martinmm said:

You're having problems with exposure compensation. The two bars moving in opposite directions is exposure bracketing. There should be another control for exposure compensation. Also, you may want to turn off bracketing for the time being by merging the two bars back together.

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+1... sound like this is the problem if op was using av mode or tv mode but this is not the case. he was using manual mode.

try this with manual mode if op still want to use that mode... careless about violating shutter as blurry image since this is just a test. point entire frame to a blank white piece of paper (white piece of paper must be full expose to light, not under op's table or bed LOL), change the meter until +2. exposure is now set. op can now try to take an image anywhere in his room as long as it has kinda same lighting condition (not under the table or, under a bed, or even at a light). try to take a test image and let us know what happen.

note: do not move frame out of white piece of paper during the time of changing the meter, yet op's shadow should not be included in the white piece of paper.

paul13walnut5 said:

Cool. I'm a bit scared to run ML on my 7D, given it's current problems, I saw the X-video as maybe being a way to get another look without breaking anything (I know, I know, ML is by sheer mathematics of users / failures ratio, safe) also I only have 4TB in my RAID, which will zap with renders etc..

What computer hardware are folk using?

& back to question, is anybody using x-video? Are there LUTs for it?

Cheers

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Yeah a RAID 0 setup is important. I had started out with non-RAID, USB 2.5 (USB 3.0 card in a PCI slot running at only partial USB 3.0 speed) and it was slow. Now a 4TB RAID 0 hooked up over USB 3.0 and that helped a TON.

I also bumped up to an i7 3770 with some fast memory to help out even a bit more (had AMD x940 before).

I bought a used copy of the Sigma 18-50, it arrived -unusually- with a filter in place (I remember this from my photo retail days, staff got to keep the decent quality used filters off of lenses we bought in, so we could get the mark up on the crappy filters we sold) I had to use the hacksaw method to get the filter free (I should have in actual fact rejected the lens, as time would tell)

About 8 months in the well performing but sloppy feeling lens broke. Not dropped, no impact, just the zoom barrel slid out of it's helix and would not pop back in. Right in the middle of a video shoot with no back up.

My used bargain lens required an £80 repair, to be fair it arrived with a new barrel and was exceptionally well calibrated (focus faster, sharper corners)

I know from experience that a dropped lens can appear fine but have a problem unseen that will manifest itself at the worst possible moment.

200-400 matches 400 2.8 II on resolutions tests

Wow, on LR they got the 200-400 at 400 f/4 to have essentially the same imatest results, center, average and corner as the 400 2.8 II has at f/2.8!!

Good Decision. Your older lens is still excellent, and a new body will take advantage of it. I usually recommend a new lens over a new body, but in your situation, you'll get more from a new body.

New official Canon picture style

Canon is busy on surprising fronts, and this really might be of use to videoshooters (if you don't shoot raw with magic lantern) or jpeg still shooters (in raw you can apply the style later). Does anyone know how to import these custom picture styles into Lightroom so they can applied to raw shots?

"Image characteristics similar to images shot with Canon’s professional digital video camera (X series) and contrast is softer than Standard in Picture style" ... http://www.canon.co.jp/imaging/picturestyle/file/videocamera.html

kaihp said:

Cathay Photo in Singapore received 2 on Thursday, and the first left the store the same day (pre-order).
Friday they still has one. SD16,000+GST I believe.

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I have yet to hear from either amazon or B&H. Hopefully I will hear soon

Mt Spokane Photography said:

ZoeEnPhos said:

Hi all here who knows better than me about the future upgrades!


I wonder if there might be a small or any chance, that Canon may or will produce an upgrade of the white Canon EF 200mm f/2L IS USM in near future?


Wishing you all happy shootings!


Greetings from Europe and Sweden!


C

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There have been no upgrade rumors. Its not a fast selling lens, and is not easy to resell, so don't expect Canon to invest in a upgrade in the next 10 years. There are just too many other lenses to upgrade, and there are "M" lenses, Cinema lenses, etc that are taking a lot of Canons design resources.

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Indicators of Canon having little to no stock of the 200 f/2 (numerous sources have stated this) would suggests that there is an upgrade in the pipeline or that it is just a very good selling lens. Got mine for $4100 used and could easily sell it for $5000. Canon will do the 200 f/2 when it does the 800 f/5.6 as those lenses are same generation.

For 500 £, on eBay, you can buy a Zoom H4n, a Rode NTG-2 mic with a windshield and a shockmount, a decent boompole and a pair of good cables. This way, you'd only miss a good isolating headphone, but if you find something like a used Sennheiser HD280 Pro, you can probably get it all within your budget. That would be a very good audio set. If you can afford it, I would definitely go for it.
Consider also to buy, for outdoor shootings, a blimp windshield with a "dead cat", sometimes they're indispensable. Search for a cheap one (for exemple: http://www.ebay.it/itm/New-40-cm-Blimp-Windshield-with-Furcover-for-microphones-upto-12-30cm-Long-/190839080880?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_2&hash=item2c6ee547b0&_uhb=1) the branded ones are very expensive. They always include a shockmount, so if you're gonna buy it you can save the money for the separated shockmount.

