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Compare Mirrorless & DSLR Images

We are here in Capture One. I'm sure you guys are probably waiting with bated breath to see the results of the DSLR versus mirrorless test that we did here. And so, I was kind of just scanning through these images here really quick;y because we have them all in the same session. I'm using Capture One for my tethering which, again, we're going to talk about in-depth and in great detail of the whys and how this work and all that good stuff later on in this course. But I wanted to, basically, go through these really quickly and I have the Metadata tab opened up to take a look and see what camera had taken which image. Because, as I did when I first did this test, you'll scan through these images and, if you're just looking at them this way, and I'll kind of go through this a little slower... I don't know if you're like me, but it's kind of hard to tell the difference between a lot of these shots. It's hard to figure out which camera took what. So, I ended up have to use the metadata to te...

ll me which one was shot with which camera. You could actually do that as well within Capture One. You can actually go ahead and kind of drill down on which camera took which shot, a certain ISO, if you used it, certain file size. If that kind of differentiates shots from another, you could do that. So, it looks like these are the ones we took on the Canon side, so I'm going to try to find a shot here. And, actually, let me zoom into this one. So, I think I'm going to use this one as an example. So, we'll hit one on that. I'm going to find a shot from the a7II. Let's see. We're going to scroll through these here. And, again, I'm just looking at the metadata to try to find the shots that we're going to compare here. This was a6300 with the 55mm/1.8. Let's go ahead and... What do you guys think? That one look like a comparable one? We'll hit one for that. What I'm doing is, whenever I hit one, it adds a star rating so that afterwards, I can actually drill down and just look at the ones that I gave a one-star rating so I don't have to see, I don't know how many photos we have in here, but we've got quite a few. So, we'll go ahead and keep scrolling through here. Trying to find some shots that were taken with the a7II which are all kind of mixed up in here. But I'm just flipping through these so you guys can kind of see that they all look painfully similar. And that was actually one of the things that kind of upset me when I first switched over from DSLR, because I had 5D III with a 24-70, and at the time, that was like a $5,000 camera combo. Like, it's a lot of money. And I had the original Sony a7 with a kit lens. You know, that lens that everybody tells you is terrible. Like, don't use the kit lens. It doesn't do good. And I did this exact same test in my living room, where I had a model that I was photographing, I did the pictures with the 5D III, and then, I did pictures with the original a7, not even the fancy one that I have now, with a kit lens. Not even trying to use the same lenses together. When I did this process where I was scrolling through the different images, I immediately expected that those Canon images were going to jump out because it's $5,000 versus a $1,200-$1,400 camera setup with a kit lens, which that should blow away anything that a kit lens should produce. And I started to realize that it didn't. Like, the images looked very, very comparable. And having dropping $5K for that setup, I was pretty upset. Because I'm like, "I spent a lot of money on this. "I really expect to see a drastic difference "when I'm scanning through these images. "This should jump out like, that was with this one. "Oh, that's definitely with this other, you know... "That's a kit lens shot." But it actually was the reverse. Many times, the shot that I really liked, I checked the metadata and I'm like, "Oh, my gosh. "This was taken with the a7. "How is this possible?" So, it's pretty insane. We're going to take... This one was the 24-70 on the 6300. So, we'll take this shot. I want to try to find a bunch of close-up portraits for us to compare. These are all 24-70. Looks like this is with the 85mm/1.8. So, this is with the a7II with the adapter. Let's see if we can find a pleasing expression. Let's take a look at this here. Alright, so we're going to go with that one. That's a7II with the Canon lens. And, again, that was auto-focused. This is the 85mm/1.4 G Master from Sony. So, this one is native. I kind of like that particular shot. Let's see... Nice and sharp. Alright. Miguel? Yes? The main thing that people are commenting on or are curious about is sort of the color differences. Was there a different white balance or what's going on there? There was. Yes. So, let me go to these here. I can actually make all of these kind of look the same. If I go to Daylight, for example, and I change these all to Daylight, they should all, hopefully, have the same type of look. Because you're probably looking at it and you can see the warmth in one shot and the others aren't. So, I'm always shooting in RAW. And so, when you shoot in RAW, typically, I shoot with auto-white balance when I'm shooting with any DSLR or mirrorless camera. With a mirrorless camera, you can actually, if you're using off-camera flash, you can use Daylight for your auto-white balance setting and they'll come out like this where they'll have that cooler tone. If you use auto-white balance, you usually get kind of that warmer tone to the shot. But because you're shooting in RAW, whether you're in Lightroom, or Capture One, or Exposure X2, you can go ahead and you can choose what white balance setting you want. For me, I typically will change that in post. I'll make the white balance whatever it is that I want it to be. So, in this case, hopefully, this will match a little bit closer for all of the frames. Let's take a look at this. So, we have our... Let's find our Canon shot here. And, again, I'm just looking at the metadata because they look very similar to me. This is the Canon shot. We're at 100% zoom. This is the Canon 5D Mark III with the Tamron 85mm/1.8. So, you can you've got