5 misleading specs that trick camera buyers (NOT crop factor) 

When someone asks you if you want a nerdy explanation on why the focus breathing happens, YOU SAY YES!

If you made F-stop vs T-stop test for lenses, I would actually watch it (seriously). Think about how many people are buying fast and expensive lenses so they can shoot in low light.

I follow Grandpa's advice and let other people use stuff for at least 6 months so they can figure out the good and the bad. Then I consider buying.

So glad to hear that I'm not the only one that has a hard time telling if the picture is in focus on the camera screen.

Weather sealing is another area with a lot of misleading marketing on both camera bodies and lenses. They pretty much never obtain an actual IP code rating for weather resistance. Many heavily market their toughness and show their cameras getting soaked in heavy rains or huge ocean waves but the fine print always says they are light splash and dust resistant only.

Very helpful video! But one suggestion: could you make use of the youtube 'chapters' feature? For a video like this, it would be useful to see it divided into the specific topic areas. That way, if I want to go back and review one of them, it is easy to find.

IMO Tony is at his absolute best in videos like this. And that is why his science video series is so good. Thanks for this Tony. - The one spec that always troubles me is Mag-factor. Buying longer lenses don't always give you more magnification. And minimum focus distance is rarely discussed.

Thank you! You guys have answered so many of the things I wondered about. Another great video 👍🏻

When Pentax came out with an electronic AA filter, I said, "Whaaaat?" It was then I realized what was really going on with optical AA filters. Pentax took it out but realized the problem with the "corduroy fashion moire" could bite them so they gave you the option of shaking the sensor, just a little, to re-blur, just like an optical AA filter would. I thought reducing sharpness was a rather odd "feature", and in 5 years, I've used it once. I'm pretty happy they took this rather strange approach, because the other 99.99% of my pictures were noticeably sharper.

I did notice my new RF 70-200mm does not Zoom in as much as the EF version. Kind of a bummer.

I remember shooting a 36 frame roll at 5 fps with my Olympus OM-2 and Motor Drive 2. No buffering. Pretty good performance, even today. I never got the 250 film back though.

You should name this episode "hard way". Thanks much for doing all hard work so we learn this easy way :)

Incredibly valuable information! Thank you Tony and Chelsea! This vid is going into my favorites for reference. :)

What is going on with the audio? Ouch. Yet, I'm reading that apparently it has been made better?? Good interesting content so I'll try to stick it out. :-) Peace.

The AA filter is not a "coating" on the sensor. It is a separate discrete filter element that overlays the sensor. I had the AA filter removed on my D800 three years ago by a company called LifePixel turning it into a D800e. They also performed the same mod to my D600.

I had exactly the same problem as you with my XT3. I was shooting group of kids playing in the park and later when I saw them on computer, almost half of them were out of focus. Now I know why.

Thanks for reposting. Because this video is filled with great information!!! Appreciate you both being humble enough to understand a mistake and correct it. And again, thanks for THIS video. I learned several things from this. And really glad to know. I do hope that the screen resolution thing gets more attention. Because that is a pet peeve of mine - having to wait to get to my computer to see if a picture is great. Because usually those photos are at the moment shots and I can't get it again. THANK YOU!!!!

Love what you guys do - thank goodness YOU do it, because I would pull out the few remaining hairs on my head trying to figure out stuff like this on my own! 💯🥰

Thank you for this. I found it informative, inspiring, and enjoyable. Cheers!

To check T stop, shoot on a bright sunny day at midday using the sunny f/16 rule. The amount of underexposure you get(if any)is the difference between f stop and T stop.

I recently ran into f-stop verses t-stop comparing 2 lenses with the settings all locked down. I was looking at resolution of parts photos but what caught my attention was how dark one lens was verses the other. I looked up the dxo mark data and there was the answer in t-stops. You had mentioned it before but I did not expect that much difference.

Forget the quality of the year camera screens, sunlight makes them very difficult to read in even reasonable sunshine, I still rely, almost 100% on the EVF!

I believe that a lot of us (at the least me) would rather wait for a trusted reviewer to release their complete review than any random review hitting the tube right when the product is released. Maybe less views, but the views will be more impactful. Moral of the story - keep producing great reviews and always sacrifice minute-of-release video releases for truth and thoroughness.

