Topics

16

Third Party Manufacturers / What's going on with the Voightlander 20mm?

« on: December 30, 2012, 07:37:00 PM »

They have a new rev of that line of lenses with a machined focusing ring rather than rubber grip. They've introduced the new 40mm with this feature, but the old 20mm has been discontinued and the new one isn't out yet. I believe it was supposed to be introduced in early summer.

Does anybody know anything about this lens?

17

Lenses / Revenge of the Primes

« on: November 12, 2012, 08:12:45 AM »

When I was putting my kit together a few years ago (5DMKII, 70-200/2.8II, 24-105, 8-16, 16-35) I beat around the bush for awhile trying to get a good range of focal lengths with primes. For whatever reason I like the simplicity of a few good primes and in the old days I enjoyed my AE-1 immensely with its 35mm and 50mm lenses. But now in the electronic age it seems Canon was letting their primes languish with only these really old designs. So I bought the zooms.

But now Canon seems to be coming out with a refreshed line of high IQ primes, 24mm, 28mm, 35mm, 40mm and a rumored 50mm. All of them with similar high quality (and price). If I knew they were coming out with a 20mm (my favorite) that would cinch it.

Thoughts on ditching my present collection for a set of primes? I'd probably keep the 70-200mm/2.8.

18

Lenses / Gear for shooting Birds of Prey?

« on: September 16, 2012, 07:25:15 PM »

I've got a thing for birds of prey, especially Owls, Eagles and Falcons, and I'd like to take some pictures of them while I'm out hiking around doing landscape photography. I have a 5DMKII with 8-15, 16-35II, 24-105, and 70-200 plus a few primes.

Following criteria for gear ...

• Lighter is better since I'm already carrying a lot of gear
• Price isn't critical but this isn't my primary thing so would like to keep it down
• L/pro gear is fine, so is non pro (if it's lighter, cheaper and produces reasonable shots)
• I'm OK with say, getting a longer lens and swapping.

On the other hand, there's a place I go where I flush owls out all the time, and need to just be able to very quickly pull a camera out when opportunity presents itself. It's by the ocean in the early morning when the owls are hunting, so there isn't always a lot of light.

Thanks for suggestions!

19

Lenses / How do you update Canon lens firmware?

« on: August 11, 2012, 08:02:18 AM »

A search didn't turn up anything useful - how is this performed? Can it be done from a camera, so consumers can do it themselves (such as for the upcoming shorty forty upgrade), or does it need to be sent in to a service center who have a special harness?

20

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Bird of prey eyeball and megapixels

« on: August 10, 2012, 08:49:15 AM »

I went to a talk recently about birds of prey, and in it he had a model of a raptor eyeball. Unfortunately I can't find a picture online to show you, but the interesting thing was that the back of the eyeball had something like twice the surface area of the front. Imagine a truncated cone, with the top smaller part being the front eyeball and the base being the back, to give you an idea. The lecturer talked about how the reason for that was that they could pack so many more rods and cones on that eye, which the birds used to see prey from 3000 feet up. What he was talking about was evolutionary zoom.

Of course I related this to cameras. Whenever a rumor comes in for a big pixel camera somebody lectures us on how unnecessary that is, it would just clog our disks, and so forth. But with more pixels you can crop and zoom and still keep detail. With enough pixels, and a high enough resolution 50mm lens I can see a case where lugging around a lot of zooms diminishes.

Anyhow an improved autofocus from my 5DMKII, such as in the 5DMKIII is all I really need, but I'm hoping they do release a big megapixel camera, preferably in a 1D body. I'd buy it.

21

Speedlites, Printers, Accessories / ST-E3-RT mini review

« on: August 08, 2012, 06:55:41 PM »

After waiting MONTHS my ST-E3-RT has come in from B&H, meanwhile I've been using 3 600RT's on a 5DMKII.

• Now with the complete package I'm completely flabbergasted and happy with how well these work.
• The ST-E3-RT is much smaller than I expected, it doesn't add much of any weight to the camera and I'm glad to not have a monster heavy flash up there!
• I like that the display is horizontal - easy to access and tweak while shooting
• It was an issue to know which of my flashes was the master, with the ST-E3 it's obvious
• I don't miss the focus assist light at all. Your milage may vary, but for me that was never very useful anyhow (doesn't help in full darkness, and takes too long in partial)
• I still have my 580 which is the flash I throw up there when I just want a shoe mounted flash (not often hopefully, just a little fill when outside)
• Of course it works flawlessly

Knee jerk reaction you see to the Canon RF system is along the lines of too expensive. My take is sure you can get cheaper setups, but find one that is this minimalistic, feature filled, and reliable. I'm not paying an assistant so putting out a little more for a tiny kit I can put in a small bag pays for itself, and it always works.

