Messages

31

Lens Gallery / Re: Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II

« on: January 16, 2012, 11:05:52 AM »

Neuro, very good shots, your ones in Beijing!
Let me say, by the way, that you don't need T&S to get parallel lines in the digital era!
To stay in Beijing, let me show you a Steven Holl architecture in Beijing. EF16-35L II at 35mm, PP LR 3.6. The point of shooting was extremely close, since the street was very narrow...

32

Lenses / Re: Recommendation For Long Lenses

« on: January 16, 2012, 01:57:45 AM »

I have ruled out taking the 100-400 as it is too soft.

May be I'm quite biased about the 100-400, since it is a lens I adore. I'm afraid you get a bad example of it and that is a shame, since, I know that for personal experience in photosafari in SA, the 100-400 has the perfect zoom range for the business. By the way, what do you mean by 'soft'? Is the following image (100-400 at 300) soft for you? (Unfortunately I had to resize it to allow uploading it, loosing a lot of IQ)

P.S. I think the following article could be very useful.
http://www.canonrumors.com/tech-articles/this-lens-is-soft-and-other-myths/

33

Software & Accessories / Re: Automatic Microfocus adjustment software

« on: January 09, 2012, 01:25:52 AM »

I started by using my 7D and went thru 5 of my lenses which I had adjusted using the Lens Align tool.

I did my 15-85mm zoom first, I had trouble at the wide end, but I was too far away, 4 or 5X  more than the 50X focal length that Canon recommends.

Here is what I saw.

15-85mm ma= 0 (was -4)
Tokina 17mm prime= +4 (was 0)
Canon 50mm 1.4= +4 (was 0)
Canon 100mm L= -1 (was 0)
Canon 135mm L= -10 (was 0) - the curve on this lens showed high resolution from ma of  -14 to 0 and then went straight down, a strange curve.  I ran it 3 times at different distances with similar results.

That's the problem with MAF, in my experience.
Whenever you try a new method, you get big differences from the previous ones and it is very difficult to get in the real world ultimate evidences that the latest is working better than the previous.
My latest attempt was with LensAlign. I spent some days tuning up my kit (two cameras, 4 lenses), paying the maximum care to alignment etc, getting, time by time, contradictory results. At the end I opted for the ones 'seeming' to work better in the real world, by I'm not sure it was just a psychological decision, since every previous method gave me a similar decent satisfaction. Now I stand on the last one I got with LensAlign telling me that this is ok...

34

Site Information / Re: Any way to see which posts you got positive karma for?

« on: January 06, 2012, 01:38:45 AM »

I gave you good karma now too. I guessing those Crab Nebula partisans were giving bad karma for the Orion Nebula picture you posted.

They have to know that I've just sold my telescope. Is it enough to give me some pluses?

35

Site Information / Re: Any way to see which posts you got positive karma for?

« on: January 02, 2012, 07:35:18 AM »

QED... I've just got a -1 for expressing, moderately, an opinion... 

36

Site Information / Re: Any way to see which posts you got positive karma for?

« on: January 02, 2012, 05:11:27 AM »

What's the point of this Karma system anyways? Is it to encourage people to be civil in the forums or what? I've read some interesting and helpful posts from people with a lot of bad Karma and it makes me wonder why they have it. I just assume people click bad Karma if they don't agree with something they may have read, but who knows.

I fully agree with D_Rochat. Once, after some days that I didn't connect with the forum,  I found  suddenly a lot of bad karma. Obviously that doesn't spoil my day :-) but I would be curious to know the awful things that I could do to get such a bad reputation!
Actually, and not for personal reasons :-),  I think that good karma is a good system for rewarding good advices/opinions, but that bad karma could be just  a way to express anonymously bad feelings and that is useful in no way...

37

Canon General / Re: Canon 16-35 vs Tamron 17-50

« on: January 02, 2012, 04:57:28 AM »

I hadn't the chance to test the Tamron, but as Michael I make an intensive use of the 16-35L and I consider it one the L lenses really deserving that letter. At 16mm it has less barrel distorsion than the 24-105 at 24mm. By the way, I use it just with FF cameras. I don't know your field of application but, if a wide angle is needed and you don't plan to upgrade to an FF, I would suggest you to consider also the EF-S 10-22. I had it on my previous 50D and it was a wonderful wide angle, very close to L quality...

38

Lenses / Re: Lens recommendations for real estate interior photography please

« on: December 27, 2011, 07:05:27 AM »

You consider also  that, optically speaking, their focal lenghts are very much shorter than the nominal focal lenght, with all the related optical problems.

I think you have it backwards - a nominal measure is a by-the-numbers measure, whereas on APS-C DSLRs (NOT full frame cameras) the "equivalent" focal length is longer - not shorter.  On full-frame cameras the lenses act as normal.

