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Author Topic: Long Exposures on Tripod: Sony a900/a850 or Canon 5D Mark II?  (Read 8846 times)

tpatterson

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Long Exposures on Tripod: Sony a900/a850 or Canon 5D Mark II?
« on: February 19, 2010, 06:43:05 pm »

From all that I gather, the Canon EOS 5D Mark II and the Sony a900/850 are running neck and neck for an affordable, full frame market niche. The Canon 5D Mark II has superior high ISO performance, greater lens diversity, video, and live video sensor focusing to its name while the Sony a900/a850 features superior image quality at lower ISOs (especially with the Zeiss 24-70), in-camera image stabilization, easy-to-access mirror lock up, and more affordable pricing for their a850 model.

However, I'm wondering which is the better performer during long exposures while on a tripod?
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nma

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Long Exposures on Tripod: Sony a900/a850 or Canon 5D Mark II?
« Reply #1 on: February 19, 2010, 10:26:48 pm »

Quote from: tpatterson
From all that I gather, the Canon EOS 5D Mark II and the Sony a900/850 are running neck and neck for an affordable, full frame market niche. The Canon 5D Mark II has superior high ISO performance, greater lens diversity, video, and live video sensor focusing to its name while the Sony a900/a850 features superior image quality at lower ISOs (especially with the Zeiss 24-70), in-camera image stabilization, easy-to-access mirror lock up, and more affordable pricing for their a850 model.

However, I'm wondering which is the better performer during long exposures while on a tripod?


I am not making a recommendation for or against. I can only say that Live View on the Canon 5dii is a revelation (no pun intended) when working on a tripod. With the Canon version of live view, you have a real-time histogram, the ability to check focus at most any point in the image with 5x or 10x magnification and/or dof preview engaged. This beats DOF charts to a fare thee well. Furthermore, the real-time histogram seems more accurate than the after-the-shot histogram derived from the jpeg.  So far as i know, the Sony does not have live view.  One unexpected use of live view is to check for motion blur. In the wind with a long lens, you can see the image move as the lens is blown around and you can see the effect of image stabilization.

Clearly, there are other considerations when considering a camera, but I found live view to be a big deal when working on a tripod, long exposures or short.

Hope this helps.

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Panopeeper

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Long Exposures on Tripod: Sony a900/a850 or Canon 5D Mark II?
« Reply #2 on: February 19, 2010, 11:19:02 pm »

Quote from: tpatterson
From all that I gather, the Canon EOS 5D Mark II and the Sony a900/850 are running neck and neck for an affordable, full frame market niche. The Canon 5D Mark II has superior high ISO performance, greater lens diversity, video, and live video sensor focusing to its name while the Sony a900/a850 features superior image quality at lower ISOs (especially with the Zeiss 24-70), in-camera image stabilization, easy-to-access mirror lock up, and more affordable pricing for their a850 model.

However, I'm wondering which is the better performer during long exposures while on a tripod?
You have not asked an important question: noise suppression in the raw image. Perhaps you will be surprized to hear this: the Sony A900 and A850 do perform noise suppression in the raw image, even at low ISOs, and you can not avoid that. You may want to read this carefully: Sony A900 Noise Reduction on Raw (in this regard the A850 behaves exactly like the A900). Note, that I am referring to the "normal" noise reduction, not to the long exposure NR.
« Last Edit: February 19, 2010, 11:21:01 pm by Panopeeper »
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JeffKohn

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Long Exposures on Tripod: Sony a900/a850 or Canon 5D Mark II?
« Reply #3 on: February 19, 2010, 11:42:17 pm »

Quote from: Panopeeper
You have not asked an important question: noise suppression in the raw image. Perhaps you will be surprized to hear this: the Sony A900 and A850 do perform noise suppression in the raw image, even at low ISOs, and you can not avoid that. You may want to read this carefully: Sony A900 Noise Reduction on Raw (in this regard the A850 behaves exactly like the A900). Note, that I am referring to the "normal" noise reduction, not to the long exposure NR.
I thought they fixed that in a firmware update?

I agree with nma though, LiveView is hugely beneficial when shooting from a tripod. And you don't say what your long exposures would be of, but if it's landscapes, the availability of tilt/shift lenses might be a factor to consider as well, since Sony has none and Canon just released two that are getting rave reviews.
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ErikKaffehr

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Long Exposures on Tripod: Sony a900/a850 or Canon 5D Mark II?
« Reply #4 on: February 20, 2010, 03:55:57 am »

Hi,

A few comments...

