Should I buy the 5D mark III ?

I've had the 5D Mark III for about 6 months and have shot over 11000 pictures with it so far. It is a great camera for practically anything and is great in the lower-light environments that I shoot in, coupled with appropriate lenses, of course. I highly recommend it.

Lenses: (all Canon except one Sigma, noted): 70-200mm f/2.8L (non IS version), 200mm f/2.8L, 135mm f/2L, Sigma 85mm f/1.4, 50mm f/1.4, 28mm f/1.8. Note that my higher quality lenses are 85mm and longer since that's what I shoot mostly. The 50 and 28 are not "L" but are fine for when I need them not so frequently.
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Who to approach (Canon/Reseller) for camera donation to NGO

Hi,

I'm currently volunteering for a local, community-oriented conservation NGO in southern Belize, C.A. The organization is funded on a project basis and has very limited funding for buying "fancy" camera equipment such as a DSLR. Do you guys think there is any chance that Canon would be interesting in donating a basic, lets say 650D with 24/2.8 and a macro, to our organization or are we better of trying to contact resellers directly? The camera will be used by our rangers to take pictures of plants they find the the nature reserve they manage and by our volunteer botanist.

website concept: proSLRs.com

grahamclarkphoto said:
pierceography said:
In theory, it's a good idea. But like the other posters have mentioned, it's an uphill battle. In my experience (Application Developer), creating the content management side is easy. Creating the content and building a subscriber/user, that's an entirely separate -- and exponentially more difficult -- endeavor.

Some questions:

* How would you entice professional photographers to review equipment on your site? To start, I imagine this site would have low traffic and small user base, so for a professional photographer to take time away from their job, you'd likely have to pay them.
* How would you manage the content? Would it be a free for all, or would you have an administrator?
* What would be your source of revenue? Ads are great, but given the saturation of market (I mean, you're posting this idea through a competitor) I can't imagine you would recoup your investment (time, capital, etc) very quickly.

Frankly, this idea kind of sounds like facebook for photographers. Which, again, isn't a bad idea... but having built these sorts of tools in the past, I can guarantee getting it off the ground would be more challenging than you think.

Hey Pierce,

Thanks for your thoughts! You're right, the primary factor in getting an idea like this off the ground would be finding the professional photographers to write reviews. I have access to this, so the secondary factor which comes up as you mentioned is of course SEO.

I don't believe revenue would be a requirement here, at least at first. Perhaps referral links to cameras on B&H or something could be one source, which wouldn't be banner-based (ldeal). What do you think?

Graham

If you already have professional photographers willing to do reviews on your (theoretical) site, then you already have small piece in place. In regards to SEO, I would have the photographers write reviews that would exclusively live on your site. Then the photographers could link to your site in their blogs/websites. This would provide a valuable SEO boost. In this context, link backs (depending on the source) can be more valuable than content.

But I'm still skeptical about the overall "business plan" aspect of it. If the site becomes as popular as you envision it, revenue would be a side effect of popularity. It's hard to have a popular website with a large user base and high SEO ranking and not be able to pull in revenue. Sure you can say you're not interested in making money off it, but that will immediately put you at a disadvantage to your competition.

Would it be a useful site? Sure, but useful doesn't always (and frankly rarely) translates into successful. Take this forum for instance. It has almost all the content you're looking to build your site around -- professional reviews/photos from all forms of photographers, featured stories/articles, and just about every opinion you could ask for. Granted, it's lacking in organization, but I wouldn't see myself gravitating towards another site with less content and better organization. Most of us have developed skills for sifting through loosely organized data, and unfortunately have an attention span reflective of that. So your primary challenge will be two fold: attracting users to your site, and convincing them to stay.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be negative here... just realistic. I've spent hundreds of hours of my own time writing my site from scratch with a hoard of useful features that no other site on the Internet offers. And to date, the only regular visitors I get are my wife, my mother, and myself. But I knew that going in. I wanted a web application where I could quickly access all (and by all I mean 32,000 and counting) photos I've taken and organize/view/manage them from anywhere. It works great, and more importantly I had fun building it. But I never had an expectation that it would become wildly popular and be the next facebook for photographers. I just enjoy writing software.

But that being said, I look forward to seeing what you can put together. :-)
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Video direct to iOS?

When I try to transfer video recorded on my 5D Mark III directly to iOS (by dragging to the 'videos' section in iTunes), I get a message when I sync with my iPad that the video was not transferred because it is not in a compatible format.

I usually fix this by opening the video in QuickTime Player 7 and then exporting, being sure to save the audio format as AAC (instead of uncompressed PCM which is the default format from the camera). However, I'd love to be able to skip this step.

Is there a way to have the camera encode the audio in AAC format (or some other iOS compatible audio format) so that I can go straight from the memory card to the iPad? If not, is there some simple and convenient way to do this in software on the computer that doesn't require me to re-encode each video file?

rebates ending soon?

