This could be a surprise: Canon next 6DmarKII will be….mirrorless?

frod said:
Mirrorless cameras have far fewer moving parts, I'd expect this change to come in from the bottom up as a cost saving exercise.
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I wonder if there'll ever be able to make a TTL hybrid viewfinder so they can please both OVF and EVF users? This would require much better on sensor PDAF than what's on most current DSLRs though, but Fuji are clearly showing the way with their XT2. I know it would increase manufacturing cost but this could be offset by both parties buying it.
 
ABTog said:
It's already been tried. Sony originally produced the Alpha line of DSLRs (with mirrors and pretty decent live view) and then they decided to get rid of the mirror and produced the SLT Alpha cameras which are mirrorless but because they use the same a-mount lenses, they are the same size as DSLRs. These are not very popular cameras, compared to equivalent Canon/Nikon DSLRs.
When Sony wanted to make a full frame mirrorless camera, they decided to use their e-mount (rather than a-mount) system which allowed them to have a much smaller body and give you the advantage of size/weight reduction.
If this rumour is true (and I'm not convinced, why change the very good 6D formular?) Canon would be wise to learn from Sony's experience: take the smaller mount of the EOS-M and make a full frame camera around it.
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To be fair Sony havn't decided to do away with the mirror altogether - they have a new FF DSLR released only last month, the very good A99 II, so they must be acknowledging a need or gap they still need to fill.
 
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odd jim said:
To be fair Sony havn't decided to do away with the mirror altogether they have a new FF DSLR released only last month, the very good A99 II, so they must be acknowledging a need or gap they still need to fill.
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Has it been released now? (goes off to look at reviews ;))
 
snerkler said:
I wonder if there'll ever be able to make a TTL hybrid viewfinder so they can please both OVF and EVF users? This would require much better on sensor PDAF than what's on most current DSLRs though, but Fuji are clearly showing the way with their XT2. I know it would increase manufacturing cost but this could be offset by both parties buying it.
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Doubt it's possible. There are lenses in EVFs to make the display viewable. Plus, it would add cost, not reduce it.
 
odd jim said:
To be fair Sony havn't decided to do away with the mirror altogether - they have a new FF DSLR released only last month, the very good A99 II, so they must be acknowledging a need or gap they still need to fill.
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Canon have used similar technology in the EOS RT and EOS 1RN if I'm understanding the technology correctly. Such a camera doesn't have to have a EVF.

But these are not mirrorless in the usual sense of the term.
 
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Eloise said:
Canon have used similar technology in the EOS RT and EOS 1RN if I'm understanding the technology correctly. Such a camera doesn't have to have a EVF.

But these are not mirrorless in the usual sense of the term.
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It is similar in principle, whether the type of mirror is the same or not I don't know. Maybe the one in the Canon reflected more light to the viewfinder meaning that you could see better, or maybe the view through the viewfinder was poor which is why Sony opted for an EVF?
 
Eloise said:
Canon have used similar technology in the EOS RT and EOS 1RN if I'm understanding the technology correctly. Such a camera doesn't have to have a EVF.

But these are not mirrorless in the usual sense of the term.
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But the A99 II is a normal DSLR is it not?
 
odd jim said:
But the A99 II is a normal DSLR is it not?
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The Sony A99 II is a combination of both and in my opinion a really good body.
It uses a translucent mirror which gives it great hybrid AF (4D) and a EVF. :D
 
odd jim said:
But the A99 II is a normal DSLR is it not?
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It uses (as I understand it) a translucent non-moving mirror just like the old EOS RT and EOS 1RN (though for different purpose as the EOS used it to avoid the lag of moving a mirror iirc).
Fuguru said:
The Sony A99 II is a combination of both and in my opinion a really good body.
It uses a translucent mirror which gives it great hybrid AF (4D) and a EVF. :D
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To my mind its the worst of both worlds ... EVF ... yuk! (Just my opinion and I've not yet tried a Fuji nor Leica though I could live with the Pen-F due to the form factor of the rest of the camera as a more specialised / secondary camera).
 
