A7RII Vs 5ds R

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

I would just confirm what Hans has said. I had the latest version of Metabones and the firmware was very recent, but Metabones did put three updates in just a few days.

The Sony 70-400/4-5.6G works well over the full focusing range with the Sony LE-A3 adapter. It has like a closed loop action. Does coarse focus using PDAF and refines focus by contrast detection.

The only Canon lens I have right now is the 24/3.5 TSE LII, and that is not AF.

Best regards
Erik

I tried Erik's A7R II for a short while on both the Canon 24-70 f/2.8 L II and the Canon 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS II. My observation was that AF was considerably slower on the A7R II compared to the 5Ds R. The 5Ds R focussed instantly on both lenses. Especially from really out of focus it snaps in immediately. The A7R II was ok on the 24-70 for landscapes, but I'm not sure it would be ok for my way of shooting portraits. The 100-400 was  an entirely different matter. The AF did not work well on longer distances for longer focal lengths like over 200mm. It would focus for shorter distances all the way to 400mm. As far as I know there is a newer firmware release for the Metabones adapter that should focus better.

The EVF on the A7R II was not my taste and would much prefer the OVF on the Canon. I prefer an uncluttered VF that is bright and clear and the 5Ds R has that.

Regarding weight of lenses, I sold my f/2.8 70-200 lenses and now only use the Nikon 70-200 f/4 VR lens which is excellent and is light at about 800 grams. On the Canon I use the Canon 16-35 f/4L IS which is excellent, but not quite the biting sharpness of the Canon 24-70 f/2.8L II lens. This lens weighs 800 grams and the f/4 is 600 grams so not much of a difference.

Regarding the Canon 24-70 f/2.8L II lens my observation is that my copy is in for repair at the moment since it had an unsharpness in the right hand side. The lens I have on loan via CPS also has a slight softness in the right hand side, so I'm waiting to see if the repaired lens has the weakness still of if it is a general thing with this lens.

Regarding the A7R II versus the 5Ds R, I would say that the Canon is a very fine example of DSLR design and has few defects in design and use. The well known lesser DR is for my landscape shooting only an issue in very early mornings with strong light from the sky and a very dark landscape and where the desire is to tone map it such that the deep shadows in the landscape will contain detail. The same applies for sunsets. For any other type of landscape shooting I have not found an issue with DR. So for the cases where DR is less than desired (which again depends on taste for post processing) I bracket and blend two (or perhaps 3) exposures using the HDR function in Lightroom. This works well and basically removes the DR issue for this camera (in my opinion) for landscape shooting.

So for choosing between the two cameras, if the use case is predominantly Canon lenses with auto focus, I my choice would be the Canon. If flexibility is needed to use many different lenses with adapters and a lot of manual focus needed and no fast focus is needed, then the A7R II seems like the obvious choice. If the EVF is highly favoured with lots of information in the VF then I guess the choice is easy too. Many more considerations could be added....

[MatthewCromer]

One thing not mentioned is that the A7R2 AF is accurate with landscapes, while dSLR AF systems all have inherent accuracy limitations that make them (IMO) unsuited for landscape photography use.

[shadowblade]

One thing not mentioned is that the A7R2 AF is accurate with landscapes, while dSLR AF systems all have inherent accuracy limitations that make them (IMO) unsuited for landscape photography use.

When was the last time anyone needed AF to focus on a landscape?

[MatthewCromer]

When was the last time anyone needed AF to focus on a landscape?

You didn't read Hans Kruse's post?

[shadowblade]

You didn't read Hans Kruse's post?

I did. And I still fail to see how AF is needed, or even useful, for landscape photography.

[BernardLanguillier]

I did. And I still fail to see how AF is needed, or even useful, for landscape photography.

It mostly isn't, but there are some exceptions.

- There are some rare cases where a fleeting moment can be captured thanks to the ability to focus very quickly on a feature in the landscape,
- When doing depth of field stacking, an AF lens can enable automation (speed is irrelevant, but I am not sure whether the DoF stacking solutions are supporting the a7RII with Canon lenses),
- A person with deficient eyes would probably benefit from AF in some cases (low light,...).

Cheers,
Bernard

[synn]

Indeed, AF is beneficial in some landscape scenarios (Especially for cameras with limited or no live view capabilities, such as CCD backs), but the "lack of accuracy of phase detection systems making them unsuitable for landscapes" statement is laughable. There are very, very few situations in landscaping where a razor sharp focal point confirmation is needed. One is mostly working with zones of focus and it doesn't make any noticable difference if the actual plane of focus is a wee bit ahead or behind the intended plane of focus, at working apertures for landscapes.

I have used Phase detection AF for landscaping on multiple formats and have made 40"+ prints and have never once thought "Dang, this PDAF thing is totally unsuitable for landscaping"!

In fact, if one knows how to do AF microadjust, I don't even see how PDAF is a limitation even in shallow DoF portraiture.

