Death of the flagship DSLR camera?

[Rob C]

I'm beginning really to see a time coming when dslr cameras, as rangefinders, will end up as relics of a bygone age. What I see replace them for general, non-pro snappers is the cellphone with some form of zoom lens.

Just today, now, as I write, sitting in a bar eating a quick lunch, something happened right beside me, outside the window, that had I had something with a better, less wide-angled lens, would have made an interesting snap. As it was, I didn't even try.

I think that adaptability will become key, and larger cameras will end up in museums.

The pro is a different animal with different needs and fiscal options. Someone will cater to his needs for years to come, I guess.

Rob

[Rand47]

The Sony top DSLT (they make no DSLRs) is the a99 II - just FYI

Which is why I’ll never buy a Sony camera or lens ever again.  Left me stranded with a zillion dollars worth of Sony/Zeiss A mount lenses that became all but worthless $$-wise and only usable with a big clunky adapter that has a 1/3 stop light-robbing plastic sheet inserted in the light path.

Sorry... even after 6 years it still chaps my hide. 

BTW, the a900 was a lovely camera, that actually felt like a camera in your hands, rather than a toaster.  Due in large part to Minolta.

Rand

[bcooter]

The pro is a different animal with different needs and fiscal options. Someone will cater to his needs for years to come, I guess.

Rob

This website is a publication and any publication plays to it’s market.

I don’t follow everything on this site, but It seems most of the talk here, in most catagories is about mirrorless, which seems to be some makers are putting most of their effort.

Given that at the pro level, except for professional architectural and landscape photography, I have see more dslrs than mirrorless.

I have mirrorless in Panasonic, Olympus and the last sony A7sII.  They work, pretty good cameras, but due to tethering, battery life I rarely use them for stills.

To the assistants I hire, the “large” pro camera they go for is a Nikon 800 something, or a Canon 5d something, usually with the manufactuerer’s lenses.   

Some would like a medium format system if they can afford it, though video has kind of taken the place of an expensive secondary still camera system.  (once again I’m talking about commerce). 

With the film crews the younger camera operators have gone Sony, the FS5 or higher, maybe an A7sII.  When they get a larger gig they rent an Arri, or RED.

For me, I have owned two of every 1d_ series from the 1ds to the 1dxII and the Canon case is always on set, even if the project is 99% medium format,  or motion imagery centric.



I guess I’m use to them, they have always performed, only had one body go down in a decade and that was self afflicted.   Canon gets little love on this forum, maybe because they are presumed to be older tech, though in my world I see a lot of canons and nikons.

It’s funny you have one of those gigs that for whatever reason, at the start when you look at the scene and think, “how the heck am I gonna pull this off”.   On those days if it’s stills I always find a Canon in my hand, if it’s motion, it’s usually a RED because once again I’m zoned into them.

Then again I look for certain things in production.  Long battery life, short learning curve on a new camera, durability and with the 1dxII the ability to shoot high quality motion quickly.

But I’m kind of over the pixel race, in still and motion.    I haven’t had a client ask about resolution in years.   When the 1dx came out I was kind of bummed with that thought of only 20 mpx, but nothing adds sharpness like perfect focus and nothing becomes a buzz kill  if a camera stops tethering, or or even worse freezes.

Just personal but I think the 1dxII, in todays commercial world is a perfect fit, if you need motion and stills.  It’s not really a movie camera, but  It shoots way above it’s spec sheet and on a high pressured day, just click a switch and going from stills to very good motion footage from my experience it’s the perfect compromise and the only downside is it's a hefty codec and takes a well spec computer to edit and grade the files if your working from the original footage.

Also it will autofocus in movie mode that’s crazy good and organic.

IMO

BC

[shadowblade]

This website is a publication and any publication plays to it’s market.

I don’t follow everything on this site, but It seems most of the talk here, in most catagories is about mirrorless, which seems to be some makers are putting most of their effort.

Given that at the pro level, except for professional architectural and landscape photography, I have see more dslrs than mirrorless.

