Mt Spokane Photography said:

magnum said:

I am finding my new EF-S 18-200mm IS lens quite slow to autofocus. Anyone else notice this or is it just me?

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Quite slow is not a very descriptive term, does it tale 0.5 sec, 5 sec, or 5 minutes? Are you focusing from mfd to infinity, or from 5 ft to10ft? You could have a bad lens, or it could be normal. We really can't tell, and assumptions are often wrong.
Comparing focus time with a lens like the 50mm f/1.4 will make the 50mm look fast, it does not move the internal mechanism nearly as much as iin the 18-200.

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OK, I only had this lens a short time and no other experience with a 11X zoom. I bought Canon (over Tamron, et al) as I thought it would be superior (reviews certainly preferred it).

It was an internal evening shot last night on around 170mm photographing my wife (before and after shots) of a cosmetic treatment. Distance to subject was around 1 to 1.5 metres (didn't measure it exactly). To begin with it would not focus at all. So I exchanged it for the EF 75-300 mm kit lens, which instantly focused. OK obviously not a problem with the camera, then cleaned the contacts on the 18-200 lens and tried again. This time it did focus but took quite a while compared to the 75-300. How long I don't know for sure as I didn't time it.

Sorry for the lack of precision.

I'll just give you my wedding gear (basic) when I did them, and you can use that info however you want:

5D Mark II
1D Mark III
2 flashes
35 f/1.4L
85L f/1.2L II
24-70 f/2.8L I
70-200L (had I first, then upgraded when II came out)
135L (a fantastic lens!)

When I begin doing weddings again, I'm going to bring my 16-35L II along, 24-70L II instead of I, plus the above lenses. I may bring my 200 f/2L for the heck of it. Will I use every lens? Probably not. Better safe than sorry though. It all depends.

Now, what you want to do is decide which focal lengths and flexibility you need. I needed the flexibility of the 24-70mm range, and saw no reason at all to have a 50 prime considering at f/2.8-4 where I was shooting, was just as good in IQ as any 50 prime. 35L though, that is slightly better and 85L is phenomenally better.

Don't buy all these expensive lenses at once!!

A lot of CF cards. Big ass gear bag, tripod.

crasher8 said:

Why is the newer Canon handstrap always backordered?

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I got mine on eBay for $15 USD. It took a couple of weeks to get it but I am very happy with it.

neuroanatomist said:

Canon is following the hardware release plan for this firmware. Delay. Delay more. Delay even more. Release.

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After the hardware release comes the tape fix, and perhaps a glue job on the mirror.

Then comes the firmware plan. Advise that issues will be fixed in a future unspecifed firmware update, delay, delay, release partial firmware fix, release a fix for the update, release a fix for the fix for the update, and then, it starts all over with replacement hardware.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/NEW-BOXED-NIKON-D3200-DSLR-CAMERA-BODY-AF-S-DX-18-200mm-VR-ED-II-LENS-KIT-/261031604728?pt=Digital_Cameras&hash=item3cc6b231f8

heres a kit with the D3200 and 18-200 VR

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/SALE-BRAND-NEW-NIKON-AF-S-NIKKOR-50mm-f-1-4G-DSLR-LENS-F1-4-G-/221006026406?pt=AU_Lenses&hash=item3374fc56a6

heres the 50 f1.4G

all up about $2100

75% of that cost is glass but good glass makes the biggest difference
the only super zoom better than the nikon 18-200 is the canon 28-300L
and that lens is $2500 just for the lens and 4 times the size

Mt Spokane Photography said:

If you have to use plus 3 EV to see it, its not a issue. It does depend a lot on the exposure, I usually expose raw images to the right, this allows you to pull down the exposure rather than boost it.
My 5D MK III was a little better in this regard, but you can still pull it up 5 EV and see the sensor.

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Well, it's present and visible in the untouched RAW file at ISO 100. I pushed to +3EV simply to show the pattern.

Shot a Chalk Art Festival last weekend. The featured artist drew a sweet Iron Man/Captain America mural. Filmed all on the 5DMKIII. I was very pleased with the performance especially with the night shots. Check it out.

http://youtu.be/oFpss6FG6MA

lpwphoto said:

RLPhoto said:

If your doing landscapes, a full frame camera is the best. It has more resolving power that smaller sensored camera with Equivalent MP count.

If you have the budget a MK3 is the best.

If you have less to spend a 5d2 is the best.

If your strapped for cash, A 5Dc is a excellent choice and still a stunning camera.

Pick your poison. ;D

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Another good thought that I had briefly considered but shoved aside in my mind. My reasoning being that with the lower MP count on the 5Dc, wouldn't that affect how big I could go with enlargements? I'd really like to be able to make at least 40x60 high quality enlargements with whatever I end up purchasing. Thoughts or input on that?

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If you want to print something that's 5 feet wide and want ultra-tack sharpness at a super-close viewing distance, I dont believe any DSLR will provide that kind of detail.

The reason you print large is to move the viewing distance of the print father back to make your photo have Impact. This is called Scale. A good example of scale is printing a 6 foot photo of a tiny little mouse. Why would you print so large for such a small mouse?