The Zoom H2 is the H4 "bigger bro" (http://www.zoom.co.jp/english/products/h2/) it is the 4 channels one, I have no idea why they named them that way... so the H4 would be the right choise. Anyway, since you just need to record "a couple of short speeches", I wouldn't buy anything and go for a rent. What's more, if you're recording just a speech and you're indoor and there are no disturbing noises, placing the camera near to the subject and using a good video microphone you can already get a decent audio quality.
Otherwise, you could just rent something like a Sennheiser ME67, put it on camera with a shockmount, connect it to the camera with a balanced XLR-Minijack connector and a good shielded cable and this way you'll get a good, already syncronized audio. If the camera has to be far from the subject, you just have to add a boom pole to the equation. Anyway, to rent all this stuff, you won't pay more than 20 $ per day.

Got the replacement copy today. Zoom ring sounds perfect!
Definitely must have been something strange going on with the one I returned. So I'm really pleased that I chose to send it back and get it replaced.
Actually the zoom ring action feels nicer too and smoother.
Obviously as I've only just got it today and attached it to the camera to check briefly I haven't done any extensive IQ testing but it appears to be very sharp in the middle of the frame at wide and tele end. Will need to check edges at 24mm properly but that also appears to be very good. So think I've got a keeper!
Also don't know if it's my imagination but this copy also appears to be quieter when auto focusing. The returned one was ever so slightly clunky sounding at times. Nothing serious but again this one is an improvement.
So all appears to be good. Even with the inconvenience I've had with getting a good copy without issues I'm still amazed by the near prime-like quality of the images this zoom can create.
Looking forward to putting it through it's paces now

procentje20 said:

I have quite some experiance buying second hand camera gear, and one thing i noticed might bemefit your goal. Some people buy into the hobby and then suddenly want out, selling all their gear at once. So if you can afford investing, buy somebodys kit (i'd say containing the 7d and 70-200 II) and sell all the lenses seperately. You will have the gear you need for your trip, and make a profit in the process.

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Thanks but there are no 7D+70-200 kits. I got a good deal with a new 70-200 IS II, I´ll get the 7D second hand later on. The camera I will certianly sell.

SA = spherical aberration
COF = curvature of field

As for US re-issue of Japanese patents:
That the US20130135514A1 patent application “claims the benefit of Japanese Patent Application No. 2011-261634, filed Nov. 30, 2011 and is hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety “, ensures that any additional claims made in the US application, because it was filed on Nov. 15, 2012 and hence within the 12 month priority year, is allowed to use the first priority date of the Japanese patent. Since being granted patents, is very much about who was “first to file”, this backdating and possible expansion of claims can be quite important.

Further Japanese "kokai" patent applications are not made "made public" until 18 month after their filing - in Japanese and without a search database. I do not know how “made public” is to be interpreted in regards to publication in other languages, but that US20130135514A1 was published on May 30. 2013, or exactly 18 month to the original filing date, is likely no coincidence either.

But let’s take another example to underline the principle. The super zoom Patent application mentioned on CR May28. 2013: The Japanese app is JP2013-97184 with a filing/priority date of Nov 1. 2011. The US app is filed Oct 1.2012 i.e. within the 12 month priority year. The US app is published 18 month after the original filing data, namely May 2. 2013 – whereas the JP app is not published until May 20. 2013.

Hence how much “news value” an US patent application with a JP priority has, cannot be assessed from the cited sentence alone, and unless you have a JPO subscription on the weekly patent database CD update and fluent in “Patent Japanese”, I guess it will be hard getting the news much “fresher” than the corresponding US applications (for those JP apps that are actually filed in the US or the EU, that is)..

~ hans ~

Canon 24-70 L II
Canon 70-200 L II
Canon 200-400 F4 IS

If I had to reduce inventory of what I currently own already

Canon 24-105L
Canon 100-400L
Canon 85 F1.8

.
I like it too. Good work! Thanks for showing it.

Dave_NYC said:

Maui5150 said:

The LowePro belt can "release" itself and my nice new Canon took a 3 Ft drop and broke the LCD and cracked the housing. Saw other comments in forums related to similar things that happened to others.

Your mileage may vary, but I definitely am regretting swapping over to a LowePro belt from Black Rapid. At least my repair will be a little cheaper because of CPS... but could have been very costly.

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I actually use a police duty belt, which has a release mechanism you have to push in first before the belt can be unlocked: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0035XKDYC/ref=oh_details_o03_s02_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

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That looks like the same buckle on the Spider Holster belt

Where mine really impress me is the flat sharp field. The two I have are amazing. A good flat sharp field with little or no distortion. Which is very important to me. Close quarter shooting makes the lenses a perfect match for me. Bare lens my 300 is so sharp it is amazing. Shooting with it everyday I can immediately see the quality drop when I put on my 1.4. Not only that with the 1.4 on a bigger lens it slows me down to a crawl. Af speed, Long lens technique has to kick in to get sharp shots. Just not fun for me. The 1.4 on the 300 I find acceptable. It is light and IS does a good job. The 2X is strictly a no go zone for me with either lens.