Well, mirrorless has only been a credible option for things other than landscape and architectural photography (and some niche areas, like macro, microscope and telescope photography) for six months. Landscape and architectural photographers have been using them for around four years now (not counting MFDBs and medium/large-format film backs with ground glass which are technically almost mirrorless). Before the A9, the lack of dual cards, limited AF ability and limited lens selection (other than third-party lenses with even poorer AF) made them suitable only for a few things - one of which happens to be the third word of this website's title (hence the interest here). This year was the watershed moment for mirrorless, with the A9 and A7r3 able to keep up with top-end SLRs in ovefall performance, not just sensor-wise. It is the year they went from being niche instruments to being able to fully replace an SLR in all roles (barring lens selection for some applications, e.g. supertelephotos, which will come in time). It is telling that we are now starting to see A9 bodies among the Canons and Nikons in the pits at sporting events (at present, mostly indoor sports, due to the lack of fast supertelephotos, but that is due to change with the 400mm f/2.8 next year).

It takes time for studios and companies with hundreds of cameras and lenses to change. There's no point replacing camera bodies which are still good and effective, and there's no point switching. Right now, they are loaded with Canon or Nikon lenses and bodies, and have little reason to change system until the gear wears out, becomes obsolete or a competitor comes up with a very compelling reason to make them change. (A Sony 8k camera, with full mirrorless AF, in the same price range as the 1Dx2/D5/A9 and equally able to be used as an 8k video camera or 39MP/25fps stills action camera would probably be such a reason). Give it another three years and the picture will be completely different.

[BernardLanguillier]

It is telling that we are now starting to see A9 bodies among the Canons and Nikons in the pits at sporting events (at present, mostly indoor sports, due to the lack of fast supertelephotos, but that is due to change with the 400mm f/2.8 next year).

Is that a guess or an actual observation?

I have personally not seen yet an a9 in any of the sport venue I have recently visited in Tokyo. There may have been some, but I couldn't see them at least.

If you own a D5 or 1dxII with a set of matching super tele lenses (and most pro sport shooters do own that), I am not too sure how the a9 and current Sony lenses line-up would come across as appealing enough to trigger a switch.

Cheers,
Bernard

[shadowblade]

Is that a guess or an actual observation?

I have personally not seen yet an a9 in any of the sport venue I have recently visited in Tokyo. There may have been some, but I couldn't see them at least.

If you own a D5 or 1dxII with a set of matching super tele lenses (and most pro sport shooters do own that), I am not too sure how the a9 and current Sony lenses line-up would come across as appealing enough to trigger a switch.

Cheers,
Bernard

Witnessed.

No cricket, soccer or football yet (probably due to lack of long telephotos), but seen them at tennis, judo, muay thai and MMA. Not many (the A9's only been out for six months, and the A7r3 for two weeks) but they're starting to appear.

Apparently the eye focus is a huge drawcard.

I say give it three years, to the next Olympics. Sony should have multiple fast supertelephotos out by then. Maybe Canon mirrorless, too. You need the long telephotos for outdoor and stadium sports - it's a prerequisite, and you won't win any users without them, no matter how good your camera body is. But the real killer will be 8k video. An 8k video camera can shoot 39MP images at a minimum 25fps and is mirrorless. No SLR design can keep up with the frame rate. With the way mirrorless AF technology has developed, it would also be able to track action as well as the SLR. This turns every stills action camera into a video camera, every video camera into a stills action camera, every sports journalist into a video journalist and vice-versa. You can't do the same with an SLR. I don't know what brand these cameras will be - Canon and Sony are the two likeliest candidates, although we don't know what Nikon has in store for its mirrorless offerings yet - but they won't have mirrors. There will probably be many SLRs shooting alongside them (a bit like how the Rio Olympics were still mostly shot with 1Dx and D4 bodies, despite the 1Dx2 and D5 having been launched) but they will not be the new flagship models that the camera companies are showing off. And, given that the games are on their home ground, no doubt Canon/Nikon/Sony will want to impress.

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi Kevin,

I would say that LuLa is not a camera test site, never had been. It was a place where the owners shared their experience. It used to be a great site, with a lot of good information. Today's LuLa has a lot of independent articles.

In old times, the "pro" cameras were the top performer  with Canon and Nikon. But, that has really changed with the Canon 5DIII and foremost with the Nikon D800. Especially the D800 was pretty much a good match for the D4 and the D800 took the lead in resolution and base ISO DR. Both parameters are desirable for many areas of photography except action.

Action photography puts more emphasis on focus tracking, frame rate, durability and things like that.

I guess that for most of the work the owners do, it would have little benefits to work with a "Pro" camera like the 1DXII or the D5.

