I love the Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM, but the chromatic aberrations not so much. The optional lens hood does cuts down the frencency of how often it occurs. If your buying the Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM lens for mostly outdoor use I would recommend against it. My outdoor prime is the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS USM Macro Lens. It has great image stabilization which is a big plus on a portrait lens. Great Bokeh with IQ and sharpness that is truly excellent.

Legio said:

stefpat said:

Clear!!!
Go with 135
Thx

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Good choice its fantastic!

You can buy the additional Macro lens Canon 500D in either 72mm (same as EF135) or 77mm and you will get decent macro (not 1:1) in the EF 135. Forget about handhelding it with macro thou since you will have small apertures so I would say that you need a good tripod.

But the bokeh in the 135 is so good, Ill try to have it on all the time!

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Or you can use the Kenko extension tubes and get close to true (1:1) macro. They vignette on full frame, but it can be corrected.

I love the new Sigma 35mm f/1.4. It is so sharp it is ridiculous. A 35mm might be a nice wide studio lens as well. The 24-105mm is also a good starter.

Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Lens Review

This video should help you out.
Canon 6D Vs. 5D Mark III Hands On Review

Re: New Canon USA Lens & Speedlite Rebates

Daniel Flather said:

The link to BH is dead, so what's the deal on the 600 speedlight if any? Will this deal migrate to Canon Canada?

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It is $50...which, I believe is $10 less than last time for rebates.

I forgot about the dang 135L I wanted too UGH

Did you sell that TC? How old is it?

At first glimpse it looked like a Vivitar camera

at heathrow... vat off... u can get a bit cheaper in HK if you go tho Nathan road, but know your prices before you go in as they will have your eyes out...

prestonpalmer said:

Viggo said:

prestonpalmer said:

The RODE does a pretty good job in my experience. If you want super clean audio, you will need an off camera source. Take a look at my video equipment page and let me know if you have questions. The Zoom h1n's are really good for off camera audio.

http://www.brovadoweddings.com/blog/equipment/

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Do you use the Rode into one of those external recorders? Because I'm not being picky about the sound quality, my experience with 6 different cameras and 3 mics is that the internal mic gives a better result for speach, MUCH better.

How diffcult is it and in what software do you sync the sound when using an external recorder like that h4n?

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No, the RODE always goes into camera. We always have at LEAST 2 sources of audio. Sometimes 3. Use Plural eyes for Syncing Audio. Putting the RODE on a h4n would probably reduce audio quality.

http://www.canonrumors.com/2012/04/nab-2012-singular-software-pluraleyes/

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Any microphone plugged into the DSLR instead of an external recorder will degrade sound quality significantly. Sometimes it's more useful in a workflow to have a shotgun mic going into the DSLR directly (at the expense of quality), but plugging into an external recorder will improve audio quality, not reduce it.

(edit) Depending on what type of sound you need, directional vs a stereo spread, the video mic may not sound as good for your purpose as the external recorder's mics. Any mic will sound better in an external recorder and worse in the DSLR, but if you need a stereo spread a videomic won't be as good of a choice as the built in mics on the recorder.

I shoot with both the 70-200 f/2.8L IS II and the f/4L IS. Since moving up to the 5D3 from the T2i, I have hardly used the f/2.8 version at all - the f/4 version is just as sharp. That said, I primarily shoot outdoors and in decent lighting. If I were shooting weddings where lighting tends to be challenging, I would still think that having an f/2.8 would be required. I think your approach on getting one f/2.8, one f/4 and then sharing one with your husband would potentially work. I also think that the 135 f/2L and 70-200 f/4L IS option would be useful and overall lighter and cheaper.

I want one

Ray2021 said:

Brand new, even with best rebates, you should not expect any lower than $1299 however long you wait... Used or refurbished it can be had for lower now.

Part of that high pricing can be due to that little extra magic some claim it produces and the rest certainly due to the branding and marketing by Canon. Beyond that I don't want to get into the value of this lens at that price and how much more or less you get compared to its cheaper, but definitely a well-performing cousin f1.4 That dead horse of a topic has been resurrected here more times than Betty White's career

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I have noticed that as I have been doing my research! I was leaning towards the 50 1.4, but after a bunch of research I decided that I should invest in a higher-quality lens for a focal length I plan on using a lot.

