Do full frame camera require more power than a crop sensor camera?

Question

I had a Canon 60D and used to get around 800 to 1000 shots on full battery charge. I've now traded my 60D to a 5D Mark II and it looks like it requires a lot more power.
Is this normal for a full frame camera? The 5DMII and 60D use the same battery.

Asked by Vivek

Answer

All else being equal, yes.

A bigger sensor requires more power. Advancement in power-saving technologies can sometimes improve that but with higher pixel counts being the norm, we do not see much of that. Each pixel requires circuitry so higher megapixels require more power than making the sensor bigger.

Luckily bigger cameras have room for bigger batteries which compensates nicely until you get to the huge DSLRs with integrated grips which are rated upwards of 4000 shots per charge! Otherwise, most DSLRs are given batteries to last them between 500 and 1000 shots per charge.

Keep in mind the shots you get are highly dependent on usable. Using the flash is the most power hungry thing to do, followed by using the LCD, including Live-View and Video capture.

The stats for the 60D vs 5D are misleading because the CIPA standard requires 50% flash use if there is one, which the 5D does not have.

Answered by Itai

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Why do the 600D/7D sensors have more noise at high ISO than 5Dmk2 or 1Dmk4?

Question

Hi I'm wondering why the high ISO performance in a 5Dmk2 or 1Dmk4 is so much better than a 600D or 7d? I've been trying to photograph the milky way galaxy and when I use an ISO of 6400 I have an incredible amount of noise on the 600D, but I've seen the same ISO used with the 1Dmk4 and 5dmk2 to achieve wonderful photos without any apparent noise. I'd have to say the same for ISO 3200 which I can't get picturea without bad noise, ISO 1600 works but that causes noticeable star trails as the exposure becomes longer than the calculations I make using the declinations. Is this because of more pixels in the sensor size? Or do different cameras just have different ISO performance? Thanks for any insight.

Answer

The bigger the pixels, the less noise there is. This is a matter of physics. More light gets accumulated in each pixel and so it take more noise to appear significant.

The 600D and 7D have APS-C sensors which are small and have a high megapixels count. This makes their pixels comparatively smaller than the 5D Mark II which has a larger sensor and hence larger pixels since the resolution is not much higher than that of the 7D.

You can see the same thing in the Nikon range by comparing the D3X and D3S which are both full-frame cameras but one has twice the number of megapixels. The one with fewer megapixels shows less noise because each pixel is larger.

The extreme example of this is the poor performance of compact cameras which have tiny sensors. The last factor is technology because newer sensors show improvement over previous generation but physics cannot be beaten.

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Is HyperSync possible with a flash on a PocketWizard Mini TT1?

Question

I recently bought a PocketWizard Mini TT1 and a Flex TT5. When attaching a 430EX on the FlexTT5, I can set the shutter at 1/8000 and still get a correct exposure thanks to HyperSync.

However, when attaching the 430EX on top of the TT1 (so, on-camera with the TT1 in between and without using the TT5), the camera doesn't let me choose shutter speeds faster than 1/200, as if there was no HyperSync.

With the TT5 this works (on-camera). Is this by design? Do I need to use the Flex to get HyperSync on the camera-mounted flash (with or without additional radio-triggered flash)?

EDIT: as it seems also the TT5 forces 1/200 after the first calibration shot.

I'd prefer to use the MiniTT1 in such a configuration as it is much smaller...

Answer

HyperSync is designed to work over radio. The hot-shoe on transceiver is pretty much directly connected to camera underneath - if you have a flash there, you have to enable HSS on it to use shutter speeds over X-sync.

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Is there an iPad connection kit to import RAW images from a Canon DSLR?

Question

Is there a way to connect a Canon 5d MK2 to an iPad for copying the contents of the CF card especially in Raw format?

Answer

I have done this with my iPad and the camera connection kit using a USB CF reader and the USB connector on the iPad. I found it was much faster using the reader than the camera. I was even able to upload some of the better pictures to my photo hosting account using a 3rd party app. I will say though to not use it as the only tool to decide if the color is image is worth keeping. On mine at least the color rendering is not as good for RAW as Adobe Camera Raw.

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Can the Canon 5D Mark II be set to save exposure settings on auto power off?

Question

I usually use my 5D mark II in manual mode, with auto power off enabled, but every time it auto powers off, my exposure settings (shutter speed, aperture, iso) are lost. It seems like there should be a setting for those to be saved and restored.

It's very annoying as a lot of times I will dial in an exposure while hiking or out somewhere, and then when I go to take a picture a few minutes later my settings are lost and I take something way over exposed and miss whatever moment I was trying to capture.

Is there a setting I'm missing, or some kind of alternate firmware which will do this? It seems like something Canon should have thought of, but I haven't been able to find any information elsewhere.

Answer

I've tried the same thing on my 5DmkII and it works fine for me: the aperture, shutter speed, ISO and WB I set in M mode are still there when the camera's auto-powered off and been re-awoken. I'm on firmware 2.0.8, and I have auto power-off set to 1 minute.

Not sure if it's helpful to mention, but what you've described is exactly what I get if I'm in one of the custom modes (C1, C2, C3). That's by design though and worked exactly the same on my 40D. It's definitely not correct behaviour in M mode though: I wonder how the camera decides which settings it ought to revert to.

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Why is depth of field different in live view vs. video recording on my Canon 5D?

Question

I recently got a Canon 5DmkII.

This weekend I was at the local high school football field playing with the camera and recording video. I set the camera down on the field, turned live view on, and pressed the focus button in order to focus on a soccer ball. In the live view, the depth of field was amazing. I was so excited to record. When I pressed the center button to record all of sudden the depth of field changed. It was not even close to what it looked like during in the live view before recording.

Why is this?

Answer

Usually, LiveView is shot with the aperture wide open, hence minimum DoF. When actually shooting (or recording), the aperture closes down to whatever your setting is. Try setting to max aperture to record what liveview sees.

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So why does Canon 5D Mark II have a better video quality than Canon 60D?

Question

Assuming that Canon 5D Mark II and Canon 60D both have the same processor, DIGIC 4 (single), why does the former shoots a better quality video? Better quality I mean the technical aspect, the video/compression itself.

Let's ignore the visual aspect like more shallow depth of field, for example.

I know 5D is a full-frame, but the video is 1920px wide. The 60D shoots 18MPx, which scaled down to 1920px wide should still look almost the same as if shot on full-frame initially, right?

Therefore, and this is my point:

UNCOMPRESSED INPUT -> DIGIC 4 -> OUTPUTTED VIDEO

If we exclude the depth of field and a better ISO handling from our equation, it's possible that the uncompressed input is the same on both cameras, right? Then, it goes to the digic 4 processor to be compressed, which is the same on both cameras. Yet, we end up with a better quality video on one of those cammeras. Why?

Answer

The 5D Mk2 has a far larger sensor (because its a full frame camera) and more pixels. My assumption would be the camera scales down the input to 1920x1080 so having more uncompressed data allows it to give a higher quality output.

If Andres's comment about it skipping lines whilst taking video is right, then the improvement in quality is more likely down solely to it's lower pixel density. A lower pixel density means a bigger area per pixel, which means more light per pixel, more light per pixel means less amplification is required (amplification increases noise also)

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