Best regards
Erik

Rob said it correctly.  First, there is only a small handful of us here at LuLa.  A few years ago we went and focused on mirrorless like a number of other sites have done.  The DSLR market is covered well elsewhere.  We look for the new technology and innovations and there isn't much of that on the DSLR side these days.Plus we buy the gear we test (even though we get some loaners).  The cost for some of the high-end Nikon and Canon gear is just too expensive for us to purchase and the resell prices are way too low for trade in.  Seems that a lot of the gear mentioned is being traded in as photographers move to mirrorless. 

So, we will focus on the mirrorless side of things as well as medium format.  There is such a proliferation of gear sites out there and we don't want to be like everyone else.  Our focus is also on the Aesthetics of photography and interest stories like we do with the Masters series, The Leica Story, and other interviews as well as some great content form photographers. 

I anxiously await the day Canon and Nikon enter the mirrorless marketplace in a serious manner.  Then it will get real fun and we will be really busy.

[Michael Erlewine]

As mentioned, a “flagship” for what? It seems there are two major areas in users, Action AF and Landscape/Still photography. I happen to be in the second group, one that cares more for good low ISO rather than good HIGH ISO.

It does seem we are in a time of major change or at least a shift in emphasis. IMO, there are too many interesting (to me) cameras and lenses for me to afford them all. Yes, over the last two years, since I was already selling a lot of lenses I no longer used, I jumped on the equipment train and purchased a bunch of cameras (and lenses). I had to time all of this carefully and I could not afford to have all of them at once, but I did managed to try out the Pentax K3 and K1, the Nikon D810 and D850, and the Sony A7R2 and A7R3, not to mention (purchasing) the Hasselblad X1D and the Fuji GFX mirrorless medium-format camera. For me, that’s a bunch in a short time.

Most of these systems I tested and eventually sent back or resold, leaving me today with the A7R3 and the Nikon D850. I still have the D810, but it has too many shutter actuations to consider selling it.

What I see is that these higher-end DSLRs and mirrorless are within a reasonable ballpark of one another in output. I can’t buy all the new equipment that is coming out that I might want and I need to remember that I am a photographer and not a tester of photographic equipment, although with the flurry of activity in these times, I sometimes wonder.

For me, financially, an even scarier market is the upgrade in quality that many of the new lenses being released have. Since I go back to 1956 as to when I first seriously began photographing, I learned how to get the best out of any photo equipment I had on hand. I was early into digital cameras, with a Nikon Coolpix and the Nikon D1X, etc.

Although I can meaningfully compare the final images from the Sony A7R3 and the Nikon D850, as far as cameras, the quality (and ease of use) of the Nikon D850 is worlds superior to the Sony A7R3... wait for it... IMO. Since I purchase (and end up collecting) very fine APO lenses, I see more and more quality lenses that I would consider buying (and using) coming on the market, in particular from Zeiss and Sigma... and even some from Nikon. I can’t afford them all.

The inability for folks like me to financially afford all of the good photo stuff coming on the market is a real bottleneck IMO, one that has not been realized and discussed enough. That fact is also changing the market! Great Lenses + Not-Enough-Cash = Few Purchases. More important perhaps, it forces me to choose one brand rather than a few brands. I found that out painfully when I tried to really test the Hasselblad X1D and the Fujifilm GFX. It was not just the price of the cameras, but trying to find enough great lenses, attachments, extras and for both cameras was an exercise in being broke.

So, in my case, at least in winter here in Michigan, I am an indoor still photographer, using the Nikon D850, the Sony A7R3, and the Cambo Actus Mini, set up to take both of the above camera bodies and exchange them in seconds. That’s going to have to be enough for me for a while. Also, I am gear-tired at this point and the number of adapters, extenders, diopters, Teleconverters, mounts, releases, filters, etc. and etc. that I have is enough to fill a small room, literally.

So, it seems that in my case, I just have to get off the equipment train at least long enough to take some photos and stop setting up systems and testing them. And perhaps I can learn to not jump at the next photo lure that hits the market. LOL.

[Rob C]

I can't imagine anyone getting into that state of affairs, Michael. Why on Earth do you care if camera A is different to camera B if you already have success with camera C? Why not stay with camera C and let the rest go away and play somewhere else? It seems you may have more an addiction to equipment that to making photographs. You would certainly not be alone.

Discipline, dear boy, discipline! Working in toy shops is only for students and Santa. And anyway, the big one, TRU, is on its ass... there's a moral there if you squint for it.

;-)

Rob

[Michael Erlewine]

I can't imagine anyone getting into that state of affairs, Michael. Why on Earth do you care if camera A is different to camera B if you already have success with camera C? Why not stay with camera C and let the rest go away and play somewhere else? It seems you may have more an addiction to equipment that to making photographs. You would certainly not be alone.