22

Speedlites, Printers, Accessories / Cave shooting & curse of the green box

« on: August 07, 2012, 04:18:08 PM »

So I was doing some shooting while in a lava cave, not knowing any better I stuck two 600RTs in my pocket and away I went (5DMKII 24-105 lens). I was surprised at how difficult it was to take pictures (I shouldn't have been).

First problem, the camera can't focus (duh). I finally stuck it in MF and tried to focus to what it should be - tons of blurred shots.

Second problem; not enough light (duh). I had one flash on top and one in my hand, and it still wasn't enough to light up some of the big spaces most of the time. A few shots worked out more or less, must have been an accident.

Third problem, in desperation I went to the green box to try and get something, guess what I found? The 600RT wireless turned off. Of course its dark so you can't easily see everything going on with your camera (and I was walking along at the same time), but that green mode is so blindly stupid that it even turns off wireless and the flash goes into no RF master mode (might as well have had a 580 up there). WTF ... half the reason I want a 1 series body is so I don't have to see that awful green box anymore.

Anyhow, you want a challenge? Go shoot in a cave. I'd recommend trying ...

• Bring some high powered flashes, two 600's at the minimum
• Put the wide angle barn door on the flashes (I did this eventually and it helped). I'd be curious to try a small softbox too but that might kill too much light
• Use a MF prime lens light a Zeiss or Voightlander for precise manual control
• Manual mode, f/9 1/100s and let the flashes to the heavy lifting
• Wide angle seemed to work better, shorter focal lengths just made it look like a bad picture of a rock face

23

Speedlites, Printers, Accessories / Bag suggestion for 5DMKII and Shorty McForty?

« on: July 24, 2012, 08:37:09 PM »

Now with the shorty as my walk around lens when I don't want weight my bags are too big. Suggestions? I want a shoulder type back (no backpack), just enough room for the camera, spare battery and card. I like Lowepro generally.

24

Speedlites, Printers, Accessories / ST-E3-RT stock ... this is crazy!

« on: July 03, 2012, 09:06:12 AM »

I've had one on backorder since they were announced at both B&H and Amazon and neither have come in. Yet smaller retailers are frequently getting stock, and charging an extra $70-$100 for the privilege of buying one. What is going on, will these ever 'be released' to the big retailers?

25

PowerShot / G1X notes

« on: June 26, 2012, 10:37:20 AM »

So I got a G1X to replace my S100 with a broken screen (which still works however). I'm going to return it however as I'm not impressed.

It's a neat camera in a lot of ways, a real chunky monkey. Really solid and feels good in the hands. I like best that it has a hot shoe and an articulating screen. However for the price it doesn't seem to give pictures much better than my S100. I'm not a pixel peeper, and the larger sensor should surely be doing better, but in real world shooting I'm seeing similar quality in LightRoom. Which either speaks to the quality of the S100, or to the G1X, or to me, don't know. Also I don't like having a lens cap, and to protect the lens I have to get a too expensive adaptor which will pop the lens out even more.

However the camera isn't that much fun. It's almost the same size as the Fuji X100 which I have, and the Fuji takes way better pictures and is a lot more fun to use. The G1X is more versatile (zoom), but it's safe, comfortable, and boring. All for $800. My biggest complaint however is the size, it won't fit in the SnapR bag like the G12 does, it takes the Snap35 bag like the FujiX100. So it's not really a compact camera anymore but a midsize. And if I'm taking a midsize camera, I expect better pictures for it.

26

PowerShot / S100 too small for my hands; upgrading to G1X (new price drop)

« on: June 24, 2012, 10:23:11 AM »

So it seems the going price (Amazon sellers at least) is $739 for the G1X. Meanwhile, as much as I absolutely love the S100 it finally slipped out of my hand and cracked the LCD. It still works, and I have some tape on the glass to keep it together, but I've had too many near misses with that camera. I love the size and that I can clip it on my belt, however I find it too easy to drop obviously.