Ah I see, sounds good! Though is there a light transmission issue to the sensor with translucent mirror systems? I read there was an issue with an earlier iteration of the system a couple of years ago?
 
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odd jim said:
Ah I see, sounds good! Though is there a light transmission issue to the sensor with translucent mirror systems? I read here was an issue with an earlier iteration of the system a couple of years ago?
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There is inevitably yes ... my figures maybe wrong but there is something like a 1/3 stop transmission loss.
 
odd jim said:
Ah I see, sounds good! Though is there a light transmission issue to the sensor with translucent mirror systems? I read there was an issue with an earlier iteration of the system a couple of years ago?
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As per my post on the first page there is a light loss, and it is noticeable when comparing noise at a given ISO. Having said that my A77-II had better noise handling than my A77, but still only comparable to my EM10. Looking at DXO the Sony A99-II is down again on noise handling compared to the rest of the field. I believe it uses the same 42mp as found in the A7R-II yet only scores 2317 compared to 3434 of the A7R-II I can only put this down to the the translucent mirror as I'd expect it's using a similar processor. It's still markedly lower than the D750.
https://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Com...Sony-A7R-II-versus-Nikon-D750___1120_1035_975
 
frod said:
Exposure/wb preview, no chimping means reduced post processing, much better manual focussing, fewer moving parts, no need for focus fine tuning, and sometimes electronic shutter, to name a few.
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I don't understand why a mirrorless would mean no chimping and reduced post processing. Fewer moving parts is always good but it's not as though DSLRs are unreliable. Less parts wouldn't sway me in the direction of mirrorless, size possibly for some aspects of photography but offset against better AF from DSLRs for my needs
 
Gaz J said:
I don't understand why a mirrorless would mean no chimping and reduced post processing. Fewer moving parts is always good but it's not as though DSLRs are unreliable. Less parts wouldn't sway me in the direction of mirrorless, size possibly for some aspects of photography but offset against better AF from DSLRs for my needs
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The reason for less chimping is because you can see the exposure and WB before taking the shot therefore there's no need (in theory) to check that you've got the exposure right after the shot, particularly in tricky lighting scenarios. The fact is though that I chimp just as much with my XT1 as my D750 as I chimp to double check focus is correct.
 
snerkler said:
The reason for less chimping is because you can see the exposure and WB before taking the shot therefore there's no need (in theory) to check that you've got the exposure right after the shot, particularly in tricky lighting scenarios. The fact is though that I chimp just as much with my XT1 as my D750 as I chimp to double check focus is correct.
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I can see the advantage for being able to see the exposure prior to taking the shot if time allows. Where time doesn't allow you're back to experience, skill and knowing how your camera reacts in a given set of circumstances.

Like you I chimp for focus as much as anything and I doubt that would change whatever camera I owned.
 
snerkler said:
As per my post on the first page there is a light loss, and it is noticeable when comparing noise at a given ISO. Having said that my A77-II had better noise handling than my A77, but still only comparable to my EM10. Looking at DXO the Sony A99-II is down again on noise handling compared to the rest of the field. I believe it uses the same 42mp as found in the A7R-II yet only scores 2317 compared to 3434 of the A7R-II I can only put this down to the the translucent mirror as I'd expect it's using a similar processor. It's still markedly lower than the D750.
https://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Com...Sony-A7R-II-versus-Nikon-D750___1120_1035_975
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It sounds like a large difference, but from 2317, 1/3 stop up is 3090, so the D750 (2956) is less than 1/3 stop better, while the A7R-II is 1/2 stop better (which gives a pretty good indication of how much light is being 'lost' to the translucent mirror).

What Sony have managed to do in the A99-II is combine the on-sensor 399 PDAF points with the traditional off-sensor 79 point PDAF array - giving it very good coverage in terms of available AF points.