Discipline, dear boy, discipline! Working in toy shops is only for students and Santa. And anyway, the big one, TRU, is on its ass... there's a moral there if you squint for it.

;-)

Rob

Different strokes for different folks. My point is they are all pretty good. I try them out to see if one of them is able to push my work forward to where I want to see it go. And I do photography, almost every day. It is hard to be understood on these forums, so end up with the old axiom "Horses for courses."

[shadowblade]

As mentioned, a “flagship” for what? It seems there are two major areas in users, Action AF and Landscape/Still photography. I happen to be in the second group, one that cares more for good low ISO rather than good HIGH ISO.

I would say there is a third, 'balanced' category in the middle - those who shoot everything. Most photo/video journalists would fall into this category, as would many casual users. Sometimes, they might be shooting wide landscapes or cityscapes, shooting single frames at ISO 100 or lower on a tripod; other times, it might be fast-moving sports or wildlife, requiring 8fps or faster at mid-ISOs, as well as capable AF systems. They might find themselves shooting dimly-lit stage performances or ceremonies at high ISO, or in places where tripods are impractical or not allowed. They may shoot some video. They may shoot in sandstorms, torrential rain or seaspray, at +/- 50 degrees Celcius. And they need cameras which can handle this - cameras which can hit the requisite 8-10fps while retaining as much resolution as possible (not going all-out for speed while sacrificing resolution, or vice-versa), with the AF to track difficult subjects, with other features such as dual card slots, battery life and connectivity to make them suitable for critical roles.

Fortunately for them, this category of camera is growing, at the expense of the other two categories. Technological advancement means that a camera no longer needs to give up resolution to have sufficient speed for most action photography, or give up speed to have high resolution. Advances in mirrorless AF mean that cameras can now maintain their full AF capabilities when shooting video, or in live view mode. A dedicated action camera can still be faster than a general-purpose body, but there are far fewer applications for which 15fps is much more useful than 10fps than applications where 10fps is more useful than 5fps. Essentially, these general-purpose cameras are covering more and more of the applications previously requiring dedicated speed-focused or resolution-focused bodies, squeezing the specialised bodies into smaller and smaller niches.

The 1Ds3 used to be the ideal camera for this (5fps being reasonably fast for 2007, being faster than anything other than the dedicated sports cameras of the day, which only reached 9/10fps anyway). It had dual cards, solid construction, the highest resolution of its time and the best AF system of its time. This group of cameras was largely ignored for a time, but, as of the last few months, we have had the D850 and A7r3. These are fast enough to shoot action effectively, have among the highest resolution of any current cameras of the same sensor size (only the 5Ds has higher resolution) and effective AF systems. The only issue is that their AF systems are not yet the equal of the top-tier D5 and A9 bodies, but I would expect this to change in the next generation, as camera companies seize on the commercial success of this category of body (likely to be much bigger than the dedicated action bodies, both in terms of sales volume and absolute profit) and realise that dedicated action bodies are better off as 8k video cameras anyway, in a separate category not really competing with, or being cannibalised by, the 8-10fps general-purpose bodies with double the resolution of the action bodies.

Dedicated high-resolution stills bodies will likely survive this expansion of 'balanced' bodies better than dedicated high-speed stills bodies. Higher resolution is always a bonus, even if you ultimately downsample the image. But, once you hit 'fast enough', going faster often doesn't add much. And there's also the 'video barrier'. If you're shooting at 15fps, it's not much a stretch to go a bit faster and design for 25fps, for video. When general-purpose bodies are already shooting at 10fps, there isn't much room for action stills bodies to distinguish themselves from them (short of deliberately crippling the general-purpose bodies in other ways) without reaching the point where you may as well make them into video cameras. But dedicated resolution bodies can always move to 80-100MP, or add features such as tri-layer/Foveon-type technology or stronger colour filters to improve detail (improving base-ISO performance at the expense of high-ISO performance, which a general-purpose body is less able to do), leaving them with more ability to separate themselves from the general-purpose bodies for specific applications.

[lightskyland]

I am not too sure how the a9 and current Sony lenses line-up would come across as appealing enough to trigger a switch.

Golf strokes or any other sport where the machine-gun rataTATTATTATTATTAT of a clanking pro dSLR mirror isn't wanted.

[BernardLanguillier]

Golf strokes or any other sport where the machine-gun rataTATTATTATTATTAT of a clanking pro dSLR mirror isn't wanted.