I own and use an Sony Alpha 900. I also happen to have made a few of the test images that "Panopeeper" used to show that Sony does noise reduction at low ISO on RAW files.

Although I admit that there is something fishy with the way Sony handles low pixel values I don't think it actually is noise reduction. I'd say that Panopeepers findings are for real, but not really an issue.

The major disadvantage of the Sony is the lack of live view, IMHO.

There are also some advantages, good user interface, easy mirror lockup. Antishake is nice to have. Generally a good camera.

Regarding lenses I have the 24-70/2.8 ZA, 80-200/2.8 APO (twenty years old), 70-300/4.5-5.6, 100/2.8 Macro, 20/2.8, 400/4.5G (with two extenders) and a Sigma 12-24/4.5-5.6.

I have some test pictures here (look at "original" size!):

http://www.pbase.com/ekr/a900_test

I'm using the 24-70/2.8 as my main lens, it is good but I don't necessarily think it's better than what Canon or Nikon has to offer. Keep in mind that there are a lot of individual variations.

In general, I presume that the no one can go really wrong with the EOS 5DII. It's obviously not the perfect camera, else Canon would not make the EOS 1DsIII at three times the price. It is possible that some folks prefer Sony color over Canon color. Some lenses are better than others, this also applies to individual lenses. For instance, I have seen some pretty good test reports on the Canon 100-400/4.5-5.6L USM IS. It seems to be sharper in tests than the Sony 70-400/4.0-5.6G. On the other hand, folks I respect like Michael Reichmann and Andy Biggs seem to have reservations about the 100-400/4.5-5.6/L USM IS being really sharp. It could be that the Canon lens is sensitive to wear.

Another issue is that the moving assembly in IS lenses is something that can be broken. One of the posters on this forum lost a lot of good images in Venice because his IS lens went broke on travel. Very said for him, especially as he seems to be one of the friendliest persons on this forum always offering good advice.

Best regards
Erik


Quote from: JeffKohn
I thought they fixed that in a firmware update?

I agree with nma though, LiveView is hugely beneficial when shooting from a tripod. And you don't say what your long exposures would be of, but if it's landscapes, the availability of tilt/shift lenses might be a factor to consider as well, since Sony has none and Canon just released two that are getting rave reviews.
« Last Edit: February 20, 2010, 05:07:20 am by ErikKaffehr »
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douglasf13

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Long Exposures on Tripod: Sony a900/a850 or Canon 5D Mark II?
« Reply #5 on: February 21, 2010, 03:34:52 pm »

Quote from: tpatterson
From all that I gather, the Canon EOS 5D Mark II and the Sony a900/850 are running neck and neck for an affordable, full frame market niche. The Canon 5D Mark II has superior high ISO performance, greater lens diversity, video, and live video sensor focusing to its name while the Sony a900/a850 features superior image quality at lower ISOs (especially with the Zeiss 24-70), in-camera image stabilization, easy-to-access mirror lock up, and more affordable pricing for their a850 model.

However, I'm wondering which is the better performer during long exposures while on a tripod?

  Both cameras have some issues in shadows.  With the 5Dii, there is the well documented low ISO banding problem.  With the A900, the adcs clip shadows below ISO 320, and that can cause color shifts and blotching in some cases.  I rarely, if ever, shoot below ISO 320 with the A900.  ISO 200 has slightly better DR and less grain, but there can be shadow issues like I mentioned above, and that negates the advantage to me.  Granted, these issues are very subtle, and few users know they even exist, because seeing them can depend on your workflow.  If you can deal without live view, I'd pick the A900 because of color.  Canon's color separation has been particularly poor since the 5Dii.  

  As for NR, panopeeper has been trumpeting that for a while, but Iliah Borg has adamantly argued this.  He explains it like this:

"It is not noise reduction, it is a crude analog to digital conversion that drops levels and clips to black forming clusters and causing posterization in shadows. That, indeed, is some problem; and Sony is well aware of it. By the way, the problem exists not only in Sony cameras."

