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upgrading from rebel xsi: T4i or used 7D

I went from my old XTi to the 7D a few years ago wanting three things: better focus, better low light, and a bigger viewfinder. Then I discovered the speed of the 7D - I hadn't realized the XTi was slow before I tried the 7D.

Now the T4i will have better low light, and a little better focus than the XSi, and it is a bit faster (though the buffer fills very quickly). But what you won't get is the bigger viewfinder, and that is something you need to see and use to appreciate - it is much easier to either manually focus or check auto focus with the 7D's viewfinder.
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Does google use Canon?

Tcapp said:
Tcapp said:
Mt Spokane Photography said:
neuroanatomist said:
Not to worry, it's most likely just a post processing artifact used by Google at the request of the US Government to hide the sensitive military installations hidden in the shadows in that part of Oregon.
How did he find that secret submarine base in the first place??
Now, there will be a international incident as the US accuses Canada of leaking secrets via Canon rumors. ;D

The sub is actually parked right behind OMSI and the portland opera. For reals yo.

And, oddly enough, no banding!
That one is obviously the decoy!
Oops! Now after Canadian Bacon there will be Indian Paneer ;)
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60D or t4i for video?

skaterhan1 said:
Mt Spokane Photography said:
skaterhan1 said:
I'm quite the noob when it comes to this, so all help will be appreciated :)

EDIT: I also want to keep in mind the quality in "low light" environments.
Canon recommends that a video camcorder is better. HDDSLR video can be amazing, but the basic camera does not come video ready as a camcorder does, rather, its just a small piece of a system needed to produce movies for the big screen or television programs and commercials.
I'd figure spending at least 3-5X times the cost of the body to add all the other needed equipment that will make the video live up to its potential. You will get better video with a good camcorder for less money at the low end.
One other reason for HDDSLR video is when you have only one camera and want to take a quick video on the spur of the moment. It might not be pro quality, but having the capability to capture something is nice.

Not exactly sure what you're trying to imply, but I have my mind set on a 60D. I'm going to use it to make short films (like the one in my above post) for YouTube. At this point I just need to figure out my lenses (also mentioned in my above post).

Choose the one with better MagicLantern support.
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Need opinions on telephoto choice

New (today!) to this forum so here is my 2p for what it's worth.
My long lenses are a 600 F4 L IS Mk1 and a 300 F2.8 L IS Mk1. The 600 is a bit of a monster and handholding it is a cause hilarity amongst my friends! However for bird photography the longer the better!
Very recently I purchased a used 300 F2.8 IS Mk1 and have been doing a little birding to try it out. I have yet to try the bare lens, as it is too short for this sort of thing, so have been using mainly with a 2 x Mk3 extender.
I have tried to attach a couple of unedited images - hope they come out!

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5d MKiii focus

Drizzt321 said:
Also, it could just be you need MFA adjustments. One lens on different bodies can need completely different MFA.

Most likely. Set up your tripod, but instead of using the phase detect AF, use Live View (make sure it's set to Live AF, not Quick AF - when you go to focus, if the mirror doesn't flip up, that's Live AF and what you want). Compare those shots. If the Live AF looks sharper than the Phase (viewfinder) AF, you need AFMA.
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Not long to wait.

my D600 shows two little dust spots, which isn't nearly enough to get me excited.

I propably will also buy a 6D though, as soon as it's tested and all of it's possible hiccups have been worked out, just to get access to the sweet L glass, mainly 50mm 1.2L and 70-200 2.8L.

Great news that the wait isn't much longer! Also hoping for 13+ stops of dynamic range! (too optimistic?) And good center spot af performance.
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Excellent service at canon customer service centre- beyond words

thebowtie said:
pwp said:
This mirrors my long-term experience with CPS in Sydney. They're the best.
I echo the experience with Canon service in Sydney (though I'm not a CPS member - I'm just a keen hobbyist).
They're quick and do a great job!

I'd recommend CPS anyway, I've got the Gold level and have no plans to go for the Platinum unless I start shooting professionally. It's well worth it, in fact it can pay for itself just in the 2 free cleanings you get per year. Add in priority service and turnaround, servicing discount (if you have repairs needed), and the equipment loan/evaluation program and I'd say it's worth it.
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What's a good camera?

neuroanatomist said:
I'd like to see a black and white camera. Not monochrome, pure binary black and white. Each pixel either on or off, nothing in between. DxO Landscape Score = 1 and no argument about it.

