Messages

301

EOS Bodies / Re: A tongue-in-cheek missive to those who want a high MP 5D3 :)

« on: December 05, 2011, 08:10:29 AM »

I would expect more megapixels is going to challenge the skill of the user.

Joseph Holmes would certainly agree with you.

They're long articles on medium format shooting technique & precision, but well worth a read.

The summary is that merely using a "bomb-proof" tripod, using a cable release, waiting 6 seconds for mirror vibration to settle after lock-up, and using a 3x magnifier on the focusing screen is not good enough to get the full 40+ MP resolution out of a medium format camera system.

Phase One's tolerance for registration distance is 12 microns, but he's come across systems that were off by hundreds.  Joseph calculates that with this system's lenses the difference between the focal plane registering at infinity and 200 feet can be as low as 8 microns (depending on the focal length).  Among other things, he had to test *seven* 80mm lenses to find *two* that would really, truly focus to infinity at the micron level (meaning everything at 1000+ feet sharp; remember that we're talking about the mechanical tolerances of lenses in distances of microns here).  Other lenses worked out better, but you get the idea.  I'm not talking about the resolution of the glass or sensor here, but simply the mechanical tolerance of medium format lenses & bodies. 

If Joseph had to go through all this to really squeeze all the resolution capability out of a high-end hand-assembled ultra-quality-controlled medium format camera system costing tens of thousands of $US, how much resolution do you think non-professionals will really be able to effectively eek out of a mass-produced 30+ MP DSLR with even smaller pixels, mass-produced lenses?  How stable is "stable enough" from an I.S. system?  How much will the strong AA filter Canon tends to use impact the real capability of such a sensor?  How precise is phase-detect AF at these resolutions (even after calibration)?  And let's not forget that ultra-high resolution CMOS sensors like this tend to stink for video...

Mind you, sometimes Canon's approach to this sort of thing is "ship first, ask questions later" so who knows, but personally I think that they're purposely avoiding the high-resolution game as it would open up several proverbial cans of worms for them, none of which are economically lucrative for them to deal with.

Have a look at some of Joseph's samples BTW, they're truly stunning in terms of resolution.

302

EOS Bodies / Re: How often do you go through a body? Why do you upgrade?

« on: December 03, 2011, 07:09:07 PM »

Aha, this was another French astrophotography site I was trying to find, a colleague of Christian Buil's (from the previos site)...

Thierry Legault's solar silhouettes like this one are nothing short of amazing.

303

EOS Bodies / Re: Anyone have a good explanation of "native" vs "expanded" iso?

« on: December 02, 2011, 09:46:58 PM »

I can't remember where I read it as it was a while ago, but my understanding is that (as others have said here) "expanded" iso is simple linear amplification that could be just as easily done in the RAW converter.  But a lot of things in the new 1Dx are very different from the way they were done in the past, so who knows...

304

EOS Bodies / Re: New transparent mirror patent on photorumors.com

« on: December 02, 2011, 09:39:23 PM »

Thanks for the better translation, it makes a lot more sense now.

Do you think that the mirrors in the patent illustrations are significantly larger than in existing APS-C DSLRs, or am I just reading too much into this?

305

EOS Bodies / New transparent mirror patent on photorumors.com

« on: December 02, 2011, 05:40:59 PM »

here's the link

The idea is that an EF-s lens would really cram the rear element up inside this thing.  I don't fully understand the implications of the patent, but the mirror element may actually serve to shorten the registration distance slightly.  If that's the case then the design is a truly genius way of tackling the DSLR size problem while maintaining legacy compatibility.

Do notice that the silhouette of the camera body has no flash overhang as in traditional EOS DSLRs.  The mirror also seems to be a lot larger (proportional to the sensor) than in conventional cameras.

I'm going to gloat a bit & mention that a week ago I said that they'd do it this way :-)  Well, the fact that it'll have a mirror and look like a "bastard child of the Powershot G and modern EOS cameras" anyway...  The older "mount adapter" patent certainly led me to believe that they'd create a new mount with a shorter registration distance (& it may have been a design at some point) in order to design a camera system from scratch around an APS-C sized sensor.  A lot of patents are just design lab exercises & never even make it to the prototype stage...

It's also worth mentioning that this isn't the first transparent mirror patent they've filed recently...

306

Lenses / Re: 70-200 f/2.8LisII with x1.4TC VS 70-300 f/4-5.6L

« on: December 02, 2011, 04:58:14 PM »

A couple of examples of the 100-400mm + 2x Extender II on the 7D below.  Not the best day for it - gloomy and misty, and f/11 of course.  Shot from a tripod.  Both are at ISO 3200 and cropped a bit.  The biggest challenge was focusing, which would have been close to impossible without IS on the lens.

Not bad at all.  Seems like the most noticeable thing to my eye is the loss of contrast; certainly more than with my 1.4x.  How much post-prod did you do on these?

307

Canon General / Re: Hello! Help... what should I do?!