I also just discovered a rebate on the Canon Pro-100, 10, or 1 printers when purchasing a Canon lens or Camera on Adorama and B&H. You can get the Pro-100 printer for almost $100 with this rebate. Pretty good deal for a $500 printer.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/FrameWork/Rebates_Promos/033113_CANON_PRO-100.pdf

Mt Spokane Photography said:

Marsu42 said:

If you get the nice 100L

Random Orbits said:

If you do a lot of macro work, then the 180L would make sense. It offers a longer working distance, which is helpful in a lot of instances. If you do some macro work and would like to use it for portraiture, then a 100mm makes sense. The IS offers you more flexibility when you try to handhold it, but is not necessary. If you are happy with the ef-s 60 on the crop, then the 100 will perform similarly on FF. If you have a 70-200L II, then the 100L makes less sense because both perform similarly for portaits at 100mm.

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+1 ... and if you get the 100L buy the Kenko 1.4x tc which works nicely with it and gives you more working distance while keeping it a real lens that can focus to infinity unlike macro extension tubes (though these can be useful, too). Just don't expect the IS on the 100L to make any difference while shooting handheld near macro 1:1 magnification, a common fallacy (and Canon marketing will make sure to imply otherwise...).

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1. A TC does not increase working distance.
2. Since you are going to FF, note that The Kenko TC does not work with the 100L and a 5D MK III, it just locks the camera up and the battery must be removed to get the Camera /TC combination to work again on a compatible lens.
3. I was very skeptical about getting the IS to work on near macro shots, but it surprised me. I put the camera in AI Servo and it does very well for a handheld macro shot. I have had several non-IS macro lenses, they are all sharp, but for just walking around and getting up close to snap a near macro photo, it is suprisingly good.
Here is a handheld shot with the 100L:

And Another:

And yet another:

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Love em!

Very nice! Congrats!

bseitz234 said:

Perhaps the most intuitive, understandable explanation I've ever heard... This is tremendously helpful. Thanks!

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You're welcome. Glad to help. I don't remember where I first encountered it, but the idea if not the source obviously made an impression....

b&

I'm thinking of taking the chance on a Sigma 120-400. I currently own the 17-50, and before that, the 17-70. The 17-50 is a truly awesome, "L Quality" lens. Certainly the new f/1.4, is of the highest caliber. If I had a full frame camera, and sold a lot of other stuff (which I might)...I would get that lens also.

The main issue people have had with Sigma, myself included, was AF. I have no doubt their new line will probably never suffer those issues. And they certainly know how to design glass that meets a price point, and delivers quality beyond it.

I really am itching to try the new 120-300 f/2.8 with newly designed elements including two fluorite. Nobody knows when it will get released, it could be 40 years from now, or a thousand...or next week.

Wow! I never know these existed. Assuming they had favorable optical quality, that would be fantastic.

I can see why Canon might be reluctant to make one of these. It certainly wouldn't eliminate all of the advantages of Full Frame, but it would make it a lot closer for those shooting APS-C.

Here's hoping that Metabones, Sigma, Tamron, Tokina or someone comes out with one of these for EF to EF-S, in the not too distant future.

I have always used Sekonics, though the models that I have used are fairly old and analog (L-28c, L-398), no chance to use them as flash meters for stills and not as convenient as the newer digital meters. Maybe someone else on the board can chime in on personal experience with their newer meters. I was looking at the L-308DC. Specs look good for around $275, but I haven't used it personally.

You might want to rent a meter just to try it out. There is a slight learning curve to setting exposure that way.

I've been thinking about getting this one: http://www.amazon.com/Satechi-Bluetooth-Wireless-EOS-D2000-Compatible/dp/B00ANWQMWK/ref=pd_rhf_dp_p_t_4_X1SG which can be controlled by iPhone or iPad and has time lapse capability.

Hector1970 said:

When I look at a scene I often can see the bright and the dark and not lose detail in the bright or the dark.
When I take a photo of the scene depending on where it's metering it might make a photo too bright or too dark (losing detail in either case). It might also (if I meter correctly) do a kind of average where I lose some detail in the bright and some detail in the dark.
The dark bit I might dodge and the light bit I might burn (or use a lightroom filter).
Could a sensor have dark but retain all the detail (ie it's not black unless it is black) and bright light but also retain all the detail (it's bright but not completely white)?

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Let's put some numbers to the question to help things along.

We'll start with a carefully controlled environment -- a viewing booth with a standard D50 illuminant. That would be a full-spectrum daylight-balanced light source that's reasonably bright at the print. A light trap (a hollow black-lined box with a small hole at the top) would be 0. A piece of Teflon thread tape would be 100 (or close enough as makes no difference. A piece of high-quality fine art paper would be just barely discernibly darker, around 98 or 99. The darkest you could print on that paper would range from 10 or so to 20 or so, depending on the actual paper and printer.