Indeed, fair point.

Cheers,
Bernard

[HywelPhillips]

I would say there is a third, 'balanced' category in the middle - those who shoot everything.

Yup. That's me.

If one shoots a big enough range of things a camera system with a very wide "shooting envelope" is a required part of the kit room, even if we have specialised equipment for specific things.

My main commercial work is people. For years I shot with Canon dSLRs until I moved to Hasselblad in search of better resolution and just-as-nice colours, I shot 100% with flash and leaf shutters meant a lot more to me than high ISO. The Hasselblad is great and I still use it in its niche.

I got itchy for different looks- bokeh-tastic f/1.4 ISO800+ natural light, for example. My old Canons could just about sorta handle that, but not reliably (AF was rubbish at low light levels, grain was ugly, etc.) I only have one Hasselblad f/2.8 lens, the highest ISO I really rate it at is 80, and I can't hand-hold it steady below about 1/125th.

Furthermore, I moved back to Wales and I wanted to try commercial landscape, for which I wanted light weight and high resolution. And before I knew it I was struggling to do astro-landscape photography with a Canon 7D Mark I (I'd sold my 5D). I also do jobs here and there as they crop up which means needing kit to cover a very wide range of shooting situations.

I also shoot video; a small cam on a lightweight gimbal is a very useful tool in the toolbox! Good performance at ISO800 is a real plus here too. I'd been using a Panasonic GH4.



So I needed something new to broaden my shooting envelope, and I chose the A7RII. I chose it over the dSLR options because of IBIS and lower weight, good-enough video, good high ISO, reasonable AF, excellent resolution. 

It's absolutely turned into my go-to camera in the way the Canons used to be, which I really wasn't expecting. I always used to take the Canon case with me on every shoot. Now I take the Sony case instead.

That's why I'll be adding an A7RIII next year,. I'll round out my lens lineup with the Sony 12-24 and 100-400, and adding the Sigma 14mm f/1.4 to improve the astro stuff. It addresses my main complaints with the A7RII. (Although the UI apparently is still pretty poor).



Canon could have sold me a 5D with dual pixel PDAF and 4K video with a decent codec, any time in the years since the 5DII came out. But they've decided not to. The 1DXII is epic, especially for focussing in video, but just too heavy and not enough stills pixels for my main commercial uses. I've still got enough Canon lenses that they could just about grab me for one last hooray, but the 5DIV and the 6DII are just not competitive with the Sony option, for me.

Nikon could have sold me something if they'd come up with it sooner, although no IBIS is a bummer when you've got used to being able to handhold at 1/60th and get close to 40 megapixels of resolution out of it. If I didn't have Sony lenses now I'd be seriously looking.

I fancy the GH5 for video, but no PDAF, and there's just not enough resolution for me for stills. I find myself using the Sony over the GH4 more and more, not because it's better per se but because I've ALWAYS got the Sony with me on every trip. Add touch screen AF (big help on a gimbal, even if it is just to set focus at the start of a shot rather than tracking) and the A7RIII looks like a better bet. Plus I think the Sony lenses are a different class from the Panasonic ones I have (which is fair enough, they cost a whole lot more).

I'm tempted by the mirrorless MF stuff, and by a Hasselblad 6D, but I just don't think I can justify them when for me an A7RIII will fill so many more roles, and full frame 42 megapixels and f/1.4 lenses just cover more options than the MF 50 megapixels but slower lenses.


It all comes back to the "wide shooting envelope" and the cost of extras to get the system shootable. which is something Michael Erlewine touched on. It isn't the camera that costs the money as we all know, it's the need to invest in the system, especially the lenses.

So settling on one versatile body which can serve several needs is very helpful- it lets one leverage the expensive lenses in multiple different shooting situations, and conversely means I don't feel so bad about investing in the expensive lenses knowing I can always try them out for unexpected effects in different shooting scenarios. For example it turns out that my favourite landscape lens is the 70-200 f/4 Sony, which I totally did not buy for landscape photography!

Cheers, Hywel

[NancyP]

Yep. I like Canon lenses, and have a fair number of them. Until I turn into Wonder Photographer  and make images worthy of display at 30" x 40" in someone else's (not a relative's) house  , I am sticking with the camera I have that matches my  lens collection.

Everyone has different needs.

[Rob C]

Yep. I like Canon lenses, and have a fair number of them. Until I turn into Wonder Photographer  and make images worthy of display at 30" x 40" in someone else's (not a relative's) house  , I am sticking with the camera I have that matches my  lens collection.

