Messages

31

Lenses / Re: New Tilt-Shifts in 2013? [CR1]

« on: July 30, 2012, 11:10:07 AM »

The 90 TSE is almost perfect as it is, with the possible exceptions of the suggestions as listed above. But, they could really hit the mark by adding to the TSE line for product shooters, by making either a 135mm, 150mm, or 180mm TSE as well.

FYI, it's possible to use extenders with the TS-E 90/2.8 lens. Both the 1.4x and 2.0x work well, giving 126mm/4.0 and 180mm/5.6 equivalents.

32

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: Used my 5D Mark III and II today during a studio shoot

« on: July 08, 2012, 05:08:05 PM »

Metering and White balance shouldn't matter in a studio Environment.

There is more to colour rendition than white balance, so in principle the 5D3 could be different from the 5D2 even in a controlled environment (not saying it is, I don't know).

My old 5d Mark II's still surprise me with how absolutely beautiful they shoot in a controlled environment.

Yes, the advantages of the 5D3 to the 5D2 are most pronounced outside a studio environment!

33

Lenses / Re: A New EF 50 f/1.8 IS? [CR1]

« on: July 08, 2012, 05:00:24 PM »

sigh...i think your missing the point ...

Yes, sorry, I now realise I missed your point. You mean that peripheral equipment becomes more expensive for the D800, than the 5D3, to the point of eradicating the $500 price difference advantage. I think you would have to be a very heavy shooter for that to be true, and for most people the cheapest current computer with a couple of external 2 TB drives would be plenty for both configurations.

Cheap hard drives are currently around 5 cents/GB. A D800 requires 63% more space than 5D3. Translating the $500 price difference into pure hard drive space, you would have to shoot (and store) a total of 500000 raw images before the difference in harddrive space requirements between the 5D3 and D800 became worth $500. If you include backup space, that becomes 250000 images. That's a lot of raw images. If you shoot that much, $500 is likely a negligible expense. Using a $150 CF card for the D800 instead of a $100 for the 5D3 is not going to change this conclusion.

Your other point seem to be that it is inconsistent to first complain about expensive bodies and then praise expensive lenses. You may be right, but are you sure those are the same posters?

34

Lenses / Re: A New EF 50 f/1.8 IS? [CR1]

« on: July 08, 2012, 04:09:08 PM »

For water and blur, I tend to go with ND filters and f22 - depending on time of day I will go with 1-20 second exposures.... IS ain't gonna help there.

Of course there are plenty of situations where IS is not going to help, that's obviously true. If those are the only situations you shoot in, then IS is obviously useless for you. About flowing water, it depends on the angular velocity of the water with respect to the camera; e.g. close to a waterfall you can get a lot of motion blur in a small fraction of a second, while you would probably prefer 10s of seconds for braking waves lit by the moon at some distance.

35

Lenses / Re: A New EF 50 f/1.8 IS? [CR1]

« on: July 08, 2012, 03:58:45 PM »

If thats your attitude then the $500 price difference shouldn't matter either then.

My attitude is that computer power (however you want to measure it) is growing quicker than sensor megapixels, and therefore any complaints you have with sensors producing too big files should go a way at a similar rate. Yes, of course, you can always save money by sticking to yesterday's tech, and that may be the best thing to do in many cases.

Compare the top-of-the-line harddrive of today (4 TB) with the top-of-the-line at the time when the 5D2 was announced (750GB). If you had no problems in fitting your 5D2 images onto the harddrive then, you should have even less problems in fitting the D800 images onto your hardrive today. Same goes for processing speed etc. Of course, you can do even better by using an even fewer-Mpix sensor on a current computer, but that's a rather trivial and non-interesting argument.

You wouldn't believe how may photos I can get on a 16Gb card with my D30

Exactly

About the CF card, I was thinking about a card I recently purchased, a 400x Transcend 64GB (now $126 at BH). The reason I got a 5D3 instead of a D800 had nothing to do with the number of Mpix.

36

Lenses / Re: A New EF 50 f/1.8 IS? [CR1]

« on: July 08, 2012, 02:47:49 PM »

Speculation:
It might be cheaper to put IS into a medium-quality, small aperture kit-lense, than a 70-200 f/2.8 L-lense. Stricter requirements, heavier glass to move.

That's true for sure. In particular, large apertures seem especially difficult. That's the reason there are no fast primes with IS, the fastest being the immensely expensive EF 200/2.0L (AFAIK).

37

Lenses / Re: A New EF 50 f/1.8 IS? [CR1]

« on: July 08, 2012, 02:43:44 PM »

If your referring to the d800, then have fun spending all that you saved buying that body on more CF cards, cause unless you shoot in crop mode the files are huge.   

In addition to the Murphy's law you are referring to, you should learn about Moore's law. CPUs, GPUs, hard drives, RAM and about anything computer related including CF cards, tend to double their performance every 18 months. This stands in stark contrast to the Mpix of camera sensors, which increase much more slowly. You can get fast 64 GB CF cards for $150 today. That's more than a 1000 raw files for the d800. File sizes today is a non issue.

38

Lenses / Re: A New EF 50 f/1.8 IS? [CR1]

« on: July 08, 2012, 02:33:22 PM »

Just that IS will have no benefit for wa lens when the subject is moving and you are not panning - IS does not stop motion blur.