lots and lots of detail just like you'd expect. If I go over to the... This is the 6300, okay? So, the camera body is a thousand dollars. Crop-sensor. Looks like a little vacation camera. This one is with a 27-70. This is at a 100% zoom. And, again, this is a much different class of camera on paper but, side-by-side, you're not going to notice a very, very big difference between these two. If I go to the 55mm/1.8, this is at 100% on the 6300. We're using the 55mm/1.8 from Zeiss, which I will say, if you notice that this image is a little sharper and more detailed, it's not by accident. Because that little lens in obnoxiously sharp. For people that are coming over specifically to Sony mirrorless cameras, that 55mm/1.8 should be at the top of your buying list because, number one, it's very small and lightweight. But the resolution power and the sharpness in that lens is something that I really still don't understand how they did that. Like, it should not be possible to have a lens that is that tiny and that small that gives you detail and resolution like what you're seeing here. Especially, out of not a full-frame camera. We looking at a crop-sensor image compared to what we just saw from a full-frame camera. Oftentimes, I get people that will ask me. They'll say, "Miguel, is it worth it for me "to go from crop-sensor to full-frame?" I'm showing you guys a collection of crop-sensor and full-frame images and, call me a liar if you need to but, to me, it's very hard to tell the difference. This is the a7II with the Tamron 85mm/1.8. So, this is the head-to-head that we did between the two. To make this a little easier, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to export this as a TIFF and open it in Photoshop. And then, I'm going to open up the Canon shot and do the exact same thing. So, I think this was the Canon image. We'll go ahead... And, again, I haven't done anything besides just changing the white balance to kind of make them match up a little bit. So, we'll put these two side by side and we'll take a look at these. Make this a little bit bigger here. There we go. And so, we'll go ahead an Control - A. Just going to go ahead and make this like a side by side. There we go. Control - B... And I'll go ahead and do one of these numbers. There we go. And T. We'll make this a similar size. There we go. Alright. So, we've got these images here side by side. And, again, just like the very first time that I did this, I completely lost track of which was which. (laughs) Let's go back here and let's take a look. So, this one was the Canon shot. Perfect. What I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and add a little text layer here. Just put "Canon". Make this a little bigger.... There we go. And, sorry... There we go. I'm going to go ahead and move that there. We'll Command - J that one. We'll take this over here and we'll say this one was the a7II shot. So, hopefully, this helps people kind of visualize this a little tiny bit better. But this is the a7II with the exact same Canon lens which you saw I was able to auto-focus. I was able to do everything the same way identically to what I was doing with the Canon. And, if I zoom into these and kind of scan around... There's the Canon shot, zoomed in nice and close. You can see the detail. The Tamron 85mm/1.8 is like super, super-sharp. Like, it's a fantadtic portrait lens. If you're shooting Canon and then you want to go over to keep the same lens and shoot with Sony, it's a great, great option to be able to do that. And this is the a7II, full-frame mirrorless, using the exact same lens with the adapter. So, you can tell, detail-wise, they're very, very comparable to one another. And the biggest difference is that you can get the camera body for anywhere from, I believe, $1,400 to $1,600 for an a7II, to where the Canon 5D Mark III body, brand new, will probably cost you close to $2,000, maybe a little over. Plus, it's bigger. Did I do the side by side? Did I show you guys the physical difference just yet? John, could you bring me the 5D Mark III and bring me the 70. I'll go ahead and kind of show you guys... It's worth mentioning and it's worth showing. While he's doing that, do we have any questions on the internet at this point? Or, do we have any questions here in the audience? Since you guys are able to see this pretty good... I know you're familiar with many of the cameras. And so, someone had asked about the major advantage of the a7RII versus the a7II, other than resolution. Yeah, that's a good question. So, with the a7RII, the big thing is, if you are somebody who... Thank you. If you're somebody who is both a video and a still shooter, the a7RII allows you to shoot 4K video with a full-frame chip. So, it's pretty amazing, the fact that you can actually have a camera body this big. It's 42 megapixels, so the resolution is a little bit higher. However, you have the ability to shoot 4K internally in the camera, which is pretty phenomenal. The auto-focus is a little tiny bit better with adaptive lenses on the a7RII. Even though they both use face-detect auto-focus, they use the same tech, but the focusing system on the RII is a teeny-tiny bit more advanced than the a7II, which is part of the reason why the price is almost double for the camera body. But, yeah, that's really the two biggest things. The fact that you have the 4K capabilities in the a7RII. There's a lot of other specs. If you kind of compare them side by side, you'll notice that the RII has more features. But, to be quite honest, if you're a still shooter and all you do is just shoot portrait work, the a7II, really, is like... It does everything. You can kind of see on the screen here. And so, this is kind of showing you guys. Maybe, I'll put this on the table so it doesn't have any weird perspective. You guys can kind of see the difference in the size of these camera bodies. It's much, much different for you to be walking around or in the studio with a camera body that's this big compared to one that's this big. I know, for you guys watching at home, you really need to go to the store and hold these two cameras because, the thing I hear from people all the time is they'll