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Review: Canon RF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM by TDP

Gotcha... Note however, my original 'kit lens' reply was not to undermine the lens... but to explain why I called it a kit lens.

I was super happy w/ a EF-S 24-135 STM kit lens for the longest time when I was using a 70D.
It sounds like I didn’t make it clear enough that I was agreeing with you, and adding that you don’t even have to go all the way with the L lens. There have been enough crummy kit lenses to give them a bad name. But recent EF 24-105mm kits lenses have been fine.
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The Digital Picture has posted RF 800mm f/11 Image Quality

My local dealer knocked at my front door yesterday with a big smile and gave me an RF 800mm to play with for a week - Canon had left him a demo! Here is my quick first impression.
The lens is a joy to hold compared with my 400mm DO II + 2xTC in terms of weight. It's AF isn't as as fast though.
At 20m from a target, it's of similar sharpness to the 400mm DO II at 800mm and better than the RF 100-500mm at 700mm with a 1.4xTC, about what you would expect for the extra 100mm length.
At its minimum focal distance of 6m, it is only marginally outresolving the zoom at 700mm and much worse than the 400mm DO II, both of which will allow you to go closer.
It works quite well with the 1.4xTC but AF slows down.
Birds in flight aren't easy to follow because of the narrow field of view at 800mm and it will focus only in the central zone. Also, high shutter speeds are needed for BIF and f/11 doesn't help.
My views haven't really changed. It's a very nice lens and excellent value for money. I could see myself using it if I was going out for a hike and it was a bright day and I knew all the birds would be far away. Or, if I was going to a hide or stopping at places in my car and there wasn't much walking I could take it along with my 100-500mm II + 1.4xTC.
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Venus Optics officially announces the Laowa RF 11mm f/4.5 FF RL

Not really. 10 shows the contrast of the lens and is thus useful. The biggest issue at 60 lp/mm and above is that the slightest bit of field curvature will kill the MTF chart. Roger recently did a couple of articles for DPR on the subject. https://www.dpreview.com/articles/1351719699/roger-cicala-field-curvature-for-fun-and-profit and https://www.dpreview.com/opinion/7031211310/roger-cicala-field-curvature-pt-2 . Many lenses are much sharper at the edges than the standard planar MTF chart would indicate. The edge focus is just not in the same plane with the center focus. https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2017/11/testing-lenses-best-individual-focus-mtf-curves/ . Enjoy.
The contrast of the lens at almost unusable low resolution. Why not go to 5? The contrast could be almost 100% across the board?
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R5 results added to Photons To Photos

You received an A1 or a R5?

Both should beat the 5D IV quite easily, but as both have been discussed in the posts before yours the context of your message is unclear.
Yes my bad, the R5 as referenced in the title. Noise at higher ISO is pretty distinguishable based on very limited observation. I haven’t quantified it but I think that difference would show up at ISO 1000 or so.

Base ISO could prove to be closer, the 5d4 is really good there both in the amount and character of the noise. Hopefully I’ll get the opportunity to test that in the near future (real world).
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Problems with high speed flash sync. Are the highest shutter speeds electronic?

Right, I have a fix that works okay (thanks to: https://fstoppers.com/post-production/learn-how-fix-color-banding-using-just-one-simple-tool-7946)
- Select the area with banding using the magic wand - this worked quite well for this image.
- Create a new layer with the selected area - ctrl J. I removed with the eraser, some parts of the image inadvertently selected by the magic wand
- Go to Image - Mode - 8 bit
- Go to Filter - Filter gallery - Spatter (You won't be able to access the filter gallery if the image is not in 8-bit - so do most of your editing before removing banding)
- Use very low smoothness and play around with the spray radius (should be quite high) until banding is just removed.
- I tidied up a few edges of the selected area with a small soft brush.

I tried a couple of different blurs, but found that spatter worked best.

A crop from the image is below.

