Messages

31

Lenses / Re: 50mm upgrade or 85mm coverage?

« on: December 31, 2012, 08:01:04 PM »

Someone mentioned that the Canon 85mm 1.8 has more unreliable autofocus. I am just posting to say that I have not found that to be the case. The Canon 85mm 1.8 has the best autofocus on any possible lens that I have tried, better for sure than the 70-200 II, for instance. It's never unreliable unless user error causes it to be so. (I.e., you mis-place your focusing points, such as accidentally beginning to press the button before the AF points are actually on your desired subject.)

The Sigma 85mm f/1.4 has slightly unreliable autofocus, I have found, but good enough that I can still rely on it at a basketball game (not 100% reliable). But Sigma's image quality at f/2.0 is far better than the Canon just because of the CA problem (chromatic aberration) that the Canon has.

With the Canon, you will get purple reflections from the out of focus stadium lights reflecting off of glasses, for example (ruining an otherwise good dunk photo, for example) if you shoot below f/2.8. So basically you are wasting more than one stop of the len's potential in order to avoid CA.

I don't have to worry at all about CA with the Sigma lens at f/2.0.

CA is the problem with the Canon, but its auto focus is as close to perfect as possible on all of my copies and every else's that I know. So I had to chime in and say something.

Yes, I have had disappointing focus experiences myself, but it has always been user error of my own like getting too eager and starting to lock focus before a subject is close enough to even register on the AF sensor. If I make a mistake like that, the lens will do a perfect job of tracking focus on the background. The way to fix that mistake is to take my finger completely off the shutter and re-acquire focus on the proper subject. So if you are experiencing any focusing problems with the 85mm 1.8, just wait a little bit. AF takes technique from the photographer as well as capability and accuracy from the lens. I am still learning and improving every day.

32

PowerShot / Re: Panasonic Lumix 7 vs. Canon S110

« on: December 29, 2012, 12:33:09 AM »

I don't have the current S110, but the previous one.

I bought the LX7 that you are considering. It is slightly bigger than the Canon, but in my opinion it has much better features. Select the regular focusing mode and the focusing is EXTREMELY fast. Select the macro mode, and of course, it is slower, but very snappy for a macro mode.

The f/1.4 lens is great in that it does its work without being noticed. But as soon as I try to go back to my Canon, that's when I realize that the f/1.4 has been keeping my image quality superb by using lower ISO speeds.

The LX7 outclasses the S110 by far. The S110 has basically stagnated with the same features all the way back to the S90.

The lens of the LX7 is much more substantial, and you will definitely want to use the cap-keeper to attach the lens cap to the strap eyelet since the lens cover is not an auto-retracting style, but an actual SLR-style lens cap.


Another thing is that the camera strap isn't a hand strap like the S110. It's an actual neck strap.

It's kind of awkward putting the camera into a belt pouch with an entire neck strap attached to it.

I might just swap out my old Canon hand strap and use it with the LX7.

There are some deals for the LX7 at $350 or lower. If you can find one of those, I would have no hesitations in recommending the LX7 as a much better buy.

33

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: Shooting With the EOS 6D in Costa Rica

« on: December 23, 2012, 07:28:21 PM »

Bravo! Your comments are spot on with my own 6D experience, even to the point of videography not being a strength of mine. The heft of the 6D in particular is outstanding. The 6D feels strong, dense, and durable. The D600 I have is not quite terrible, but its construction is much more wimpy compared to the 6D.

34

Lenses / Re: Sigma 50 1.4 or canon 85 1.8

« on: December 21, 2012, 08:35:59 PM »

The Canon 85mm 1.8 delivers better out of focus backgrounds and nicer bokeh, with much more blur.

At fixed, non-macro distances, depth of field is approximately inversely proportional to the square of the focal length, while it is directly proportional only to the first power of the f-number.

So the 85mm lens gives approximately 2.89 times more blur at equivalent f-numbers.

35

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: Color Management for Online Photos

« on: December 21, 2012, 08:27:29 PM »

unless you can get everyone to calibrate their monitors etc.. colour balance will never be 100%

This is exactly right. There is nothing you can do, even with all the embedded profiles in the world, to make your pictures look the way you want them to look on other people's monitors. That is the way the internet is. Just like web pages do not define "page numbers," color on the internet is a relative thing.