say, "Well, it's not that much different in size." And it's like, okay, again, take one camera, put it on a strap and walk around with it for an hour and a half, two hours. And then take the other camera a day later, walk around with that for an hour and a half to two hours, because that's kind of what I did. I didn't really think it was going to be that big of a difference until I physically started going out with the camera. And then, I realized, wow, I can shoot all day and my back doesn't hurt, and my shoulder don't hurt. And it's not as exhausting. And, honestly, I started to realize that, whenever I wasn't exhausted, I can actually be more creative, and I could actually talk to people more. And it was a weird thing because I don't want to be the guy that tells you that if you get any camera, that it's going to make you a better photographer. Because the camera does not make you a better photographer. People that tell you that, they don't know what they're talking about. They're misguided. However, I will say for me, in my specific case, the fact that I was able to not be super-exhausted from carrying around a DSLR for an extended period of time, it allowed me to be more creative. And so, it didn't make me a better photographer, but it just kind of allowed me to not be so tired so that I could actually engage with people more and get much, much better shots. That's the front. Looking at it from the side. It's a big difference in terms of the thickness of the the camera bodies. So, again, perspective for you guys that are watching this video. You really just have to put these cameras in your hands so you can really understand the fact that you have the same full-frame capabilities in these two cameras, why would you carry the bigger, heavier camera if you don't have to. Especially, when it's gonna eventually wear you out to where you have limited creativity. So, those are the two. We'll go back to the images here really briefly. I'm going to actually open up... Let's took a look at one of the 55mm/1.8 shots on the 6300. So, this one. We're going to edit this one. We'll bring this one into Photoshop. And we're going to compare this, which is a crop-sensor shot with a 55mm/1.8, and compare that to our a7II. Let's bring this... Control - T. Thank you. Excellent. Perfect. That's even better. Thank you. Alright, so here now, we have the a6300, which is even smaller than the camera I was using before. I always joke around and I tell people it looks like a vacation camera. But here you see side by side... And, again, this is something I've never done in a workshop before. Like, I've done this in my own personal time because, before I invested my money and going into the system, I really wanted to see what it was capable of. And so, looking at this again... And, again, these are RAW files, too. So, if I sit down and I apply the process that I'm going to show you guys in a little bit, if I apply that same process to there two files, they're going to look identical. Coloring, warmth, coolness, the white balance, basically, your exposure, the sharpness, the contract... All those things. If I apply what I'm going to show you guys to both images, they're both going to come out looking extremely identical. That's the Canon shot. Here's the crop-sensor a6300, with a 55mm/1.8. We'll zoom in because I'm sure people are like, "I want to see detail." So, 55mm/1.8 on a crop-sensor versus full-frame 85mm/1.8. And, again, the way most people will experience your images on the web will probably be something like that. It's a funny thing because we like pixel-peeping. As photographers, we love zooming into an image where we see every thought that the person has in the image. But the reality of it is that people are not ever going to see the image at that close of a resolution. And even yesterday, I was walking around the mall and I was looking at some of the big prints that some of these major brands, major brands that I'm not going to name, that you will know if you've heard of them... You walk past their storefronts and, if you look at the images, you'll notice that a lot of them are not super-sharp. They're not super-detailed. A lot of them have grain that's been added. But yet these are mega brands where the photographer probably made more than what many of us make in a year, and they just did it on that one shoot. And it's used all around the world. So, we're very big on this whole thing of pixel-peeping an image and, if an image is just a smidgen better on one camera compared to the other, you kind of automatically assume, "Well, I have to go with that because it's going "to make my images better." But it really has nothing to do with it. It comes to the lighting. It comes to your retouching, your post-work, your interaction with your subject. And, in this case, I'm able to take a camera that, if I was not wearing my tight jeans right now, I could probably stick this thing in my pocket and walk around with it and not have too much of a problem. Any questions at this point? Can you clarify, are you saying that mirrorless can be more cost-effective? Yes. Good question. And, yes, it can. Because, in this case, you could actually have taken this shot... If this would have been with an a6000, which is one of the most popular cameras that Sony makes right now, that camera is probably around $600, give or take. So, essentially, you could have a camera that's $600. It looks exactly the same as this. Compared to a full-frame Canon camera, or Nikon... I'm picking on Canon because that's what I used. But it could have been a Nikon camera. It could have been a Pentax. It could have been whatever DSLR. And that's going to cost you upwards of $1,500, $2,000. There's even some that are going to cost you even more than that. So, it can be much, much more cost-effective. You can get an a6000, and it's going to be able to compare if you use the right lighting, if you're good with your post-production. You can get the images to look very, very comparable, to the point to where, if you didn't see them side by side, you wouldn't tell the difference, which is what you want. You should never be able to immediately tell the difference between the two.