There are plenty of pros and cons for IS, and usually IS is by far more useful for longer focal lengths. But to say that IS has no benefit for wide angles is too strong of a statement. Apart from slowly moving scenes (with no accessible tripod), sometimes subject motion blur is actually desired. Think, e.g., flowing water or other situations when motion is to be emphasizied by motion blur. Quite effective but requires a very steady hand, tripod, or IS. Whether this is important enough for you to deal with the cons of IS is another and more subjective matter.

39

Software & Accessories / Re: Are lens skins worth it?

« on: July 02, 2012, 09:46:51 AM »

They are easy to use and take off (somewhat elastic material that provides a good fit). Could help prevent minor dents, I haven't tried that. If you choose an inconspicuous colour it also helps against attention from fellow humans, not only birds, in particular if you have a big white. Expensive but good in my experience (I use it on a 400/2.8 ).

I think they look cool, but might be labeling myself as a noob if i were to go out shooting with them

Best way to become cool is to care less what other people think 

40

EOS Bodies / Re: Is SLR dead?

« on: June 29, 2012, 05:23:56 PM »

I think it's pretty clear that optical viewfinders at some point will be replaced by electronic ones, meaning yes, SLRs are doomed in the long run. That doesn't mean they will become entirely extinct (like there are still LPs around today).

Regarding camera size... there are certain limits every future camera will need to adhere to, that can never change, no matter how clever future engineers are. I'm of course referring to the laws of physics. It may sound scary, but is often really simple, like this one: A sensor can never detect more light than is fed to it.

One implication is that we cannot expect sensors to increase their sensitivity indefinitely. Sensors already have a quantum efficiency (QE) of about 50%, meaning about half of the photons of the right wavelength hitting the sensor will get registred. For Bayer-type sensors we can thus expect at most a factor 2 improvement in sensitivity, even for an ideal sensor. With photo-sites that can detect all colours (as opposed to one colour; think foveon-like sensors), we can gain another factor 3 in sensitivity.

Low-light photography dominated by thermal/readout noise can naturally benefit from eliminating those additional noise sources, but the photon noise will always be there no matter what.

Another implication is that a larger lens will always have a low-light advantage, no matter the size of the sensor. Thus you have the option to choose a big lens that will be good in low light (and give shallow DOF), or a small lens that will fit easily into your pocket, but deliver deep DOF and not work as well in low light conditions. This will always be true. Forget about small lenses delivering shallow DOF - the reason the DOF becomes shallow is that the lens is big! Simple.

For perfect optics, the size of the sensor does not matter. In reality, it is much easier (and cheaper) to design satisfactory optics for a large sensor than a small. That's why the EF-S 17-55/2.8 is slightly more expensive than the EF 24-105/4.0L, eventhough the latter sports better build quality, has a larger effective aperture (26 mm at f=105mm compared to 20mm at f=55mm for the EF-S), and has the red ring.

Since we can expect sensors to continue become cheaper I would predict that sensors in general will become larger, and that the optics will become cheaper. I'd be surprised if we hadn't cheap FF P&S with plastic lenses within 10 years, producing better quality images than current P&S to better ergonomics and much better prices.

41

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: Ergonomics... Why you pay more for a 1D...

« on: June 11, 2012, 06:04:58 PM »

Different hand sizes are a major point with camera bodies. My hands are very much on the large end of the scale (nearly 10-1/2 inch span) so my 7D feels tiny, even the 1 series is not very large for me - so it will clearly be that what fits me wont fit others. Same applies to weight of camera + lens.

Aha, that explains why you claim the 400/2.8 to be handholdable to you

42

Landscape / Re: Venus transit

« on: June 06, 2012, 08:25:53 AM »

If venus is in the top part of the moon Sun, is that because all of you guys are northern-hemispheres?

Yeah, you can see on the sun-spot pattern how the Sun is oriented. It's great to see so many contributions from various part of the world! Some show the transit at sunrise, some at sunset, some upside down... When you see Venus like that, a tiny dot on the Sun, it is amazing to think that the planet is of about the same size as Earth. This could have been martians watching the Earth transiting the Sun.

43

Landscape / Re: Venus transit

« on: June 06, 2012, 03:54:06 AM »

We too had clouds After a while the clouds fortunately parted momentarily, presenting a spotted Sun along with Venus 

400mm+TC1.4x+7D, Baader solar film, ISO100, f/5.6 & 1/400s.

44

Landscape / Re: Venus transit

« on: June 05, 2012, 11:06:16 AM »

Anyone know if that's dark enough? Or should I stop past the local camera shop on the way to work and see if they rent out ND10,000s?

If you live somewhere where the Sun will rise or set with Venus transiting, then you really don't need to go that dark (just as you often can shoot the sun during last part of sunset without filters). If you have the chance to catch the Sun before the transit event, i.e. today, you can try out your equipment beforehand and practice on a couple of sunspots that are on now, and that you should be able to catch. Venus will be much easier to get than those sunspots, though.

45

Landscape / Venus transit

« on: June 04, 2012, 11:12:18 PM »

Is anyone planning to shoot the Venus transit tomorrow? From where I live the Sun will rise with Venus transiting, so I'm considering cool sunrise options (weather permitting). A distant familiar building in the foreground, or just the Sun reflecting in open water are some ideas I have. For planning location, I've found Google Earth useful.

In case you wonder if it's worth it: consider that few alive today will have a chance to see another Venus transit. Next one is in December... 2117.