Messages

1

Canon General / Re: I have a question about wedding photography

« on: May 11, 2012, 09:26:46 PM »

So from the flipside, what do you, as professional photographers do when it is your big day? I am currently single, but have been thinking about what I would do for my own wedding. As a photographer, I think I'd just want to have the RAW files right after the wedding and edit the pictures myself instead of waiting a few weeks to see them. What have you guy/gal photographers done?

I'm in the same boat.  Getting married soon and nobody seems to want to give me the raws.  I totally understand, it's just disappointing knowing I'm probably one of their few clients who (IMO) knows what they're doing.

But I'm so excited, and really love the work of the photographer I found that I've let the issue go.  It really doesn't bother me.  I know we will love the end product, and frankly I have a few things on my plate right now!

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EOS Bodies - For Video / Re: 5D Mark III Magic Lantern wish list poll

« on: April 29, 2012, 01:48:41 PM »

I'll go a little outside the box here and say my wish list is:

1. Finish ML Unified for 5D2
2. Everything else

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EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: 5D Mark III doesn't live up to expectations in real world shooting...

« on: April 27, 2012, 01:45:15 PM »

Lens microadjustments only need to be performed in rare cases. Usually the camera and lens fit within a tolerance of each other and those microadjustments aren't necessary.

I'm not going to bother reading all the pages in between here and now, I'll just say that every single lens I use on my 5D2 needs AFMA.

Every single one.

If you buy an F1.2-F1.8 lens and it works perfectly out of the box with your camera, you got lucky.

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EOS Bodies / Re: 5Dii refurbished- instock at Canon store for 1500!!!

« on: April 17, 2012, 12:33:24 PM »

I dunno what you guys are doing, but all I see is:

Promotion Code 20SLR412 not found, please try again.

The free shipping one did work however.

Do you have to be logged in to the site?

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EOS Bodies / Re: 5Dii refurbished- instock at Canon store for 1500!!!

« on: April 17, 2012, 10:47:41 AM »

I'm thinking that coupon was meant only for the 5D2, it doesn't appear to work with other bodies/kits. 

6

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: 24 cameras now pushed and compared for noise on the dark end at all ISOs

« on: April 16, 2012, 04:21:06 PM »

First of all.... THANK YOU!  This is really great free info.

A 100% crop of a 50 megapickle image can look much, much worse than a 100% crop of a 10 megapickle image and yet the 50 megapickle image might make a print that blows away the 10 megapickle one.

If you're serious about this, what you want is to pick a representative final print size -- 13" x 19" would be typical of the largest likely print size owners of those cameras might have in common -- and then scale, up or down as needs be, all the images to 100 ppi at that size. For this example, that would be 1300 x 1950 (to preserve the aspect ratio). You can then take a 100% crop of the 1300 x 1950 resized image for your comparison.

Yes, yes, and YES!

This is what I'd really love to see.  For any shot that's framed more-or-less correctly to start with (I'd say most are), the larger resolution noise is going to be compressed and never look like the 100% crop.

My inner nerd really loves seeing all these comparisons, but the rational part of me that PPs and prints photos would love to see how 22 MP and 36 MP noise compress into the same final print size....

7

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: Canon Announces EOS 60Da for Astrophotography

« on: April 04, 2012, 05:20:20 PM »

I've always been curious about this kind of photography; tried it a few times and failed miserably. Just what exactly do you focus on when shooting the stars? And what are optimal camera settings? Can anyone help me with this?

You focus on infinity-ish.... most lenses aren't in focus when you crank the focus ring all the way.  You'll have to back it off a little.

Just find a bright star and zoom 10x in live view.  Keep a steady hand/tripod and get the star as small as possible.

I don't usually use a lens with IS for wide field astro, but if you do, you can turn it on (just to focus).  Half press the button while you're focusing to make things easier on the eyes.  Don't forget to turn it off before you shoot.

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EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: Canon Announces EOS 60Da for Astrophotography

« on: April 04, 2012, 01:02:28 AM »

Pardon my ignorance, for I only ever shoot things closer than 50km, and then only stills.
But (whether the 60Da has video or not), why would you want to? Don't planets and stars move really really slowly? What information can you obtain from 1920x1080 25fps that you can't get from 5184x3456 5fps? or even 1fps? (from what I know about video, the best shutter speed is half the frame rate, so shouldn't 0.5s exposures at 1fps using a TC80N3 make a nice video?)
Or is it just the hassle of taking hundreds/thousands of photos, downsizing them, and jamming them into a movie file?

Actually a small portion of the frame at "just" 1000mm moves very quickly.

A lot planetary and moon imaging folks use video to get thousands of frames and stack them to eliminate noise and bring out details you won't get with only maybe a dozen exposures.  The benefit of the stacking only increases as the square root of the number of images, so the returns really start to diminish unless you get a ton of frames of data.