There is a way that you can see how it will turn out when posted into contests, etc., at least on your own computer screen. First, make sure you export your jpegs using sRGB color. Then use something like the jpeg/png stripper: http://www.steelbytes.com/?mid=30 to remove all non-image data from your exported jpegs. Use File > Open to open the jpeg files in your browser. The result, except for compression, will be same as the images will look when viewed online in a photo contest, etc.

If your pictures are looking that bad when entered into a photo contest, it would help to know what you mean by bad. Are they looking dark? Sometimes images created on Macs with a gamma of 1.8 look dark when viewed on Windows with a gamma of 2.2.

36

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: My brand new 5D Mark III - what am I doing wrong, please help!

« on: December 20, 2012, 04:08:49 PM »

There's some bad advice being given here.

If you use manual exposure, make sure auto ISO is turned off. When auto ISO is turned on, your camera changes the ISO to obtain what it thinks is proper exposure, so all your work with shutter speed and aperture is undone.

I disagree. There are times when manual + auto iso is the way to go. If you want to set a fast shutter AND control depth of field AND have the camera meter... auto iso is the way to go.

Real world example: I was shooting a pro motocross race. I set a specific shutter speed that balances motion blur with stopping action. I set aperture to 5.6 (on 70-200 f/2.8 IS II) because it's outdoors with hills and crowds in the background and I don't want them blurred to nothing. Also the extra depth of field helps fudge focusing accuracy on fast moving riders. In some areas they move from open track to the shade under trees causing the lighting on them to change, so I used Auto ISO to allow the camera to meter and expose them correctly. It worked like a champ.

It depends on the background. If you're shooting against bright walls or dark stadiums interspersed with flashy advertising, then auto ISO is going to mess up the whole point of using manual exposure to get the right exposure.

If you are trying to have precisely the right shutter speed to track a vehicle while also conveying its motion, and exactly the right aperture for being able to have the crowd blurred just the right amount, then yes, auto ISO is good.

I should have been more clear that I didn't mean to always turn off auto ISO whenever manual exposure is being used.

37

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: My brand new 5D Mark III - what am I doing wrong, please help!

« on: December 20, 2012, 03:28:55 PM »

There's some bad advice being given here.

If you use manual exposure [begin edit] in situations like this[end edit], make sure auto ISO is turned off. When you are shooting from slightly above the court, as you are, the floor (and advertising signs) will reflect light into your camera's light meter. When your lens is pointed towards the floor, your light meter will read at least two stops brighter than the subjects actually are. If there is some dark in the background to make up for the floor, the meter reading won't be quite as bad. When auto ISO is turned on, your camera changes the ISO to obtain what it thinks is proper exposure, so all your work with shutter speed and aperture is undone.

Exposure compensation doesn't help a lot either, because as you are tracking your subject, the background changes with every shot, but your exposure actually should change only slightly, depending on whether they are in mid-court or near the basket facing towards the darker perimeter of the stadium. But the exposure definitely shouldn't change based on the background, but on the subject.

My manual exposure settings for an average Division I gym using the 135mm f/2 are about like this:

Fixed ISO 2,000
f/2.2
1/1000th
Picture Style Contrast set to very low (next to the leftmost setting)
If possible, use a manual white balance reading taken from a gray card positioned vertically slightly within the 3 point line and facing the basket. You need to catch some reflection from the floor as well as direct illumination from the lights. Ideally, the card should represent the light reflected from a player's face and eyes as they are moving the ball towards the basket or shooting. If the lights are flickering, then you need to use a time value under 1/15th of a second to get a perfect white balance reading that avoids the red/brown or other color shifts. But when I am actually shooting the game, I do not force myself to use a slow shutter speed. Go ahead and shoot fast enough to stop action, which at the very minimum is 1/500th of a second. I virtually always keep it at 1/800th or higher. Even if 2/3rds of your photos have a terrible color cast, the the other 1/3rd of them will be fine, and it is better for 1/3rd of them to be sharp and properly colored than for none of them to be sharp because of motion blur.

