Messages

1366

EOS Bodies / Re: No 5D Mark III on Novemeber 3 [CR2]

« on: September 26, 2011, 10:42:01 AM »

No, Canon, no!

Video is, with a few exceptions, a slow and boring form of communication.  Once people realize that no one wants to watch their boring clips, this will fade.  Sure, it's possible now to shoot HD video at reasonable prices, but who needs it?

Apologies of course to those who actually are able to make good video.

+1

The videos I make are hard to watch, I have stopped trying... the pics I take are not as terrible 

1367

EOS Bodies / Re: All I Want For Christmas is a 5D Mk III...

« on: September 26, 2011, 09:05:35 AM »

Vote with your wallets and quit buying the 5D2... arent we perpetuating the delay by purchasing all the 5D2's? 

1368

Canon General / Re: Improving composition - photography skills

« on: September 26, 2011, 07:49:47 AM »

2) Portraits. Everyone talks about using a small f/stop >=2.8 to produce background blur (bokeh) and give the shot a nice affect. However I find - that f stops 2.8 and smaller - can easily produce blurry shots as the smallest movement of the subject (not to mention a group shot where people are not all the same distance from you) causes blur. I found that nothing ruins a nice portrait more then a blurry kind of picture (unless this was intended for some artistic purpose)
What is the best F/stop for portraits ? What about if you use a flash ?

2.8 and smaller, open up the aperture, allowing a faster shutter, thereby allowing you to freeze your subjects better, so in this case, it's a win/win, since you get more softer backgrounds anyway. The 2 downsides (minor) are that some lenses will be sharper 1-2 stops slower, and if you are up very close, the depth of field will be so shallow that unless your subjects are in one plane, some will be blurred.

Perhaps you are referring to OOF (out of focus) and not (motion) blur caused by someone moving front to back and falling outside the depth of field... ?

To get max background blur, open up as much as you can knowing your lens will still be sharp. In the end there are many factors to consider but for this scenario, open up the aperture and work from there. Know your lens!

1369

Lenses / Re: New L Series Lenses coming out with the 5D Mk3?

« on: September 23, 2011, 01:18:32 PM »

The 24-70 2.8 and the 70-200 2.8 are the perfect tag team. The 24- 105 2.8 is just too much overlap IMO,

I prefer having some overlap on zoom lenses. In the real world it makes shooting much easier, not having to stop and switch lenses when a subject moves or to get just the right framing.

I always thouhgt that lenses are sub-optimal at their extremes, so overlap in lenses could make up for that perhaps?

1370

Lens Gallery / Re: Canon EF 180mm f/3.5 L Macro USM

« on: September 23, 2011, 01:09:07 PM »

Have you compared the 180mm to the 100mm L? What do you think are the pros/ cons of each? (IQ wise) I know the 180 weights a bit....

.....   but the 180L does a fairly bad job as a tele lens....

Thanks. Would you care to expand on this a bit, since the samples I have seen, the 180mm has a great creamy bokeh when used as a portrait (granted it is useless indoors) and is very sharp, allows you to snap away people in the outdoors from a distance without being in their face and causing them to act unnaturally... maybe this is not the scenario you had in mind...

1371

Lenses / Re: New L Series Lenses coming out with the 5D Mk3?

« on: September 23, 2011, 12:50:36 PM »

It's not likely that anyone will produce a 24 - 105mm f/2.8 IS L.

That is likely what people were saying in late 80's when the 35-70mm f2.8 was being made, and again in the mid 90's with the 28-70mm f2.8, and now with the 24-70mm f2.8.  Look at the progression, what makes you think it will stop?

UWA
20-35mm f2.8 (1989) -> 17-35mm f2.8 (1996) -> 16-35 f2.8 (2001)
Normal
28-80mm f2.8-4 (1989) -> 28-70mm f2.8 (1993) -> 24-70mm f2.8 (2002)
Tele
80-200mm f2.8 (1989) -> 70-200mm f2.8 (1995)

On top of that we could add the Nikon 14-24mm f2.8 to UWA list, and the 35-70mm f2.8 to the Normal list.  Also, we could look further back in history with the FD mount: (24-35mm f3.5 [1979] -> 20-35mm f3.5 [1982]).  Constant aperture zooms have grown from less than 2x (24-35 is 1.46x, for example) to 5x (Nikkor 24-120mm f4).