I recently got a Nikon Z5, and the EVF has no lag when you're just looking around, but as soon as you engage the AF, the latency slows waaaayyyyyy down and I've actually missed shots because of it! Mirrorless sucks, they overcomplicate the process of taking a damn photo. Thank goodness for my D4S, which is and will always be a perfect photo-taking experience (with no lag!!!)

here is one that mislead me i had a Nikon D7100 and used a 18-140 lens, then got a fuji X-T3 with a 18-135 lens and found out that if your shooting at 3200 ISO with the Fuji, it's the same Exposure at the Nikon D7100 at ISO 1600, So the ISO with my Fuji X-T3 is a lie, if your at ISO 3200 it's really 1600 from all the other camera's i tested.. I think Fuji does this to make people think that Fuji's Camera shoots cleaner images at ISO 3200, which it does not lol Very misleading if you ask me..

I appreciate ALL of your technical knowledge and testing...keep up the great work and informing us! I trust you before I buy!

The information you put out is great and very useful for those people who are technically sound... But such people always have workarounds to compensate for gear deficiencies... There is no gear that's PERFECT.. A great photo sums up the skills of the person behind the gear with all it's imperfections !!

Fantabulous. The artist and scientist in me were both inspired. I appreciate especially the discussion of T-stops. I'll now be looking to find T-stop data as part of the lens selection process. The discussion of camera display size was very insightful, and I feel less guilty about assuming sharp focus when it wasn't there on my computer monitor. I also appreciate your candor regarding marketing versus technical nuances and limitations. I once had a professional musician (pianist) tell me that "knowing the notes" is mere technique; but, once you "know the notes," then the art can begin. Similarly, it's good to see some aspects of image capture tech "solved" (e.g., AF tracking) so the art of photography can begin. But, it is also great to know the tech limits which can inadvertently affect one's art. You two have managed to not only educate us regarding that balance, but also perhaps appreciate knowing BOTH the art and science/tech of photography. Thanks.

Great video, guys! It makes one heckuva case for renting before buying or trying to find as many "real world" honest reviews as possible, especially for the hobbyist like myself!

Brilliant video. Very educational. Thank you very much. I’ve learned so much watching it.

Your information and presentation are excellent! Thank you again and again.

I think this is a very good presentation, especially the F-stop / T-stop discussion.

The top edge of the video is flickering up and down for some reason. How does that happen?!

Kudos for this video. It's one of the most enlighting videos I've seen the last two yours when it comes to photography.

Thanks for the info. I watch your RU-vid videos almost every week. You guys are such a blessing to me. I shoot with a Canon R5 with R glass and I love my setup. John Chambers - Omaha, Nebraska

Great video! Something I really needed. Some things I probably knew before I had my stroke that stole many things I once knew. I have a Canon 60D that I like because it takes pretty good pictures in automatic mode. This video I think really explains some of my disappointments. All together we have come a long way since I first became aware of Digital Photography in 1998. I have been hooked on photography since 1970 when I helped a friend at school that resulted in a 4 page spread for our year book. At that time everything was with manual mode especially sports or indoor low light situations.

Funny thing about t-stops - I measured my cheap Yongnuo 50mm f/1.8 against my equivalent Nikon 50mm f/1.8 G lens, and the Yongnuo was actually about a third of a stop brighter! Turns out the Nikon lens has a transmission of 2 t-stops according to DXOMark. They don't have measurements for the Yongnuo, but it's seemingly closer to the actual maximum f-stop, which I found surprising. You would think the lower-quality lens would be darker, but I'd guess that the lower optical complexity probably helps, as does its tendency to flare (which could theoretically contribute to the extra exposure, though it appeared to happen in all situations). I was planning to sell it, but it does render things surprisingly nicely given the lower overall optical quality. Unfortunately the autofocus is slow and sounds like heavy machinery in need of serious maintenance, so I don't get a lot of use out of it day-to-day.

