The Great Mirrorless Camera Autofocus Shootout

[UrsaMajor]

When I go to an event, lets say, a concert or so, I don't usually take pictures. And, if i finally do it, it will be by the end. Because I don't enjoy the event through the camera. I do work through the camera, it is a filter, or a shield, that protect me from the whole experience -but if I'm at a concert of an artist I really like, i don't want to be "protected, I want the full experience.

I agree that if you are attempting to get any decent images with your camera, you might as well forget about really enjoying the music.

Since photography is just a hobby for me, I use a camera at a concert on very rare occasions - most of which are for personal reasons such as the images below.

Here are two images that I shot indoors a couple of months ago without flash, using my A700 and my old Minolta 75-300mm lens. The Symphonic Strings of my older granddaughter's school in Arizona came to California for a music festival, so I put my NEX-6 on a tripod to get a video of their performance, and shot hand-held stills with my A700. The first image was taken with the lens at 300mm, and the second with the lens at 75mm.

- Tom -

FWIW, the tall one to left of center is the object of my interest. Shot at 300mm.

Music-11.jpg (204.82 KiB) Viewed 1729 times

In hindsight, I should have brought a wider lens. The theater was much more shallow than I expected, and a focal length of 75mm captured only about half the group.

Music-9.jpg (176.12 KiB) Viewed 1729 times

[Greg Beetham]

I don’t think I noticed very many complaints about the actual accuracy of the 7’s for set piece photography it was more like that they expected it to have snappy AF in lower light (candid happy snaps) and also be accurate at the same time…I think, maybe I should have been paying more attention, my eyes tend to glaze over when people start on about on-sensor AF not being capable of this or that.

Yes I just noticed that on dpr about the roller derby photographer, good photos too although he did mention there were a certain amount of misses among the hits which is probably pretty understandable considering the violent changes of direction and speed. I’ve seen that on TV before back when it was popular and now it seems to be making a comeback, it’s a bit like world wrestling I think in some ways except the participants are a lot hotter. (except for the tats…yuck)

Thing is though from what I remember the playing arena isn’t huge and it’s reasonably well lit, at least the ones I remember on TV were pretty good unless they’ve changed, but anyway that guy is using an Oly M4/3rd MILC system with success so it follows that if it didn’t work he wouldn’t use it and he’d find something that did…correct?

It would be interesting to know exactly what EV level we are talking about though just the same, it could be as high as EV10 for all I know.
Pretty good promo you would have to say, a photographic noob (self-admitted) using an MILC for shooting action in not so good lighting is an angle that’s guaranteed to have people take notice.

I thought they said the GH4 came up pretty good in the motorcycle test except it wasn’t as good at single shot predictive AF as the others where it lagged behind, or do I remember wrong? The new CDAF algorithm certainly seems like an advance though as long as you are using proprietary lenses, IF you are in favour of having on sensor AF at all that is, I tend to think if it aint broke don’t fix it but the design does lend itself to shedding weight and size and that is a good thing for sure in a lot of cases.
Overall I’m getting the impression the MILC Empire is trying really hard now to strike back.
Greg

[peterottaway]

The cameras referred to in that "test" were all 2012 or 2013 release and we have seen the improvements that have been made with a number of the 2014 cameras. So potentially what we see released in the next few months could be very interesting in terms of refining and tweaking of firmware let alone whatever hardware improvements that can be made. Although just as sensor development seems to have plateaued we can't expect an indefinite run of high performance improvements. But with the engineers gaining increased experience about what works best and feedback about how consumers like things done, there should be continuing improvements for a while yet.

I would imagine that if Fuji were to release the X-Pro 2 / X-T2 duo with say a 20MP sensor, a further refined EVF and real world AF performance with its shortly to be released Pro zooms that the T1 has with the 14mm prime. It will have its Canon and Nikon converts swooning all over the place. Although as has been pointed out above there is a need to improve Af-S performance which also shows up in a low focus success in the first frame of a sequence.

Personally I'm hoping for an A7 Mark 2 which can focus at 5-6 fps and has no AA filter. Then I could start looking at handing out redundancy notices to quite a selection of cameras. And a lot of A mount lenses I have accumulated over the last 25 years.

[bakubo]

The Fuji X-T1 will greatly disappoint Barry since this issue is of great importance to him:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/fujifilm-x-t1/16

By our tests, the X-T1's measured sensitivities are around 1/2 - 2/3EV lower than marked, which is unusual for a modern camera. This means that for any given light level, the X-T1 has to use a significantly slower shutter speed, brighter aperture or higher ISO to get an image of the same brightness as an accurately-rated camera.

It's unusual to see this sort of discrepancy and we're disappointed that Fujifilm persists with a system that, while technically compliant with the ISO standard, ends up appearing rather disingenuous.

[bakubo]

The Panasonic GH4 has CDAF along with something new called DFD (Depth-From-Defocus) which is supposed to make the CDAF even faster. Here is some info:

http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/panasonic-gh4/panasonic-gh4TECH.HTM

With the GH4, Panasonic has introduced an all-new autofocus algorithm that eliminates many of the drawbacks of contrast-detect autofocus, and delivers AF speeds approaching those of traditional SLRs. DFD stands for "Depth From Defocus," and to understand what this is all about and why it's such an impressive innovation, let's first take a quick look at how camera AF systems work.

Here is a short interview and a few photos of roller derby with m4/3 (Olympus E-M1 and Panasonic GH4). It looks like some action in not so great light:

http://www.dpreview.com/news/2014/05/30/roller-derby-photography-james-mcdaniel-micro-four-thirds

I came across these about the GH4 DFD (Depth-From-Defocus). Seems like even with CDAF the continuous focus is much faster.

http://cameraergonomics.blogspot.jp/2014/06/panasonic-gh4-user-review-part-34.html

http://naturalexposures.com/panasonic-lumix-gh4/

[bfitzgerald]

The Fuji X-T1 will greatly disappoint Barry since this issue is of great importance to him:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/fujifilm-x-t1/16

By our tests, the X-T1's measured sensitivities are around 1/2 - 2/3EV lower than marked, which is unusual for a modern camera. This means that for any given light level, the X-T1 has to use a significantly slower shutter speed, brighter aperture or higher ISO to get an image of the same brightness as an accurately-rated camera.

It's unusual to see this sort of discrepancy and we're disappointed that Fujifilm persists with a system that, while technically compliant with the ISO standard, ends up appearing rather disingenuous.

Having tried the X-T1 I don't doubt this though I didn't have time to run extensive tests on it though but having tried a few other Fuji's they are def fudging the stated ISO, but they're doing it a bit less than Olympus (who really are telling extreme porky pies) with their OM-D range a good stop off just to make iSO 3200 look fab on a micro 4/3 sensor Bit surprising DPR didn't pull Oly up too but I think it's that "Steve Huff" thing we dare not be critical of our beloved brand, sorry but it has to be said. I would like to see all makers stick to the value properly that was it's a level playing field

Anyway onto AF things have improved (X-T1 is quite good) really depends on what you shoot though some of the ILC's are not great for movement but if you don't do a lot of this then you won't care that much. I still view ILC's as a sensor shoved into a body to save money and have very little real interest in them.