I love images like this one:

Dalmatian%20illusion.png


:P
Hmm wouldn't that have practically zero noise (as long as the "sensor" would be able to distinguish between black or white) ? In that case I imagine a DXO ISO noise score of say ... 100000 ;D ;D ;D
Now how this contributes to the final score ? ;D
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Sigma 12-24 F4.5-5.6 EX DG ASP HSM II

I find that with this lens, most of the time I'm on a tripod. So that being the case, I also tend to manually focus a lot... which produces very good results.

Ultra wides can be quirky, so sometimes you just have to work with what you have when it comes to getting 12mm on a FF. I pretty much never use this lens below f/8, since the sides would be a mess. And manually focusing is something else I've become accustomed to. Although AFMA did help quite a bit.
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Canon 5D mark III vs Nikon D600 & dynamic range test

drjlo said:
dswatson83 said:
the 5D smokes the D600 in everything except DR where the Nikon wins.
Huh? That video does not show 5D "smokes" D600. For IQ, I would say they are about even with D600 having a bit better DR and 5D III a bit better high ISO performance. $3500 vs. $2200 gets you more pro-like functionality, but for the hobbyist, the D600 produces impressive IQ. Since I already have the 5D III, I can only hope the 6D can compete with D600 when it comes out..
I am not holding out much hope for the 6D. I think they went more consumerish with the body, design, and specs than Nikon did with the D600. I was really hoping for the 7D with a FF sensor & digic V chip and thought they could do that for under $2200. Nothing else needed to be changed. The size, build, ergonomics, speed, focusing, and resolution of the 7D are perfect and I don't need wifi & GPS built in. The 6D is really more of a FF 60D and the D600 more of a FF D7000 and the D7000 is more of a hobbyist/prosumer camera than the 60D. I'm loving my 5DmkIII but i'd really love a smaller/cheaper backup/family vacation camera that can still hold its own in a professional shoot like a wedding. I'm torn between keeping my 7D (love but not FF), getting a 5DmkII (slow & crap AF), or another 5DmkIII (large and expensive for a 2nd body).
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Canon USA Announces EF 300mm, 400mm, 500mm and 600mm L IS II Lens Firmware Version 1.1.1

The process of upgrading the Super Telephoto Series II lenses firmware is the same with the 40mm pancake firmware.

My guess is that the recall was done for the following reasons

- Canon doesn't want the firmware dissected by competing companies. Thus the controls put in place
- Only 2012 Canon bodies can do lens firmware upgrades. As indicated in the 40mm pancake firmware announcement
- Canon wants to inspect recently bought lenses for any defects

It took less than 5 minutes to do. I went through 2 hours of traffic to get it done. It was OK as I was also getting something near by.
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New 50mm f/1.4 lenses are metal throughout?

RobPan said:
Yes indeed, the lenses are all metal. The point is, the newest Canon sensors are too sensitive for glass lenses. At ISO 1000000000 and above you would need a shutter time of a millionth of a second or faster. The simple solution is to make a titanium lens. With that and a recent sensor you can take lovely pictures of black cats in dark rooms. Success!

Cats are lazy & slow. A good camera should be able to take shots of black bats racing through dark caves, with the autofocus system & lens tracking the bats as they fly.
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1st day with the 1dx (wow)

what blew me away (and still does) are the customization options

yes, the image quality is on a level all its own

but.. the customization makes this camera addictive - for example, i have THREE focus points (i have it configured for left zone/exp-point, AF-ON button - right zone/exp-point, */star button - and center point FULL AUTO, M.FnII button)

and, its like that also but top/center/FULL AUTO in vertical orientation

sweet
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Canon EF 40 f2.8 vs. EF 35 f2.0 on crop body

This all helps!! Thanks to each of you!

I did a lot of comparison research on DPP before geting the 35 and was impressed with its sharpness for a crop body (where the soft edges are cropped out). But, I hadn't realized how much sharper midframe is at 2.8:

http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/ISO-12233-Sample-Crops.aspx?Lens=122&Camera=736&FLI=0&API=2&LensComp=122&Sample=0&CameraComp=736&FLIComp=0&APIComp=0

This certainly helps alleviate my concern for losing that stop. Must admit, the much cheaper 40 is impressively sharp even at the corners. (I just wish DPP did some tests with a crop body.)

http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/ISO-12233-Sample-Crops.aspx?Lens=122&Camera=453&Sample=0&FLI=0&API=2&LensComp=810&CameraComp=453&SampleComp=0&FLIComp=0&APIComp=0

The 40 is now on my Christmas list.
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Are there 39mp & 50mp+ Test Bodies in the Wild? [CR1]

TheSuede said:
You are seriously talking past each other now, and things are mixed up beyond belief.

