Canon EOS R1 Field Report from Antarctica: A Wildlife Photographer’s Perspective

#41
Exploreshootshare said:
Nowadays, it is kind of funny to read that every photographer who actually praises a camera is accused of company marketing talk. Seems like a report is only valid when one criticizes. But maybe, just maybe, some people have a hard time accepting that some statements are not just marketing talk but instead facts! I mean, we’re talking about a state of the art camera, of course, there will be some rightful claims about the camera being superior and more and more R1 users seem to prove it. But if the grinch can start believing in Christmas, maybe some critics can start believing in cameras that are actually up to the task and their claims.
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REAL PHOTOGRAPHER WITH REAL LIFE EXPERIENCE. For internet warriors who think they know better, nothing can be worse. Obvious;y to some (idiots) no camera can be great at what it does. Everything falls short and needs to be criticized. Even when their criticism is usually based on no real life experience. Pretty sad.
 
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#42
Richard CR said:
Absolutely. Observer's distance is the key.
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I've printed my parents a picture of a beautiful sundowner up on top of a hill - it's framed and a bit more than 50" across. It was taken with my trusty 5D Mark II and - lo and behold - the by some as "unusable" called 17-40/4L at 17 mm f8 or something like that. The 5D II had what? 22 MP? And the 17-40 wasn't that great either (although not as bad as some say judging from real world performance).

And you know what? It looks great, even up close.

People need to relax and get out more.
 
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#43
neuroanatomist said:
Output size typically scales with viewing distance. 60-foot wide highway digital billboards are typically 8MP or less.
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But if you increase the viewing distance, aren't you effectively making the entire image and the pixels in it, smaller? I've concluded that the optimum viewing distance of an image is the diagonal of the image. For a 60 x 90 print, that is about 96 inches. I don't know what the diagonal of a billboard is but I'm certain that it is shorter than the distance from the billboard to my car. But then the billboard and my car are typically rapidly moving relative to each other and I have only a few seconds to read and interpret the billboard message.
 
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#46
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#48
Exploreshootshare said:
“And the reader, with his typing-finger as cold as snow,
stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? The praise came without influence. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore. Then the reader thought of something he hadn't before. What if the reports, he thought, don’t come from Canon resorts. What if Canons R1´s performance, perhaps, is just a little bit more.”

Nowadays, it is kind of funny to read that every photographer who actually praises a camera is accused of company marketing talk. Seems like a report is only valid when one criticizes. But maybe, just maybe, some people have a hard time accepting that some statements are not just marketing talk but instead facts! I mean, we’re talking about a state of the art camera, of course, there will be some rightful claims about the camera being superior and more and more R1 users seem to prove it. But if the grinch can start believing in Christmas, maybe some critics can start believing in cameras that are actually up to the task and their claims.
Click to expand...
I mean, I'm not saying it can't be good. It's pretty great, I own one, and I love it. And I concede that I am nowhere near in his league in terms of what he does with it.

However that review does not come across as unbiased to me, and I stand behind my claim that some of it even sounds like marketing speak. When I see "field experiences", I kind of expect a collection of raw realistic experiences, things he loved he didn't know he would, things he struggled with, weird quirks trying to get settings right, stuff like that. Not a collection of marketing phrases weaved together.
 
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#49
neuroanatomist said:
Would a 96 MP sensor (which is what you'd need to pixel bin down to 24 MP) have the 'incredible performance' of 40 fps and a very deep buffer? I think not.
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It'd be a compromise for sure, it probably wouldn't hit 40fps unless they really streamlined the binning circuitry.

I also didn't say I disagree with ALL (his) arguments against higher res, just his last one. Claiming that the option of binning negates the added value of the option of shooting higher res is kind of weird.

In the broader discussion I accept both sides. Yes 24MPx is enough. Yes it has great noise performance. But also, yes I would have preferred a slightly higher resolution sensor. Not a deal breaker, just a preference. Bit more detail, bit more crop flexibility.
 
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#50
Del Paso said:
Easy to find with Google. 66 North is a Danish company selling mostly outdoor clothing.
[email protected]
I've just ordered mine... :)
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Thanks, Del Paso. The closest I can find in that site was for "Vik Polartec WindPro stretch touchscreen gloves". It looks like more of a glove than a liner that I'm used to having. Is this what you got? This looks like something that I'd enjoy having for laptop & camera usage in very cold weather, but I'd just like to make sure I'm ordering the right thing.

​

 
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#51
24 vs 45 MP seems to be a forever flashpoint among us. I'm on the side that either is fine to me and I wouldn't be surprised if the image quality of the R1 surpassed the R5m2 (but I only have the R5m2 so I'm guessing). There are many other important things we could get into, such as:
GPS
cross-green AF pixels and overall AF speed & accuracy
feel in the hand (size, weight, button size & placement, balance with lenses etc.)
EVF image quality
accurate recoverable shadow detail
memory usage for thousands of photos
(I'm sure there are lots of others beyond that)

As far as the reviewer and his post, I think it was wonderful. He did belittle the importance of the option to crop, but that's about the only thing I think that I disagree with (and even then you can still crop either of them and get good pictures).
 