This sort of pedantic complaining is great for the Diglloyd types, but it is hardly a limiting factor for anyone who is doing real work. Sure, CDAF/ on sensor PDAF is more accurate and there is no need to fine tune it like one does with mirror based systems, but people have been doing perfectly good work before those two came along.

Regarding the speed of Canon lenses on the A7RII, I don't have any first hand info, but from what I see here, it is perfectly usable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yottoM_P1o

Not as fast as on the Canons obviously, but definitely usable in the field.

[MatthewCromer]

It's quite simple. Off-sensor PDAF often misses far / infinity focus with normal and wide lenses - to such an extent that the resulting image must be trashed.

[Chuck Fan]

It's quite simple. Off-sensor PDAF often misses far / infinity focus with normal and wide lenses - to such an extent that the resulting image must be trashed.

Have you fined tuned the PDAF on your camera?

[eronald]

It mostly isn't, but there are some exceptions.

- There are some rare cases where a fleeting moment can be captured thanks to the ability to focus very quickly on a feature in the landscape,
- When doing depth of field stacking, an AF lens can enable automation (speed is irrelevant, but I am not sure whether the DoF stacking solutions are supporting the a7RII with Canon lenses),
- A person with deficient eyes would probably benefit from AF in some cases (low light,...).

Cheers,
Bernard

Anybody in a hurry will benefit from AF.
Even if you don't ALWAYS need it, you certainly can often use it.

Edmund

[shadowblade]

It's quite simple. Off-sensor PDAF often misses far / infinity focus with normal and wide lenses - to such an extent that the resulting image must be trashed.

Which hardly matters for landscape photography. Not only do you have all the time in the world to focus manually (using live view or using the distance scale on the lens), but your settings are usually such that everything from the foreground to the horizon is in sharp focus anyway. Even in rapidly-changing light at sunrise or sunset, you have more than enough time to manually focus - it only takes a few seconds.

[Hans Kruse]

One thing not mentioned is that the A7R2 AF is accurate with landscapes, while dSLR AF systems all have inherent accuracy limitations that make them (IMO) unsuited for landscape photography use.

I have been shooting landscapes using only PDAF on Canon and Nikon DSLR's and can say for sure that your statement is completely wrong.

[MatthewCromer]

Have you fined tuned the PDAF on your camera?

Yes. This is an issue with AF inconsistency.

[Rob C]

It's quite simple. Off-sensor PDAF often misses far / infinity focus with normal and wide lenses - to such an extent that the resulting image must be trashed.

This resonates in my head.

I recently bought my second af lens ever - a 1.8/50 G Nikkor, and it works well on simple, straight images of things in front of me, badly where there are complex images in reflections in windows, and the one shot I tried of some distant red sails was so far off as to be laughable.

I only bought it because of my failing eyesight, but I sometimes find I use the old manual one instead - if only because I have to override the af so often it ends up annoying me.

How grim never to have experienced manual focus, especially with very long lenses, where the changing focus experience is often even more a sensual delight than the final image.

Rob C

[DeanChriss]

It's quite simple. Off-sensor PDAF often misses far / infinity focus with normal and wide lenses - to such an extent that the resulting image must be trashed.

If a 50mm lens set at f/1.4 on a FF camera is incorrectly focused at 300 feet instead of infinity, the DOF extends from around 120 feet to infinity. You can get different results depending on sensor size and circle of confusion, but the point is that at long distances DOF becomes huge and focus has to be incredibly far off before one has to trash an image. At wider focal lengths and/or smaller apertures this is even moreso. Some current wide lenses shift focus significantly when stopped down or develop field curvature at long distances, but those are lens issues. In the former case stopping down before manually focusing is a workaround, but it's not a PDAF issue. 

I use PDAF all the time for both wildlife and landscapes. I've never had any PDAF DSLR camera miss infinity focus. Low contrast fast moving subjects could be difficult for PDAF in the past, especially with lenses like the 600mm f/4 wide open and close where DOF is paper thin. Today with a camera like Canon's 1DX it's almost hard to miss focus even at high frame rates. I just don't see the problem with PDAF beyond having to spend time micro-adjusting AF when one gets a new camera or lens. I'm not arguing that PDAF is better than on-sensor focusing, just that it seems perfectly adequate for just about any use.

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

DoF is an illusion. It just says that a certain amount of unsharpness is acceptable and it goes back to the time we considered a 5x8" print a decent size print.

According to standard DoF tables this would be regarded to be a sharp image (CoC 0.025 mm, 9 cm of defocus at 3.0 m and f/4 on a 100 mm lens)

The very same lens/sensor can deliver this, when correctly focused:

This is not very exotic gear, a 30 year old macro lens on a 24 MP camera from 2008.