If the viewing distance is moved back to a few feet, your eye will not be able to discern between 12mp or 20mp. Will 20mp make a difference? Sure, but wont be noticed at the proper viewing distance and would be a marginal improvement at a close viewing distance.

If you want ultra-sharpness for large prints and close viewing distances look into Medium or large format cameras. 35mm never will match larger formats for insane IQ.

All in all, More MP is better but 12mp could do it fine with Genuine Fractals software.

I'm gonna suggest some very cheap manual lenses (M42 mount). You can easily find them on ebay or at second hand shops.

Zenitar 16mm f/2.8
Mir 20M 20mm f/3.5

If you want to stick with new lenses, choose between Canon 10-20 and Tokina 11-16. Maybe Sigma 8-16 if you need extreme wide angles, but I don't trust Sigma QC at all.. Of course these lenses are not cheap.

The main obstacle to this idea is the readout time necessary for each of the pixels at 12 bits is too long. So instead of sampling a little faster and maintaining the bit depth, sample MUCH faster but only sample 1 bit. In essence, you run the the bias up so high on the transistor that you have an avalanche photo diode that triggers if it sees a photon ('1') or does not ('0'). The problem still persists that you need one hell of a ROIC to get you to the speeds that you need but the lane width decreases significantly (by 12x). Other problem is dark and bias noise that will cause a "false 1" but it's not like you get a full 12 bits of info from a 12 bit array anyway. The sampling speeds you would need to make sure that you are not saturating your sensor are pretty high, but when you get to the sweat spot it turns out that you need MUCH MUCH less light to make a sensor work this way and you would essentially have infinite dynamic range.

I have a Pro Runner 350AW. The most I've fit in the bag are my 5d Mark III, 24-70mm f2.8 lens, 70-200mm f2.8 lens, lens hoods for each lense, flash, battery charger, filter boxes. But then again, that's all the equipment that I have. ;D

maybe they are pre-production camera

dstppy said:

Seriously, THIS is what you give us? How about MFA goofuses?

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Imho Canon simply removed afma from the 50d -> 60d step to make the 7d look better, or else there would be little reason to get the 7d for situations where more af points and better af tracking don't matter. I didn't get it anyway because the 7d doesn't run magic lantern, but with the 60d you have to be picky when buying fast aperture lenses or have them adjusted (Tamron does this for free).

te4o said:

If you look precisely into the focusing screen chamber access of the 7D and the 5D3 there is a difference.
I hope the 5D3 will still have the same ease of access. Actually, they can't change it a lot, can they? Servicing / cleaning of the focusing screen is performed quite often.

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Well, I must say: it's easy to access. I can even confirm it, but without illustrating the whole procedure on my own body, because I'm a bit afraid to do it myself.

First of all: DON'T YOU EVER TOUCH YOUR FOCUSING SCREEN WITH ANYTHING. USE ONLY AIR BLOWER TO REMOVE VISIBLE DUST ON IT.

As for my experience: don't even use a blower, because you may make things worse, as I did it with my copy of 5D Mk III.

A little story here:
About a week ago I noticed some speck on my focusing screen while looking through the viewfinder. Firstly I didn't plan to do anything with that. But whom I'm fooling around?! It was annoying every time I looked through the viewfinder. Well, I decided to try a blower (damn it).

2 pushes on a blower, then another 2 and another and finally it (the speck) was gone. I was happy for 2 seconds or more before I noticed new participles from the other side of the focusing screen. I tried to blow them away but nothing helped. It was under the focusing screen.

The things got worse when I tried a sensor cleaning swab. My bad. It didn't helped either. As a service guy said I had scratched my focusing screen. :

As you've already know I went to service. The screen was scratched but not noticable in the viewfinder. I asked them to try to clean it from visible participles. As they said it was easier to replace than clean it.

But as it's a newer model, the new focusing screen will take for about 2 month to get shipped.

I was begging them to clean it, just to try, and the service guy said OK.

I must mention that this was not an authorized canons service centre. In my country (Ukraine), the service under warranty is not so good and professional as the paid one, with "real" engineers working there.

The service guy took my MKIII and invited me to come with him just to watch the whole process (madness). He unscrewed two little black screws (as on the pic) and pulled out the bracket, which holds the focusing screen chamber.

The chamber opens by clicking the lock, as on the 7D's focusing screen replacement procedure (http://www.focusingscreen.com/work/7den.htm), and then the screen was exposed. The service guy took the focusing screen out with tweezers and pushed some air on it. It was cleaner than before, with less dust but some specks were "glued" and didn't want to fall of. So we ended up with ordering the new focusing screen. And now I'm waiting it to get shipped in two months.
That's the whole story. Sorry for such a long one.....

bkorcel said:

My take on this is that they have a lot on their plate right now...not to mention that someone reports an issue and it has to be regression tested across all models to make sure it's only limited to the one reported. It's a complex process.

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Is this your application for Canon marketing, or are you going into politics ?

bkorcel said:

Understand folks that these new cameras are much more complicated than those of 10 years ago. If you fix one thing it might break something else and so goes code rewrites. I for one am very happy that Canon is fixing some of these issue even if they are minor.