So with the first price drop on the G1X I ordered one. I'm traveling next week and can't take anything bigger.

27

Lenses / Shorty Forty, 24mm & 28mm precursors to mirrorless announcement?

« on: June 23, 2012, 05:09:29 PM »

I was thinking about the shorty forty and the earlier announced 24mm and 28mm - this is an odd trio. Among all the super high end lenses they're announcing they come out with these. All three are small, high quality lenses, but are all rather oddballs. Now I ordered a 40mm which is on its way, and am seriously considering a 24mm, just because I really like small, solid primes. However I don't know of Canon ever releasing a pancake before, and the other two outliers, why? DSLR owners are scratching their heads over these lenses. Since they were announced soon before the mirror less, could these be meant as mirror less offerings, with an EF mount mirror less?

Look at it this way, imagine a mirror less with a few zooms, and put in the 24, 28 and 40 mm along side it. Seems to make more sense now. If Canon went this route, it could be their way of getting the P&S crowd to step up into the DSLR and EF lens family. First they get a mirror less with a shorty forty and a zoom, and later they can upgrade to a DSLR body and use their existing lenses.

Tell me I'm wrong or this has been discussed before ...

28

Lenses / Voightlander 20mm Pancake notes

« on: June 22, 2012, 10:39:57 AM »

I got a little time with the Voightlander 20mm pancake and some people here wanted to know about the lens, here are my notes.

First off, the lens you can buy now is discontinued, including the one on the B&H website. I mentioned this to them but they didn't have much of a response to that. Anyhow, an updated one is coming out in August which has a metal knurling focus ring instead of a rubber covered ring. I think this is a great idea, I like all metal, especially in a lens like this.

The lens is solid and small. Not as solid as I was expecting, but I'm not sure how it could be made more 'reassuring'. Getting rid of the rubber as I mentioned, and there is some plastic in there.

Anyhow, on the IQ. I didn't do extensive testing just some shooting around the house. What I found is that the lens won't give you the best results without coaxing. Canon lenses seem to just deliver to the best that is possible given the situation. This camera tends to give you worse results, and you have to push it to give better.

It does vignette and is soft wide open in the corners with a FF. This is part of what I mean by the lens making you work - it wants to take certain types of pictures and not others. I took a night shot with a focused flash and it looked great. I also took a general wide angle daytime outside snapshot and it didn't look so good. The lens likes more considered 'art shots' and performs better in those.

For some reason I found myself tilting the camera and doing more creative framing than with the big lenses. I never do that with my other lenses. I think the big zooms encourage you to think 'do it professionally', and this little lens encourages you to 'think creatively' more.

The lack of autofocus was a no brainer. You get a focus light in the viewfinder when it finds focus, or you can get a Eg-s manual focus screen. My first camera was an AE-1, maybe somebody who hasn't used a manual focus lens would feel differently but I actually preferred it. Nothing worse than having a 'hunting focus' lens when you're trying to take a shot.

Finally, the lens has a characteristic that I noticed in Flickr shots and in my own. Hard to describe ... kind of like if you were taking pictures with film, and the film had some slight harsh, jagged contrasty look. Flat colors, not three dimensional. By contrast the 70-200 2.8 II has dreamy 'true to life' colors and depth, this one creates a stark look. I like the look, my wife loved it. More old school than new school, shots look like they might be from the 70's or something, and I think it's a combination of the old school optics and digital resolution. This is a characteristic that makes the camera want to take 'art' shots, and not snapshots.

Neat lens, my ideal focal length, I'll probably buy the new version when it comes out in August. There is a Flickr group dedicated to the lens if you're interested. Here is a picture from that group that captures the lens for me

DSC_3136 by Anton Damolescu, on Flickr

29

Software & Accessories / Printing recommendation?

« on: June 17, 2012, 11:12:44 PM »

What online printers do you recommend? I'm picky about colors, who calibrates their system?


If you have any recommendations for purchasing a printer I'd like to hear that too, as I wouldn't mind being able to do my own prints too (even if it is more expensive)

30

Canon General / Engadget hands on with the T4i and Shorty Forty

« on: June 08, 2012, 12:16:06 PM »

Oh and that other new lens

http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/08/canon-rebel-t4i-hands-on/

The Shorty Forty looks good on the camera - not 'too small', if there is such a thing.