Messages

1

United States / Re: Traveling abroad with photography equipment

« on: April 11, 2013, 01:40:40 AM »

Regarding weight limits for carry-on luggage please check out British Airways.

In my experience they have the best weight limit regulations for hand baggage.
http://www.britishairways.com/travel/bagcabin/public/en_us#

The difference to the sadly common unusually useless 8 kg allowance is striking.

2

Lenses / Re: Europe Vacation: Equipment Advice

« on: April 04, 2013, 07:59:53 AM »

You can find useable tripods practically anywhere. Just rent one instead of bringing one to keep your baggage weight down.

If you want to do a night photo shoot in one of the larger European cities you might be able to locate a pro photo shop situated in the area, where you can rent a tripod.

In addition you can ask someone you meet carrying a tripod, if this person would lend you that tripod for a moment. This ad hoc approach has worked fine for me.

3

Reviews / Re: Most Objective and Less Objective REVIEWER?

« on: April 04, 2013, 05:05:36 AM »

@comsense:

Incredible, you actually believe that a machine might provide less biased information compared to a human being. How can this be? 

Do you believe that machines are created by some sort of greater and completely flawless beings or have you already realized that machines tend to be man-made and as such bring in their own flaws and bias based on how a machine has been designed? 

4

Canon General / Re: European travel?

« on: April 04, 2013, 04:48:18 AM »

@Deva:
I generally agree with your comment regarding tripods, but for night time photography a tripod may come in quite handy, especially if used extensively for night time exposures.

If there is no opportunity for night time photography, then a tripod would indeed be a waste of space and effort, but things look differently, if there are lots of opportunities. Not everyone will bring in a 1D-X and f1.4 and f1.2 lenses for night time photography and there are also limits to the usefulness of shallow depth of field in those circumstances.

I myself have often enjoyed the opportunity of loaning a tripod locally. This is a much better option than bringing your own.

5

Lenses / Re: Need your opinions on selling my 50L and 24/70L

« on: March 25, 2013, 10:01:54 AM »

Well, I own both of these lenses and I tend to use them a lot. Pardon me, if you think they are too close in focal length.

My point is: If the OP sells the 50L and later purchases the 85L and then realizes missing the 50L's focal length, then selling the 50L is just a waste of money, isn't it?

6

Lenses / Re: Need your opinions on selling my 50L and 24/70L

« on: March 25, 2013, 09:45:40 AM »

It makes sense to exchange only the 24-70 for the mark ii without selling the 50L, especially if you love the 1.2 and want to purchase an 85L in the future. 50L and 85L make for a beautiful combination of prime lenses. They are not too close in focal length.

7

EOS Bodies / Re: Big Megapixel Development Announcement in the Fall? [CR2]

« on: March 25, 2013, 04:58:14 AM »

How about macro?

If per-pixel-quality is similar to the 1D-X or 5D Mark III then you can crop to your heart's delight or create stunning large-scale images of static objects like flowers and such.

How about shooting landscapes without bringing a Hasselblad or similar medium format device?

How about people shooting magazine covers or similar work?

8

Reviews / Re: Most Objective and Less Objective REVIEWER?

« on: March 22, 2013, 08:45:26 AM »

This is quite a good poll, especially that we can only choose the most reliable sources of information, which is useful information. I don't think it is necessary to dwell on the negative, but rather to point people looking for reasonably reliable reviews in the correct direction.

9

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: Sell canon 5d3 and return new macbook pro retina to buy the 1d x

« on: March 11, 2013, 11:53:52 AM »

Selling all your nice stuff just to get one camera is not a good idea.

I bought both 5D Mark III and 1D-X, but although I tend to shoot with my 1D-X most of the time the 5D Mark III still makes a nice backup and I haven't sold it to purchase a second 1D-X, just because the 1D handles so much better and is faster and offers better low iso capabilities and camera controls are so much more efficient and ... Okay I have been thinking to replace my 5D Mark III with a second 1D-X, but I have dismissed the idea.

My point is:
You won't see so much of a difference in your pictures. If you can purchase a 1D-X without selling anything to be able to get it, do go get it. Otherwise be happy with what you have. For example it makes no sense to sell your Macbook, if you will eventually purchase another one in a couple of months.

