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Author Topic: Death of the flagship DSLR camera?  (Read 193321 times)

bcooter

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Re: Death of the flagship DSLR camera?
« Reply #60 on: December 22, 2017, 09:08:38 pm »


nothing is special.

Rob,

I think every generation feels that way about present to past work, so I respectfully disagree.

Right now I’m in the virgin atlantic club and there are large vintage rock n’ roll subjects in 20x30 still prints.   One fairly medium high production of a very young Elton John, shot by Terry O’niel.  The second I like is Jimmy Hendrix in London.   Honestly they look amazing, but it was a different time, different place and wardrobe, hair and styles that you don’t see today but if it was present day rock stars in modern garb, they wouldn’t have the same feel of importance and history. 

Same with cars.  People will look at a Ford Rally Escort Cosworth and go “those we’re the days”, but remember nobody sees those anymore, so of course they look special.

In reality there are family cars today that will run even with some race cars of the 70’s, 80’s even 90’s and do it much safer way.

But back to your reply.

There has always been millions of photographs, but before the internet nobody saw them in mass, just the high end ones for advertising and editorial and everything wasn’t always that great, some we’re downright dismal.

The difference I see today in digital vs. film was not the actual capture, not much difference there, but the amount of post work we perform.  Now I hear from every client that it can be “fixed in post” or “you can fix it is post . . . right?”

You can lose every free moment in learning post production, upgrading equipment and re learning the new programs for the new equipment.

The other thing I notice with the younger ADs and clients we work with is they started in the industry in the WWR (world wide recession), so they think the budget, time, volume from 2008 and on is standard. 

In fact the only thing that changes an image, other that knowledge and talent is time, money, inspiration and something amazing to point the lens at.   You can’t shoot 12 amazing individuals with full wardrobe, exotic locations and flawless reproduction without the budget and the time. 

Well you can shoot them, but as you know there is a difference in shooting in the British Virgin Islands compared to Lake Michigan.   A big difference.

But the upside in what I see is in motion imagery.  Today I can own three 4.5k cinema cameras that very much mimic Kodak vision stock and I  own the cameras and lenses for the price of renting for 2 months in the film days.

The only downside to this is digital takes a lot of sweat equity to get the desired result, especially in motion, or the budget to let others work it out.

Maybe I’m just happy because it’s the holidays, in three days I'll close the book on the year and have some time in London.   

I see a good future ahead for anyone in our industry that works hard, learns, invests and produces.

P.S.  Rob,  you had a great career, produced some beautiful imagery, lived a life most people could only dream of so reflect on that, because it's impressive.



IMO

BC
« Last Edit: December 22, 2017, 09:28:45 pm by bcooter »
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Rob C

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Re: Death of the flagship DSLR camera?
« Reply #61 on: December 23, 2017, 08:53:49 am »

Hey, BC!

Thanks for the response, and especially for your last sentence. Strangely enough, it was the point my wife used to make now and then when I would get attacks of the blues... accepting what both of you said, the thought remains that even were I still working today, I very much doubt that I would be doing the same things - not because I wouldn't want to, but because some of the finest clients I had no longer exist. I could never have thought it possible that The Hewden/Stuart Group, source of my best calendars, then the largest industrial plant-hire group in the entire U.K. would, today, no longer even exist, a direct victim of the fall in construction and motorway building that was once their big business interest. The only good thing to come out of that disaster is that I wasn't in the middle of producing a calendar for them at the time; with forty-two different versions of it per year, that would have left me with one mother and father of a fiscal problem to resolve!

I had never thought about your point about the age of the people doing the art buying, and their expectations of fees levels. This may not be totally new, though, as Jay Maisel makes the same point about money in one of the two LuLa interview sections that Chris Sanderson reminded us of the other day... he speaks about buyers looking for the lowest tender rather than hiring for the photographer's vision; he also recounts how he refused to work to supplied layouts, though he couched that in terms of fear of copyright abuse leading to hot water, though I suspect it's more about pride and doing your own thing. Again, I was very fortunate in that the layouts I had to follow were very early in my life, and after a while it worked the other way around: I'd get told what the guy wanted, and once I'd shot it, the results would be examined and the final thing built around the best image I'd managed to come up with. Of course, that worked because the number of agencies I worked with was quite limited and so we got to understand one another very well; it's all about mutual confidence. As with the girls we picked.

Motion was never part of my scenario, thank God, because it would have been right over my head. I was probably never much of a team player, unfortunately, and I think it came through when I went looking for work; in fact, most of the good stuff came my way almost by accident, but certainly not through lack of wishing that it would.

