Sometimes it’s fun to go through the archives to see what kind of images I got with certain gear that I didn’t keep for long, just to see if I let something good slip through my fingers too quickly. That’s something easily done when justifying a hasty decision to “upgrade” to the latest set of **ahem** marketing claims.
First shot below is an ISO 640 100% crop from a shot across the strait (same scene as yesterday’s hazier one with the CL), taken with the EOS RP and RF 800mm f/11, a truly fantastic piece of plastic. The lighthouse is, I believe, about eight miles away.
While there’s much that’s good about the RP, its sensor appears to fall somewhere between the noisy sensors of the EF days and the current generation of superb RF ones.
The second is from the same setup, also a 100% crop, this time at ISO 320, salvaged from backlight by raising shadows moderately. The idea was to see if DXO’s superb noise reduction tool could rescue either shot.
DXO appears to have succeeded in the first shot, aided by amazingly clean air—for this part of the world—on the day the image was captured. In the second shot, the shadow noise even at ISO 320 was so coarse that no details were recovered.
It’s no wonder, then, that the higher-end EOS R bodies are the more popular ones. The results here tell me I made a correct choice.
