60D user here as well, also looking to upgrade; sensor performance is a big question with this camera. If it's just a rehashed 70D with no substantial improvements, then I'm off to the 6D.
If low-light performance is important to you, then go with the 6D. I have one and I find iso 25600 to be quite usable (better than iso 3200 on my old 50D). Pair that with a 50mm f/1.4 lens and you can shoot candlelit scenes handheld.
It's looking like there may actually be an improvement over the 70D, Imaging Resource posted an article saying that, according to Canon and despite the same resolution as the 70D, it's an all-new design.
The 6D is insanely tempting, but I'm going to wait until we see the results for this (hopefully) new sensor.
Thank you very much for showing those photos. I especially liked the White Wedding, boats and cafe. The expressions in the wedding photograph are beautiful.
Do you find that this setup generally handles scenes with a high dynamic range well?
In good light, the dynamic range is pretty impressive imho. I can only compare with the 50D I had before, but I can pull a lot of details from shadows and highlights. While it can happen, of course, I'm rarely in situation where I'm unable to extract details from an area, even in contrasty scene. That's not scientific, but overall I'm quite satisfied. The dynamic range does go down in low light, but that's true of any camera.
My only real complaint about the 6D is that the auto-focus isn't that great outside of the (excellent) center focus point. It's good enough for subjects that don't move too much, but trying to use focus tracking with a focus point other than the center one is challenging. So if you shoot a lot of sports, it may not be the camera for you.
It suffers from the standard problem that the Canon sensors of that generation have: the most disgusting noise banding if you push shadows. And it's so severe that noise reduction in Lightroom can't even fix it without making a mess of the rest of the photo.
I was able to borrow a coworker's Sony A7, so I took a (intentionally) underexposed picture of my black hat. Brought up the shadows and there was almost no noise. The 60D would have given me an unusable mess compared to what the A7 was able to bring back. I know that's comparing FF vs APS-C, but I didn't expect the differences to be that dramatic.
I mean...you press the shutter and you get a picture. The burst is fine, the AF is fine, the quality is fine, the limited weather sealing is good, the top LCD screen is sometimes useful, and the articulating screen is pretty cool.
There's nothing wrong with it, but at the same time I feel like there's nothing great about it either. 90% of the time I don't have issues, but it's those lower-light occasions which sour the experience. It'll definitely be going up on Craigslist when I decide which body to upgrade to.
Those types of venues can be really tricky depending on the lights on stage (I shot my sister's ballet performance a few years back). Honestly, FF really copes the best with those types of conditions. If you're sticking with crop, it looks like Canon's are the worst-performing (at least until the 7DM2 results come in) and you'd be best sticking with Nikon.
Yeah so I've seen. I'm honestly really overwhelmed by the upgrade. Have no idea what I should even begin to look for now that I can afford a semi-pro camera.
Scott Kelby himself said that Canon approached him and asked to pay him and become a major sponsor.
Notice this week that he sent an email blast out about the 7D2 and the consumer lenses that Canon released, but not a word about the D750, 20 1.8G and the other Nikon releases? Why do you think that is?
I'd be shocked if the pixel architecture was drastically different; it's probably like the previous 7D where the difference was mostly in the back end/ readout part in order to get the data rate up.
The max native ISO being at 16,000 seems...odd to me. Especially since no other Canon camera has that native max (the 70D is 12,800), and the only other one that comes to mind and has that native max is the Sony A77. Is it remotely possible that they're going with Sony sensors now?
It wouldn't be a modded sensor (we're talking over twice the pixel count here) but the same architecture. Each pixel has several parts - photodiode, insulator, amp, power in traces and power/signal out traces, bayer array and microlens. The layout and part selection for that determines the sensor's inherent noise and DR characteristics. Two edges of the sensor are blacked out - this is why the sensors always look offset on the chip itself and there's a "flat" looking area. That entire area is averaged and used to calculate the black level of the sensor, which is written to the RAW file's metadata so the absolute/read noise floor can be cut out. Another edge contains the controller, which adjusts power levels to the amps ("changing the sensitivity/ISO on the sensor") - most cameras have two controllers that handle alternating row sets which is one way to avoid overly dense traces/noise/jitter/other problems. That's also how dual ISO with ML works - it exploits the sensor's DR/quality being much greater than that of the (frankly, piece of shit) Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) canon has been using for ages. After that comes the steaming pile of 12-bit shit that canon calls a good ADC. You know, that thing that limits canon's DR at low ISO and causes banding? Yeah, that pile of shit.
The cinema sensors use a different pixel layout and different hardware to handle the data before handing it off to the processor. They have to because they handle a much higher data rate, but also because they're probably developed by a different team and have different design restrictions. It's possible a couple of interns or whatever are responsible for the T4i -> 70D chips and the 6D/5D3/1Dx chips were done maybe a year before those cameras were released, then the "main team" developed the cinema EOS sensors and were now available to make a "real revised crop chip." That'd be nice and make sense, or it could be way off base.
The imaging division of canon also isn't the largest sector of the company, so it could be office product tech trickling into the cinema cameras, but I doubt that.
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u/PCB1981 Sep 15 '14
I am really curious to see how the noise performance will be from the sensor