Sony finally offers big/fast zooms

jrista said:
3kramd5 said:
neuroanatomist said:
How about a 'let's stop taking pictures afte a couple of hours because of the a7RII's poor battery life." ::)

It's not that bad provided you diligently disable the display when you aren't actively using it (I have a button mapped). I've never carried more than 1 extra battery, and I've never run out of batteries.

That being said, as much as some people would like to write position papers on adapted lenses and the AF system, it isn't an action camera. If you use it as such (buffer out chasing birds or athletes), it won't last long.

I never had any problems with the A7r when i was using it. It is extremely easy to just power off the camera, and I just got in the habit of doing that every time I was done with a shot or series of shots. One battery last me over a day.

The displays are the heavy hitters when the camera is idling. The EVF is off when you aren't looking through it, and toggling the rear monitor off is easy. My camera sleeps after a couple minutes anyway, which is pretty much as good as powering down.

Another consideration: turn on airplane mode. WIFI sucks it down.
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Panasonic develops organic sensor .. 123dB DR / global shutter

CanonFanBoy said:
But what about Sony? Do you think you'll switch to Fuji?
[/qote]
Who, me? No, Fuji is of no interest to me. I am neither intro retro-design nor into APS-C lenses at the price of Canon FF lenses.

Sony? No idea, whether they are also working on OPF CMOS sensors.

And while I always welcome "more DR", as long as the image quality looks as shown in the starting post above, yikes! Looks like when I am trying to put together an HDR in Lightroom using 2 shots captured at -3 and +3EV @ ISO 6400 ... hardly any color information left. ::)
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Canon Still Working on New 800mm Lens [CR1]

Don Haines said:
AlanF said:
CanonFanBoy said:
Aren't we mostly men here? My 8 year old granddaughter might complain, but guys... the setup weighs less than your clothes. Part of the gear must include extensive study with a dumbbell when not in the field. Just do some got dang curls.

Do you strip off your clothes in order to carry your camera? Most of us carry a camera and wear clothes rather go around naked.
It's -22C here today before windchill......I am wearing clothing that weighs considerably more than my camera :)

Stay warm Don. Don't let all the talk about 3.5 lbs being debilitating scare you off the parka. We want you around awhile :)
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300 2.8L lens cover fit question

No, they will not fit the older lens.

You used to be able to purchase third party caps. I think some found Tupperware lits that snapped on rather than the pull over hood affair. I made a leather slip-on cover for my old Nikon 300mm f/2.8 by sewing a leather cap to fit to fit it, It was a little complex, since I lined it with velvet to keep it from scratching.

Contact Don Zeck and see if C2 caps are still available

http://donzecklenscap.com/don-zeck-canon-lens-caps/
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Broken weather sealing rubber gasket on 70-200 2.8 IS II

Don Haines said:
Is it possible that there was a tiny bit of moisture on the rubber and it froze to the metal, ripping when you dismounted the lens?

That would be my first guess as well. If changing the lens in cold weather, and the gasket picked up some snow when you mounted the lens, it could freeze to the metal.

At any rate, I'd call Canon and ask them to send replacement parts. They sometimes do it gratis.
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Flash/Camera Setup for Backstage events with bad lighting no bounce advice.

I would use a single flash gun, ttl cabled, a stofen or similar and some cto gel (visit lee lighting for an offcut, or get a swatchbook or a single cut sheet off ebay etc)

This will at least get your flash CT to match the ambient light CT.

Add a diffuser gel, or stofen.

I would set the camera to manual and expose so that your ambient exposure is at -1&1/2 to -1. This means that your exposure without flash will be slightly underlit.

Bear in mind your focal lengths, I would probably say use 1/50th. Your flash will freeze the subject motion anyway, and a little bit of ambient background motion blur might make it quite dynamic. Aperture prob something middle of the road to help ad hoc depth of field... say f5.6? Then its just a case of setting your ISO. You can go fairly high with both your cameras, though shoot RAW. Buffer depth goes out of the window when you are waiting for a flash to recycle so don't worry about card speed.

I would use E-TTL, set to -1/2.

Slight under is easier to recover than even slightly over.

With your flash on an E-TTL lead you can keep it quite far away from the axis of the lens, and you can model slightly, throwing the shadows away from directly behind your subject. Have your camera on a long strap though, in case you end up juggling, that way the camera won't fall.

Plan b. A cheap macro ring light, dead basic pc synch type, set the thyristor to A, and follow the quide on the back. Nice fall off. Quick and Simple.
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This has me tempted to try a Sony A7 camera. :)

Can't remember which version of Lr it was (v6?) but when they introduced the ability to use the adjustment brush to edit your grad filter it made the use of physical grads all the more obsolete. I love this feature on Lr.