Could you guys do a video about how to get the best with camera you have now? Instead of so much focus on the latest and greatest that we all can’t afford to blow $3,000-4,000+ on ? I shoot with a 60d, and that’s what I have. I watch a lot of videos trying to make the best of what I have to work with, but to be honest I feel lost a lot. Should I just hunker down and take the “no duh” approach and read the whole manual back to back ? Lol or do you have any tips just for me to get better, sharper results? Honest question lol

The only thing that ever was a "head scratcher" for me was years ago I was shooting with a D2xs and I switched from "full frame" to cropped mode after shooting a burst and the display showed "Busy" and I could not shoot for what seemed a long time. Of course I missed some action while this was happening. I learned fast that if I wanted to make that change from 12 megs Full to 6megs cropped I would have to make the change ahead of time. Recalling this I'm not sure if this was a Camera issue or the CF cards write speed was the problem. Cameras have advanced and cards have advanced, So thankfully I don't have any issues with my equipment.

Great information guys. A couple of topics not many people talk about or address in their videos. The lack of appropriate and globally applicable measures for certain factors makes fair comparisons essentially impossible.

Chels and Tony! Please talk about the importance of knowing the pixel pitch aka. sensor pixel density of a camera! One of the most important "specs" to know when buying a camera for low light action, sports and wildlife photography.

Great commentary and good food for thought. That being said, wish I knew how to find the difference, if any, in T stops between Canon's RF24-70 F2.8L lens and their RF28-70 F2L lens, both shot at say, F2.8, lenses you both have used, reviewed and/or own.

I would appreciate if you created a T-Stop bench mark as I mostly do low light/Astrophotography.

impressed how you formulate flows, which I feel but kind of got used to and wouldn’t ever formulate! love your videos

Really useful information. Your experiences underscore the value of making buying decisions only after seeing a few thorough reviews from different sources, preferably spread out over 3 to 6 months of time. It is also useful to read consumers post-purchase reviews over the same period. I have definitely seen products that failed to live up to the promise implied by their specs. Likewise some products turn out to be considerably better than the “sum of their specs” suggest.

One spec I always have a hard time finding is jitter for videos. Some cameras advertise an fps but is not performing like one. Some advertise 24p but produce 23.976 fps. Others advertise 24p but create it using 29.976 using telecine techniques . This creates jitter effects and the footage appears to skip from frame to frame. Also the compression rates or codecs are rarely mentioned. As well as the mic specs such as the frequency in Hz, polar pick up patterns, and gain db level, and types of amps used. Eventhough you may be using on board mic for scratch audio its still important to know it for specific situations. I also would like to know stabilization specs. For how strong is the stabilization. Many cameras and lenses have OIS , EIS, or IBIS, but some are way better than others. I wish there was a way they could measure these.

Always interesting to learn from you guys. My z6ii is glitchy it gets stuck in focal areas and the screen stops working it also won’t change monitor views as well as the 70 200 z mount lens with 2x tc seems short sighted compared to my f mount 200 500. Not to mention the dreadfully slow autofocus.. could I have a duff camera and lens ? I’d love your opinion.

Great video topic, probably underappreciated compared to the regular gear related videos on youtube. Literally one of the best videos in a long time. I knew most of them already, but that Fuji XT-3 thing really caught me off-guard. I would be pissed if I had bought a camera specifically because I wanted that camera to get me those fps numbers to track fast moving subjects only to find out that the manufacturer tricked me into buying the gear with a weird excuse of "it does so when taking fotos of stills". It's incredibly deceiving marketing and I would literally feel robbed. Manufacturers go into great lengths to hide all the details and only post the big shiny numbers. I recently thought about getting the Sony A1 and since the camera is pretty expensive I obvously wanted to be well informed if it's worth all the hype and what it can truly deliver. I literally had to watch what seems a million youtube videos until one person even mentioned that the 240fps on the EVF reduces the resolution greatly. All the reviewers out there just said that switching to 240fps drains more battery so you should only use it when needed. When you look at the Sony website they only write 9.44million dots and 240hertz and at no point they make it clear that it's a choice "either/or" but not both. In order to get the information and confirmation since only on youtuber said this in his video I downloaded the Sony alpha 1 manual but I failed to find where it lists the possible modes or that you have to choose. As a normal consumer/customer these things are so misleading, you literally are not getting what it is marketed for. Don't get me wrong, the A1 is still an amazing camera (haven't bought it yet though :-)) but these things as mentioned in this video happen all the time and when you spend hours to read and watch literally everything you find about that gear, read through everything carefully on the official website but still it is not clear that you are not going to get what it advertised is illegal in my eyes. @f-stop vs t-stop: Both values are important, f-stop for the look (depth of field) but t-stop for the low light performance. Having some kind of benchmark would be nice indeed. Until now I checked dxo mark values and on high quality prime lenses they are actually pretty damn good as pointed out by you. I always try to look them up in order to get a feeling of how much performance the lense wil be able to provide me.