The quality of the work from the 50s through the 80s was indeed variable, even from the same people. What also comes to light is how much they copied each other (or had amazingly similar ideas at the same time!) and this shows clearly when you look through websites featuring the old Vogue magazines of the day. In fact, what strikes me now is that the Italian guy who had a thing going with Veruschka - Franco Rubartelli - was probably the best location photographer of them all during his run. If he's still around, he is living somewhere in Venezuela doing ads and commercials, or just chasing maidens!

At the end of the day, I found it a career of two extremes: you were flying, or you found yourself on your ass. Guess I had a mixture of both, but loved almost every minute of it, which is something worth holding on to as one gets older. I don't really accept that it's over because I know that if I manage to sell up here and get back to the UK before I lose my marbles, I would probably still be able to find girls to shoot for portfolios etc. and that's really an ironic trip: when I was working I didn't really have time or even inclination, but today I would see it as a blank sheet, the opportunity to do exactly what I pleased!

Season's greetings to you and yours!

Rob
« Last Edit: December 23, 2017, 08:58:28 am by Rob C »
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bcooter

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Re: Death of the flagship DSLR camera?
« Reply #62 on: December 23, 2017, 07:33:46 pm »

Sorry for the long post, but I just landed in London and kind of wired up and really should be fine tuning  edits rather than writing, but it’s a nice break from unpacking and firing up drives.  Anyway, It’s all a matter of perspective.

I’ve heard we’re all doomed before.

When we first set up in LA, it was early evening and I was at the lab waiting for my snips.      The guy behind the counter use to be a photographer and since it was just him and me in the room, he started carping on about how the industry has gone to s**t, pays not good just a bunch of negative stuff, mostly about how the good ol’ days were better.

He was a good photographer,  but obviously not that good at sales or dealing with people.    He was from the school of I’ll wear ragged jeans, smoke a J shoot what I want and make money doing it.   It actually worked for him, but then it didn’t, hence he was at the lab.

He said don’t you think clients are _______?   I said I guess it depends on the client and he was so down he didn’t realize that I was waiting for 200 something snips from the project we had just shot, so for us things were not bad, in fact they were good.

What most people don’t realize is this is just a business and clients want to be pleased, actually they want more than anticipated. 

The thing is when you finally get really busy, your not selling, your working and even if you have the best agent in the world, if you don’t have time to feed them new work, promotions, set up meetings, keep their eye on the ball, you’ll hit a point where it gets slow, so you bust ass do all those things and your busy again.

Like you, I’ve been fortunate, work with my best friend who is my wife, we travel the world together and see things few people get to see, meet people in all stations and situations of life. 

Ann can do anything, everything and does.  She produces, when the budget is tight does makeup, propping set design and keeps us on schedule, actually ahead of schedule.   

Ann says there is still beautiful work being done.   Charlise Theron’s ads for Jadore/Dior are beautiful and Ms. Theron is 41 years old.   Yes they are a lot of combination images with post production involved and it doesn’t matter how they got there because they’re wonderful. 

But back to the topic of reflex cameras.    Few people are going to use a mirrorless camera to shoot those Jadore ads today.  You need rock solid tethering, processing suites that are fast and bulletproof and a vetted crew that knows the equipment and won’t let you down.   If I was shooting those Jadore ads I would probably go medium format just for safety sake due to the post production involved.

Though  if the talent was running through the water,  and I was shooting motion and stills, I’d probably go with a 35mm dslr, because focus and catching the moment is more important than pure megapixels and if the images were in focus and sharp, 20 megapixels will beat 50 mpx that are soft any day of the week.

What a lot of starting photographers don’t realize is that every day is new and we play different roles.   If your shooting retail, even great retail, your usually a xerox machine (does anybody know what xerox is today?).  That doesn’t mean you can’t be a damn good xerox machine, but to stick your feet in the sand and say we’ll do it my way won’t get you too far.    Other days your the guy/girl that has a lot of control, but with control comes a lot of responsibility and those days aren’t as easy as they look from the outside.

To me the key to this is to have trust in your client’s and they have trust in you.   Yes the industry has changed, but not as much as we all like to think.   Prices on some projects have gone down and most people blame the internet.    I don’t, because I’ve seen this industry change 180 degrees about 4 times and we have to adapt, which is one of the reasons we’ve added motion.    I love shooting motion imagery, less in love with the post production it requires and it is a different mind think.  The good side is you don’t have to tell the whole story in one frame, the rough part is you can’t just cut out 4 seconds in the middle of a 10 second clip and make it work, so you have to be good from the words action to cut.   

