SOUNDIMAGEPLUS: Nikon, Canon, Leica, Sony and Panasonic 'Full Frame' Mirrorless Cameras

Nikon and Canon have just invited various photographic 'journalists' to various scenic locations, plied them with alcohol and given them half-finished cameras to play with. From this and the various activities of trolls and schills on the photographic internet, we are supposed to make up our minds as to whether we want to buy one or not. Now I've made a decision to give the Canon EOS R a try and I've pre-ordered one. Why? Was I persuaded by an 'internet guru' a 'YouTuber' or a review site? Well no. The Canon is the cheapest and I have more Canon lenses than Nikons and use them all the time on my m4/3 cameras. So I've ordered the camera body, the basic adapter for my EF lenses and the battery grip. Another reason is much as I like the results from my Canon 5DS R, it's very heavy bulky and 'clunky' and I have just sold it.

I was however struck by some of the attempts of said self important gear commentators (I hesitate to use the word photography in this context) to a) justify their existence and b) come up with something coherent to say about these cameras. Now after Panasonic announce their FFMC and get round to releasing it, the whole circus will start up again. So here's my take on what's been written and said about these cameras.

1) The two memory card slots issue. Much has been made of this, indeed I wrote a post discussing it. However, ultimately it matters little. Personally I would prefer two slots for security reasons, but Leica M series cameras don't (and probably never will) have two. My film cameras don't run two films through the camera at the same time and that's much more prone to going wrong.

2) There's a load of nonsense about the lack of 4K / 60fps video and in Canon's case a significant (1.6x, 1.7x or 1.8x depending on who you read) crop factor. Now you'd think that the critics were about to make some feature film or high-end commercial when you read their comments. However that is not what these cameras are for. Panasonic will come up with the best video specs. anyway, but even then genuine film makers and professional videographers will always use dedicated, broadcast quality video cameras anyway. All of this mirrorless 4K video is destined mostly for the internet or wedding video anyway and as such any lack of 'professional' features is pretty meaningless. Much is made of it by people trying to sound important, but ultimately both the Nikon and Canon cameras and indeed any of the Panasonic offerings are designed, intended for and used by enthusiast photographers who like to shoot a bit of video. And any pretending that it's more than that is just what that implies, pretence.

Besides, my Leica SL (Typ 601) has a crop on the 4K video output and it's the best looking video I've ever shot, including from my Lumix GH5. I used my APS-C Leica T lenses on it and that produced superb results. For the Canon all you need is an APS-C wide-angle zoom and you are sorted. You then get a 'telephoto' effect on your full-frame lenses which I would suggest is equally as useful for the people who are actually going to use these cameras for video as having a 'full frame' output.

3) The lack of a large lens range has also been criticised. But then that was always bound to happen. The good thing from both Nikon and Canon is they have released adapters for the F and EF lens ranges, all of which are designed to make using the existing lenses as easy and seamless as possible. There does seem to be difficulties in adapting the existing lens mounts for mirrorless cameras, so it's inevitable that the new cameras needed something new. However, the issue that many of us have extensive lens collections from Nikon and Canon cameras seems to have been overcome.

4) 'Now there's one more thing............now what was it? We've done the important stuff, the card slots, the video format etc.......... Oh yeah, the image quality!!' Now that's pretty much how it's been with these camera 'reviews'. Last but not least, does it take a decent picture and / or video? Well, in some cases who knows. Lot's of comments on the above and of course plenty of discussion on whether these cameras are any good for vlogging!! Made into an issue by, you guessed it, vloggers. As if that mattered for one single moment.

So it's the usual mishmash of instant reactions based on pre-production cameras. Now why camera manufacturers don't do proper launches with production cameras and letting people use the cameras over a period of time I cannot say. Surely it's in their interest to get a long term balanced view. And why they don't give them to actual photographers who use them in real world situations I cannot say either. A few days ago I finally got see some raw files from the Canon EOS R that I could open. Photoshop / Lightroom don't support them yet, but somebody had thoughtfully converted some into .DNG files. Certainly they were impressive and confirmed my decision to pre-order one.

Now that pre-order was pretty much done on trust. Trust that Canon would produce a camera that had good stills and video. Now, I couldn't think of any reason why they wouldn't, so I went ahead and did it anyway. I haven't done this for years, but I'm looking for a camera currently that will hopefully replace three different systems I'm using currently using. So, hopefully the EOS R will work for me. And as mentioned above, the price and the large number of Canon EF lenses I own has been a factor in deciding between that and the Nikon Z7. When I get the camera I will post about how it performs and that will be an ongoing process over a period of time. Hopefully all of that will be positive and based on experience I see no reason why it shouldn't be. But then where's the argument in that!!

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