That's basically what the L* value represents in the Lab color space -- except, of course, the definition is more precise than what I just gave.

Unlike RGB color spaces, the Lab space is open-ended. Most real-world scenes contain images with considerably more than an L* value of 100.

For example, right next to this standard light booth, let's place another one with the print raised so it's closer to the light source. It's the same piece of paper as the one in the standard booth, but it's now more brightly lit and so, to the observer, has an L* of more than 100. How much more depends on how much closer the paper is to the source, but let's pick an arbitrary number and say it has an L* of 150.

You're standing there with your high dynamic range camera and you take a picture of this very scene. Not a problem -- the camera captures it just fine.

But now what're you going to do with that file?

If you want to make a print, the stuff in the standard viewing booth is no trouble; with the proper workflow, within certain limits, your print can look identical. The picture of the bare paper gets no ink in your print, either, and the other parts get the same ink as in the original.

But how are you going to make the image of the paper in the non-standard booth be brighter than the paper in your print? That is, with a paper that has an appearance of L*=99 in standard viewing conditions, how are you going to make an image of something that has an appearance of L*=150, and still show the image in standard viewing conditions?

There are a few possibilities.

You could compress the captured dynamic range. The image of the paper in the brighter booth would get printed as L*=99 (you have no other choice), and everything else gets similarly scaled by 2/3. The image of the paper in the standard booth gets printed as L*=66, which is roughly Zone VI.

You could be more gentle in your compression. You could print the paper in the brighter booth at L*=99, print the paper in the standard booth at L*=90, and thus make the standard booth look very close to as it was but everything in the brighter booth would look very washed out.

You could go ahead even further and clip everything in the brighter booth that happened to wind up brighter than L*=99.

You could do some masking and render each booth to a normalized version, such that the white paper in the standard booth got rendered as L*=99 and the white paper in the bright booth also got rendered as L*=99...but what're you going to do in the space between the booths? And you're now left with the two booths looking the same when they were significantly different to your eye.

One obvious solution would be to not make a print of the scene but rather to show the scene on an illuminated display. Let's say that this display can go from L*=5 to L*=200. Now, there's no problem showing the full scene that originally went as high as L*=150. But now you might have a different problem...the viewer's eyes might be adapted to thinking that L*=200 is "full bright," and the L*=150 parts of the scene in the original give the appearance of being less bright than they actually were. You then might be tempted to scale everything the opposite direction, to make L*=150 map to L*=200...but now either you also have to raise the blacks and make them washed out, or you wind up stretching the dynamic range overall and creating more contrast than there originally was.

Now, instead of simply two viewing booths with slightly different light levels, imagine you're also including the lightbulb itself in your scene. That may well be L*=1000; how are you going to reproduce that?

So, sorry, hate to break it to all y'all, but we're never going to stop having problems with dynamic range in photography.

Indeed, it's the exact same problem as artists everywhere have always faced...and that's why artists are always talking about the light, why there exists such things as good light and bad light.

It's all about the light. It always has been, and it always will be.

Cheers,

b&

This post is more about the 6D- sorry ken

Im still reading every bit of info about this camera. Ive been on the fence since it was first announced, But have now finally decided against buying- i would feel like im just getting ripped off from very basic features.

If i can get 9pt all cross on a 65od, why does a camera costing over 2x as much come tiwh one cross point? Honestly the AF was the biggest deciding factor fo4 me. I also feel that when the 70d comes out with all cross AF points, the camera is going look exceedingly embarrassed in comparison.

Im not mad at an SD slot- i have way more of them than i do CF cards- but the one slot argument does have some merit. Taking away the joystick doesn't make anything easier as well.

so ill now try to find some freelance work to help pay for a mark III.

Vimeo in general loads much slower than Youtube, especially when embedded.

Sure, Why not? I used a 1970's K-mount Cosina 200mm F/4 on my 7D as a portrait lens.

Pretty much anything over 85mm will make a decent head & shoulders traditional portrait lens.

gferdinandsen said:

Out of curiousity, does anyone know why a TS-E lens cannot be made with AF?

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Because you can tilt the focal plane, which means that by definition, the focal plane intersects with the image plane. Simplified, you might say you already have focus from distances nil to infinity. The focus ring really moves the focal plane from left to right and v.v. (or up and down, obviously). It is up to you how you'd like that all to work out.

AF would only have a meaningful function with the focal plane parallel with the image plane and for that, Canon has a perfectly servicable f/1.4.