For darker gyms, light quickly goes down by a factor of five. That's when I would go down to 1/500th and ISO 5,000 if there is also color casting happening, or just go up to ISO 10,000 if there's not.

A few gyms are actually one stop brighter than the case mentioned above, and so I would use that as an opportunity to bump aperture, ISO, and shutter speed each by a notch to f/2.5, 1600, and 1/1250th.

** One other thing, when I'm taking pictures of coaches, players standing there, and whatever isn't action, I have a separate body with either a 300mm or 70-200 lens on it, and in that case, I definitely will use a slower shutter speed, like 1/200th, if there is any chance of color casting, to make sure that my photos don't have that color problem. But for action, the weird colors on some shots are just something to live with, because slowing down the shutter speed would only blur their faces too much. **

38

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: UPGRADING 7D to FF Please help!!!

« on: December 19, 2012, 10:35:47 PM »

I agree with those above who find the 7D more useful than the 5DII.

The 7D's only significant shortcoming is its crop sensor with 2009 technology inside.

Not unless you get a 5D3 or 1DX will you find a camera more capable of actually letting you take pictures than the 7D. So you will be very disappointed with anything less.

I have yet to try my 6D for full action sports, for instance basketball with a 70-200 II attached. Theoretically, maybe the middle point on the 6D might be able to do it. A lot of times I use four-point expansion on my 1Dx now, so maybe the extra big, extra sensitive point on the 6D will work "like" that, although I wouldn't say "similarly." I just have to wait until I get to something other than a big game, and I've only had big games in the past two weeks that I've had my 6D.

Back in 2010 I finally just sold my 5DII after using a 7D versus a 5DII for a couple of weddings and a few events, and even in those scenarios, I felt that the 5DII made it so much harder for me to take the photos, compared to the 7D, that it was worthless despite the extra image quality offered. So I would give that as my advice, that of all possible options, not to "upgrade" from the 7D to the 5DII. Camera-wise, the 7D is leagues ahead of the 5DII. I know there's a lot of people loving the 5DII, but if they had the experience with 7Ds that I have had, they would understand what I'm saying.

Maybe the 6D is a viable option, especially if you don't do sports. From my experience so far, the 6D is excellent for everything other than sports, and it's much more professional feeling and acting than the D600. Anything above ISO 1600 is also much better quality than the D600.

*** Update ***
Many things that I get paid for could be done in a pinch with a 5D3 and your existing 70-200 II and the new Sigma 35mm 1.4. Besides sports, the 6D would be very good as well. If you are willing to part with your EF-S lenses, maybe you could get the 6D and the 35mm 1.4. You could be an outstanding professional in many areas with a 6D, 35mm 1.4 Sigma, and 70-200 II Canon combo.

For a cheap assignment today, that was all I used, in fact--my 6D with the 35mm and my 5D3 with the 70-200mm II. There were moments I wished my 70-200mm would have been a 135mm f/2, but I survived and got photos everyone will be happy with. There was never a moment I would have found any use the 10-22 or 15-85, nor is there in almost all situations.

39

EOS Bodies / Re: Are you really serious about 6D?

« on: December 16, 2012, 09:12:38 PM »

Yes I am serious about 6D, and I love it!
I'm not a professional even though I have had friends ask me to shoot their weddings, homecoming, family portraits etc. All this I have done with the 20D and an equally old Tamron lens! Remember that camera? So, it was time to upgrade my body. Question was, do I buy a discounted 5DIII, or for about the same price, or get the 6D PLUS the 24-105L with IS? I went with the upgrade to the body AND lens. Sure I wish it did a bunch of other things, (I actually love the wi fi and GPS feature), but bottom line, I'm getting better pictures out of this thing than I did with my 20D. It has also breathed new life into my 70-200 f4 which I use to shoot my daughter's basketball games. Being able to increase the ISO has allowed me to increase the shutter speed and the auto focus is fast enough to keep up with the 7th grade girls basketball team

You said it. The 6D is awesome. Really, really awesome. It's what a dream version of the 5DII would be. In every case that I didn't need the advanced tracking features of the 5D3 autofocus, the 6D is as good or better. I've experimented a bit to see whether it can sometimes track action with just the center point, for example, but I've not had many opportunities where I could take the risk of possibly missing shots for customers. I've also been using the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 art lens for a while, and it goes with the 6D just like love and marriage, or a horse and carriage. I just came back from a Christmas program, and I really had no need for anything but these two cameras: 1DX with Sigma 85mm f/1.4 and 6D with Sigma 35mm f/1.4. It feels so good not to need 100 pounds of equipment anymore.

