Posts

WhoIreland · Mar 27, 2013

I had a 50/1.4 which I loved on film & early digi's....
never thought it was up to scratch on full frame digi bodies

tried 50/1.2 and was much better

but bought and kept 35/1.4L - superb lens....
i upgraded 28-70L to 24-70L, and then went to 24-70L II

but nothing replaces 35L - it's a fantastic piece of kit

WhoIreland · Mar 27, 2013

ok,so Canon lens codes let us see year of manufacture - e.g. Z denotes 2011

my question is what's "normal" for a new lens ?
i.e. if I go into a store to buy a 85L II , what should I expect to see as the code - 2013 or is 2011 normal ?

I know it doesnt REALLY matter for the lens use, but I do notice when it comes to selling/trading people will try haggle a lot saying the lens is x yrs old etc

bycostello · Mar 27, 2013

answered your own question... you need a back up...

firebreatherboy · Mar 27, 2013

If 35mm cameras don't make you happy,... you should consider MF. And, pentax D645 is a good option.

But, your third choice is as good too. Buy the best lenses n wait (or be happy with what you have)

wingspan · Mar 27, 2013

A little update for those thinking of sending their lens somewhere other than Canon. So I didn't want to spend $370+ for a lens cleaning, Canon's going rate just to open a lens these days.Considered a lot of places including the ones above, thanks guys. I decided on Precision Camera in El Paso, Texas. http://www.precisioncamera.com/ I sent it there for two reasons, I was in a hurry and they promised the best turn-around time and two, they were the cheapest.

I was nervous sending them my lens because their price was so low. In part I was right. I was promised 10 day turnaround and I got it 14 days later after they had the lens for close to a week and hadn't sent me an email or called. I called and they sorta apologized and after talking to a manager, they expedited my cleaning. The work was alright but not as good as what the Canon factory in Irvine does on a good day. And they don't always have good days mind you.

Bottom line, if you want to go a little cheaper than $370+ and don't mind waiting a few weeks to get your repair done with a passing grade, go with Precision Camera. It was something like $110 and they do open the lens up. Also, I will note that most places that take in gear have a longer turn-around than 14 days.

Mt Spokane Photography · Mar 26, 2013

neuroanatomist said:
Yeah, but that's lateral CA. Longitudnal CA is a different matter. Lots of magenta and green there.

Here's a test from a while back, focusing successively on each battery in the first composite, crops of the chrome ball in the second composite. You can see LoCA showing up green in OOF specular highlights behind the focal plane, and magenta in front of the focal plane. Stopping down reduces the LoCA. Watch out for those chrome bumpers and water reflections, people.

Oops, You would have to point out my error.

cayenne · Mar 26, 2013

Rienzphotoz said:
Interesting, thanks for sharing ... but, if I am not wrong, I don't think most photographers would be concerned with it.
I use 5D MK III with CamRanger for my WiFi needs and it is secured with a password, so me not worried ;D

Well, I'm curious if that password makes for an encrypted connection...or not?

If not, would be trivial to do a man-in-the-middle attack, and gain info and access....

marcel · Mar 26, 2013

I use the the EF16-35 2.8L mk ll mainly for video. And for "bokeh" sometimes the EF28 1.8.

wickidwombat · Mar 26, 2013

Don Haines said:
I see two big ways that the 7D2 and 70D can distinguish themselves from the Rebel line. One is sensor and the other is focus. If you look at the 7D and the 60D, there are a few minor differences between cameras, but only two big diferences. The 7D has way beter focusing and the 60D has the articulating screen.

I would not be surprised to see new sensors in both. I would expect to see touchscreens, wifi, and GPS in both. I expect the difference to be significantly better AF and a higher frame rate in the 7D, with a few minor improvements... I would also expect NO articulated screen in the 7D2.

Time will tell. I have no intentions of getting a 70D, but since it's features will give a good clue to the 7D2, I eagerly await it's announcement.

