Topics

1

EOS Bodies / 60D on the way out?

« on: May 02, 2013, 06:50:46 PM »

Big sales on the 60D around here.... Body for $700, with 18-200 for $1000, and for some inexplicable reason, with 18-200 and tripod for $1900..... Bet they don't sell any of the last package....

Kind of looks like an attempt to clear out the 60D stock before the 70D is announced.

2

EOS Bodies / The sound of silence

« on: April 23, 2013, 06:31:00 AM »

So today is the much anticipated April 23 day of announcements... When the earth shakes and both the 70D (new sensor technology) and the 200-400 lens ( rumored to exist longer than Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster) get revealed to the world......

So far, silence....

3

PowerShot Cameras / Powershot SX280 - any more news?

« on: March 21, 2013, 12:41:55 PM »

Canon PowerShot SX280 HS Coming Shortly

Found the Specs on the Canon Canada page - http://www.canon.ca/inetCA/products?m=gp&pid=24255#_030

Specifications
12.1Mpixels
25-500mm equivalent lens, f3.5-6.8
ISO 80-6400
shutter of 1 - 1/3200 second
3" monitor with 461K pixels
DIGIC 6
WiFi
GPS


does not record in RAW
many video modes of interest, 1920 at 60 and 30 fps, 1280 at 30,6,3, and 1.5fps, 640 at 120, 30, 6, 3, and 1.5fps, and 320 at 240fps.
has a Manual mode

4

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Chikadees in flight

« on: February 12, 2013, 08:20:57 AM »

I have been trying (and failing) to get some decent pictures of chikadee's in flight. Do you have any idea how freaking fast those tiny wings flap..... and they don't fly level..... it's flap like crazy and climb, then tuck the wings in and go ballistic.... then flap.. then ballistic. It has to be the hardest thing I have ever tried photographicly.... taking pictures of the ISS was childs play in comparison.

Hah! Indeed! Getting a good shot if a perching chickadee is a chore...those little twits never stop moving, even for an instant. Even my best shots of chickadees have some blur somewhere on the bird (even in long sequences if 16 or more with my 7D). You need very high shutter speeds to capture them in flight, and a proper flight setup is pretty much essential.

I have been shooting with a 60D, shutter speed around a thousandth of a second, 400 f5.6 lens, burst mode (5.9 frames per second) or single shot, and have tried various autofocus modes. I have yet to get an in focus picture of one in flight.... no problems when they stop at the feeder, but none in flight. They really move fast, they don't fly level, and I have problems just tracking them with the camera, let alone get a decent picture. Any advice from those with more experience?

5

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Filling the buffer

« on: February 07, 2013, 12:41:01 PM »

I decided to do a test to see how many frames it would take to fill the buffer of the camera in various recording modes.

Camera used 60D, 1000th of second shutter speed, manual focus, high shutter rate (5.9 frames per second)... The list is of how many shots it took before the buffer filled and the frame rate dropped.

RAW and Ljpeg (5184x3456) - 6 frames

Ljpeg (5184x3456) - 8 frames
Mjpeg (3456x2304) - 8 frames
S2jpeg (1920x1080) - 8 frames

RAW (5184x3456) - 14-15 frames
MRAW( 3888x2592) - 15 frames
SRAW(2592x1758) - 15-16 frames

Before the test, my assumption was that smaller files would mean more files dumped to the memory card before it stuttered, and that small jpegs should allow a much larger number than full sized RAW files. In fact, the opposite happened.

I interpet the results to mean that my assumption of writting the files to the flash drive being the bottleneck was wrong. It seems obvious that the internal memory becomes filled with RAW data waiting to be converted to Jpeg... the bottleneck is processing to Jpeg.... get rid of that process and the number of pictures before stuttering doubles. The next bottleneck is processing the raw files (including reading them off of the sensor), changing the output RAW size has almost no effect on the buffer, so once again, the flash card is not the bottleneck.

So the limitation is computing power.... not card speed. Anyone care to try this test on a different camera model?

6

Lenses / Ipad app by Canon

« on: January 02, 2013, 11:56:16 AM »

For those of you who have an Ipad.... Canon Singapore has put out a very interesting (and free) app called CanonSGLens, you can searh for it on the apple store...

It gives lens specs, drawings, MTF charts, allows comparisons, has a FOV simulator, depth of field simulator and calculator, etc etc....

7

Third Party Manufacturers / How far we have come

« on: December 13, 2012, 07:54:19 PM »

I was cleaning up stuff at work and sending off old gear to disposal..... including about a half dozen polaroid oscilliscope cameras..... one still had unused film in it so I had to give it a try, but the film was so far out of date I got nothing.... yet another casualty of digital, but it got me thinking

It is amazing how far we have come in digital photography. My first camera was ISO100 only, 320 by 200 pixels and 8 bit color.... and I got nice pictures with it! Now thats the size of the thumbnail images. I remember when the 1Mpixel camera came out. by the time we hit 5 megapixels people were saying that there was no need to go any bigger. My first DSLR was 8Mpixels, and has ISO range from 100 to 1600, but 800 was very grainy and 1600 was a joke...

Now we have 40+Mbit images, ISO over 100,000, image stabilization, and our cameras have several orders of magnitude more computing power than what took Neil Armstrong to the moon..... WOW!

8

Lenses / 650-1300 T-mount lens

« on: November 28, 2012, 06:15:29 PM »

Has anyone tried the Vivitar/Bower/Rokinon/Samyang 650-1300 T-mount lenses, and if so, what do you think of them?

And yes, I realize that a $250 lens at F16 will be "somewhat inferior" to a $10,000 Canon Prime.... and yes, I realize that handholding a 1300mm F16 lens with no image stabilization is "less than ideal". My expectations are low, but it would be nice to hear from those who have gone before.

9

EOS Bodies - For Stills / 60D rubber coming loose on grip

« on: September 10, 2012, 06:02:20 PM »

The rubber on the grip of my 60D is coming loose. Any recommendations on a good glue to use to stick the edges back down before it gets any worse?