I have always enjoyed reading Popular Photography’s lab reviews on new cameras. Over the years I have always found their reviews to be very accurate and straight to the point. In fact many purchasing decisions I have made have been influenced by reading a review of the product in Popular Photography, so I was surprised after reading the reviews of both the Canon 5D MKIII and Nikon D800 in the July 2012 magazine. I should also preface this by stating that I have been a 100% satisfied Canon shooter since 1999, and have used their Digital solutions since 2003. However with the release of the Nikon D800, I have begun a long process of moving back to Nikon.
In the review of the Nikon D800, I felt that Popular Photography missed one key point, and this is very key, the Dynamic Range of the sensor. The D800 scored 95 in the Dxomark tests, which is the highest score of any Digital Camera ever produced, including the highly placed Phase One IQ180. The fact that you can underexposed the D800 by as much as 4 stops and still pull up the shadows is an amazing feat. Where as if you try this with a Canon %D MKIII, you will just get an extreme amount of noise in those same shadows. To me this capability means that you have so much more leeway when shooting, You can go ahead and expose for your highlights, (which if you blowout will be always gone) and then pull up your shadows for amazing details. Again try this with the Canon 5D MKIII, I have and the results are terrible. The Dxomark score of the Canon 5D MKIII is 81, basically the same as the 5D MKII. This is very telling in regards to the dynamic range you can expect from the 5D MKIII
Popular Photography seems to be more focused on two aspects of the Canon 5D MKIII which are:
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