The EVF is also continuing to get better and better - I am also a big fan of a large, bright OVF (the A900 has an excellent OVF), and was not satisfied with the EVF in the A77 or original A99, but having tried an A99-II at a recent show, I must say its much closer to an OVF in terms of clarity, etc than anything I've tried before, and has certainly reached the 'good enough' stage - add in the benefits of an EVF (ability to adjust for actual exposure, focus magnification, peaking, review through viewfinder - a real boon in bright conditions, etc.) and it's reached the stage where I'd happily upgrade (anyone got a spare 3k?)
 
Gaz J said:
I can see the advantage for being able to see the exposure prior to taking the shot if time allows. Where time doesn't allow you're back to experience, skill and knowing how your camera reacts in a given set of circumstances.

Like you I chimp for focus as much as anything and I doubt that would change whatever camera I owned.
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Back when I had a 5D and a humble little Panasonic G1 in challenging conditions the G1 with its in view histogram allowed me to get a useable shot first time when I'd have been guessing and shooting multiple shots with the 5D, and that was just with a first generation mirroress camera, the newer ones are a lot better.

With a conventional DSLR you can move your camera about the scene and spot meter here there and everywhere, guess the compensation to dial in and / or bracket your shot but it's not a quick process unless you are just going to meter for the highlights and rely on post capture processing to boost the shadows and cure the noise. With the mirrrorless cameras I have now shooting in challenging conditions is quicker and I very rarely delete a shot... unless someone walks into the frame, that sort of thing, but very rarely am I disappointed because my highlight have blown or I've needed to boost the shadows so much that they've turned into a noisy mess.

And on focus, I rarely worry about that any more as mirrorless cameras are very accurate and consistent for the sort of pictures I take. Back when I had DSLR's the Canon website used to say something to the effect that if you took three pictures you should expect to see focus differences between them and this is normal. I doubt that's changed. With mirrorless cameras the AF can be very accurate and consistent and focusing manually with a greatly magnified view arguably allows the most accuracy of any way of doing it. As I've said to people many times with mirrorless it's like shooting macro at a distance and you can see the focus moving along the length of the eyelash of your choice. That's not possible with a DSLR.

With mirrorless as long as the shutter speed is appropriate I don't worry too much about focus accuracy as I know it'll be bang on. A couple of years ago when at a very hot and humid spot in Thailand I did get a series of about three shots which were slightly out of focus and as it's never happened before of since I assume something just got fogged up in the heat and humidity. That's just about the only focus issue I've had in years of using mirrorless and that's a much better record than I had with SLR's and DSLR's. Another wonderful thing with mirrorless is the excellent lenses which are often good wide open and it's not just the primes, one lens I have now is a truly tiny f3.5 to f5.6 kit zoom which I use wide open, even the more exotic DSLR lenses often need stopping down a bit.
 
I believe that the DSLR's will come to a end eventually, its very old technology now.
 
woof woof said:
Back when I had a 5D and a humble little Panasonic G1 in challenging conditions the G1 with its in view histogram allowed me to get a useable shot first time when I'd have been guessing and shooting multiple shots with the 5D, and that was just with a first generation mirroress camera, the newer ones are a lot better.

With a conventional DSLR you can move your camera about the scene and spot meter here there and everywhere, guess the compensation to dial in and / or bracket your shot but it's not a quick process unless you are just going to meter for the highlights and rely on post capture processing to boost the shadows and cure the noise. With the mirrrorless cameras I have now shooting in challenging conditions is quicker and I very rarely delete a shot... unless someone walks into the frame, that sort of thing, but very rarely am I disappointed because my highlight have blown or I've needed to boost the shadows so much that they've turned into a noisy mess.

And on focus, I rarely worry about that any more as mirrorless cameras are very accurate and consistent for the sort of pictures I take. Back when I had DSLR's the Canon website used to say something to the effect that if you took three pictures you should expect to see focus differences between them and this is normal. I doubt that's changed. With mirrorless cameras the AF can be very accurate and consistent and focusing manually with a greatly magnified view arguably allows the most accuracy of any way of doing it. As I've said to people many times with mirrorless it's like shooting macro at a distance and you can see the focus moving along the length of the eyelash of your choice. That's not possible with a DSLR.