I agree, the smart move would be to put the current 7D AF maybe tweeked a bit into the 70D it would essentiaqlly become the 7D low price replacement.

then give the 7D2 the 61 point AF and awesome build essentially put a new crop sensor into a 5Dmk3 10FPS?
maybe 8FPS full raw and 10FPS jpg or something like that, depends what processing they give It esspecially if it gets more megapickles I doubt it would get 10FPS raw as thats getting closer to eating 1Dx lunch.

what canon ACTUALLY do might cause some head scrathing however based on current form

it will be more in the 5Dmk3 price range but I can still see it selling tons

PureShot · Mar 26, 2013

i need to make panoramic building picture it is nessery to buy panoramic head like this one http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/293646-REG/Manfrotto_303SPH_303SPH_QTVR_Spherical_Panoramic.html

bdunbar79 · Mar 26, 2013

TrumpetPower! said:
bdunbar79 said:

The 5D3 does horrible in harsh lighting with a lot of overblown highlights and shadows, such as outside at noon on a hot summer day. The RAW files aren't as easy to work with as the 1DX files are in those situations, I agree.

Click to expand...

I'd hardly say the 5DIII is horrible in harsh lighting. Harsh lighting is horrible, generally, yes, but the 5DIII handles it as well as you could reasonably ask it to. No camera is going to fix bad light.

Here's an example I was playing around with last week. Obviously, it's Arizona, the middle of the desert. And it's midafternoon. And I'm in the bottom of a steep ravine. I can't imagine anybody seriously looking to do anything pretty in harsher conditions.

This one isn't going in my portfolio, and it's not the shot I was out there to make, but it's a far cry from "horrible."

It's also basically straight out of the camera. No lifting of shadows, no HDR, no noise reduction...just white balance and exposure normalized with a ColorChecker passport, scaled, and sharpened for the scaling.

I took a three-shot auto HDR bracket; I always do for landscapes because it's so easy. But I wouldn't use any other than the normal exposure for this shot anyway. No need; the camera has all the dynamic range I needed for this shot and then some.

Cheers,

b&

But you know how awful I am doing post work

. That's where the 1DX gives me 3 steps

.

Erikerodri · Mar 26, 2013

heptagon said:
Erikerodri said:

hsbn said:

If it's not broken, don't fix it.
If you don't know where it is, and don't experience any problem with your camera/lens combination, then don't be so haste.

Click to expand...

Well my 50mm 1.8 front focuses everytime i use it so ive been having to use manual focusing so i am hopin i can just adjust it through the micro adjustment

Click to expand...

Did you also read the post here about the new quick and easy adjustment method?

The program FoCal?

bdunbar79 · Mar 26, 2013

Thank you for the responses.

MrKorney · Mar 26, 2013

Sorry for not being clearer, what I was saying in my original post is I already have both a mk II and III and was wondering if there was a better one for studio.... I ended up taking the mk III which proved to be the right choice cause since it was a workshop we were having to take turns using the strobes; while I wasn't using the stobes (which had the model lights turned on) I pulled out my 50 and 85 1.2's and did some shallow dof shots which would have been a lot more difficult with the mk II since I would have been recomposing a lot more. So it looks like the AF does need to be taken into consideration even for studio.

RGF · Mar 26, 2013

Great information. If they have it for the 1D M4 and 1Dx it would interesting to see. I still have my 1D M4 for wildlife but have considered upgrading but hate to lose the 1.3x crop (though I would great low light sensitivity and better AF) lighten my wallet by nearly $6000 (ouch)

Mt Spokane Photography · Mar 26, 2013

simonbratt99 said:
Ok er, its telling me the voltage in the battery? which in turn is (on the same scale) telling me if the battery is good or needs replacing. For £2 this better be highly accurate!

Most of the traditional battery testers drain current from a battery and measure the voltage under load. For Alkaline batteries, this is a indication of remaining battery life. However, its going to be different for ni-cad, and nimh batteries, so unless the battery tester has a battery type selector switch, or specifically tests a particularly type of battery, then assume its only accurate for alkaline or conventional batteries, and then, only for a particular cell type.
I have one that provides 4 different loads so I can use high loads for "D" cells and light loads for AAA cells. The green, yellow, and red bars are only accurate for conventional batteries, but it will read volts as well.
Its only useful to tell battery condition in very broad terms, and I'd never use it on a rechargeable battery.

Mt Spokane Photography · Mar 26, 2013

Harv said:
This question is directed to the technically knowledgeable out there and has to do with in-camera noise reduction settings. Although I'm shooting with a 1D4, I would guess the same would apply to all models.

In a nutshell, is in-camera noise reduction (assuming it's enabled) applied to RAW files or just to JPEGs? If it's applied to RAW files (which is all I shoot), have any of you shot RAW with noise reduction disabled, and if so, how were the results?