40

Lenses / Re: 2013 - The Year for 400mm Lenses? [CR1]

« on: December 16, 2012, 06:34:48 PM »

400mm f/4 is exactly what I need if it's super, super sharp. I will refuse to pay $7,000 for it, however. $3,000 is the most I would pay if it also has IS and is absolutely perfect in every way. Otherwise, it's worth paying four times more to get the 400mm f/2.8.

Next would be a 135mm f/1.8 that is faster focusing than the current 135mm f/2. The most I would pay is $2,000 if it is extremely good, like at least 200 lp/mm sharper than the current camera.

41

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: 1D X AF in Low Light action

« on: December 13, 2012, 05:58:35 PM »

Yes, as soon as I had the 1D X, I was already wishing for more. Sometimes I think the AF system is fine-tuned for decent lighting, and I have felt that it can miss some photos in worse lighting by being too good at trying to track the object, whereas a simpler camera might actually have gotten the shot in focus, not because it was smarter, but because it was dumber. The super advanced tracking algorithms don't seem to work as well in lower light. Yes, I have tried reducing the frame rate from 12 fps down to 8-10. It doesn't seem to make much of a difference. Sometimes I subjectively think it even hurts to change the frame rate below 12 fps (no scientific way I know of to measure it, though). It may be the math formulas that calculate focus are pre-optimized for the exact mirror bounce, delays, resonance and counter-resonance, and other physical issues that happen while shooting at 12 fps. I'm probably way off, though. I was just expecting much better results at a lot lower frame speed (since the AF sensor would be exposed to the image for a much greater percent of the time), and my results weren't really any better.

Another problem I have with my 1D X is that initial focus point acquisition in AI Servo seems to be imprecise. In 61 point mode, I was hoping to be able to acquire focus even on a subject included in only the center point (like the manual says that one can do) and then have that subject tracked using all 61 points.

Instead, the initial focus shifts to nearer objects if the desired subject is covered by only the center focus point. If the desired subject was already locked on when it was more isolated, then it's fine.

So basically it's almost impossible to shoot someone whose head is above a group of players, for instance, because it will lock on the other players all the time, unless I was tracking that player to start with.

If I use single point mode or four-point expansion, then I don't have problems, except I lose the benefit of the 61 point AF tracking system.

I hope that I am being stupid and overlooking something obvious, but I have tried every single possible AF combination, especially the obvious ones like disabling automatic AF point switching, and even the non-obvious ones like the advanced color tracking system, etc.

My 7D cameras seem to have absolutely no problem with acquiring initial focus on whatever is in the center point, even when they are in 19-point AF mode and lots of other objects are in the surrounding AF points.

42

Lenses / Re: Did you use a UV filter on 70-200 f2.8L IS (I or II) during its last use? (Poll)

« on: December 10, 2012, 11:02:33 PM »

Neither that lens, or any other, for that matter unless ambient conditions make it a good idea, like a sand or dust storm.

+1

43

EOS Bodies / Re: Canon 6D Dominates Low Light Focusing Test vs 5Dii, 5Diii & Nikon D600

« on: December 06, 2012, 12:46:16 PM »

Exposure value (EV) is not an amount of light and it also has nothing to do with ISO. It is simply a definition for relating camera settings which are equivalent to each other in terms of how much light they would let in, if there was the same amount of light available.

Setting your camera to f/1.0 and 1 second exposure is still called an EV of 0 even in complete darkness or in bright sunlight. Setting your camera to f/1.4 and 2 seconds exposure is still EV 0.

By telling someone that you are obtaining proper exposure by an EV of 0 and a certain ISO value, then and only then does the actual darkness or brightness of the scene come into play. In that case, changing the ISO will change the EV needed to obtain proper exposure for the same scene. And vice versa, changing the brightness of the scene will also change the EV needed to obtain proper exposure for the same ISO.

