Originally posted by Ryan Tischer I shot with the 5D II for over two years and had the 16-35mm f/2.8L II and the 24-105mm f/4L. From my experience the Canon wide angle glass stinks compared to the MF Pentax lenses. I don't have any experience with the Nikon FF glass. With my Canon images were never sharp in the corners, even stopped down. I think you'd have to use Zeiss glass or at least the Nikon 14-24mm to get lenses that actually resolve enough for that sensor's tiny pixels. Or maybe I just had two bad copies of those lenses. I think for landscape shooters the wide angle glass is very important, at least for me it's a deal breaker. Also, the Canons are very noisy in the shadows. I was blown away by what you could pull from shadows with the 645D once I started using that system.
Yeah, the 16-35 was widely considered as simply decent and I don't think anyone ever bought the old 24-105 for sharpness, it's advantages were the stabilization, extra zoom, and the fact that it was incredibly cheap, since it was a kit lens for the mk2. The 16-35 does make for an excellent reportage lens though. Canon's strength's are their prime lenses - the 24 TS-E and f/1.4 are monstrously sharp, as are the 35, 85 & 135L. Before the 24-70 2.8 II came out, the only zooms I could wholeheartedly recommend were painted white.
Quote: One of the issues mentioned by some professional landscape shooters was the uselessness of the Nikon live view in the D800, and they chose the 5D III over the higher megapixel D800 for that reason. I have a feeling they weren't planning to make many large prints like I do. Not sure if they fixed the live view in the 810, but perhaps that could still be an advantage for Canon.
I almost forgot about the botched D800 live view, aka "how not to sample the sensor 101". But I don't think a slightly fuzzy view would be too much of a deal breaker if you really wanted the features the D800 offered, it was already a considerable step up for people whose cameras never had LV at all, like medium format users. Fuzzy 10x magnification is better than no magnification every day of the week.
Quote: After shooting for nearly 3 years with the 645D I am pretty used to not needing live view and now feel it's a luxury with the 645Z. I do use it often now, but don't need to since I know my lenses well.
I had a 645D for an extended period of time on loan from a friend, and I could have bought it from him for a steal at any time really, but decided to go for the Z instead, just because of LV. Yes, not the extra pixels, nor the dynamic range. In my case, LV is pretty much a job requirement, I gotta confirm that what I shoot will be sharp at 16x magnification.