With mirrorless as long as the shutter speed is appropriate I don't worry too much about focus accuracy as I know it'll be bang on. A couple of years ago when at a very hot and humid spot in Thailand I did get a series of about three shots which were slightly out of focus and as it's never happened before of since I assume something just got fogged up in the heat and humidity. That's just about the only focus issue I've had in years of using mirrorless and that's a much better record than I had with SLR's and DSLR's. Another wonderful thing with mirrorless is the excellent lenses which are often good wide open and it's not just the primes, one lens I have now is a truly tiny f3.5 to f5.6 kit zoom which I use wide open, even the more exotic DSLR lenses often need stopping down a bit.
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But at the end of the day it's still just shutter speed, aperture and ex comp. there isn't some magic formula that allows a mirrorless to achieve an exposure that I couldn't get.

I rarely get an exposure that's out by much and exposure comp is a very quick adjustment.

As for focus, I don't bother checking for static subjects it's for birds in flight etc. I find it hard to believe that you have that much confidence in the AF that you wouldnt check focus on a fast moving bird or motorcycle for example.
 
Gaz J said:
But at the end of the day it's still just shutter speed, aperture and ex comp. there isn't some magic formula that allows a mirrorless to achieve an exposure that I couldn't get.

I rarely get an exposure that's out by much and exposure comp is a very quick adjustment.

As for focus, I don't bother checking for static subjects it's for birds in flight etc. I find it hard to believe that you have that much confidence in the AF that you wouldnt check focus on a fast moving bird or motorcycle for example.
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Have you tried a mirrorless camera? There's no magic but how about seeing the world as your camera sees it and seeing what the final image will be like before you press the shutter not chimping on a tiny back screen or 4 hours later when you get home? Couldn't that be an advantage? Yes, you could get just about any exposure, eventually, but even the best of us (I've been at this over 40 years now) can't guesstimate every scene and be cock on every time and I bet you chimp more, bracket more and delete more than I do.

When I had DSLR's and I knew I was shooting a difficult scene I'd usually take a series of shots for exposure and focus reasons but for me that's very largely negated by the advantages of mirrorless. I suppose it depends what you shoot and for you there may be no gain in having what you see is what you get, in view histograms or focus aids but for me all of these things add up to make a much more useable and reliable tool.
 
Eloise said:
Unless EVFs get a lot better than the Sony ones ... then that will be a sad day.
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Technology is always improving and moving forwards, sometimes its not always the best way forward but cheapest. :D
I found the EVF on the A7RII and now Fuji XT-2 to be excellent, so I am in the pro-EVF crowd.
 
Eloise said:
Unless EVFs get a lot better than the Sony ones ... then that will be a sad day.
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They will get better and even today EVF's are better than OVF's in some situations and at least with an EVF I haven't yet had the crud and/or creatures in my line of sight that I've had with every purely optical viewfinder I've had. That's one obvious advantage :D
 
woof woof said:
Back when I had a 5D and a humble little Panasonic G1 in challenging conditions the G1 with its in view histogram allowed me to get a useable shot first time when I'd have been guessing and shooting multiple shots with the 5D, and that was just with a first generation mirroress camera, the newer ones are a lot better.

With a conventional DSLR you can move your camera about the scene and spot meter here there and everywhere, guess the compensation to dial in and / or bracket your shot but it's not a quick process unless you are just going to meter for the highlights and rely on post capture processing to boost the shadows and cure the noise. With the mirrrorless cameras I have now shooting in challenging conditions is quicker and I very rarely delete a shot... unless someone walks into the frame, that sort of thing, but very rarely am I disappointed because my highlight have blown or I've needed to boost the shadows so much that they've turned into a noisy mess.

And on focus, I rarely worry about that any more as mirrorless cameras are very accurate and consistent for the sort of pictures I take. Back when I had DSLR's the Canon website used to say something to the effect that if you took three pictures you should expect to see focus differences between them and this is normal. I doubt that's changed. With mirrorless cameras the AF can be very accurate and consistent and focusing manually with a greatly magnified view arguably allows the most accuracy of any way of doing it. As I've said to people many times with mirrorless it's like shooting macro at a distance and you can see the focus moving along the length of the eyelash of your choice. That's not possible with a DSLR.