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#52
Good review and I will only add that I have an R1 and I have been able to compare it in the same conditions with the Sony A1 regarding AF and there is no comparison regarding eye and animal tracking. In the same conditions, the R1 continually lost focus on the eye with a leopard, with lions when they closed their eyes or turned around while the Sony A1 kept it without a doubt, with the eye closed, when it turned around it kept it where it was (turned) or with the leopard it did not hesitate between the eye and the black spots, when the R1 went to the head without detecting the eye. I think that Canon has a major problem understanding the subject, especially in animals (perhaps now somewhat less in birds) but such a distance between a recent camera like the R1 and the A1 that is already 4 years old does not seem logical. Not to mention the A1 II... If we go to situations with grass between the subject and the camera the same, continuous loss of AF due to the algorithm being unable to understand where the eye and face of the animal are. It\'s not a configuration issue, it\'s a matter of understanding what you have in front of you and Sony\'s, for the moment, are 1000 times better than Canon\'s AF (which is shared between its cameras regardless of whether some or others have better hardware like the cross-type AF of the R1).
 
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#53
Bob Howland said:
why does the bottom half of the penguins fade to white?
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I find that a very strange question, which I know you know the answer to. So is it thinly veiled critique? If so why don’t you come out and say it?

If you really didn’t know, is snow (it’s very cold and snowy in the Antarctic) and it’s called artistic license.

As an aside, I would like to see some of your shots, penguins or not. They must be absolutely amazing.
 
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#54
Moritz_RD02 said:
I've printed my parents a picture of a beautiful sundowner up on top of a hill - it's framed and a bit more than 50" across. It was taken with my trusty 5D Mark II and - lo and behold - the by some as "unusable" called 17-40/4L at 17 mm f8 or something like that. The 5D II had what? 22 MP? And the 17-40 wasn't that great either (although not as bad as some say judging from real world performance).

And you know what? It looks great, even up close.

People need to relax and get out more.
Click to expand...

I've seen gallery images taken with 8MP that were well over 5 feet wide. Sure, if you looked at it from 6 inches away it wasn't the best resolution, but normal people didn't.
 
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#55
mmmm said:
I find that a very strange question, which I know you know the answer to. So is it thinly veiled critique? If so why don’t you come out and say it?

If you really didn’t know, is snow (it’s very cold and snowy in the Antarctic) and it’s called artistic license.

As an aside, I would like to see some of your shots, penguins or not. They must be absolutely amazing.
Click to expand...

Craig mentioned to me that it was most likely the wind blowing the snow near the surface, causing it to white out closer to the ground than above.
 
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#56
SvO2 said:
I'm very curious about the average age of people who say stuff like this. It's almost like they don't actually interact with people who look at pictures on their phone / online. Pinch to zoom is very much a part of the game.
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And I’m surprised when people make this type of comment, as if most of the content we consume is the same quality and resolution as the initial photographer originally intended.
 
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#57
Richard CR said:
Craig mentioned to me that it was most likely the wind blowing the snow near the surface, causing it to white out closer to the ground than above.
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Exactly. I used to shoot in the snow a lot, I lived at 1800m in the French alps for 15 years. There is a lot of leaway for play with depth of field to add interest to a picture with exactly that kind of phenomenon. It’s hard to get right, but can yield incredible results such as demonstrated in these pictures.
 
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#58
Karm said:
When I see "field experiences", I kind of expect a collection of raw realistic experiences, things he loved he didn't know he would, things he struggled with, weird quirks trying to get settings right, stuff like that. Not a collection of marketing phrases weaved together.
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You can find some reviews like this online, but you'll have to wait a a bit. For example this one for the 5D Mk IV took 5+ years ;):
youtu.be

Canon 5d Mark IV In 2022. After 5 years of assignments. Thoughts from a professional photographer

I have been shooting professional assignments with the Canon 5d Mark IV Full Frame DSLR since 2017. In this video I discuss my experiences and opinions of th...
youtu.be youtu.be
 
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#60
Karm said:
I mean, I'm not saying it can't be good. It's pretty great, I own one, and I love it. And I concede that I am nowhere near in his league in terms of what he does with it.

However that review does not come across as unbiased to me, and I stand behind my claim that some of it even sounds like marketing speak. When I see "field experiences", I kind of expect a collection of raw realistic experiences, things he loved he didn't know he would, things he struggled with, weird quirks trying to get settings right, stuff like that. Not a collection of marketing phrases weaved together.
Click to expand...
All good :)

I know what you meant and I understand that for this reason it might not be a trustworthy report or that there are resentments about it. Shooting Canon for 20 plus years, as pointed out in the article, probably makes you kind of "biased" to some extend. On the other hand, the camera seems to be exceptional in many ways and I think it is ok to feel "blown away" and use phrases like "best ever" or "game changer". Compared to my R5 there are some things on the spec list that I´d consider a "game changer".

I recently have the feeling that reviewers who actually praise a camera or other gear are often called "biased" or something similar. It kind of implies, in order to be a real reviewer or to share "real life experience" one always needs to criticize. I simply don´t agree with because there is really, really great tech out there. I personally absolutely love and enjoy my camera, my laptop and other technical gear and I think one should be grateful for it and we don´t have to find every little thing to pick about it.
 
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