You will notice that the short zooms coordinate with the long zooms on your list. If they were to produce a 24-105 f2.8, it would likely mean there would be a move to a 105-300 f 2.8.

The 24-70 2.8 and the 70-200 2.8 are the perfect tag team. The 24- 105 2.8 is just too much overlap IMO, unless they were to add the 105-300 2.8... which would be a sweet lens!

Lets say we were to frame at 70mm, would we choose the 24-70mm or the 70-200mm ? And why?

1372

Lens Gallery / Re: Canon EF 180mm f/3.5 L Macro USM

« on: September 23, 2011, 12:33:02 PM »

Neuro... I don't mean to pry.. but you have awesome gear... are you a pro, or just are lucky enough to have spare cash?

Photography is just a hobby, but I happen to have a decent budget for gear, mostly from consulting work that I do outside of my day job (I don't spend a lot of time at it, but $300/hr adds up  ).

Nice!  I am glad that someone who knows what he is doing and has a passion, is not constrained by other things. 

Have you compared the 180mm to the 100mm L? What do you think are the pros/ cons of each? (IQ wise) I know the 180 weights a bit....

1373

Landscape / Re: Ever wonder where the Windows XP default wallpaper came from?

« on: September 23, 2011, 10:35:06 AM »

Many of the microsoft wallpaper images, including some on Windows 7 were taken by a Microsoft Employee, Mike Swanson with a lowly Canon Digital Rebel XT.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mswanson/archive/2005/11/10/wallpaper.aspx

What a nice read !! Thanks for the link.

1374

EOS Bodies / Re: Canon EOS 3D?

« on: September 23, 2011, 10:14:11 AM »

12 yrs of my great internet rep wiped out in one screengrab   

Rep is overrated. One who can admit to his mistakes, deserves tons of respect.

1375

Lens Gallery / Re: Canon EF 180mm f/3.5 L Macro USM

« on: September 22, 2011, 08:59:18 AM »

Were you the guy that shared a pic of the pink flower / trident stamen with the MPE-65? It was gorgeous. What do you use for illumination?

This one?  (small size since this is not the MP-E 65mm thread)



If so, yes, that's me...and thanks!  Lighting was with the MT-24EX Twin Lite (with StoFens on the flashheads).

Yep    thats the one!  I had it as my desktop background for a few days as I watched the dazzle of nature... of course the dazzle of the photographer as well

Neuro... I don't mean to pry.. but you have awesome gear... are you a pro, or just are lucky enough to have spare cash?

1376

EOS Bodies / Re: Ball pitching speed / Shutter speed accuracy experiment

« on: September 22, 2011, 08:54:48 AM »

The question that I would have is "Does the difference in the crop factor make any difference?".  The 1d2 has a 1.3 crop factor whereas the 5d is FF

This wouldn't be a problem as the ball is a constant size so if the OP has measured the distance using the diameter of the ball then this would be the same for each picture as the ball is a standard size.

Correct, the ball is 6.7cms and I am going off the ratios of width of the ball vs. length of the blur.

I did take 3-4 shots each, and these are the longest "blurs" for each bowler. The bowler's had relatively consistent blurs in the 3 shots I took.

There is some movement in shot #1 but it is more vertical (look at the blur of the ball, there a slight hump); without that movement, the ball would have been even faster, so that's not what is causing my 15% difference.

Goes back to the accuracy of the shutter speed. I was googling "shutter speed accuracy" and came about some experiments people did at 1/100th of a sec and found after 75 shots, the shutter was languishing at 1/140 -1/160th of a second... sadly I forget what camera it was.

So does anyone know if Canon shutter speeds are accurate or does +/- 15% fall under an "acceptable tolerance" ?

1377

EOS Bodies / Re: Ball pitching speed / Shutter speed accuracy experiment

« on: September 21, 2011, 05:06:38 PM »

Hi, K,

I am trying to estimate the velocity of a pitcher (the radar gun I have does not seem to be not accurate) using a framed capture at 1/60th of a second.

Does the "scan" aspect of the FP shutter introduce any complication into your process? Perhaps with a shutter speed of 1/60 s it would not be a factor.

Is the travel of the ball parallel to the focal plane (or at a consistent angle to it)?

Interesting project.

Best regards,

Doug

Doug: thanks for reading through my "blog" there.