« on: December 02, 2011, 01:56:20 PM »

If you have the budget for a 5DII (& the full-frame lenses to go with it) and you primarily need a camera for shooting video, then that's probably your best bet.  It's a fine camera & will continue to be a fine camera after the mkIII is released, and if you really need some feature in the new camera then an upgrade will probably not be too financially painful as demand for the 5DII will likely continue far into the future.

If you don't need the shallower depth of field & enhanced low-light capability that the full-frame sensor offers, then you can save a lot of money by getting a 60D, which also has an articulated screen better suited for shooting video than the fixed screen on the 5DII.

Bear in mind that lenses that are made for fast autofocus are usually not the most practical for manually focused video shooting.  There are sites that offer much more information on this than I can (check out Planet 5D for example) but Zeiss, Voigtländer, and Samyang are good brands to check out for dedicated manual focus lenses.

308

EOS Bodies / Re: A Canon Move into MF: Not in the near future (from NL)

« on: December 02, 2011, 11:34:03 AM »

I've dreamt about MF, like everyone else.  But the main reason for my thought of moving up is the jump from 14bit resolution to 16bit.

The overall dynamic range of the system has a lot more to do with the noise floor of the chip than the bit depth of the ADC output...  However more ADC bit depth certainly adds more data to work with in the shadows, which gives the subjective impression of better dynamic range.  Michael Reichmann has a better explanation of what I'm talking about.

But for me the big advantage of moving from 12 bit to 14 bit color channels was the increased smoothness in color gradients & the ability to work the color in the RAW file without inducing banding.  The jump from 8 to 12 was by far the most significant, but 12 to 14 was nice & certainly noticeable in situations with difficult color balance or B&W conversion with the channel mixer where you might be throwing away half the color data or sometimes even working with just one channel.  16 bit would be fantastic for B&W but 14 is already pretty good.

Going back to what I mentioned earlier about survey buttons, I think a lot of people clicked the "more dynamic range" button & Canon took that into account when designing the 1Dx.  Unfortunately I don't recall seeing a "more bit depth" button in the surveys...  At least high dynamic range & a low noise floor go hand in hand & it's clear that the 1Dx has been optimized for that.  I think that that's what the marketing dept means by "better pixels"....

309

EOS Bodies / Re: How often do you go through a body? Why do you upgrade?

« on: December 02, 2011, 06:42:20 AM »

I'm already a bit ticked off, living on the East Coast of the US that light pollution seriously detracts from amateur astro-photography which I feel I would be quite interested/active in if I had access to clearer skies (Jealous of all my friends who live in NZ and Aus).

Check this out.

Sounds like you need some light pollution filters, or if you're ready to dedicate a camera to it, replace the low-pass filter to reject artificial wavelengths.

310

EOS Bodies / Re: A Canon Move into MF: Not in the near future (from NL)

« on: December 02, 2011, 06:19:31 AM »

It seems odd not maxing out what 135 fullframe format can do in studio and still life when the technology exists <...> Let the competition take the risk.

Yep, that's their gamble with the 1Dx.

I'm not sure how well the D3X sold, but given its price point & the economic situation I'm guessing "not as well as Nikon thought it would" is the answer. I've seen plenty of tourists, pros, etc using D700 and D3S over the last few years, but I've never seen a D3X in the wild.  That's not to say that they're not out there, but given how good cameras like the D3s and 5DII are, you've really got to *need* the extra resolution D3X to justify the extra cash, even for pros.  I imagine that some Nikon folks that really did need the extra resolution & couldn't afford it jumped ship to the 5DII to get the extra resolution for less than half the cash.

A Canon D3X resolution beater would likely cost even more than the D3X, which is pushing dangerously close to 645D territory.  & as I mentioned before, without lenses like Nikon's 14-24 to take full advantage of the extra resolution, they're really not in a position to play the megapixel king anyway.

One other argument I've read is "the 1DX's pixels are so good that if you need to print larger the images upres much better than 5DII or 1DsIII".  We'll see how that works out in practice, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a feature in the new version of DPP that comes with the 1DX specifically tailored to upresing.

If it's true then that's another great play in Canon's playbook, as it allows finished output at final resolutions as good or better their previous cameras while not pushing the lens stable as hard.

311

Lenses / Re: I wish I'd never sold my.....?

« on: December 01, 2011, 10:29:51 PM »

For those posters regretting the T90, and the average spot metering :  my 5D's don't even come close to that metering. I wish Canon would put that back into a camera.

The 1Dx has it :-)

312

Third Party Manufacturers / Re: Fuji X10 or X100?

« on: December 01, 2011, 10:22:08 PM »

cool, when you get it can you let me know if you can at least shoot the raw+jpg in the sensitivity mode?
does this mean you have to press the raw button before every shot? or hold it while shooting?
got a link to those 3200 sample shots?

The concert tickets are $600 each so to drop $600 on a camera that can take decent shot that i can actually use at the event will be worthwhile i think, i have been leaning toward the X10 over the X100

What concert are you going to that costs $600?  Wow.