Now doing motion and stills is where mirrorless shines and will get better as the tech gets better and after the 1dxII’s brilliant autofocus in motion, is just a glimpse of where cameras can go.  The only point I was trying to make on this thread was in digital, nearly all cameras are mirrorless, even if you have a mirror and lock it out and use an evf or the lcd in the back.    In reality, my RED’s are mirrorless, Arri’s mirrorless with either an evf or optical viewfinder.  Why optical?  Because a lot of dp’s and operators are trained in that way and that’s how they see the image. 

I don’t know when, but I am positive that there will be a day when autofocus will be offered for high end cinema cameras, along with the ability to shoot stills and motion, apply color luts and codecs to fit the project and yes the cameras will become smaller or more module based.   When, I don’t know but I do know that the technology is already there, it’s the adoption rate of the people involved that slows it up, hence that’s why Arri still offers optical viewfinders.

But Rob, you know this, the ups and downs of this business are normal. For the younger people in our crew I always suggest they watch the Hollywood roundtable videos, (even if they just want to be a still photographer).  Those videos of dp’s, actors, producers, directors are fascinating and the people that open up with the truth, no matter how famous or successful they are have a common thread of you do what you gotta do, regardless of time, budget, equipment, etc. and everyone has great periods, everyone hits a bump in the road.   

One well known producer recalled a story where he shot the b camera, because #1 he knew how, #2 the budget (on a well budgeted film) didn’t allow for another operator.   Nobody from the outside would believe that a producer, living the hollywood good life would put 20 lbs on his shoulder and mix it up in the dirt with the crew, but it happens and truth can be stranger than fiction and perception and reality are rarely the same.   

So to say you don’t mix well with people I don’t believe.  You have to even in stills.  You’ve got camera makers, labs, clients and crew.  If you don’t deal with them, uplift them to your standards and you to theirs then it’s a recipe for disaster.

Being a professional artist is an elective.  Nobody puts a gun to our head and says do this.   We chose it and not because it’s easy, it’s damn hard.   So rather than say what you won’t do, the best thing is learn and know what you can do.

The phone will not ring, today it will buzz . . . a lot.

IMO

BC





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Chris Livsey

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Re: Death of the flagship DSLR camera?
« Reply #63 on: December 24, 2017, 04:31:33 am »

Rob & BC thanks again this year for participating and sharing you both make visits here still worthwhile, I hope you both take pleasure in the Festive Season and that the year to come exceeds your best expectations.
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ErikKaffehr

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Re: Death of the flagship DSLR camera?
« Reply #64 on: December 24, 2017, 04:45:48 am »

Hi BC,

Nice to see you back! Thanks for the long postings it is always interesting to hear what the folks earning their living by making still and motion feel about things.

Best regards
Erik

Sorry for the long post, but I just landed in London and kind of wired up and really should be fine tuning  edits rather than writing, but it’s a nice break from unpacking and firing up drives.  Anyway, It’s all a matter of perspective.

I’ve heard we’re all doomed before.

When we first set up in LA, it was early evening and I was at the lab waiting for my snips.      The guy behind the counter use to be a photographer and since it was just him and me in the room, he started carping on about how the industry has gone to s**t, pays not good just a bunch of negative stuff, mostly about how the good ol’ days were better.

He was a good photographer,  but obviously not that good at sales or dealing with people.    He was from the school of I’ll wear ragged jeans, smoke a J shoot what I want and make money doing it.   It actually worked for him, but then it didn’t, hence he was at the lab.

He said don’t you think clients are _______?   I said I guess it depends on the client and he was so down he didn’t realize that I was waiting for 200 something snips from the project we had just shot, so for us things were not bad, in fact they were good.

What most people don’t realize is this is just a business and clients want to be pleased, actually they want more than anticipated. 

The thing is when you finally get really busy, your not selling, your working and even if you have the best agent in the world, if you don’t have time to feed them new work, promotions, set up meetings, keep their eye on the ball, you’ll hit a point where it gets slow, so you bust ass do all those things and your busy again.

Like you, I’ve been fortunate, work with my best friend who is my wife, we travel the world together and see things few people get to see, meet people in all stations and situations of life. 

Ann can do anything, everything and does.  She produces, when the budget is tight does makeup, propping set design and keeps us on schedule, actually ahead of schedule.   