There are often several rebate periods each year. Here are some historical/current rebates, to give you an idea of the trend:

http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Canon-Lenses/Canon-Lens-Rebates.aspx
http://www.the-digital-picture.com/News/Default.aspx?Cat=Canon-Camera-and-Lens-Rebates

If you look at a site like canonpricewatch.com, and click on a lens, you can see the price history and rebates, for example:

02968-Canon-EF-70-200mm-f2.8L-IS-USM-II-price-graph.png
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Boiled to save a lens damaged by Salt Water

J.R. said:
Hi Rienz ... the replies under the post were hilarious.

However, if I may point out that this was posted yesterday as well ...

http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=13631.0

This here, becomes a duplicate thread.
Sorry did not know it already existed ... thanks for pointing it out.
Moderators, can I delete this thread or you will you merge it with the earlier post?
Thanks & regards
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Future of STM and USM

As i do not have a STM body but the Shorty McFourty, i'm not totally happy with the STM thingy, at least not for stills.
The main problem is MF, there is a delay and it just does not feel right, the worst thing is to change from MFD to infinity: the STM is too compared to any lens where i can manually pull the focus.

I hope that this STM stuff doesn't grow too much, because it's not the best thing for still photographers, and any decent videographer uses anyway a followfocus and prefers therefore full MF lenses.

So, please keep USM in the high grade lenses and STM in the consumer stuff (=
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Flash life of speedlites?

sturdiva said:
Here is a great article on the lifespan of speedlights: http://strobist.blogspot.com/2013/02/will-your-flash-last-forever.html
What a complete load of misinformed rubbish. This is to be completely ignored. My 580EXII's must be up over a few hundred thousand pops. My year old Einsteins DO have an odometer...they're up around 40,000 and they're probably barely run in. My Profoto monos definitely are in the several hundreds of thousands on original flash-tubes. Capacitors and boards are more likely failure points. Even so, flash gear of any description is famously reliable.

-PW
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[FILM] Which is "quicker" a SLR (AE-1, SRT-201) or Rangefinder (GSN, QL17)?

I'm going back to film because of my photo 101 class and I am using this as an excuse to add a new film camera to my collection. I'm looking at cameras that existed during the 1970s or older. I have one camera from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. I'll wait 10 more years to get a camera from 2010s D:

Anyways, any one here have any experience using a film rangefinder other than a Leica? Something like a Canonent QL17 or the cult classic Yashica 35mm Electro GSN. I want to use one to get a feel of what a rangefinder has to offer. Another reason why I'm looking for a rangefinder is to have a small, unobtrusive film camera that I can put in my messenger bag. I like the idea of using a rangefinder as my camera of choice because 1. I don't have a risk of getting any real expensive equipment stolen 2. My friends won't think I'm a weirdo carrying a HUGE DSLR (or SLR)

Please, let me know if you have any opinions or if you want to side with my girlfriend and say I have too much camera gear.

-She will not get off my back for having a Point and Shoot under our pillows -.- YOU NEVER KNOW!

books on macro

I'm in the same boat. Just bought a 100 2.8L IS Macro last week. Played around with it over the weekend photographing flowers and just getting an idea of what I could do with the lens. I've seen the same books mentioned but haven't purchased anything.

My nephew took a workshop with Mike Moats (tiny landscapes: http://www.mikemoatsblog.com ) but Mike only conducts his workshops in the Midwest and Southeast. So, if you live in that part of the country, you might want to check out his macro workshops. There are others that give workshops, but Mike Moats doesn't charge you an arm and a leg.

I'll probably checkout the usual book suspects.

BTW - Mike Moats has an eBook: "Creating Art With Macro" that's $14.95
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Extension Tube Detection in DPP for DLO

The main thing that differentiates different TC's is the accuracy of the machining. The front and rear mounts need to be very parallel. Canon goes to extremes to assure this, and you pay the price. Kenko is also excellent.

Then, there are the plastic body tubes from China which may have flimsy mounts that flex and bend. If you use one rarely and are not hung up on perfection, they are fine. But, if you want the best quality, get Kenko or Canon.
I've had all three, I ended up selling my Canon set, and later, sold my Kenko set. I have a cheap Chinese set that I only use to play with once a year or less, and it serves the purpose.

Now that I am selling many of my light weight primes and getting larger zooms, I may pop for Kenko again. I keep a eye out for used ones on our local Craigslist and have found some deals every few years.
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Pictures in DC

All my shots were using the existing lighting that is part of the monuments. The MLK shot is most striking - I got a lucky balance of the spotlights from the ground and some pre-dawn light in the sky. The Lincoln memorial is well lit on the inside (at least for a slow exposure - 1sec @ f8 ISO200). I brightened up the lettering a bit in both cases in post (LR4).
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