Attachments

  • BZR_6844-Edit-2.jpg
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R5 IBIS + Lens IS

Question: IBIS and lens IS are great to have but does the R5 automatically make any adjustments because of this? For instance, in Av Mode, if I am not tracking a moving object, the R5 will adjust the shutter speed and Iso (auto Iso). With IBIS and lens IS, can the R5 adjust to a slower shutter speed and/or lower Iso than would have been made if IBIS and lens IS were not present?
No, but in the Auto-ISO settings you can set it to -1 or -2 to have it adjust a stop or two. I have it set to +1 to keep the shutter up for my kids that won't sit still :)
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Canon EL-1: Activating the modeling lamp remotely

Has anyone discovered if it's possible to activate the modeling lamp on your remote EL-1's? It seems you can activate modeling flash (burst of flashes over 1 second) but not the actual LED lamp which I find quite odd. I've tested every possible setting and I believe that you can only activate the lamp for focus assist with the unit that is attached to your camera. That's a bit of a let down to have to manually press the button any time you need to activate the modeling lamp, especially if it's in a position that's out of reach. Otherwise these guys are pretty fantastic. I'll attach a bare-bulb sample below. Also, keep in mind they won't fit in the older Godox S1 bracket. Found that out a little too late and had to use my 600. They will fit in the S2 bracket but it is tight.
MW2_0103.jpg
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SIGMA releases an official update about their Foveon X3 sensor project

The fact that some of the 3 Foveon layers pick up light meant for the other layers doesn't have to be considered being "poisoned". If the layer sensors have low noise, then they should be able to have a software 3x3 matrix filter to get the proper R G B values out of them. To show an example of this, the human eye has a green cone and a greenish-yellow cone (instead of a green and red cone). These 2 cones have a QE curve that overlaps each other as much as it differs from each other, but the eye/brain has circuitry that separates the values into what we consider green & red. If there is low noise then circuitry can do the same to eliminate this issue. Now, I'm guessing that the Foveon pixel elements have a lower QE curve and higher noise levels than desired so that would be the reason (I assume) for their lack of success.
That’s exactly what poisoned means. It has nothing to do with noise, which is different.

please don’t compare a camera system with human sensoriums. They are very different.
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An APS-C RF mount prototype is currently in the wild [CR2]

When you say: “get the most out of”, then you’re saying the body with the highest IQ. Do you think that will be an APS-C body?

traditionally, APS-C has NEVER been at the high end, once FF came out. It’s a compromise product category, which as I said earlier, is why you don’t find high end lenses specifically made for it by the major camera manufacturers.
I must respectfully disagree with that statement about bodies with crop sensors being inherently inferior to a FF camera. It was for a reason that Canon put the 7D series in the same league as the 5D etc. with the best tracking system and the same level of weather sealing' and general build quality as the 5 series.

To me, a lot depends on what one is using the camera for. In many cases, the larger sensor will beat the crop sensor for light sensitivity, wide angle use etc. No argument there. However, as one who shoots with super telephotos at long range, the crop factor is an advantage for the pixel density. I might add that my interest does not just lie in birds, but macro predators from which one wants to keep a respectful distance.

If I shoot an image with the FF sensor and crop it to get the same FoV as the APS-C sensor, it will reduce the pixel count by a factor of about 2.5. That is significant if one needs to crop more. So it's about pixel density at long focal lengths where the high-end crop sensor comes into its own. If I have a FF sensor and an APS-C sensor with the same pixel count, I can crop the APS-C sensor much more than the FF sensor and still get a decent number of pixels, and to me that has value.

The 7D series is getting long in the tooth, but even at 20MP, it is the same pixel density as cropping a FF sensor of around 50MP to its FoV.

If they could create an R7 with a sensor similar to that of the 90d, tweaked for mirrorless, and with the same features as the R6 as regards IBIS, AEAF etc, it would give me a big advantage for shooting at the longer range. Absolutely NOT for everyone, but there are a lot of long lens shooters out there, so I think there is a market.