You guys are crushing it! Great back-and-forth.

Thanks for the video you two! Love your channel. Quick question if you have time to get around to it... never heard of T stops until now, that’s fascinating! Any other thoughts on how to find somewhat “objective” levels of light entering the lens versus other models of similar focal length and F stop? I also noticed the same about sigma versus canon 24-105! Rented them both and found the clear winner, although DXO mark scores nudged my perception of that a bit as well admittedly. Anyway thanks for the tips I’ll keep digging myself and see what I come up with :)

Is the AA filter the same as the IR filter? In cleaning the sensor on my 5D4 I scratched it. I'm being told that I did not scratch the sensor but did scratch the filter on the sensor. I do mostly landscape. So should I just have the filter removed? Love your vids, guys. TY!

Tony! Can you help me figure out why my Canon R5's EVF is super laggy and choppy in low light indoors with a slower f4 lens? Works amazing outside but once i get indoors and crank the ISO a bit, the EVF becomes nearly unusable. The LCD does not have that problem.

I didn't know what I didn't know. Thank, this is so helpful.

I fell in the specs trap at least twice: first with the Oly EM1X that did not impress me at all on paper, until I held it in my hand and used it. Then again with the plastic Oly EM5 iii, not interested until I had it in my hands. The key factors are simply not in the specs, some reviews however at least mentioned relevant characteristics. I dig your video on this topic!

i remember my first digital camera, before the internet was full of info and reviews, it had 3.2mp and an eyepiece viewfinder. It had a bout 3 week lag between view and photo, so it was like a skill test anticipating the aircraft being in the right framing, no idea it would be like this when i bought it.

16:58 I GREATLY prefer an accurate review over a fast review. People are relying on these reviews to help them make purchasing decisions for equipment that costs thousands of dollars. Discovering a fatal flaw post-purchase that the reviewers could have noticed had they taken the proper time to evaluate the camera brings the reviewers trustworthiness into question.

Top critique from you guys. Thank you

I can't find a suitable site for this question. Hope you don't mind. I used a Canon 28-105 f3.5-4.5 for a long time. A year ago the focus motor and manual focus stopped working. I thought I had a large selection of replacements to choose from for my Canon 7d crop. Your video on "should I put a ff lens on a crop body" helped narrow the options. The perceptual megapixels is the same for crop vs ff lens on a crop sensor (DXOmark). That leaves crop lens. Crop lenses have so many negative features: no weather sealing, lens creep between 24-50mm, too expensive for f3.5-5.6, etc. I love 28-105, don't necessarily need f2.8, photograph landscape mostly, gets expensive renting ff lenses with poor results Canon, Sigma 24-105 f4, Canon 70-200 f4--don't know if my settings were faulty. I'm a retired enthusiast. Any comments?

Great video! It answers a lot of questions for me. Would you mind talking about another spec -- Shutter Lag? It is also a very blurring area.

I have been fooled with FPS in the past. I typically don’t chase specs and understand it’s the amalgamation of all the components together that are often the difference between a good and a great product.

Mislead by the f stops/T stops 😱, thank you for so much insight 😊👍👏

Which is the least costly APS-C or Full Frame mirrorless without viewfinder lag for wildlife action currently available ? Mainly in Nikon, Canon or Sony but other brands will also do.

I know this is late in coming, but I thought you might like to know that because of your original review and reveal of the focus breathing problem on the Nikon 70-200mm (years ago) I waited and bought the next version. That was a $2,800.00 purchase at the time. I still have and use that lens and I am forever grateful.

is there a typical efficiency of lens ( f stop vs t stop)? Is it say 90% on average?