"It is not sloppy (crude and sloppy have different meanings IMHO), it is state of the art, meaning the camera successfully competes over my D3X and 1Ds MkIII, rendering sometimes colour detail separation superior to D3X but for quite a lot less money. In raw converter void shadows and void highlights in one of the channels are treated equally - through additional interpolation."

http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index....32777&st=80
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feppe

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Long Exposures on Tripod: Sony a900/a850 or Canon 5D Mark II?
« Reply #6 on: February 21, 2010, 05:37:31 pm »

Dpreview has ongoing commentary from Sony keynote at PMA, and they're saying there are new a-series cameras coming with a new sensor and video capability. Perhaps this means they'll also have Live View.

If that's the case, Sony will be a big competitor against Canon on my next purchase on the strength of its prime lenses alone.

ErikKaffehr

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Long Exposures on Tripod: Sony a900/a850 or Canon 5D Mark II?
« Reply #7 on: February 22, 2010, 01:10:12 am »

Hi!

Thank's for good info!

Just a comment, for those who don't know:

"Panopeeper" is the developer of RAW-analyzer, a utility to look into RAW-files.

Iliah Borg is a raw processing guru, involved with the LibRAW project and also the RPP Raw Processor.

The original poster was asking about the long exposure capability. It may depend on what's meant with long exposure. I'm using my Alpha 900 quite frequently with exposure as long as 30 seconds and I have not seen any issues.

And by the way, thanks for pointing to a discussion started by me ;-)

Best regards
Erik


Quote from: douglasf13
Both cameras have some issues in shadows.  With the 5Dii, there is the well documented low ISO banding problem.  With the A900, the adcs clip shadows below ISO 320, and that can cause color shifts and blotching in some cases.  I rarely, if ever, shoot below ISO 320 with the A900.  ISO 200 has slightly better DR and less grain, but there can be shadow issues like I mentioned above, and that negates the advantage to me.  Granted, these issues are very subtle, and few users know they even exist, because seeing them can depend on your workflow.  If you can deal without live view, I'd pick the A900 because of color.  Canon's color separation has been particularly poor since the 5Dii.  

  As for NR, panopeeper has been trumpeting that for a while, but Iliah Borg has adamantly argued this.  He explains it like this:

"It is not noise reduction, it is a crude analog to digital conversion that drops levels and clips to black forming clusters and causing posterization in shadows. That, indeed, is some problem; and Sony is well aware of it. By the way, the problem exists not only in Sony cameras."

"It is not sloppy (crude and sloppy have different meanings IMHO), it is state of the art, meaning the camera successfully competes over my D3X and 1Ds MkIII, rendering sometimes colour detail separation superior to D3X but for quite a lot less money. In raw converter void shadows and void highlights in one of the channels are treated equally - through additional interpolation."

http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index....32777&st=80
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douglasf13

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Long Exposures on Tripod: Sony a900/a850 or Canon 5D Mark II?
« Reply #8 on: February 22, 2010, 02:11:28 am »

Quote from: ErikKaffehr
Hi!

Thank's for good info!

Just a comment, for those who don't know:

"Panopeeper" is the developer of RAW-analyzer, a utility to look into RAW-files.

Iliah Borg is a raw processing guru, involved with the LibRAW project and also the RPP Raw Processor.

The original poster was asking about the long exposure capability. It may depend on what's meant with long exposure. I'm using my Alpha 900 quite frequently with exposure as long as 30 seconds and I have not seen any issues.

And by the way, thanks for pointing to a discussion started by me ;-)

Best regards
Erik

Here is a good comparison of ISO 200 vs. 320 with the A900, and I've run my own basic tests to confirm it.
link

The author is Andrey, who is the programmer of RPP, and here is a good thread from him about the A900:

http://forum.getdpi.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7885



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tpatterson

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Long Exposures on Tripod: Sony a900/a850 or Canon 5D Mark II?
« Reply #9 on: February 23, 2010, 11:15:38 am »

Glad to initiate conversation here. I've taken note of live mode in the 5DII and Sony's noise reduction, but I'm looking for insight or personal accounts of individuals making exposures between 30 seconds and a few hours. Most of my work is creating at night to capture stars and landscapes in motion. We're talking low ISO, tripod-mounted, cable-released, and mirror-locked here.
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JeffKohn

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Long Exposures on Tripod: Sony a900/a850 or Canon 5D Mark II?
« Reply #10 on: February 23, 2010, 12:31:12 pm »

30 seconds shouldn't be a problem, several hours is not realistic with today's DSLR's IMHO. For one thing, neither of the cameras you're looking at has the battery capacity to take an exposure of that duration, you'd have to be using an AC power source. Keep in mind though, digital doesn't suffer from reciprocity failure like film does.