Here's the link to the DPreview article & samples.  This article specifically addresses the DR mode. I won't have the camera 'till Christmas so you're probably better off talking to the folks there & in the DPreview Fuji forum if you want to learn more.

Digital Outback Photo's review is also quite good.  I'll let you search for any others...

313

EOS Bodies / Re: How often do you go through a body? Why do you upgrade?

« on: December 01, 2011, 10:05:18 PM »

Still on my 40D, which was an upgrade from the 10D that got me into DSLR photography in the first place.

Very tempted by the 7D, but I'm still really happy with the 40D & can't really justify the upgrade.  It'll have to be something pretty revolutionary (& affordable) to get me to move.  I get a new lens every year or two & leave it at that.  New glass certainly gets me out shooting a lot more than a new body did.

Compact cameras, however, are a different story.  Had a Pana LX3 for a year or two (loved it), traded it on the LX5 shortly after it came out (even better), and now a Fuji X10 is on the way (to be continued)...

314

EOS Bodies / Re: A Canon Move into MF: Not in the near future (from NL)

« on: December 01, 2011, 09:58:28 PM »

This is great news & confirms what I'd already suspected.  We've all seen the surveys over the last few years asking what photographers want in their next DSLR.  Pretty much after the 50D came out, many more people started ticking the "high ISO performance" rather than the "more MP" box.  Canon seems to have listened.  The "more fps" crowd is also fairly vocal, & Canon seems to be using fps as their competitive advantage point against Nikon (& others).  Also, very high resolution CMOS sensors are not so great for video.

I particularly appreciate the tidbit on the new teleconverters.  The line is "if you're an APS-H shooter & like the extended reach of that format, well, the new teleconverters are better than the old ones & will give you back the reach you gave up by switching to FF, and the 1Dx will AF as well or better with an f/4 lens as the old ones did with f/2.8 glass".  Unfortunately, the marketing department doesn't really seem to be conveying this particular message, and the no-more-f/8-AF issue doesn't help either (e.g. the 2x TC becomes useless on anything but f/2.8 or faster glass).

The 1Dx, then, is a calculated risk for Canon.  They are betting that they'll make more money from the faithful that move up to a very high IQ 12/14fps FF body that costs $2500 more than the 1DIV (plus the few working at f/8 that will upgrade their lenses so that they still have supported AF, & those that buy TCs for the reach), and that the higher unit volume of the now single-model 1D line will drive costs down over time & keep them competitive for years.  In this crazy economy, they'll have to get as much mileage out of the 1Dx as they did with the 1DsIII (and the 5DII, which continues to sell like hotcakes 3 years after its introduction).

Can't afford it & need the fps?  Well, then I guess the 7D's your camera, but at least the 7D's there.  I'll go so far as to say that the 7D (& certainly the 7D II) is a calculated part of their APS-h phase-out strategy in the 1-series.  If they incorporate the mirror & processing developments of the 1Dx in the 7D II then we're looking at a mighty fine sportsman's crop camera in 2013.

It's a similar gamble on the resolution side of the house for the traditional 1Ds customer:  "we're giving you 18 very high quality gapless megapixels & a completely redesigned metering system rather than 25+ MP".  They've obviously figured that the few pros that they loose to Nikon (or medium format) will cost them less than maintaining a two-model 1D lineup.

Personally, I think it's the right decision.  I'll add another reason that hasn't gotten a lot of airtime in the discussions revolving around the 1Dx:

Pretty much anything but the best L lenses would be massively outresolved by a ~30MP FF sensor, especially in the corners where higher resolution APS-c (& even APS-h to a lesser degree) sensors don't have to worry about it.  They're well aware that wide-angles are their weak spot & have updated several of them to compensate, but at 30MP anything with less resolution than five-star-rated L glass just wouldn't cut the mustard.  Such a camera would expose every single flaw in their aging lens lineup that they use as a major marketing point for its breadth & versatility (which unfortunately also makes it harder to maintain over time).  We'd just continue to see more & more reviews like this one...

A very high IQ 18 MP FF camera has the opposite effect.  That's the same pixel density as a 7mp APS-C sensor.  Not much to worry about there; if a lens looked fine on a 1DsII then it should look fine on this (& the same assurance cannot be made for the same lens on the 1DsIII and 5DII).

Unfortunately that leaves me with even less hope that we'll ever see lenses like a 28mm f/1.8 USM II, but lenses are a lot harder to predict than bodies so who knows...

315

Lenses / Re: Primes to go with a 5D Mark II -- does anyone not use a L prime?

« on: December 01, 2011, 08:37:33 AM »

A few other suggestions in the "don't forget" department (OK, it's well-known here that I'm a Voigtländer fanboy):

http://www.photozone.de/canon_eos_ff

Check out the "third party" lenses from Voigtländer and Samyang.  Very nice alternatives to Zeiss for a lot less cash.