So you might ask why then does Canon present on their 6D product page a meaningless specification about sensitivity at -3 EV? EV doesn't mean luminance, but they are acting like it does.

The answer is that it is well-established practice among photographers to express luminance in terms of their camera settings using the EV terminology, by assuming that ISO 100 is used and that a nominally "correct" exposure is being obtained by the camera settings indicated by the specified EV. Since photographers probably communicate best when talking in terms of their camera settings, EV makes for an easy way to understand the level of available brightness for a photographer when this common practice is used.

Anytime exposure value is used to speak of the amount of available light, the assumption is that a CORRECT exposure will be obtained from that EV of aperture/shutter speed AND a sensor sensitivity of ISO 100.

44

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: Too much dynamic range?

« on: November 23, 2012, 11:51:30 PM »

We are saying the same, I guess I didn't make myself sufficiently clear.

What I mean is that if you add 1 bit to your ADC and instead of having

00 = 0-100 photons in a pixel
01 = 100-200 photons in a pixel
10 = 200-300 photons in a pixel
11 = 300-infinity photons in a pixel

You now have:

000 = 0-42 photons in a pixel
001 = 42-84 photons in a pixel
010 = 84-126 photons in a pixel
011 = 126-168 photons in a pixel
100 = 168-210 photons in a pixel
101 = 210-252 photons in a pixel
110 = 252-294 photons in a pixel
111 = 294-infinity photons in a pixel

...and you have the same read-out noise, you still have the same DR, because neither your full-well capacity nor your read-out noise have changed.

<----- is writing the VHDL code for the FPGA of a motion picture camera

Right on! This is exactly what I'm trying to say, and you explained it much more clearly. DR is not the same as the number of gradations and also not the same as the bit depth (which actually just counts the number of "possible" gradations, whether or not the camera actually is capable of resolving all those gradations).

If the number of gradations accurately recorded within a 10 stop dynamic range is the same as the number of gradations accurately recorded within a 14 stop dynamic range, then the 10-stop camera has more precision and better image quality _within that 10-stop interval of light intensity_ versus the 14-stop camera. But outside that 10-stop range, the 10-stop camera has zero image quality, and so the 14-stop camera wins hands-down.

DR is not something to get angry about, just a trade-off between obtaining either greater differentiation between subtle shades of colors (like slide film with lower DR) or greater exposure latitude (like negative film with higher DR).

45

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: Too much dynamic range?

« on: November 21, 2012, 09:10:05 PM »

One extremely theoretical way to view dynamic range is the ratio of the sensor's noise level (in photons / quantized energy units) to the sensor's white point (in the same units).

This extremely theoretical way of viewing noise and dynamic range to be equivalent is useless in the real world.

Viewing dynamic range as a number of stops that can be represented in an image, as I did, is much more practical and less theoretical.

The engineering truth is that noise exists also at each point between the black level and the white level of the sensor.

Consider a camera whose sensor is exposed the 10 brightness levels of Ansel Adam's zone system, in proportion to the camera's actual level of dynamic range (arbitrarily scaled to begin with 25 "units" for level 0):

Level 0 = black level = less than or equal to 25 units of true light, which is lost within 25 units of random noise
Level 1 = 50 units of true light energy +/- a different amount of random noise, which is varies considerably from sensor to sensor and at different levels--it is not necessarily 25.
Level 2 = 100 units of true light energy +/- an even different amount of random noise, etc.
...
Level 10 = 25,600 units of true light energy +- zero noise because at this point the sensor site is fully saturated and is desensitized to any further amplification of signal as well as any noise

Clearly there is fluctuation going on in the interval between level zero and level 10. The number of gradations in tone that can actually be distinguished by the camera depends on the integral/summation of the sizes of the variable noise through all brightness levels, to determine an average noise level, and then dividing the white point energy level by that average noise level that separates distinguishable levels of gradation in tone.

To say that dynamic range and the number of gradations in tone are equivalent, or to say that either one of them can be determined simply from the ratio between the black noise level and the white level, is as stupid as defining people's adult heights merely by their weight at birth.