I am afraid I have to plead ignorance to the ""scan" aspect of the FP shutter" question. This was a series of stills, the capture should have lasted 1/60th of a second in my mind.

The angles and other aspects of the ball line were far from perfect, for Pitcher 1, the 1d2 was handheld and there is vertical blurring, but it has little impact (little) on the horizontal trajectory. A +/- 5% margin of error is very much a given;  the way i did the experiment, but I am getting an over 10% difference from expected result.

See the attached pictures and see what I mean. The blur of the ball is clearly different lengths. Pitcher #2 should be faster or equal to Pitcher #1.

1378

Lens Gallery / Re: Canon EF 180mm f/3.5 L Macro USM

« on: September 21, 2011, 04:08:18 PM »

100mm is a bit short for insect shots... either I scare them or they scare me at 2 feet.

now if I can get a nice cheap, and sharp used 180mm

Depends on the insect.  I've gotten some nice insect shots with the MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x, and the working distance on that lens is between 1.6-4 inches, depending on magnification (and since you can't go below 1x due to the lack of infinity focus, 4" is the longest working distance possible!).

I have seen a 180mm f/3.5L Macro pop up on my local Craigslist in the $950-1000 range a few times, as recently as a month ago.

Were you the guy that shared a pic of the pink flower / trident stamen with the MPE-65? It was gorgeous. What do you use for illumination?

1379

PowerShot Cameras / Re: Sensor Pixel Density

« on: September 21, 2011, 02:43:15 PM »

Q1: I would think no, because native pixels are sharper (more clarity) than interpolated pixels. This is assuming your Camera uses the whole sensor and not a crop at 10mp. I am saying this because if you set your monitor to a smaller resolution than it’s native resolution, it is interpolating pixels and it gets quite blurry. At magnification levels that are square roots or similar proportional numbers, the perceived sharpness is better e.g. 50% magnification looks better than 66% magnification on screen. So there is a relationship between the nativity vs. interpolation of the pixels. So I think the answer to this question might be a “No”

Q2) Might better to use a good software to reduce it. For example bicubic scaling is better for reductions as it naturally sharpens, and Bilinear is better for enlargements as it smoothens jaggies. Fractals are even better at enlarging. My guess is specialized software for resizing should out-do the in camera resizing.

Here's some info on the reduction/expansion algorithms: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/07/better-image-resizing.html

1380

EOS Bodies / Ball pitching speed / Shutter speed accuracy experiment

« on: September 21, 2011, 02:27:53 PM »

I am trying to estimate the velocity of a pitcher (the radar gun I have does not seem to be not accurate) using a framed capture at 1/60th of a second.

I set a 1d2 at 1/60th sec capture then measured the trail of the ball and (how much it moved in 1/60th of a second); did some on screen measurements; ran some calculations; to get at an expected speed of 90.12mph.

I think this is very close to what I thought his speed would be, so I was confident in the modelling.

This was a cricket pitch, but lets use baseball analogy if it helps.

We have another pitcher that we think might be a bit faster or at least the same than Pitcher #1.

This time I set a 5Dclassic (that I had on me at the time) with the similar (though not same) framing and 1/60th frame capture. I figured as long as I can get a ratio of the ball trail vs the diameter of the ball, I’d end up with a constant that could be uses to compare the two captures and calculate the speeds. We also have a third pitcher who we feel is a bit slower than #1 and #2 that I framed the second time as well.

To summarize:

Pitcher #1 = 1d2 1/60 sec
Pitcher #2 = 5D 1/60 sec
Pitcher #3 = 5D 1/60 sec

For that batters (batsmen) who have faced these 3 guys feel Pitcher 1 & 2 and neck and neck at around 90mph, while pitcher 3, is about 7-8%  slower.

Results:

Pitcher 1 = 90mph (1d2)
Pitcher 2 = 77mph (5d)
Pitcher 3 = 67mph (5d)

While the speed differential between pitcher 2 & 3 is absolute since the test and the conditions are identical (even the trail in the photo bears out a 14% difference between them) what I cannot believe is that Pitcher 2, is only 77mph (though he seems very close or faster than pitcher 1).

I may not be able to assemble these guys together for a retake with the same equipment so here is my question:

When the 1d2 takes a picture at 1/60th of a second, how accurate is that? Same for the 5D.

Based on this, it seems to me that there is a 15% difference between the 2 bodies. Should I trust one or the other? Are shutter speeds that accurate?