Here's a review of using the D3 for long exposures: http://www.naturfotograf.com/D3/D3_rev04.html. I know it's not one of the cameras you're considering, but may give you some additional data points.
« Last Edit: February 23, 2010, 12:31:36 pm by JeffKohn »
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tpatterson

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Long Exposures on Tripod: Sony a900/a850 or Canon 5D Mark II?
« Reply #11 on: February 23, 2010, 02:48:09 pm »

Quote from: JeffKohn
30 seconds shouldn't be a problem, several hours is not realistic with today's DSLR's IMHO. For one thing, neither of the cameras you're looking at has the battery capacity to take an exposure of that duration, you'd have to be using an AC power source. Keep in mind though, digital doesn't suffer from reciprocity failure like film does.

Here's a review of using the D3 for long exposures: http://www.naturfotograf.com/D3/D3_rev04.html. I know it's not one of the cameras you're considering, but may give you some additional data points.



This is the kind of information I'm after! Thank you Jeff.
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guyharrison

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Long Exposures on Tripod: Sony a900/a850 or Canon 5D Mark II?
« Reply #12 on: February 24, 2010, 10:20:56 am »

Hi,

I recently shot my 5DII for exposures of over seven minutes at ISO 200, taking landscapes by moonlight along Big Sur, Calif.  The temperatures were around 45 degrees F and I mention that because I have read that the ambient temp can be an important consideration (cooler is better).  I shot RAW + JPEG and will post a JPEG here later as I am not at my regular computer. Here are my thoughts about the process on the 5DII

QUALITY I thought the image quality results were quite amazing but have not pixel-peeped the image at 300% etc.  The camera seems to work very well for such exposures and is head and shoulders above film from what I can see.  I would be totally confident based on this to go for exposures up to ten minutes without hesitation.  This is not to say the camera can't go much longer, I just have not attempted one hour exposures yet.  

BATTERY As for battery life, I shot about ten of these exposures during the evening with the battery showing more than 50% when I was done.  I believe I could have gotten a one hour exposure or even much longer without any problem.  If you have the grip with two batteries, you probably get two hours or substantially more.

LIVE VIEW Under these admittedly extreme conditions, which it sounds like you will be encountering, the live view was not very helpful in composing the scene as there was just not enough light for it to gain up and show a useful image.  I prefer composing with live view but was very glad to have the OVF which was actually useable to show the broad compositional elements of the scene, but not for showing fine details.  You will have to fine-tune composition around the edges in post, as even the OVF will hardly show details at such low light levels (maybe also my 50 year old eyes have something to do with that!).

For shooting more normal scenes, live view is a completely decisive advantage and there is no question about it.  Other posters have already gone over this.

MIRROR LOCK People, including Michael here, have made much ado about Canon's poor mirror lock but I think they are way off base at least for the 5DII.  You push the live view buttion and presto:  instant mirror lock!  It is a dedicated one-button one-push mirror lock button and end of the problem.  I can't comment if Sony's is any easier, but it is hard to imagine anything can be easier than Canon's implementation.

I won't go over the other pros and cons you mentioned in the opening post except to make one comment--you should not, ever again, invest in an expensive camera that does not offer full HD 1080p video.  I am a dedicated still photographer for 20+ years but found it a revelation to shoot wildlife video, crashing waves, trees full of moving monarch butterflies, etc.  The ability to switch instantly from video to still and back without changing cameras was just amazing.  It took my ability to capture the visual beauty of our world to a different level and you are really depriving yourself of some joy if you forego it.  The HD video of the 5dII is completely stunning in its quality, and tripod shooters will really get the best results here.  I can not only get huge prints but also wonderful multimedia shows to play on my HD television all with a single tool.

Hope this helps!

Guy
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douglasf13

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Long Exposures on Tripod: Sony a900/a850 or Canon 5D Mark II?
« Reply #13 on: February 25, 2010, 03:40:58 pm »

This guy uses the A900 for long exposure and astrophotography with great results:

link 1
link 2
link 3
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