THE VIEW FROM HERE
by Stephen Johnson

Testing the new Canon 5DSr
This is not a Review

Canon's new 50 megpixel 5DSr was long awaited. It was interesting to have it in to start using, testing its features and resolution, perhaps more importantly getting a feeling for its possibilities

It is not often that a new camera changes the way I think and react to my photography. It certainly did when I used my first 4x5 view camera in 1975, the Leaf Digital Back for the Hasselblad in 1993, and particularly the BetterLight Scanning back in 1994. The Canon 5DSr might not be quite that deeply game changing, but I did feel some of the same sense of greater empowerment and possibility, even seduction.

Most of the newness comes from the 5DSr resolution. Moving from a 23 megapixel camera to 50 megapixels is a major difference. For the sheer resolution, the Nikon D800 variants were tempting. I still have a good selection of Nikon lenses, and I used the 800 series a bit, and though it was clearly a nice camera, it didn't scream at me to change brands. Many of my students had the Nikon 800 or 800E, and I got to use it some, seeing some very fine images out of it. 14 megapixel more just wasn't enough incentive.

I had seen a prototype Canon 100 megapixel chip, and images from it at the Canon Tech Expo in New York in 2013. We all knew that Canon would somehow answer Nikon's resolution increase. Many of us thought it might be along sooner.

In 2011, I came to terms with what I generally found to be size limitations of my 23mp camera files, for me 14 inches wide for fine detail in prints, 25 inches wide for softer image content, and almost unlimited size for certain very soft subject matter.

I have always loved aerial photography, but had been doing less because of technology challenges. Serious flying required me to carry both my Canon camera and the Phase One back on my old Hasselblad. Neither was ideal as the 35mm format had clear limitations on what I could do with some files, and the medium format camera was just plain harder to use in the air, even though it produced some great images.

Consequently, aerial work was naturally high on my list when the 5DSr became available. My flying connections had drifted away as many of my pilot friends had let their licenses lapse. The new camera gave me the incentive to reach out, and we made a great pilot connection almost immediately, taking to the air within days of the camera arriving. Aerial photography is always challenging, balancing ISO boosting with noise tolerance for the fastest shutter speed and a sharp aperture. We did two flights in succession, one quick one because of northern California coastal fog's limited visibility, and the other over two hours long.

I was very pleased with the wonderful sights I was able to take in near my studio here in Pacifica and northward. We flew up the coast along Pacifica's many headlands, then onto the Golden Gate, flying through the layered mist and fog, with great views the coastline and the beautiful city of San Francisco. 2300 photographs later, I will be looking to see what I've done for some time.

Steve Holding a 40 inch print made from his flight. A 14% enlargement at 240ppi.

Print size is the bottom line incentive for me with this new camera. These are clearly the biggest color prints I've ever been able to make from a 35mm format color camera. Of course that means the most fine detail is being held.

That size capability actually gets at the most important takeaways for me. I felt empowered to record more seriously than with any 35mm I've ever held. This has huge implications for me artistically, as documents, and as a revealer of the world.

Canon 5DSr Raw Resolutions.

Multiple raw resolution modes is an interesting capability. I'm not sure how often I would use it, but I can see the downside of slogging through 50+ mb files for every casual photograph I might make. Already, I noticed all of my workflows naturally slowing down with the added overhead of the big files. The 50 megapixel file comes out of a Raw Interpreter as either 150mb in 8 bit, or more likely for those of us that want to hold onto the bit depth of the camera, 300mb when the file is rendered into the 16 bit space.

Downtown San Francisco, CA. 2015.
Zoomify export from Photoshop for full res looks into the file. Not yet working on mobile devices,
I will update as I get the HTML5 version ready.

Rendering fine details has always been one of the challenges of 35mm format, as film or as grainless digital. Architecture has been one of those subjects where large format cameras excelled, for the detail and the adjustability of the camera itself for no perspective distortion. Now that we have Tilt-shift lenses for our 35mm format cameras, and Photoshop perspective correction tools, the missing piece remained resolution. This has now been addressed with Canon's 5DSr and its dramatic increase in resolution for the 35mm format.

Conservatory and Palms, Golden Gate Park. San Francisco. 2015.

I've heard a few comments about the dynamic range of the camera. Although my limited tests did not reveal any real shortcomings, it is certainly true that any camera's capabilities need to be judged on far more than resolution. An ability to record a wide range of light and dark values is one of those considerations. The very small pixel size of this camera should be challenged dynamically. I must say though, at this point, if I see shadow and highlight detail reaching the edges of the histogram in a field exposure, where practical, I'm automatically thinking about an HDR file. I'll look into the dynamic range more as time allows.

A number of nice additions to this model's camera firmware proved useful. The mirror-lock up built-in delay allows me to trip the mirror and not have to trip the shutter separately. The aspect ratio selections give us a nice mask within the viewfinder that is read as a preset crop by Adobe Camera Raw and the Canon Digital Photo Professional. A scrolling info window displaying different data sets within the review screen was handy. And quite unexpectedly, the tilt indicator is now viewable through the viewfinder with x and y axis displayed interactively. I might just get more horizons straight on my handheld work with this feature.

There are features I would really like to see built-in into the new cameras. A Depth of Field routine that would let us focus on the near focus need, then the distant focus need, and then automatically calculate the needed aperture and ideal focusing point. Short of that, it would be very helpful to have distance read out in the camera so that depth of field charts and apps can be easily used.

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