dgatwood said:

A $6 fee for a three cent piece of foam? I think I'd try Home Depot and Lowes first....

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I had to pay £6 for a screw my 1DIII had lost along the way, you know the tiny ones that canon use on the front plates of their cameras (which all seem to have different size screws mind you as nothing from my butchered 350D would fit)

I'll echo everyone's welcome. Been to Churchill for the Polar Bears. Maybe I need to go during another season!

It depends. I control the light entirely on maybe 5% of my shots, the other 95% is a combination of low light and good light... but I've rather have low noise. I rarely kick my iso above 3200... and I never kick it above 6400... So that is just me.

dolina said:

Unless you're using a Sony or a Nikon then it doesn't really matter how awesome XQD is. Last I checked Canon & Phase One are backing CFast.

http://www.cnet.com/news/cfast-2-0-splits-high-end-flash-card-market/

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I'm aware of that. IMO, Canon is backing the wrong horse—a dead horse, give or take a bit of postmortem twitching. When it comes to communicating with flash cards, the SATA protocol has been globally abandoned by the entire tech industry except for a handful of holdouts like Canon and SanDisk who are afraid of progress. It simply can't keep up with PCIe in the long term, and the difference in performance will become more and more obvious as the technology improves....

Thank you to everyone who replied. Doug Kerr's and Lee Jay's explanations were awesome. I always appreciate when people take the time to help me.

Viggo said:

wickidwombat said:

isnt this what the FEL button does or did i read your post wrong?

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The FEL button uses spot and only locks for one image, no?

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I thought it locked for a period of time and if no shots were taken in that time it reverted but as long as you keep shooting its in effect... not 100% though but i thought it was for more than one image. I don't really use it so i'm not sure.

Zv said:

Try setting the highlight slider to -100 then slowly move the exposure slider + way, watching the histogram as you go to bring the shadows back up. Once the histo reaches the right edge stop. This work for me and gives a more natural look. Avoid increasing the shadow slider too much. Also drop the clarity on this to -10 which gives a little more of a natural look.

If this was a landscape shot you might be OK but I think with people in the shot I process my shots with less clarity.

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too much clarity does horrific things to skin i agree dial in some minus globaly and then if needed for tight portraits add some back into eyes etc with the brush

As you say, used 1D4 prices have been pretty stable at around $2700 - $3000 determined by condition and extras - I keep an eye on that and it's been stable since I picked one up several months ago.

Much more interesting (to me) is going to be the arrival of the 1DX successor and how that will impact the 1D4 price once you can get a clean used 1Dx for close to $4K.

It's a good deal if you are purchasing a 300mm or 400mm prime

Well, the Sigma DP#Merrill APS-C series is good, and is on sale. I think that Sigma wants to attract existing Merrill users to try the Quattro. I may be looking at the upcoming 19mm DP1Q whenever it comes out, if the lens is a big improvement over the DP1M.

The DP2M (30mm) and DP3M (50mm) are stellar. The workflow complication involved in adding a Foveon .x3f camera to existing Bayer CFA (Canon et al) cameras exists. Sigma has a global RAW developer, Sigma Photo Pro, that does a good job of rendering, but has some speed and bugginess issues. Unfortunately, SPP doesn't do a lot of simple local adjustments, so you have to manually export image as .tif and then process in LR, PS, a pano program, etc. PITA. Microcontrast and color subtlety are the reasons to use the DP#Ms. These are great landscape cameras. Color accuracy may not be consistent, but hey, I am shooting RAW.

The early news on the Sigma fora is that the DP2M and DP2Q are quite close in image quality, with the DP2M winning on microcontrast and color subtlety, and the DP2Q winning on color accuracy straight out of camera. I am very happy with DP2M and DP3M, and don't expect to get their Quattro equivalents. I would like to see a 20 to 24 MP (DP#M is 15 MP) full frame sensor, which might be a medium format-killer, as long as the on-board and RAW developer processing improves in speed. BTW, the Merrill APS-C sensor is used in QC at Sigma lens factory, sensor installed in a shift frame so a full frame image can be composited.

Anything that educates the customer on the different effects of different types of lenses can only be an advantage to our community.

There are some really nice tips on that site and it is nice to have them all on one site with plenty of graphics.

Good job Canon!

Quasimodo said:

Thanks all of you, and I will try to callibrate it again with 3.38 m.

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That's really too close to get the best results, 5 or 6 M is best, 3.4M is the minimum and a compromise. You are not going to get accurate AF at macro distances, use live autofocus if you can for close shots.

Likely a 12-24mm (or 14-24mm) f/2.8 without IS.

Hi yakman.
I don't think you need to worry about duplicate file naming as the cameras pick up the last file name and go from there, this can lead to very rapid increase in file numbers if you use continuous numbering scheme. Take a hundred shots put card in camera 2 take another 100, return card to camera 1 image number starts at 201 despite only taking 101 shots.
This May or may not bother you or you may set manual reset or auto reset on card change.

Edit, I meant to add I keep mine separate by using larger cards in the camera with the larger file sizes!

Cheers Graham.

Don Haines said:

It's negative logic. You can't prove the non-existence of something by saying that you have not seen it.