Edwin, here I'm not speaking about APS-C crop, but about T&S lenses design. A T&S lens design is nothing more than a super wide angle with a huge image circle, larger than required by the sensor, allowing the image to 'float' inside it by means of the lens groups mechanical shifting or tilting. The TS-E 17mm, for instance, has a 67.2mm image circle, far larger than a standard 17mm. So, a 17 mm T&S lens has an optical design typical of extremely wide angle or a T&S 24mm of a super wide angle, hence the huge price to get a good quality.

39

Lenses / Re: Lens recommendations for real estate interior photography please

« on: December 27, 2011, 01:56:03 AM »

I'm not a professional photographer, but I'm an architect and I'm shooting architecture (inside and outside) since the early seventies. I used, in the old times of films and large sheets, a Linhof and an F2+T&S lenses. They were a big pain in the a**. Now, I believe that using a T&S lens on a DSLR is more a matter of old habit than a real necessity. You consider also  that, optically speaking, their focal lenghts are very much shorter than the nominal focal lenght, with all the related optical problems.
In the old times correcting a perspective in the dark room was a big pain, something impossible shooting transparencies, and for that reason T&S lenses or optical benches were the only way for getting acceptable architecture images.
Perspective correction in LR is not more a fake than correcting by T&S lenses. Everything is a 'fake' when you translate a 3D perception on a plane. As Arthur Schopenauer said, the World, in our eyes is just 'representation'...
To believe in photoobjectivity is  a naive belief...
By the way, as always all depends on the final destination of your shooting. If the destination is a large and expensive architectural book, and you don't accept compromises, you have to consider a big optical bench and a lot of auxiliary lights. Nonetheless I experienced that a good kit as a 1Ds or a 5D with a 14mm and a good tripod can give a perfect starting material for a final LR editing that will be accepted by the majority of architectural publisher. And the whole process is faster and more manageable.
Just my personal opinion and experience, by the way...

P.S.: I would add that controlling a  perfect parallelism in Live View or in a viewfinder is very difficult and for a perfect final result you will always go through an LR (or similar) editing...

40

Software & Accessories / Re: Exporting in Lightroom 3

« on: December 23, 2011, 01:43:43 AM »

Just one export passage to JPG leaves the IQ almost perfect, if you set Quality=100 and Resolution=300.
I compared many time at very high magnification an LR3 exported PP JPG with the correspondent RAW and I found non significant loss of quality. You have to consider that many editing tools are not available in LR3. In case I need them, I export the image in TIFF, than I edit it and after that I save it in JPG (maximum quality, minimum compressione).
By the way, since mass memory amount is not more an issue (I have a 4Tb NAS), always I save the JPG (for portability), the original RAW and the LR3 catalog that contains all the editing parameters.

41

EOS Bodies / Re: Is mirrorless camera replacement to DSLRs or just hybrid of aim/shoot and DSLR?R

« on: December 21, 2011, 06:09:19 AM »

The real point is always the same: If we are thinking about images to be posted on Internet with the usual related poor resolution (let me say a maximum width of 1600-2080 pixels), small mirrorless evoluted cameras are and will be ok. If we are speaking about absolute IQ, to any progress in this area will correspond a further advancement of DSLRs... One of the few cases validating Zeno's paradox... :-)

42

EOS Bodies / Re: 5D mkII - 7D

« on: December 07, 2011, 01:02:21 AM »

This year I added a 7D to my 5D MkII in order to expand the range of my L-lenses. After few months I sold the 7D and bought a second hand 1Ds MkIII, since the image quality of the 7D was very similar to a cropped image on the FFs. To say the truth, I was quite disappointed by the global quality of the 7d. I use to focus just by the center point, so the better 7D's AF is not an important feature for me...

43

Lenses / Re: Astrophotography telescope 'lens'?

« on: December 03, 2011, 09:06:48 AM »

I started 'astrophotography' with my 5D MkII, catching Moon and Jupiter pictures. Than I decide to go for something more specific. I bought a Meade L200, a wonderful telescope, just for realizing that my  point of observation in town was spoilt by huge light pollution.
By the way, with a focal lenght of 2000mm (my Meade's) you get a very small Saturn at direct focus, and something bigger through a Baader 13 mm ocular.
The best thing you should get is a place free of light pollution, allowing a very little noise and radical crop...

44

EOS Bodies / Re: This and That

« on: December 03, 2011, 02:23:50 AM »

One thing that amazes me is that Canon doesn't seem to care much about the opinion of its 'real' users. I am a Gold member of CPS, with a very typical and standard kit, but I never received a questionnaire or interview aimed to know my desires. I find this rather unusual, if I compare the behavior of brands in other sectors, such as automotive or electronics, for instance ...

45

EOS Bodies / Re: Where and how do you keep all your gears?

« on: November 28, 2011, 08:52:19 AM »

I'm able to fill a medium size Lowepro with all my kit: 1Ds MkIII, 5D MkII, 100 IS L macro, 16-35, 100-400, 430EX. The only lens that doesn't fit the kit is the 24-105, but i have to admit that I used that may be two times.