Ann says there is still beautiful work being done.   Charlise Theron’s ads for Jadore/Dior are beautiful and Ms. Theron is 41 years old.   Yes they are a lot of combination images with post production involved and it doesn’t matter how they got there because they’re wonderful. 

But back to the topic of reflex cameras.    Few people are going to use a mirrorless camera to shoot those Jadore ads today.  You need rock solid tethering, processing suites that are fast and bulletproof and a vetted crew that knows the equipment and won’t let you down.   If I was shooting those Jadore ads I would probably go medium format just for safety sake due to the post production involved.

Though  if the talent was running through the water,  and I was shooting motion and stills, I’d probably go with a 35mm dslr, because focus and catching the moment is more important than pure megapixels and if the images were in focus and sharp, 20 megapixels will beat 50 mpx that are soft any day of the week.

What a lot of starting photographers don’t realize is that every day is new and we play different roles.   If your shooting retail, even great retail, your usually a xerox machine (does anybody know what xerox is today?).  That doesn’t mean you can’t be a damn good xerox machine, but to stick your feet in the sand and say we’ll do it my way won’t get you too far.    Other days your the guy/girl that has a lot of control, but with control comes a lot of responsibility and those days aren’t as easy as they look from the outside.

To me the key to this is to have trust in your client’s and they have trust in you.   Yes the industry has changed, but not as much as we all like to think.   Prices on some projects have gone down and most people blame the internet.    I don’t, because I’ve seen this industry change 180 degrees about 4 times and we have to adapt, which is one of the reasons we’ve added motion.    I love shooting motion imagery, less in love with the post production it requires and it is a different mind think.  The good side is you don’t have to tell the whole story in one frame, the rough part is you can’t just cut out 4 seconds in the middle of a 10 second clip and make it work, so you have to be good from the words action to cut.   

Now doing motion and stills is where mirrorless shines and will get better as the tech gets better and after the 1dxII’s brilliant autofocus in motion, is just a glimpse of where cameras can go.  The only point I was trying to make on this thread was in digital, nearly all cameras are mirrorless, even if you have a mirror and lock it out and use an evf or the lcd in the back.    In reality, my RED’s are mirrorless, Arri’s mirrorless with either an evf or optical viewfinder.  Why optical?  Because a lot of dp’s and operators are trained in that way and that’s how they see the image. 

I don’t know when, but I am positive that there will be a day when autofocus will be offered for high end cinema cameras, along with the ability to shoot stills and motion, apply color luts and codecs to fit the project and yes the cameras will become smaller or more module based.   When, I don’t know but I do know that the technology is already there, it’s the adoption rate of the people involved that slows it up, hence that’s why Arri still offers optical viewfinders.

But Rob, you know this, the ups and downs of this business are normal. For the younger people in our crew I always suggest they watch the Hollywood roundtable videos, (even if they just want to be a still photographer).  Those videos of dp’s, actors, producers, directors are fascinating and the people that open up with the truth, no matter how famous or successful they are have a common thread of you do what you gotta do, regardless of time, budget, equipment, etc. and everyone has great periods, everyone hits a bump in the road.   

One well known producer recalled a story where he shot the b camera, because #1 he knew how, #2 the budget (on a well budgeted film) didn’t allow for another operator.   Nobody from the outside would believe that a producer, living the hollywood good life would put 20 lbs on his shoulder and mix it up in the dirt with the crew, but it happens and truth can be stranger than fiction and perception and reality are rarely the same.   

So to say you don’t mix well with people I don’t believe.  You have to even in stills.  You’ve got camera makers, labs, clients and crew.  If you don’t deal with them, uplift them to your standards and you to theirs then it’s a recipe for disaster.

Being a professional artist is an elective.  Nobody puts a gun to our head and says do this.   We chose it and not because it’s easy, it’s damn hard.   So rather than say what you won’t do, the best thing is learn and know what you can do.

The phone will not ring, today it will buzz . . . a lot.

IMO

BC
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Erik Kaffehr
 

Rob C

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Re: Death of the flagship DSLR camera?
« Reply #65 on: December 24, 2017, 08:46:55 am »

Rob & BC thanks again this year for participating and sharing you both make visits here still worthwhile, I hope you both take pleasure in the Festive Season and that the year to come exceeds your best expectations.

Well, thank you very much! That was an unexpected post indeed - nice to realise some people are interested.

And may the New Year bring you all the best that you may wish yourself!