As to the M7... What I want in a camera is a decent size and a battery grip using the standard R-series LP-E6 battery format, to be able to provide some balance for a long lens, portrait controls and good battery life. Then, I want an integrated EVF - I have tried the clip-on ones and they are bulky, fragile and use up the flash mount. Third, I want weather proofing. So for me the M7 fails on all of those elements. Something with the physical, IBIS and focus attributes of the R6, (I don't shoot video) but with a good size (34MP+/-) APS-C sensor and able to take RF lenses would work for me.
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Is there such a thing like pro stock lenses, or special +++ quality lenses for demo or reviews ?

I did it without difficulties for my MF Zeiss 50mm Macro Planar (which has an electronic interface).
But obviously it doesn't work with for instance fully "electronic-free" lenses (Leica R).
Edit: did it also for the Zeiss 21mm f2,8, EF mount.
PS: manual lenses of course don't autofocus after "AFMAing" them, but the green focus-ok LED in the viewfinder shows you if the lens is properly focused.
If you prefer, in this case, call it "FMA";)
I did the same to all my zeiss lenses to get the confirmation to be more accurate.
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Review: Canon PowerShot Zoom

I preordered one. While the IQ was as expected for the price, my issue was that my large hands had a difficult time holding it. It just kept slipping out of them. I never dropped it, but I felt uncomfortable and decided I'd never use it. I sent it back after a week or two.

The tiny sensor did require that the scene be bright to reduce noise. I now have a Galaxy S21 Ultra. I'd say its good at 10X. At 100X, its not much use.
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Another video demonstrating the R5 bad weather capability

Perhaps it would have been better to say:

"Another video of the R5's capability in bad weather?"
As the title is right now, it's a neat passive aggressive click bait. Without the ambiguity, I would not have checked the thread and video out to confirm that it was indeed about good capability in bad weather :LOL:
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Loading pictures from R5 to Windows Computer

Chiming in late, but as a near future R5 user, I was looking at this topic. In a previous life, I was a windows administrator. I wrote this script to take files from an card card and move them to a directory with format c:\pixtemp\YYYY.MM. It then opens the directory and launches photoshop :) It's my fastest drive, so I edit from there and move later.
Save as a .bat file. Of course, your drive letter will vary.


for /f "tokens=1,2,3,4 delims=/, " %%a in ('date /t') do set strdate=%%d.%%b
md c:\pixtemp\%strdate%
md c:\pixtemp\%strdate%\jpg

for /f %%f in ('dir /s /b e:\*.cr2') DO @move /y %%f c:\pixtemp\%strdate%
for /f %%f in ('dir /s /b e:\*.jpg') DO @move /y %%f c:\pixtemp\%strdate%
for /f %%f in ('dir /s /b e:\*.mov') DO @move /y %%f c:\pixtemp\%strdate%
explorer c:\pixtemp\%strdate%
"C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2021\Photoshop.exe"



I do have a question...does the R5 work as a storage device, where I can assign it a drive letter when connected with USB?
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Samsung Introduces 1.4μm 50Mp ISOCELL GN2 with Faster and More True-to-Life Auto-Focusing

Even I am confused it has been good 4-5 years since Samsung ia also advertising Dual Pixel AF on their topend phones and all white papers they published talk about same tech as Canon.
Google's line of Pixel smartphones also advertises dual pixel both in the name and technology, but use sensor from Sony. Sony apparently also has a patent on split photodiodes. Given how prominent Sony sensors are in smartphones, there are probably many more out there.

I've never found any explanation how it can be that basically everybody can use DPAF, and yet only Canon does it in ILC.
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Industry News: RØDE announces the next-generation Wireless GO II

A user on another forum that I’m on, posted that he received his GO II system on Thursday and has confirmed that the transmitters do record while transmitting. But you can only stop the recording by turning the transmitters OFF. When they are turned ON, they automatically start recording(if you enable the option with Rode’s computer app). And it’s just a continuous loop, meaning that when the memory is full, it begins overwriting the oldest portion of the recording. There are separate tracks created every time the transmitter is turned ON/OFF, but being a continuous loop recording system, you could lose your back-up or at least a portion there of, if not careful/mindful of how long it’s been on.
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