127 marketing people from camera manufacturers have donwvoted this video so far. Good job, Northrups! I loved this video.

Very informative you two... thank you!

great info guys! but please fix the audio :)

Yeah but why did you export this at 24fps? 60p into a 24p timeline looks ultra choppy, especially at 1/125

Hey guys, I have a general question so I have the Canon T8i it’s by no means a bad camera. It does its job fairly well and I have no real complaints been using for about a year. I do feel limited in certain areas. I’m perfectly happy with a lot of my Ef lenses and don’t want to convert to a new mount system just yet so I am completely fine with “older tech” because 50 years ago there were plenty of famous photographers who worked with a lot less qualities. I felt to ask you in short with the benefits in comparison, are the minor quality improvements in photos as well as the weather sealing, better battery life, and being more in control of my camera with less limitations is the 5DMk4 worth buying if I’m not too interested in switching over to a Mirrorless line up just yet?

I am BLOWN AWAY how well my Canon EF lenses work on my R5 and R6; not even considering buying many RF lenses. Having said that, the 600mm and new 100mm Mac in RF ARE TEMPINNG me! :0)))

@Tony & Chelsea Northrup Would it be a problem for you record in 30fps or 60fps, so it's in sync with monitors and TV? 24fps is not smooth.

Glad you pointed out the crappy resolution of EVFs. I was/still am hugely disappointed in the "2.3m dot" EVF in my Sony a6400. After I started using this camera, I thought, "really? this is acceptable to everyone?" I really miss an OVF. (I also appreciated Chelsea's explanation for leaving Sony. I agree with many of her complaints.)

Insightful discussion. We have such advanced approaches to image capture now that it is often impossible to know how we arrive at what is captured. The number of steps and the amount of processing power needed is phenomenally large and creates new problems for photographers that the manufacturers have to go to new lengths to solve. Thanks for exploring the real-world difficulties of digital capture.

Really informative video! Thanks for sharing!

I trusted Nikon on the 12 FPs for the Z6. Well it can do the 12 FPS but when it does the EVF shows a slideshow which makes following a fast moving subject almost impossible. Unfortunately I found only a single review of the Z6 II which states that it also has this issue. Manufacturers should be called out for stuff like this so they fix it (at least in the next model). Since basically no one called out Nikon for this they did nit fix it.

Excellent video! Told me about issues I was not aware of.

On the topic of view-finder resolution: if you use it with your phone or tablet, do you get the phone/tablet resolution or the view-finder resolution enlarged?

Thank you for explaining the difference between F-stops and T-stops. I actually bought a couple of Rokinon cine lenses with declicked apertures, mostly because Adorama had them new for ridiculously low prices. I had never heard of T-stops before, and without ever looking I assumed it was just a cinematography thing that had to do with the declicked aperture (just a different designation, with no appreciable difference in function) and that it was equivalent to F-stop. I love them, by the way, because I DO use them for nighttime photography and they perform very well. But, your explanation has also helped me to understand why some of the older glass I've bought seems to shoot at a stop higher EV than my newer lenses when using the same F-stop and other settings.

My first digital camera was a 2 MP Fuji- very sharp- people thought it was a 4 MP. The specs said it could shoot 9 frames at high rate. What they didn’t tell you was that those would be at reduced resolution- 👎. I haven’t fully believed any specs since then. You guys are the greatest- watch all your reports and learn a lot!

The issue of resolution reminded me of a discussion I had with my TV installer how told me straight up the so called HD signal is 720p only.

I recently got the Tamron 70-200 f2.8 for Canon after reading how good the optics were compared to Canon and Nikon. I did not find out about its focus breathing at 200 until I listened to a Jared Polin video where he showed the comparison to Nikon 70-200. Also the Nikon was slightly brighter at the same f stop which you mentioned in your video. Unfortunately I still would not have been able to afford the Canon RF 70-200 2.8 at $2700 even if I had known about it. Thanks for doing the dirty work for us.