With mirrorless as long as the shutter speed is appropriate I don't worry too much about focus accuracy as I know it'll be bang on. A couple of years ago when at a very hot and humid spot in Thailand I did get a series of about three shots which were slightly out of focus and as it's never happened before of since I assume something just got fogged up in the heat and humidity. That's just about the only focus issue I've had in years of using mirrorless and that's a much better record than I had with SLR's and DSLR's. Another wonderful thing with mirrorless is the excellent lenses which are often good wide open and it's not just the primes, one lens I have now is a truly tiny f3.5 to f5.6 kit zoom which I use wide open, even the more exotic DSLR lenses often need stopping down a bit.
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With regards to focus I get more missed focus shots with Mirrorless (EM10, EM5-II and XT1) than I ever have with DSLR (and that's static subjects) so I'd argue my need to chimp is more with mirrorless than DSLR. Obviously YMMV.

Also, metering has become so clever these days that it's very rare for my exposure to be off. Matrix mode kind of does exactly what you said about spot metering everywhere, it evaluates all aspects of the scene and somehow manages to know what's what and meter accordingly. It even has facial recognition and will weigh the metering more for the face. I'm not saying that seeing what you get isn't useful, but for me it doesn't really make much difference either way. Obviously YMMV (y)
 
woof woof said:
Have you tried a mirrorless camera? There's no magic but how about seeing the world as your camera sees it and seeing what the final image will be like before you press the shutter not chimping on a tiny back screen or 4 hours later when you get home? Couldn't that be an advantage? Yes, you could get just about any exposure, eventually, but even the best of us (I've been at this over 40 years now) can't guesstimate every scene and be cock on every time and I bet you chimp more, bracket more and delete more than I do.

When I had DSLR's and I knew I was shooting a difficult scene I'd usually take a series of shots for exposure and focus reasons but for me that's very largely negated by the advantages of mirrorless. I suppose it depends what you shoot and for you there may be no gain in having what you see is what you get, in view histograms or focus aids but for me all of these things add up to make a much more useable and reliable tool.
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I haven't tried one. Have thought about buying one but never looked too seriously as I don't think I would have the use for one at the moment. Sometimes they appeal to me and then I think I'd be better off spending the money on a new lens for what I have got.

I delete hundreds, not because of poor exposure or out of focus but because it's not what I'm after but I suspect we are photographing very different subjects.

I will agree with you re crap in the viewfinder, amazes me how much gets in there.
 
Phil V said:
Definitely!

But not for a while yet.
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I agree, but it is heading that way unless the big players like Nikon and Canon do something to shift the trend.
A good start might be to cut down their model ranges, adjust pricing and offer both a mirrorless and mirror version of each body.
5 years ago you'd probably never see many professional photographers even considering using a mirrorless APS-C system for a weddings etc.
 
I must be easily pleased. I'm quite happy with the EVF on the Nex 6.

I don't see what all the fuss is about.
 
Fuguru said:
I agree, but it is heading that way unless the big players like Nikon and Canon do something to shift the trend.
A good start might be to cut down their model ranges, adjust pricing and offer both a mirrorless and mirror version of each body.
5 years ago you'd probably never see many professional photographers even considering using a mirrorless APS-C system for a weddings etc.
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There's nothing they can do.

We're hanging onto technology that's about to become redundant (and in many senses it already is).

But there's no point in cutting down models or offering direct alternatives, Canikon understand the DSLR market perfectly, I'm not sure they understand it's not what the customer needs.
 
Do we think there'll be a time that we won't be able to look through optics anymore other than with our 'relics'? :(
 
Latest is its not going to happen and the thoughts are Canon will use the same sensor in a mirrorless to run alongside the 6D.
 
Maybe they're going down the same road as Hasselblad?
 
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