Canon 5DSr vs 5DS and Moiré
I will keep this short. Moiré is not a problem with the 5DSr in the real world. Period.
I’ve been shooting my 5DSr now for about one year and only discovered moiré in just a few photos and that is it. And even then, it was negligible. And not an issue. So…. If you are considering buying the 5DS body, get the “R” version for added detail as the fears of moiré are totally overblown and not an issue in the real world.
Now to be fair, I am a flaming amateur with a passion for this hobby. I suspect I am way pickier than the average shooter and put more effort in getting a shot than most folks. In other words, if moiré was a problem with this camera, I should have stumbled all over it. If you are a professional doing product or specialty photography in a controlled environment, you may care. But for the overwhelming majority of those considering purchase of this body, there is no issue with the “R”.
I am not going to go to deep into the technology or explain this stuff as it is covered aplenty in the pro blogs. You can find that stuff with a click. So below is just a summary of what you need to know.
The pic here is a super deep crop and shows both forms of moiré, false lines and rainbows. Sure it is there but you need a darn microscope to see it. I see more rainbows after a bunch of bottles of the cheap stuff. Lines… well I see those often as I tend to sleep face down in the carpet on Saturday nights. I finally found moiré after shooting thousands of shots in the real world.
What is Moiré and the 5DSr issue?
Moiré is an interference pattern that occurs when the contents of an image interact with the technology to present (or capture it) conflict. It can occur when an image has fine, repeating lines or regular patterns of dots and the presentation or capture technology uses a grid of dots such as monitors to present or cameras to capture. The results of this interference can be color swirls or rainbows appearing in an image, or sometime false lines and textures. In severe cases, your pictures can be ruined by this effect. But… this hasn’t happened to me.
When Canon issued its update to the wonderful 5D MK III, the 5DS, it released an alternative, higher-resolution (albeit only a tiny bit more) body the 5DSr. The 5DS is a super-high megapixel camera with a shocking 51 megapixels of resolution and with this high concentration of tiny dots, moiré interference patterns are a possibility. All cameras have the potential for moiré as they capture in dots so manufactures actually blur your picture a bit to prevent moiré. Yes, you read that correctly, they blur your fine efforts. The 5DSr does not have this burring feature.
This purposeful blurring will not be seen at all if you don’t crop all the way down to pixel level. The pixel count of all modern cameras exceed the number of presentation pixels on your monitors so pictures require software, like that in your browser, to smash them down to fit on your screen. By the time the picture is displayed on your screen, this purposeful blurring is impossible to detect. However, Canon and other makers have an issue when they moved to these super-high pixel count sensors: Geeks and hyper-pros will buy them to get the highest level of detail, and here they are blurring them. These geeks and hyper-pros want 51 megapixels to get stupid resolutions and allow for super-deep cropping and therefore don’t want purposeful blurring……. So Canon released the camera in two versions, the normal 5DS with this blurring, and the 5DSr without. You have a choice: Dice with that evil guy Moiré or go safe with a blur.
Yepper, I am a geek and don’t like blur. Now I like to drink beer and that provides me as much blur as I care to stand (when I can stand). Sure, I even get variants of blur such as slur. But beer drinking geeks concur, we want no blur or slur in our cameras-ur. So, no worry with no blur in the R, as that guy Moiré never shows up anyway.
The Equipment:
- Canon 5DSr
- High quality expensive lenses to squeak out all that detail
- Talent and perfect technique (I keep spending money hoping I get there)