Rob

Alan Goldhammer

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Re: Death of the flagship DSLR camera?
« Reply #66 on: December 24, 2017, 09:29:07 am »

Marc Maron did a very nice interview with Neal Preston who took some of the more iconic rock & roll images in our time  http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episode-874-neal-preston .  It's well worth listening to and he has a new book out on the topic.
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pearlstreet

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Re: Death of the flagship DSLR camera?
« Reply #67 on: December 24, 2017, 12:56:42 pm »

Rob,


I see a good future ahead for anyone in our industry that works hard, learns, invests and produces.




IMO

BC

This is so true. It should be on the masthead of this site.
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Rob C

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Re: Death of the flagship DSLR camera?
« Reply #68 on: December 24, 2017, 01:45:27 pm »

Marc Maron did a very nice interview with Neal Preston who took some of the more iconic rock & roll images in our time  http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episode-874-neal-preston .  It's well worth listening to and he has a new book out on the topic.


Took a while to get to the interview, but when it did, it was fascinating! It seems to me that pretty much anybody who gets somewhere in photography has gone into it because they just couldn't help or avoid doing so. They are all driven by conviction.

Thank you very much for that link - made my day a whole lot brighter!

Rob

Rob C

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Re: Death of the flagship DSLR camera?
« Reply #69 on: December 24, 2017, 01:46:59 pm »

This is so true. It should be on the masthead of this site.


Sharon, this is not a pro site!

:-)

Rob

pearlstreet

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Re: Death of the flagship DSLR camera?
« Reply #70 on: December 24, 2017, 04:03:48 pm »


Sharon, this is not a pro site!

:-)

Rob

That's true  ;D, it's not an art site either  :P - but for what it is, I find it very helpful. I don't expect it to be the be/all end/all.  ( I know you were sort of kidding, Rob.  ;D)
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Rob C

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Re: Death of the flagship DSLR camera?
« Reply #71 on: December 24, 2017, 04:52:56 pm »

That's true  ;D, it's not an art site either  :P - but for what it is, I find it very helpful. I don't expect it to be the be/all end/all.  ( I know you were sort of kidding, Rob.  ;D)

Yes, I know, Sharon, but I do run into the problem sometimes of thinking everybody is as wedded to photography as I have been since my personal forever!

But yes, LuLa is a serioulsy useful source for many photographic solutions; almost always there will be somebody out there (meaning in here) who can and will help. I have benefitted a great deal from these friendly souls - for me, digital was learned online: I never used it until post-retirment. Perhaps just as well I didn't have to face that learning curve and earn a living at the same time!

Rob

BernardLanguillier

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Re: Death of the flagship DSLR camera?
« Reply #72 on: December 30, 2017, 06:48:42 am »

http://www.dslrbodies.com/cameras/current-nikon-dslr-reviews/nikon-d5-review.html

For those interested in maximizing their chance of getting the shot, it would appear that the old monsters still have some aces up their sleeves.

Cheers,
Bernard

scooby70

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Re: Death of the flagship DSLR camera?
« Reply #73 on: December 30, 2017, 06:59:53 am »

I think it's a relatively small number of people who need what that camera offers and looking at that review one thing occurs to me and it's that I'd hate to go back to being limited to focus points all clustered around the centre of the frame. One thing I've come to value a lot is being able to focus anywhere without having to focus and recompose.

OK, maybe only a small number of people need that ability too :D
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shadowblade

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Re: Death of the flagship DSLR camera?
« Reply #74 on: December 30, 2017, 08:27:34 am »

http://www.dslrbodies.com/cameras/current-nikon-dslr-reviews/nikon-d5-review.html

For those interested in maximizing their chance of getting the shot, it would appear that the old monsters still have some aces up their sleeves.

Cheers,
Bernard

It's very subject-dependent.

Generic subject being tracked around the centre of the frame? It's hard to beat the Nikon.

Make it a human face, though, and suddenly the Sony is number one, being more likely to land a shot on the closest eye than either the Canon or the Nikon. Same thing if you're tracking a subject using the more peripheral parts of the AF area - once you get significantly off-centre, the Sony's combined PDAF and CDAF outperforms the SLRs' PDAF-only approach.

Chasing an elusive subject all over the frame? It's hard to beat the Nikon for that, with its predictive tracking algorithms. Unless, of course, the subject is a face, in which case Sony's facial recognition and eye AF trump the other two.