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I know a Black Swan who would strongly agree with you on this. ;D

As has been pointed out, the other three IS primes that have replaced the old non IS ones have not lost any speed, but then they were slower lenses than a 1.4, and I'm not sure if there are technical issues in featuring IS on such a fast lens.

Agree with the point at top of page; wouldn't surprise me if it was '1.7' as a marketing differentiation, because we all know there is no (real) difference between 1.8 and 1.7.

Or will it be an f2 based upon a modified planar pancake design ( like the 40 pancake) but set deep into the 35 IS body to give room for the IS ?

Either way I wish they'd hurry up 'cos I want the EBP to evaporate before I stick my hand is my very dusty wallet.

Jeffbridge said:

Beautiful captures; excellent series!!

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Thanks a ton

Policar said:

Kestrel said:

I believe what you are experiencing here is spherochromaticism... out of focus highlights will have a characteristic magenta outline in front of the plane of focus and green behind. Stopping the lens down a bit should reduce these artifacts.

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Yes, and it's built into the design to improve bokeh (by making it softer).

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Not sure about that at all. It's not so much they put it in there on purpose as didn't go to the difficulty of getting rid of it. Plenty of lenses with awful bokeh have a ton of longitudinal CA.

For standard to wide FF zooms, the 24-70 II and 16-35 f/4 IS do remarkably well in fighting this type of CA off, the best I've seen for such from any of the main makers (not sure about Zeiss or Leica, they may have some zooms of such that do as well).

300 2.8 IS is basically 100% APO and has none.
300 f/4 non-IS has a lot of that CA.
70-200 2.8 IS has a lot more than the non-IS or IS II or f/4 IS.
50 1.4 has a ton.
85 1.8 has tons beyond tons.
From what I recall, 60 macro had barely any and 100L does pretty well.
135L has some.
I seem to recall that the Tamron 17-50 was surprisingly good when it came this CA type.

Northstar said:

what fun! nice shot! i never see owls where i live...bummer.

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Thanks and I bet plenty of owls have seen you They are VERY hard to spot and I once asked a famous owl photographer how he finds them, and his answer was luck and persistence. He said he walks around and checks every tree until he finds one. Keep in mind that this is what he does full time, of course. I got really lucky with this guy, though the early hour really helped. Usually I hear them and then try to find them, and I have about a 5% success rate if they are nearby and hoot/call more than 2x.

In Premiere Pro, I'm using Red Giant's Colorista 2, Filmconvert, and Osiris LUTs.
To sharpen my footage, I use Unsharp Mask and the normal Sharpen effect.

Lee Jay said:

18 months? My last one took over six years from submission to award.

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The 18-month turnaround is just the typical. There are some patents on thermistor-controlled voltage regulators that I was looking at this weekend (trying to build myself a cold box for my DSLRs that is regulated by temperature feedback) that were granted in the early 70's that sometimes took many years from date of filing to actually be awarded. I found that to be the case with quite a number of patents, many of which were from some pretty major corporations (like 3M).

I think George Bush tried the "bring it on" strategy. Don't think it worked out well that time either. ;D

Woody said:

I am curious about Fuji files. Their jpeg stuff is definitely impressive... but what about their RAW files? What software are you using? I understand Adobe software, the staple software for many folks including yours truly, does not process Fuji RAW files well.

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I can edit Fuji's RAW files in Adobe RAW/Photoshop CS6 without any problem.

If I try to open them in CS5, I get an error message that Adobe RAW cannot open the file. I rarely use CS5 anymore, so I don't know if I can update its RAW software so that it is compatible with Fuji's RAW files.

neuroanatomist said:

steliosk said:

I made the test
2 shots using same ISO (200), speed and f stop

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Except they weren't the same ISO, because your camera lied.

wickidwombat said:

im pretty sure it does sweet FA in raw but i might be wrong.
It just applies a different process to the raw file than it normally would
check the manual

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It's not so much that HTP affects the RAW data per se, but it does affect the RAW metadata in a way that's not handled properly by anything but DPP.

What HTP does is deliberately underexpose by one stop, and 'misrecord' the ISO in the metadata - that's why ISO 100 isn't available when you turn on HTP, i.e. you set ISO 200, it shoots at ISO 100 but records 200, or you set ISO 800, it shoots at 400 and records 800. If shooting JPG, it processes the underexposed image to brighten everything except the highlights (meaning it applies a tone curve). If shooting RAW, it sets a metadata flag so DPP can apply that tone curve.

If you open that RAW file in a 3rd party converter, results vary. Some ignore the flag and you just get an underexposed image. Others compensate by just boosting the total exposure by one stop - I think ACR (LR/CS) does that. Of course, that just re-blows your highlights and adds shadow noise. AFAIK, no 3rd party converter tries to replicate the tone curve to preserve highlights.

So, if you shoot RAW and use a converter other than DPP, I'd leave HTP off so your reported ISO reflects the actual ISO used to take the shot, and just expose properly to preserve highlights. You can apply your own tone curve, not limited to the one full stop forced by HTP.

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Thanks for the info Neuro, you always amaze me... 8)

The oddity is that any lenses are the same on the two cameras.
However, I've understand that a camera compensates for the actual lens attached to the camera by using a data table in the firmware. Since a third party lens must lie to a camera, and tell it that its a Canon lens, this can cause simple things like AFMA issues, or even bigger ones.