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If they implement afma on the 60d, I'm happy if they break the camera serial number at the same time. No, really, I've been working as a C++ programmer for some time and know a little of software complexity, testing and lifecycles. And the lack of feature updates on dlsr bodies is simply due to marketing, you cannot tell me they would be unable implement 5x and 7x bracketing without major regressions.

bkorcel said:

Check your PC or laptop. How many firmware updates are there for it? Likely more than all of canon's cameras combined.

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All my computers never had any BIOS update - and this is the thing that compares best to a camera firmware.

Thanks. I guess when you compress all that haze, you can really see it. Post-processing will continue 8)

I've recently moved from a 7D to a 5D MKIII and can confirm that at lower ISOs (<4/800) the IQ difference is marginal at best. Above this it is clear that there is less noise in the 5D sensor, especially when you consider that the 7D is natively capped at 6,400 (without expansion).

As others have said above, the advantage of the MKIII over the 7D is the DOF, and the crop factor. Both of these will be more/less important dependent on what type of photography you're into. Being primarily interested in landscape photography I wanted less crop to get more out of wide angle lenses.

As the 5D is my first FF camera, I've also noticed that images seem a lot brighter and "sparkle" more over the 7D, although this could just be me buying into the MKIII love-in. I would be interested to get peoples option on this...

neuroanatomist said:

Capsule version - EF-S lenses project a smaller image circle, which covers an APS-C sensor but it too small for an APS-H or FF sensor. The advantage is that a smaller image circle means smaller elements (in the case of wide angle lenses), easier to design lenses, and thus lower costs. Most of Canon's EF-S lenses also have a short back focus (meaning a shorter physical length of the lens, Nikon and 3rd party lenses don't), which means a mirror larger than that for an APS-C sensor will hit the lens, so they designed the mount to prevent that from happening.

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Thank you short, sweet, and to the point (as always) !

Wow!

When I posted the question I got 1 reply and thought oh well it must be a bone question never mind. Then I have another look and now I have this lot must be from over the pond me thinks

All of you thank you for the fantastic response I now understand it all a lot better.

The reason for the question was I have 400d, 40d, and the 7d along with

Canon FD 50mm F1.8+FD to ES conv = 1.4
Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM
Canon EF-S15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM
Sigma 17-70mm F2.8-4.5 DC Macro
Sigma 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 DC OS
Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6
Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM
Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC HSM
Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II
Canon EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM
Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM
Canon EF 70-200mm f4 L IS II USM
Sigma 150-500mm f5.0-6.3 DG OS HSM
2x EX DG Tele Converter on 70-200 Canon
2x EX DG Tele Converter on 150-500 Sigma

And was wondering if I should get rid of the EF-S and the 3 body's if the new 7D was full frame or do I keep them in case something was invented that could use both but now I understand that the most economical way forward would be to get rid of them

Thanks again for all the VERY informative reply's

I have been on a lot of forums and there is not one bad post in this lot normally on a forum you get at least one dick head who cant resist a p**s take

Thanks.

Great web site as well Craig

Quote from: John Thomas on June 20, 2012, 01:11:25 PM
And there are plenty of situations in which one needs VC at weddings.

Are there? Plenty? All I'm all in favor of a "free" IS of a Tamron lens that performs like the Canon mk1 and is much cheaper, and I'll use the IS for my personal spare time shots. But except for totals of the church and such no situations would spring to my mind that wouldn't involve people, thus rendering the IS advantage nearly moot at these focal lengths?

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Yes, there are plenty of situations, at least in my case. It is not only the fact that the low light forces you (ok, me) to IS becasue I cannot obtain 1/70s at longer end, there are cases in which you (I) suddenly see "the shot" and because I'm in rush to catch it, my hand isn't steady enough. IS compensates this as well.

Also, perhaps is better to say my humble opinion about "useless" IS on slow shutter speeds because "human subjects are constantly moving" - there are (at least) two things to consider here:

1.) there are enough situations in which your subject (candid scene / portrait) can be catched at 1/20, even at 1/10.

2.) From our experience we know at what shutter speed we can freeze a moving man (and how much we want to freeze from his movement), depending on what he does. This, at (my) events is usually between 1/30 till 1/60-1/80. I preffer to have the camera near to the lowest shutter speed possible in order to have lowest ISO possible. And IS helps here.

just my2c & HTH

PS: Perhaps is better to mention that I preffer to shot mood, atmosphere shots and go to select events. Harsh, bright (neon) lights aren't my kind. But perhaps I'm mistaken.

stilscream said:

5d mk iii kill the 1d mk iv in low noise tests, so I imagine a 1dx would be even more of the same.

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The 1D4 beats the 5DII so it is not exactly shabby

Gangstas kant spell . Thay was luking for a Cannon.

Thank you all for responding. I'm a happy camper now
The issue was indeed the fluorescent like you all suggested.

BTW, I just ordered one from Videoguys, currently out of stick, 7-14days for canon to get them.

A preliminary review of the alternative 5D grip can be found in "Third Party Manufacturers"