But back to the original post about the adaptor with drop in filter, for ND filters it looks pretty useful. I wonder if a variable ND filter could be used with it for video work too?
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What do you think of the 1Dx Mark II?

StudentOfLight said:
expatinasia said:
pwp said:
Evolution not revolution was always going to be the reality. 20 mp is fine. In some almost intangible way 1DX files look better than my 5DIII images with identical shot, lens & settings. 1DX II files will push further out front.

Illuminated AF points is huge. Matching card slots would have been smart. I don't see any mention of Silent Shutter Mode. Did I miss that or didn't the feature make the final cut? The best AF is even better. More touch screen functionality would have been welcome, this seems a bit gutless.

Overall it pretty much meets expectations. The new camera will be familiar straight out of the box.

Real world reviews and user responses with real, shipping cameras will reveal the juicy truth. ;)

-pw

There is supposed to be a silent mode, but I await a video to show how silent.

As you said, real world reviews, where people are not scared of upsetting Canon, are the key. I await them too.
I expect the 1DX-II silent continuous mode to be the same as the 5Ds/R in high speed continuous. (i.e. a huge improvement over how loud the 5D-III is when shooting at 6fps)

5fps
http://www.learn.usa.canon.com/galleries/galleries/tutorials/eos1dx_markii_gallery.shtml

Mentions it @ 2.00 into the video.

Just how silent yet to be determined.

Regards how I feel about the 1Dx II, it's about what I expected & wanted, Personally I don't want an upgraded Camera to be off the wall with new & irrelevant features, if I want that I buy the Sony RX1R II, which I did, and I enjoy the Camera, what I wanted in the 1Dx II was an increase if frame rate, done, a usable increase in Low ISO, done (and re the D5 which shoots an 3 million ISO, good luck with that Nikon users, I hope it works out), the f/8 on all 61 AF points was unexpected but as I use long lenses with the 1.4x converter, it's a great feature that will assist, the video features may get me to use video more often.

All round I like what Canon have done here, enough of an upgrade for me to Pre Order 2 units.
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1DX II -- what are you most excited about?

Honestly I've been very happy with the 1DX. My only issue is apparently being addressed, i.e. being able to have a reduced noise signature. 14FPS should be great for the hummingbirds this May but I liked getting shots of the fawns coming into the watering hole for a drink and always held off(or used the 5D MK III) to avoid spooking them. Still, I haven't heard the 'silent' mode in person so have no idea exactly how silent it will be. Couple of extra MP's, nice. Better AF, great.
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EOS-1D X Mark II Claims of 15 Stops of DR [CR3]

kaihp said:
jrista said:
Don Haines said:
jrista said:
It depends. There is a massive amount of highlight information, more than you really need. If you compress properly, what you lose isn't necessarily as important as what you gain. It's 14 bits of data, but that data could represent more than 14 stops of information.
agreed! The highlight information is nowhere near as critical as the lows....going from 11 to 13 while skipping 12 is significant, while going from 16371 to 16379 may be 4 times the jump, but the difference in an image would be almost completely undetectable.

Exactly! Hah! Glad someone gets it. ;)

Think "floating point numbers" :)

The natural logarithmic encoding of floating point numbers is ideal for storing images. Lightroom can do 16 bit floating point math for a very satisfactory 30 stops or so of DR in the image.
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Canon WFT-E8A Specifications

Canons WiFi implementation in previous cameras is ok for casual use, getting some jpegs on your phone to send along and that sort of thing. This device looks to be on a whole different level of speed, range and functionality. I could see a team of shooters at a pro sporting event streaming images to an onsite editors computer who is sending them off to a publisher. No breaks in the action.

You have to keep in mind who the 1dxii is intended for, same as this device.
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Canon to Surprise With New Mirrorless Camera

AvTvM said:
While Canon is still mucking about with half-assed M's, Sony claims their A6000 to be "the best selling interchangeable lens camera - $600 and above ... in the industry" ... "MILCs and DSLRs". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDGnl5SHBzc&feature=youtu.be&t=616 ... around minute 6 ... and there are also some quite interesting market data charts around minute 3.

Yes, I do take that statement with a grain of salt - made at a Sony marketing event by a Sony exec [Neal Manowitz, VP Digital Imaging, Consumer Sales and Marketing, North America]. And unfortunately they did NOT provide the number of units sold to date to back up their claim, and none of the folks in attendance had the wits or guts to ask for it [they should have invited me :D].

I wonder if he meant in the USA?

I could see it, it has sold quite well, and canon and nikon replace their lower tiered items more frequently.

globally? I doubt it.
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