands, the D8xx is a serious need of an overhaul. What can Nikon do? They will not add IBIS. They can't add focus peaking. If Nikon were smart they would base their next high end semi pro camera after the 750 and not the 810.

Additionally, I don't desire a camera that is a brick to carry around. Modern technology has certainly made great strides in composite materials. Why do we need to carry around a camera (e.g. D800/D810) that is 1/3 lb heavier than the 750 and 2/3 ls heavier than the A7RII? At least Nikon is testing out new "monocoque," robust structures. Also, the argument that the D800/D810 is a pro-build or that the rounded-viewfinder in a pro feature is total garbage. I must admit that at least the rounded viewfinders stay in place on my 800 and D4. Though, they're a more likely to get stuck. I can see a place for the Nikon Dx series of cameras. I can't see one for the D8xx. Unless they match the overall quality of the D750 I would never buy an 8xx series again.

Hi Hugo808,

I never experienced that whatever is that.. :)
Never heard about "shutter shock" in case of the D750 (I see first in this review.) Maybe I missed some article..? :)

I've also not experienced the infamous "flare" issue, however my DSLR body is among the "affected" ones according to Nikon's website.. Interesting.

So, after more than one year of use: I am a happy camper!
It is badass fantastic FF camera for this price, moreover a real DR & ISO monster, stuffed with loads of useful features!

Not by accident: everybody love this thing:
https://photographylife.com/best-nikon-dslr
:)

I know many that use the A7S and A7RII professionally, including myself, and they have been superb. Batteries are as cheap as chips. Crashes have never been issue. They're by no means perfect, but nor is any Canon or Nikon kit I've used in the past.

The only cameras that have locked up on me were, Canon 5d2 and Samsung nx500. My Sony cameras have not done so.

@EthanP99
do you have an A7RII? Mine freezes all the time when I put it on a fast paced shoot. Never in any of my canon bodies and a couple of Million pictures under my belt.

Total nonsense.I know many a Sony user who have the opposite opinion, including myself. I know many Canon users who are clueless about their camera because they purchased it for the name only. God forbid they even try a more sophisticated Sony camera...

Hardly. Pros are buying them and loving the Sony FF. Use native lenses if your cheap adapters are causing problems.

I'm sure if Canon or Nikon made better, more innoavtive cameras, then they might win more of these round-ups.

Oh so it is by number of users that make something best? So I guess the Corolla is the 'best' car then?

So can the Sony cameras

in addition dpreview have you seen a leica sl it is just a few more grams than the 750.

Have you notice the grip that is easier to hold? it is not as thick as a camera any other dslr.

@EthanP99
so far based on nearly all reports with Sonys or others using wide lenses the corners have issues. Except M240 and more likely with SL.

http://www.sonyalpharumors.com/bart-ex-leica-boss-the-a7rii-is-probably-now-the-worlds-best-m-mount-camera/

A7rii is best M mount camera

Ethan:

People report the same problems mounting M lenses on the A7RII that the other A7 bodies have with M lenses.

Whereas M lenses work really well on the Leica SL.

@EthanP99
this is such joke. In a Sony site he reports on "I can report that The Leica Summicron 35mm f/2" he forgets all the lenses bellow 35 mm... This is where the problem is more eminent.

You make too much sense around here, people love to hate. It's becoming harder and harder to find an Internet site without stupidity all around. We're on a gear site, ok, but dedicated to photography, and the comments are never about photography, it's all war against the buyers of another brand, the reviewers of course who are paid by the brand... The Verge deactivated comments, and honestly, it's better this way. Another solution is to find moderators, and destroying comments with no mercy each time a Sony, Nikon, Pentax, Olympus or Canon fanboy disses other brands, and most of all, users of these brands. "Haha, you use a Sonikanon A920 Mark 12, you are so lame, why didn't you buy the Pentaxus FTG27AB, it's so much better in so many ways, you mustn't be a real professional in the glorious photography business, isn't it?"

The Fred Miranda forums seem to be very civil and (from my experience) people focus more on talking about photography rather than debating reviews/gear.

Yes when assigne that button than u have another 2 to play with where in pro cameras u have indivisual buttons for every thing u need on location, for u kind information i ve used the a7r ii this pme of the best camera for show off and to tell ur friend and urself u have the best camera, when u use a pro level cam u expect to act like one not to act as gadget more than a photography delivering machine

You dont need to assign any buttons for this function. Again, another user whos claimed to use the camera... also iso is a physical button, so is ss and aperture.

Fail!! :-) Lol someone's got no idea what they're talking about. Atleast read specs of the camera so you won't face this embarrassing situation when simply bashing it.

Ashkanani... I am a Sony fan... maybe more of the Sony technology fan tbh. Other than you seem to be a Canon champion (your reasons are your own), I fundamentally agree with you. The A7Rii is more of an artist's camera... that is, not the grunt 500+ images a day workhorse. This is the camera if you have time, the inclination, the pocketbook, etc to make beautiful pictures. If you are in a production-oriented environment, I would say either of the two Nikons noted would be better choices for a slew of reasons.

This article should not be called, "Which camera should I buy?" but rather, "Which camera forever changed what we'll look for in future cameras?" The A7Rii is without a doubt what the term "disruptive technology" is really all about. Cheers.

Ethan:
I don't have time to go into details of each and every button on the sony but if u want to know what I mean go and rent any nikon or canon pro level camera and compare the handling and the buttons around the body and the ability to get u shoot done on location and leave the IQ and look at both cameras in your hand than u will know what I mean.....

Rocky:
I agree with you but when website advice you to buy one camera over another its mean they advice you to invest in a system that lack a lot from lightning system to lenses to a lot of accessories that is essential to photographers, I know you can use adapters for any lens you want but I don't invest in a system to use another system lenses!

dpreview should start advising in whole system not an individual camera, for some reason all the pro buys nikon and Canon and skip the others and i just wish that depreview mention these reasons in their reviews.

Theres more than enough flashes and third party accessories. Also, its only been 2 years, they focused on smaller lighter lenses first.

Don, what's wrong with those Canon 2.8 zooms?

No.

You also have to post negative comments about competing systems such as, "extremely limited lens selection," to show that a brilliant guy like you needs no less than 47 different lenses to capture your artistic vision, instead of 4 or 5.

It also wouldn't hurt to talk about how limiting 36 Mp is, because you print 100' x 100' advertisements on the side of buildings for a living, maybe 2 or 3 per day, and you just can't understand how stupid the great mass of unwashed amateur photographers are for having accepted the calculated advertising deception that 36 Mp is enough.

Then, and only then, we might be able to take you seriously.

Not instantly, but if you take this quick course, you definitely will be: a PRO.. =)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9tEjGgeN5I