Search for "Registax" for some examples. It's free software that does some advanced stacking.  It's amazing what people have done with seemingly terrible seeing conditions.

And if you're camera has a crop/zoom video mode, you can get near the same resolution as you would crop out of full res pics anyway!

9

EOS Bodies / Re: Help with choosing my first DSLR?

« on: April 02, 2012, 01:22:23 PM »

Unless there has already been an announcement, I would (personally) never wait on the next model.  Especially considering the high probability of delays even after that.

You can't just look at the cost as wasted if something else comes along.  It could very well be another 6 months until the t4i can be found in a store.  Say you buy a t3i now and sell it for 100 bucks less... That's 55 cents day to essentially rent a camera and enjoy it for an entire half year.  I'd say 100 bucks less is worst case too.  It's just not worth sitting around and waiting.

Sorry I don't really have advice on 600 vs 60, I rarely shoot video.  But if it will make you happy, definitely don't wait.  This stuff holds its value pretty well. 

10

EOS Bodies / Re: 5d Mark III AEB, what gives? Am I missing something?

« on: March 02, 2012, 04:56:07 AM »

Preface:  5D3 looks to be an IQ beast.  Great job.

Now...  As a software engineer, nothing peeves me more than limitations I know are purely in the firmware of a camera. 

You want me to change 3 lines of code for you Canon?  It won't take me 4 years either.  I'll do it for free.

Hardware limitations I get... But when I know the marketing department has purposely castrated the camera to play an angle it's really disappointing.  You might actually have some competition now, act like it!  Those improvements are FREE to you!  Good Lord, at least grab the low-hanging fruit and continue focusing on actual technological innovations.

This goes for a lot more than just bracketing.  It looks like there are less intuitive ways of making that work, but my firmware wish list grows by the day.

Calling Magic Lantern...

11

EOS Bodies / Re: 5D Mark III Full Spec List?

« on: March 01, 2012, 09:40:58 PM »

[...]

the jump in the retail price  from 2700 USD (at the time of the release)  to 3500 USD is entirely due to the currency rate.

[...]

So please people, get mad at bankers on this one, Canon is NOT milking the cow

Just to preface, I'm not trying to come off as a jerk here, but I can think of about a dozen factors driving exchange rates more than "evil bankers".  Start with moron politicians who apparently learned economics from watching cartoons, then work your way down the list.  Exchange rates are an EFFECT, they don't just get set first, they are along for the ride.

Again, no offense meant, but I think after years of being bombarded with little drive-by comments like that, people eventually get a very misguided views of reality yet don't really know why they feel a certain way.  And I have the misguided urge to correct someone on the interweb! Lol

Now imagine you are Japanese buying stuff from the USA.  You're a happy camper!


Now a totally separate point: how did Nikon avoid the exchange rate?  They didn't.  I will wager that:
1.  There are features we don't know about yet or
2.  The rumored price is wrong. 

12

EOS Bodies / Re: 5D Mark III Full Spec List?

« on: March 01, 2012, 12:01:57 PM »

Couple of things......

1) Anyone notice the Digic 5+ in the specs?? <------  notice the "+"  What's the "+" for compared to the two Digic 5's in the 1Dx?

The Powershots also have the Digic 5, but the 1Dx has Dual Digic 5+, the 5diii has single Digic 5+ I am happy for a single Digic processor for the main Camera (lets the magic lantern guys do some magic on the 5d3 as well, they could never on the dual digics of the 7d).

+1
The single chip could lead to very promising enhancements

If you mean Magic Lantern will have an easier time hacking it than the 7D, I'm sure hoping so!!!!  It sounds like dual chips lead to big headaches.  Magic Lantern Unified for 5D3 please!!!!!

13

EOS Bodies / Re: NO 5dM3 On Friday * CONFIRMED By a canon Rep Today

« on: February 29, 2012, 11:29:25 AM »

If Canon reps knew this kind of information, we'd have every detail of every release about 3 minutes after the reps.   There are a lot of reps out there, and it's just a law of human nature.  You can't tell that many people and keep it this under wraps. He could be lucky or have a good guess, but I can almost guarantee you he doesn't know the details.

14

United States / Re: Annular Eclipse May 20th, 2012

« on: February 21, 2012, 01:57:06 PM »

I'm getting married in May (an Arizona no less!), although we haven't set a date yet.  It's small enough to be flexible, and this just sounds awesome!  An annular eclipse to me looks a bit like a wedding ring, how cool!  Now selling this might be the hard part....

15

EOS Bodies / Re: 5D Mark III Book Shows Up at Amazon France

« on: February 13, 2012, 12:44:37 PM »

Aren't 99% of the dates for these kind of things placeholders?

Usually, I wouldn't read much into this at all.

It is interesting that it's listed as 288 pages, although maybe the last version was 288 as well, I'll have to check.  I'm still swimming in Neuro's salt scoop.  I'd say it's a fun work distraction at best, publishers do this a lot.