10

Lenses / Re: Addicted to dof

« on: March 06, 2013, 04:53:31 AM »

Yes, you will most definitely see a difference. I don't own the non-L variants, but I have tried to use both 50mm L and 85mm L for street photography and I tend to shoot at late hours, so I usually only use f1.2 to f1.8 apertures. Using the faster L primes not only provides you with even better bokeh, but it also allows you to freeze motion, which may become blurred using a slower lens. This is of course only pushing a boundary, but it does make a difference.

There is a significant advantage using a 1D-X or 1Ds Mark III, because of the more powerful battery driving AF motors faster, but that's the only thing to improve compared to using a 5D Mark III.

Many on this forum complain about high cost of particular lenses. I would rather not touch this subject here.

11

Lenses / Re: 17-40mm advice please!

« on: March 01, 2013, 09:08:56 AM »

This is actually somewhat difficult, although generally the 17-40mm zoom is an excellent lens for its price.

I wouldn't bother too much regarding individual lens design flaws, because whatever you purchase has to fit into your budget. You can still produce good photos with these zoom lenses.

@Sith Zombie: Would this 17-40mm lens be the your only lens? If so, I strongly advise to take a look at the 24-105mm zoom. It is not very expensive, but highly versatile, while the 17-40mm zoom on full-frame is a dedicated wide angle zoom, so you would be fairly limited in what you can do overall. On full-frame you may find that 24mm is wide enough often enough that the additional focal length range of the 24-105mm will do you more good than the the lost wide angle range compared to the 17-40mm lens will be an issue.

Do compare both lenses on a full-frame body, not on a crop body. On crop the 17-40mm lens provides you with a very reasonable, although not very wide focal length range, while the 24-105mm lens will be limited regarding wide angle capability, so the comparison you make on a crop body won't hold true on a full-frame body with the focal lengths of both lenses appearing to be much shorter.

12

Lenses / Re: Lens purchase strategy

« on: February 25, 2013, 09:34:26 AM »

My approach is to only purchase lenses, which will allow for shots I couldn't have taken with my existing gear.

I started out with what I considered to be good enough and reasonably priced f4 L zooms, but trying to get better results has led me to be interested only in the very best for what I do, which led me to shooting primes mostly. Now if something goes wrong I can consistently blame myself, not my gear.

13

Canon General / Re: What am I doing wrong???

« on: February 25, 2013, 08:39:33 AM »

I would like to suggest manual selection of a focus point, but not the central focus point. Instead I suggest to select a focus point so that it ends up right on one of the toddler's eyes.

Then you can test focussing with a series of shots. Don't fire off quick shots, but wait for focus confirmation. With a 5D Mark III you should get pretty good and consistent results using this method unless of course your lens focussing is way off, which I suspect is happening to you.

You can quickly verify autofocus accuracy by focussing your 50mm f1.4 lens and other lenses on a static area with sufficient detail to allow checking autofocus. A stretch of tarmac in good light will do. If you try AFMA you should check how much your corrected autofocus results will vary. If you can achieve some autofocus reliability you can return to shooting the pictures you want.

14

Technical Support / Re: Dubai Pro Photographic Equipment Suppliers

« on: February 24, 2013, 06:19:45 PM »

I expect you will setup a legal entity in the U.A.E.. In this case I would recommend checking conditions on ordering gear through the internet using your U.A.E. company. My expectation is that you will get away with lower taxation compared to importing through the U.K., but you should really verify this.

U.K. prices are not outlandish, so this should give you a good starting point, but there may be better options depending on product and price range and availability of international deliveries to the U.A.E. by online stores.

15

Software & Accessories / Re: Move LR4 catalog of pictures from Windows pc to mac

« on: February 24, 2013, 05:23:45 PM »

Curiously I have just performed this operation. I have found this to be surprisingly easy. Here it goes:

1) Install Adobe Lightroom on your Macbook Pro
2) Copy both your image file directories and your Adobe Lightroom catalog and preview files to your Macbook Pro
3) Start Lightroom

You can find your Lightroom catalog (Lightroom 4 Catalog.lrcat) and preview files (Lightroom 4 Catalog Previews.lrdata) per default in a directory named Lightroom in your pictures library on your WindowsPC. You just copy this to a directory named Lightroom in your pictures library on your Macbook Pro.

It is best, if your actual images are stored within subdirectories of the pictures library of your WindowsPC, because then you can copy them to the same subdirectories of the pictures library of your Macbook Pro. If this is not the case, you will need to identify the correct folders to your Lightroom installation on the Macbook Pro.