Or, if you're trying to focus on something behind a reflective surface, particularly a shifting one - say, fish under a pond with ripples - it's hard to beat the Canon for that. The Canon will go right for the fish, whereas the Nikon tends to be distracted by the ripples and reflections.

But, for the vast majority of applications, the results of the three AF systems are indistinguishable - none of them are likely to miss.
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Dan Wells

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Re: Death of the flagship DSLR camera?
« Reply #75 on: December 30, 2017, 07:37:15 pm »

Digital technology has just given us such ridiculously good cameras that you can use most things pretty far outside of what the manufacturer intended (well, maybe not medium format - I'd hate to try and shoot sports with a Phase with center-only AF...). Even the "lower-resolution" action bodies will print 16x24 (which only a very few 35mm films ever would on a high-detail subject!), and even the "slower" high-res DSLRs still shoot faster than any F5 with far superior AF (oh, and they hold a lot more than 36 exposures at a time)...

Once you spend $1200-$2000 or so on a body from any major manufacturer (D7500, X-T2, EOS 7D mkII, A7II, GH5, E-M1 mk II etc.), you have a camera in your hands that is capable of far higher technical image quality than any 35mm camera, in essentially any situation. The lowest image quality in that group (Micro 4/3) still beats any but the slowest and most obscure (ISO 25-50) 35mm films, and the slowest focusing camera in the group (A7II?) can out-focus the F5 and the EOS 1V, with much more sophisticated tracking (and all will shoot at LEAST the F5's 8 fps).

The question beyond that is what do you spend extra on...

If you want the maximum possible image quality, there's the D850 and the A7rIII - they'll not only beat all 35mm film, but essentially all medium format film as well (40x60" prints are merely a matter of finding somewhere to put the printer and the prints...).

If you want a compact all-rounder, it's hard to beat the X-T2, which will make gallery quality 24x36" prints (with its fantastic lenses and very good sensor, even though it's not full-frame) and shoot 8fps with AF no film shooter could have dreamed of - all in a package the size of an old FM2 (with no winder) - all while hiking 450 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail (my X-T2 just survived precisely that treatment,outside my backpack).

If you're shooting the Olympics, there are the D5, the D500, the 1Dx mk II and the A9.

Finally, if you want to shoot 1/4" handheld, use an E-M1 mkII, and if you want to shoot the best possible movies, how about a GH5?
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hogloff

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Re: Death of the flagship DSLR camera?
« Reply #76 on: December 30, 2017, 07:59:12 pm »

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

Ummm...shades of Canon and their elimination of the FD system...huh?
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hogloff

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Re: Death of the flagship DSLR camera?
« Reply #77 on: December 30, 2017, 08:03:02 pm »

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.

You are totally wrong here. The eye-AF of the A7R2 and now the A9 and A7R3 is game changing for both portraits where the model is moving as well as any other situation where you are taking photos of people. Try following a child in dim light ( IE:  wide open at 1.4 ) and see what your AF hit rate is with any DSLR out there.

I've been using sony mirrorless cameras for my travel photography for the past 2 years and they have excelled. I don't know where you are coming from saying they could only be used for landscape and architecture until 6 months ago...that's total fabrication.
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hogloff

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Re: Death of the flagship DSLR camera?
« Reply #78 on: December 30, 2017, 08:07:19 pm »

Well... it is sometimes easy to forget that these bodies are amazing image capturing machines and will remain on top of most applications in the future.




D5 + 70-200 f2.8 E FL

Cheers,
Bernard

Why?  What does the DSLR have going for it that mirrorless does not?
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BJL

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Re: Death of the flagship DSLR camera?
« Reply #79 on: December 30, 2017, 08:39:36 pm »

http://www.dslrbodies.com/cameras/current-nikon-dslr-reviews/nikon-d5-review.html

For those interested in maximizing their chance of getting the shot, it would appear that the old monsters still have some aces up their sleeves.
It is natural that Canon and Nikon—having dominated the 35mm ILC market since the film era—have in many respects the best technology, but in many cases for reasons unrelated to what kind of viewfinder is in use. They also have the inertia advantage of so many good and expensive lenses in the hands of photographers, news organizations and so on. So yes, there are still good reasons for many demanding photographers to choose those brands, but in many cases "choosing a camera with an OVF rather than an EVF" is only a side-effect. Their market dominance also gives them less incentive than other camera makers to cannibalize their SLR sales by offering high-end mirrorless cameras. But I predict that the tipping point will come soon, with their best technology also offered in EVF bodies, and then the share of new camera-body purchases will flip rather quickly.
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