Why do camera manufactures use such crappy screens when our phones now are incredibly pixel dense and bright? One of the main functions of a camera is image quality. It's crazy they come with screens so ancient that it limits your ability to scrutinize your work in the field

I’m laughing here. Great discussion and explanation of some technical aspects of photography. People taking still images wanting a shooting rate that meets or exceeds video. That’s funny right there. Remember the days of advancing film with a lever. So many of us have become soooo spoiled by technology.

I remember that video with 70-200 comparison , and that was eyes opener for me and my photo rivals, and Nikon owner stayed with jaw on the floor .😁

Interesting topic, nice video (as usual)!

I have a nikkor 70-300 mm 4.5-5.6 G....the images aren’t sharp at close / further up distances. Something confusing.

Anybody know what cameras they use for their studio/interview setup?

Heya Tony and Chelsea, yeah T-stops are a beast and I am glad Chelsea brought up DXO Mark. I had been dragging around my Sigma 50mm f1.4 beast with an MC-11 on it instead of using the Zeiss 55mm f1.8. Then I saw the Sigma was 1.7T stops and my back thanked me for leaving it at home. I am sure measure T-Stops fully is a beast, but could be be as simple as taking a photo of a target at consistent settings (1/2000th of a second at f2.8) and seeing what ISO you end up on and then how much you have to pull-push exposure to get a things to match. It wont be good to 0.1 but should be good enough for 1/3rd of a stop. I know ISO is a whole other thing, but if you are testing 24-70s on the same body i think it would be close enough.

When you get time, I'd like to know how the chemical composition of lens glass varies between manufacturers in terms of aberrations etc..... Thx''''''

13:16 also works the other way. For some odd reason my d600 is said to have a 14 file 14 bit lossless raw buffer. Not sure what 12 bit is. However, i often can get 7 seconds shooting before it slows down and 42 files

Hehe honestly, for a few purposes I'd love to have a lens with incredible focus breathing. Like if I had a lens that would be wide angle when something is close and a telephoto when it is far away. would be perfect for taking photos of a soccer game, for example, where sometimes players are almost in front of you while the next moment, action is on the other side of the pitch.

I have a weird question, about the frame per second !! You guys buy a lot of great cameras, but cannot acheive 30fps, instead you get around 13. But , I'm also reading that a gopro takes video at 4k 60 pfs, and that we can get a picture from any of the frame, so we get 60 to choose from , is this right or I'm I missing something ?

An idea for a nerdy phoro topic: Is it good to shoot jpgs + raw and use two different cards for each of them to make buffer clearing better? Cameras often have one UHS-II and one UHS-I card slot. But faster cards are often smaller and bigger cards are often slower, so what are the bottlnecks in such a scenario?

Thanks for the explanation on t-shops. When testing multiple lenses at same settings I couldn’t figure why there would be exposure differences. Turns out it’s not the camera or operator (this time).

Hmmm, is there a reason the video keeps moving up and down at the top? It's like the frame keeps moving up and down to stay centered(which I'm guessing is stabilization being applied?).

You guys are saying you’ll get demolished if you post a poor resolution video, but your audio clipping is atrocious on this video! Sorry, I had so show my audio snobbery after your video bashing comment! lol. In all seriousness you guys are great. Love your videos!

Your F-Stop / T-Stop item reminds me of horsepower vs. torque in the automotive world. Race car design legend Carroll Shelby once said "Horsepower sells cars; torque wins races." I suppose a corollary would be "F-stop sells lenses; T-stop gets the shot."

There is also no information about the Focus-Speed of the lenses. How long [ms] takes it from Infinity-to-2m, Closest-Distance-to-infinity etc. - I bought once the 85/1.8, just because the Focus was much faster then on the 85/1.4.. (Nikon AF-S)

Great Video, thanks for bringing this forward. Only one thing that went up my nose. The photo showing the Nikon mirrorless camera/lens suggesting that 200mm isn't 200mm. This was a problem which existed back in 2014 with the 70-200mm f/2.8 Nikkor lens, but was rectified by Nikon in the next upgrade of the same F mount lens. As far as I know, the new mirrorless 70-200 f/2.8 doesn't have that problem and is, the best performing lens in the trio Sony, Canon, Nikon. How long is this bashing on head going to go on for when it comes down to Nikon?!?