Everyone has different needs.

Different needs, and very different aspirations.

The latter is one of the confusing factors thrown into the equipment mix. I believe that it leads to quite different choices at different stages of both development and personal age/maturity, not always in direct proportion to one another, the just mentioned pair!

Was a time equipment played two vital roles: getting the job done better and usually more easily; convincing clients, wordlessly, that the possession of some bits'n'bobs lent gravitas, a vital part of inspiring client confidence. Or it used to be in my time - what runs today I know not what. Then, it was an essential part of image-building, just like the new car.

Rob

[shadowblade]

It all comes back to the "wide shooting envelope" and the cost of extras to get the system shootable. which is something Michael Erlewine touched on. It isn't the camera that costs the money as we all know, it's the need to invest in the system, especially the lenses.

So settling on one versatile body which can serve several needs is very helpful- it lets one leverage the expensive lenses in multiple different shooting situations, and conversely means I don't feel so bad about investing in the expensive lenses knowing I can always try them out for unexpected effects in different shooting scenarios. For example it turns out that my favourite landscape lens is the 70-200 f/4 Sony, which I totally did not buy for landscape photography!

Same thing applies to a dual-camera setup. This is the other area where the 'balanced' body really comes into its own, complementing and providing backup for either the fast action body or the slow, high-resolution body, while using the same lenses, adding a lot more capability to the system for less than the weight of a typical lens.

The thing is, outside of a studio or other set-up shot, photographic opportunities rarely occur in isolation. If you're shooting landscapes, you'll frequently come across wildlife. If you're shooting architecture or cityscapes, you'll come across street photography opportunities. If you're off on a three-week shooting trip, documentary-style, you could come across almost anything.

If you mostly shoot non-action subjects at base ISO, adding a 'balanced' body (i.e. one 'balanced' and one slow/high-resolution) is a lightweight and easy way to get action and low-light capability, while providing a backup option with good resolution should your high-resolution body fail.

If you shoot sports and fast action, adding a D850 to the D5, or A7r3 to the A9, provides a far better option for long-distance action, where cropping is expected, and provides a 9-10fps backup option (which can even use the same batteries) should the fast body fail.

If you shoot wildlife, you can go with any two of the three cameras, depending on the expected animals, shooting distance and output size.

This is why top-tier bodies - whether speed-focused, balanced or resolution-focused - should never skimp on the autofocus. Ideally, they should be just as capable as each other. Fast action bodies shooting sports may be the classic use of autofocus, but a medium-pace body shooting 8-10fps is just as much an action body and needs to focus just as fast, and even the slow camera is useful for certain shots, providing extreme cropability for long-distance shots - the tiger stalking its prey in long grass, far away from the camera, the action occurring at the other end of the field from the camera. You don't necessarily need a high frame rate for these, but you do need fast, reliable autofocus.

It's also a failing of medium-format bodies for field use. They're fine if you're out shooting for one specific purpose and are prepared to ignore all other opportunities. Where other opportunities don't exist, they're obviously great (e.g. for studio use). But they lack the flexibility to take advantage of any opportunities which come up (e.g. long telephoto, UWA (12-16mm full-frame equivalent) or action shots), and the ability to share lenses with cameras which can - and most subjects ideal for MF captures tend to be static and can also be shot using multiple, stitched full-frame shots, for equal or better output quality, at the expense of a bit more post-processing required.

[KLaban]

The thing is, outside of a studio or other set-up shot, photographic opportunities rarely occur in isolation. If you're shooting landscapes, you'll frequently come across wildlife. If you're shooting architecture or cityscapes, you'll come across street photography opportunities. If you're off on a three-week shooting trip, documentary-style, you could come across almost anything.

Yup, great for the jack-of-all-trades.

[HywelPhillips]

Same thing applies to a dual-camera setup. This is the other area where the 'balanced' body really comes into its own, complementing and providing backup for either the fast action body or the slow, high-resolution body, while using the same lenses, adding a lot more capability to the system for less than the weight of a typical lens.

Completely agree. The ability to use the same set of lenses for stills, video, landscape, street, portrait, fetish, fashion, wildlife, astro is a huge plus. Now that FF35mm has caught up with MF in terms of adequate resolution for my purposes, it just makes so much more sense to get everything in one carry case.

Cheers, Hywel

[Rob C]

So, what's the conclusion? Is it dead or just moribund?

Rob