Best regards
Erik

If a 50mm lens set at f/1.4 on a FF camera is incorrectly focused at 300 feet instead of infinity, the DOF extends from around 120 feet to infinity. You can get different results depending on sensor size and circle of confusion, but the point is that at long distances DOF becomes huge and focus has to be incredibly far off before one has to trash an image. At wider focal lengths and/or smaller apertures this is even moreso. Some current wide lenses shift focus significantly when stopped down or develop field curvature at long distances, but those are lens issues. In the former case stopping down before manually focusing is a workaround, but it's not a PDAF issue. 

I use PDAF all the time for both wildlife and landscapes. I've never had any PDAF DSLR camera miss infinity focus. Low contrast fast moving subjects could be difficult for PDAF in the past, especially with lenses like the 600mm f/4 wide open and close where DOF is paper thin. Today with a camera like Canon's 1DX it's almost hard to miss focus even at high frame rates. I just don't see the problem with PDAF beyond having to spend time micro-adjusting AF when one gets a new camera or lens. I'm not arguing that PDAF is better than on-sensor focusing, just that it seems perfectly adequate for just about any use.

[Rob C]

If a 50mm lens set at f/1.4 on a FF camera is incorrectly focused at 300 feet instead of infinity, the DOF extends from around 120 feet to infinity. You can get different results depending on sensor size and circle of confusion, but the point is that at long distances DOF becomes huge and focus has to be incredibly far off before one has to trash an image. At wider focal lengths and/or smaller apertures this is even moreso. Some current wide lenses shift focus significantly when stopped down or develop field curvature at long distances, but those are lens issues. In the former case stopping down before manually focusing is a workaround, but it's not a PDAF issue. 

I use PDAF all the time for both wildlife and landscapes. I've never had any PDAF DSLR camera miss infinity focus. Low contrast fast moving subjects could be difficult for PDAF in the past, especially with lenses like the 600mm f/4 wide open and close where DOF is paper thin. Today with a camera like Canon's 1DX it's almost hard to miss focus even at high frame rates. I just don't see the problem with PDAF beyond having to spend time micro-adjusting AF when one gets a new camera or lens. I'm not arguing that PDAF is better than on-sensor focusing, just that it seems perfectly adequate for just about any use.

I've been led to believe it's absolutely nothing to do with DOF or optics per se, nor setting up the camera's af tolerances; the problem, I'm told, is that the mechanical parts that actually cause the change in focus (using af) work very well at closer distances, but that they are far less efficient the nearer you get to infinity; they just can't be precise enough because the changes they need to make near infinity are just too small. I'm told.

Rob C

[DeanChriss]

Hi,

DoF is an illusion.

...

Best regards
Erik

I agree, to a point. But if you do the same calculations based on a 60" wide print that appears sharp when viewed from 3.3 feet (1m) by a person with normal eyesight, you end up with everything from 143 feet to infinity appearing sharp when the lens is focused at 300 feet and set to f/1.4. At f/8 it's 41 feet to infinity. If the person has 20/20 vision it's different. That requires an aperture of f/4 for everything to from 147 feet to infinity to appear sharp when focused at 300 feet. At f/8 you get 97 feet to infinity "sharp". Still, it's a 60" print viewed from a couple feet away, and we haven't even tossed in deconvolution sharpening, which changes everything. For any reasonable intent I think DOF is quite useful, but you can't use numbers for 8x10 prints if you're doing 30"x40" prints.

[Chuck Fan]

I've been led to believe it's absolutely nothing to do with DOF or optics per se, nor setting up the camera's af tolerances; the problem, I'm told, is that the mechanical parts that actually cause the change in focus (using af) work very well at closer distances, but that they are far less efficient the nearer you get to infinity; they just can't be precise enough because the changes they need to make near infinity are just too small. I'm told.

Rob C

If that is the case, that PDAF and CDAF would suffer equally from this in focus accuracy.

[Hans Kruse]

If a 50mm lens set at f/1.4 on a FF camera is incorrectly focused at 300 feet instead of infinity, the DOF extends from around 120 feet to infinity. You can get different results depending on sensor size and circle of confusion, but the point is that at long distances DOF becomes huge and focus has to be incredibly far off before one has to trash an image. At wider focal lengths and/or smaller apertures this is even moreso. Some current wide lenses shift focus significantly when stopped down or develop field curvature at long distances, but those are lens issues. In the former case stopping down before manually focusing is a workaround, but it's not a PDAF issue. 

I use PDAF all the time for both wildlife and landscapes. I've never had any PDAF DSLR camera miss infinity focus. Low contrast fast moving subjects could be difficult for PDAF in the past, especially with lenses like the 600mm f/4 wide open and close where DOF is paper thin. Today with a camera like Canon's 1DX it's almost hard to miss focus even at high frame rates. I just don't see the problem with PDAF beyond having to spend time micro-adjusting AF when one gets a new camera or lens. I'm not arguing that PDAF is better than on-sensor focusing, just that it seems perfectly adequate for just about any use.

+1 and absolutely my experience shooting both wild life and landscapes etc.