I tried to do a search here on this topic but was unable to find any information.

Thanks.

Basically, the answer is no, but with qualifications.

Besides the long exposure NR mentioned, there is NR built in to the readout circuitry of the sensor, you cannot change this.

For Raw images, turning on noise reduction in the menu will set a flag in the raw file and DPP is said to read it and apply NR according to your settings. Other raw editors do not read the flag and have their own default NR settings.

kubelik · Mar 26, 2013

nice choice of music to go with the video, hope you follow up with more stuff. I agree with JLRoyal42 about thinking more about the light, even if you don't have the money for a artificial light, think about using the sun and what time of day and location to shoot in order to get maximum effect out of the largest free lighting source in the solar system. lots of really excellent footage out there shot natural lighting only.

K-amps · Mar 26, 2013

kubelik said:
that fact that I can now buy a computer that's twice as fast and half as expensive as it was in 2009 tells me everything I need to know about how much Canon has been milking their APS-C chip. sure they've added on-chip autofocus now, but a badly implemented feature does not count as improvement.

I'm really happy to see Canon diving into a whole bunch of new areas with cameras like the EOS M and the SL1, but let's get something straight: the body development team are not (hopefully not) the same guys that are the sensor development team. so there is no justification for the near-zero evolution of Canon's APS-C sensor line.

is there anything inherently wrong with the 18 MP APS-C sensor? no. we were pretty happy when the 7D got released with it, and while it never came close to matching the 5DII's sensor, I don't think anyone really expected it to. the sensor was great then, and is just as good now as it was then. the issue to me isn't really the sensor itself, it's what it signifies from Canon. it's Canon telling us that they don't feel that they need to innovate. it's Canon telling us they think we're dumb enough to think that sticking a t5i sticker on a t4i means it's "new". it's Canon lying to us that we shouldn't judge the chip's autofocus speed on the EOS M because it's pre-production, and it'll get much faster by the time of the actual release.

I don't think the folks at Canon are stupid, but I do feel they take the liberty of thinking that their consumer base is a little dim. the t5i is definitely toeing the line of "let's see how sheep-like our customer base is" and I hope the 70D and 7DII have not been treated the same way.

+1 Well Said.

The innovator of 2008 is the follower of 2011...

dickgrafixstop · Mar 26, 2013

I'd keep them both and buy the 35mm f1.4, but maybe not until after the rumored new version is announced.
Not that the new one would be a slam dunk - particularly if it's priced like the new 24-70 over the old version.

regina · Mar 26, 2013

Hello guys,
I need to buy lenses for ACTi Mega Pixel Cameras. can u recommend me?
thanks!

brianleighty · Mar 25, 2013

neuroanatomist said:
HTP increases the DR if you shoot in JPG. It underexposes by 1 stop of ISO, then lies about it in the metadata (that's why ISO 200 becomes the lowest setting - if you shoot at ISO 200 with HTP, the camera actually exposes at ISO 100). That 1-stop underexposure preserves a stop of highlights, the camera then applies a tone curve to boost everything but the highlights by 1 stop (meaning a stop more noise in the shadows).

If you shoot RAW, leave HTP off. You then have latitude to preserve >1-stop of highlights, and can apply your own tone curve.

Thanks neuro. I honestly never mess with curves. I've tried messing with it a few times or with the auto settings in DPP but never really liked the results. I normally just use contrast, highlight or blacks to adjust. Anyone have any suggestions on a tutorial for editing curves in DPP?

Capnbooboo · Mar 25, 2013

cocopop05 said:
I love the video produced by my 5D Mark III. I use the 24-105mm f/4 L lens and in Premier Pro CS6 add 28-35 sharpening. In low light, even with that lens, the footage looks fab. No complaints from me.

although i use my 5d3 in manual 90 percent of the time i do also see a quality difference, but do you guys think the problem is that the 5d3 processes at 4:2:0, until April (a weeks time) output at 4:2:2 will finally be available, but then we all need a ninja or other brand capture device via HDMi.

ive been testing my 5d3 to see whether i can pull of video and photos that look close enough to not tell the difference but i find its the lighting and i never get the same results with the same exact settings, it seems i have to tweek a custom setting for video and then switch to it from my typical manual or AV mode for photo rather then just go into live mode for video on the 5d3, you guys run into the same thing?