Disregarding the real-world effects of a TC (increased reflection and absorption losses, decrease in sharpness due to optical imperfections) from now on through this entire post: Yes, of course a TC magnifies the diffraction circle by exactly the same amount as the rest of the image. But that is also the point; the object referred diffraction is already determined at the front of the optical system, by the entrance pupil (as long as we're within reasonably Gaussian systems, for microscopes and other applications with very high magnification you need to look at angular aperture in stead of numerical aperture). A teleconverter will magnify both this object referred diffraction and target detail, a wide-converter will decrease magnification on both diffraction and target detail. It varies the projected image magnification and not the angular object referred diffraction, which is what optically limits your target resolution.

In astro (which is a purely Gaussian limited application with ordinary systems, with infinity focus targets) this is extremely important, since the angular resolution in front of the lens is determined by the entrance pupil. NOTHING you do behind that can make things better, in any way.

Well, that would only be true if a sensor with larger pixels is the limiting factor in terms of spatial resolution. If, assuming an astro context, and diffraction is only 5.8 microns (the 173lp/mm spatial limit of an f/4 aperture), but your sensor uses 6.95 micron pixels (such as the 1D X)...switching to a sensor with 5.8 micron pixels (a hypothetical 26mp sensor...a change in something behind the diaphragm) would indeed improve the detail and quality of the RAW image actually produced by the camera. Would it not? ;)



Let me ask. Do you believe adding a 2x TC to a 400mm f/4 lens (800mm f/8) is the same as using just the 400mm f/4 lens on a sensor with half the pixel pitch, in a general photographic frame of reference (vs. just the astrophotography frame of reference)? Or would you agree that using the 400mm f/4 lens with a sensor twice as dense will produce just as detailed output that encompasses a wider field of view (greater total area) than the TC setup?

In the former case, an 800mm f/8 lens on a FF sensor with say a 5.8 micron pixel pitch. Diffraction won't affect resolution enough to matter on that sensor, as the pixel is the same size as the airy disc.

In the latter case, a 400mm f/4 lens on a FF sensor with say a 2.9 micron pixel pitch. Again, diffraction won't affect resolution enough to matter on this sensor, as the pixel is the same size as the airy disc.

Assuming you use both setups to photograph a landscape of some kind...a small waterfall at some distance. Let's assume the entire waterfall fits on the FOV of the 400mm lens. Would you agree that the 800mm f/8 5.8um setup would capture only 1/4 of the total area of the waterfall? Would you agree that the 400mm f/4 2.9um setup would not only capture the entire waterfall, but that it would also capture the same 1/4 area as the 800mm setup in nearly the same detail?



My primary key point here is not so much that the 800mm f/8 setup is capable of reproducing that 1/4 area of the waterfall in high detail. I've never disputed that (I believe my post at #78 entirely agrees with you on that point, actually.) My point is that the 800mm f/8 5.8um setup is capable of reproducing only 1/4 the area of the waterfall, while the 400mm f/4 2.9um setup is capable of reproducing the ENTIRE waterfall, with roughly same amount of detail in that same 1/4 area, as well as roughly the same amount of detail in any other 1/4 area that you could crop from the original frame.

My second key point here is that no matter what you do with any number of TC's...the spatial resolution of the real image at the plane of focus (the sensor) is intrinsically limited by the spatial resolution of the sensor you are actually using. Saying that a TC added to a lens on an 18mp sensor suddenly gave you the same "resolution" as a 369mp sensor of the same dimensions is a fallacy.

(At least, in the frame of reference of sensors, who's resolutions are always measured in terms of spatial resolution. If you wish to move to a different frame of reference and use a different measure of resolution such as angular resolution, you need to make all of that very clear, and make sure you transform EVERYTHING, all numbers and units for all participating elements of the discussion, into the same frame of reference...I'm not really sure how you measure a sensor in terms of angular resolution. Additionally, it is the sensor that "sees" in a camera, not something external, not even the front lens element that is gathering the light...it is the sensor that sees and records an image. So it seems logical to me to remain in the original frame of reference: Spatial Resolution at the Sensor).

To keep things consistent, if the discussion continues. Can we use the following sensors, cameras, and lenses?

Sensor A with 5.8 micron pixels (25.6mp FF)
Sensor B with 2.9 micron pixels (102.7mp FF)

Lens A is 800mm f/8 (400mm f/4 lens with 2x TC)
Lens B is 400mm f/4

Camera A with Sensor A and Lens A
Camera B with Sensor B and Lens B
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