Kinda curious about the new 200-400. Looking at the MTF charts. I personally do not think I would buy one. For me that is. Again, not for most I guess.

That is just me. It looks like it is not for most. So no sweat.. But that is the way mine work, and the way I like to use them for my style of shooting.

Dugdale said:

Hello, I'm new here to this forum.

Several times a year I will do a review of Canon cameras. I am an advanced amatuer, I mostly just share things that I have found with the cameras I test. In my last review I compared the Canon 6D vs. 5D Mark III.

At minute 12:13 in the video I compare the center focus point on the 6D to the 5D3, after reading the wikipedia page on the -EV rating I gave up on trying to do the test accurately (as I talk about in the video) so I just set them up under the same low light conditions to see which one would work better. The 6D beat the 5D3 in my tests.

I am always trying to make my reviews better, so I was wondering if someone could help give me with pointers on how to do this more accurately in the future. I am more of a video guy than a stills guy.

Thanks!
Dave

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Hey Dave!

Big fan of your videos and online tutorials. Keep up the good work and welcome to the Forum!

I'm sure you'll get some good pointers from the members here with regards to your question.

dirtcastle said:

eyeland said:

When you say that you want to separate conversion and editing, by editing, are you also referring to color management?

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Yes. The optimal workflow for most is to do all non-conversion adjustments in an NLE, such as Premiere, After Effects, Final Cut, along with other programs that maintain a "non-destructive" workflow (e.g., Resolve).

Currently, the ACR/LR workflow outputs a Prores 422 file, into which many people are "baking" the white balance and other adjustments. The reason for making the adjustments prior to converting to Prores 422 is that you get to work on the uncompressed file and get a lot better results (especially with tonal adjustments). But the baking-in of these adjustments violates the non-destructive editing flow. In a non-destructive workflow, adjustments can be made at any point in the process, without the penalty of having to re-bake adjustments (in this case, in ACR or LR).

So the new workflows (similar to basically all other video workflows), will convert the RAW file to a format (e.g., Cinema DNG and CineForm) that maintains the ability to make adjustments at any point in the process, and doesn't require going back and forth between programs to adjust simple stuff like white balance and highlight recovery.

That said, ACR/LR do have some amazing features and I'm sure there will be people who will still use an ACR/LR flow (e.g., for extreme highlight recovery, or specific plugins such as SilverEfex). But personally, I want to take the footage straight into the NLE and/or Resolve, without having to worry about whether I "converted" the files properly.

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You can use Cineform with that workflow. I've been using Cineform almost all along. When you make the movie from the PS/ACR or LR/ACR TIFFs in AE just output to Cineform444FilmScan2 or something like that.

Canon has dropped it from their SDK as Neuro mentioned. FoCal has tried to find undocumented commands to no avail.

They recommend complaining to Canon and asking that it be added to the SDK. Otherwise, it may not appear in any of the new pro level cameras.

FoCal Pro does have a mode that only requires two settings, and is then able to predict the AFMA. Its called Turbocal. A third test is merely a verification that it was the right setting. They have done so many tests using the 5D MK III that they have a curve fitting routine based on only two points, its not perfectly accurate, but its still more than good enough.

Download the user manuals from this page to read about this feature.

http://www.reikan.co.uk/focalweb/index.php/why/documents-to-download/

Yea, you got lucky. I noticed that mine was front focused (it would be focused slightly in front of the marked focus spot. Since I mainly shoot birds with long lenses and want to control the DOF this was very obvious (to me).

Tom

You could sell it to me...

Autofocus performance is in general a mysterious and frustrating topic. I have had a Sigma 50mm F/1.4 for around 3-4 years. I got it to use on my 5D classic, but it front focussed enough to be annoying and there is no micro-adjust on that body. (Canon calibrated the body for me shortly after I bought it used.) I managed to get some use out of it for portraits by focusing on the subjects ear, then the eyes would be sharp! :

When I got my 5D III last Fall, the Sigma worked great with it, needing very little MFA. I use it a lot now for full body portraits at about F/2.0 to F2.8 to get just the right background blur. Sorry I don't have any acceptable images to post right now, most of my work is not appropriate for this site.

Seemed like this belonged here somehow...

http://slideshow.today.com/slideshow/today/teen-photographer-creates-tiny-portraits-52083634

I'd imagine telephotos follow the Tripod rule of "pick 2 out of three" to the nth degree.

Pick 2 of:

Light/Compact
Cheap*
Good IQ.

*relative to similar lenses

Now that I think about it, maybe telephotos are "Pick 1".