Threads

gekko · Mar 5, 2014

Hi, trying to figure out how to get "max" tele-reach on a budget for shooting large BIF. Let's say my budget is maximum $2000. Obviously the "great whites" 500/600+ are out of my budget. I currently have a 7D with 70-200mm 2.8L IS II + 2X vIII converter, which I find I always use at the 400 mm setting. I am however not satisfied with the image quality of that combo at f5.6. At f7.1 it is better, but still leaves a bit to be desired. I have AFMA it using FoCal.

I have been looking at the following options:

- Canon 400mm f5.6L (old design, seems to have good image quality, no IS)
- Tamron 150-600mm (heavy, large, don't really need the zoom, sceptical about purchasing an expensive 3rd party lens)

Any other suggestions/advise? Thanks in advance.

tsepeto · Mar 5, 2014

Hello
I have a 5D II with EF 24-70 2.8 I.
I want to buy a variable ND filter and a circular polarizing filter. For both filters i think that is better to buy 82mm filters although my lens is 77mm, because in the future maybe I will buy some other lens..Am I right?
Have you any suggestion for these filters? For the ND i saw the Hoya variable ND, what is your opinion is it worth? For the Circular Polarizer I saw the B+W Kaesemann XS-Pro Circular Polarizer MRC Nano Filter.. Please tell me your thoughts.
Thank you in advance

Hjalmarg1 · Mar 5, 2014

Bryan already reviewed the new Tamron 150-600mm f/5-6.3 Di VC USD Lens. He says "This highly anticipated lens has been a very fun lens to evaluate. While autofocus performance and over-500mm image quality get my vote for this lens' weaknesses, the Tamron 150-600 still has a great deal going for it. The Tamron 150-600mm f/5-6.3 Di VC USD Lens is defined by attractive image quality over a great focal length range with a relatively compact, light, reasonably well-built design that includes Vibration Control and a very attractive price"

here is the link:
http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/Tamron-150-600mm-f-5-6.3-Di-VC-USD-Lens.aspx

East Wind Photography · Mar 4, 2014

I felt a bit nostalgic and picked up an EOS-3 35mm film camera and was pleasantly surprised i could still find 35mm film being sold at CVS. Ive been shooting with a 5diii and 7d for so long i forgot what film images really look like. Im still on my first roll of film but wondering if anyone else still uses a 3 for photography. I used to shoot a lot of black and white in the day and barely recall the excellent dynamic range that film can capture. I am somewhat excited over this...maybe as much as when i first switched to digital in the 90s.

Post some of your digitized images here.

TheJock · Mar 4, 2014

I done a shoot at my local Go-Kart track two night’s back and found the failings of me and my Sigma flash unit, it (me?) blew some photos out and failed to fire on others, probably due to recycle time (7 sec’s), so I went to my local dealers to price what they had and I would like to pick everyone’s brains about a potential purchase.
I looked at three units, the Canon 430, the Nissin 866 and the Yongnuo 568 which are all similarly priced (in decreasing order), it’s probably worthwhile mentioning that I did not make any adjustments to the camera settings, I simply attached my Sigma flash unit and set it to E-TTL and hoped for the best, but which would you consider the best option from the list? I ultimately need fast recycling with consistent results; and yes, there’s a tonne of user error in my favour with how I used the Sigma, which brings me to my last item, a unit that’s user friendly.
I don’t mind buying something that’s way more capable than my experience as I can “grow into it”. My heart’s telling me the Canon, the stats are telling me the Nissin, but this forum is awash with threads on Yongnuo’s products, of which I don’t fully understand as I have very limited experience with using a flash unit. Please help!
And as always, thanks in advance for your help and support.

Stewart.

wsmith96 · Mar 4, 2014

I just started a wildlife photography class and had an opportunity to snap some photo's at the instructors house last weekend. He had a few blinds built and showed us some techniques to get birds to visit feeding areas without them looking like feeding areas.

I took 52 photos and here are the five I thought were the best ones. Let me know what you think! I was using the instructor's 1.4 extender with my 70-200.

-w

Rienzphotoz · Mar 4, 2014

Just got this email with this article posted By planetMitch (on Planet 5D)
http://blog.planet5d.com/2014/03/after-10-years-moon-and-saturn-convergence-captured-with-magic-lantern/

Is Magic Lantern changing the world? Yes!

Here’s another example of a use for Magic Lantern RAW video that just astounded me.

While in itself, it isn’t “exciting” video for most people, for those who are into astronomy, an occulation of objects is indeed fascinating (I was very into astronomy as a kid and watched many of these events).

Note: Our comment section is back again! Make your thoughts known to the world directly at the bottom of planet5D posts again! Scroll down to see what everyone is saying

When I saw this video, I was so surprised by the dynamic range – the Moon is very bright and Saturn isn’t – so I had to ask Colin Legg how he did it! He graciously sent planet5D some background info.

It is especially significant if you understand the difficulty in making this video (again, I know it isn’t horribly exciting or cinematic), not only the relative rarity of it, but how difficult it is do shoot… so I want you to specifically see the ‘challenges’ section below.

From Colin Legg:

We have waited 10 years for a Saturn/Moon occultation event in Australia. The Moon orbits the Earth at an angle with respect to the Sun and planets and this slowly changes with time. 2014/2015 are good years for occultations as the angles converge. We are lucky to have 4 Saturn events in Western Australia this year.

The first, February 22nd, was a daylight occultation, with first contact occurring right on dawn in WA. I have wanted to video this event for years. The challenge is to capture sharp well exposed images of both the Moon and Saturn as they converge. Saturn is tiny compared to the Moon due to it’s much larger distance away. So you need a fairly good telescope to nicely capture both the planet and it’s rings.

Moon Saturn Occultation
Moon Saturn Occultation
Description
Captured from Perth, Western Australia, just on dawn.

Equipment: Celestron C8, f/10, prime focus. Canon 5D2, running Magic Lantern RAW video firmware in 3x crop mode @ 1880 x 1056 resolution. 1/60 sec exposure, ISO 200, 10 fps.

Thanks to Alex Cherney for the original heads up

More at facebook.com/ColinLeggPhotography

Challenges
1. Stability: At 2000 mm focal length you need a solid tripod, well balanced camera and no wind. Camera mirror slap and shutter shake are both sources of unwanted movement.

2. Dynamic Range: The limb of the Moon is quite a bit brighter than Saturn. A 14 bit, DSLR has adequate range, 8 bit is too narrow.

3. Resolution and Scale. Smaller pixels are preferred to capture the fine details. At least full HD (or close) to include as much of the Moon’s limb as possible.

The 1st requirement is best served by video capture. Electronic shutter eliminates camera shake. The 2nd and 3rd are best served by classic DSLR still capture. What to do?

1. Hire a 1Dc or Red. Both meet all requirements, but are quite expensive to hire and not readily available in WA. Cost can exceed $400 for one day hire.

2. Install Magic Lattern alpha video firmware on 5D2, and shoot in 3x crop mode video. Video solves (1), Raw solves (2), 3x crop solves (3). And it costs nothing (extra) !

Equipment: Celestron C8, 2000 mm, f/10, prime focus. Canon EOS 5D Mark II, running Magic Lantern RAW video firmware in 3x crop mode @ 1880 x 1056 resolution. 1/60 sec exposure, ISO 200, 10 fps.

mikejkay · Mar 4, 2014

I am still getting to grips with my 5DIII and I am, in general, very pleased with it. However, I started playing with bracketed shots at different exposures with my old 7D and found this feature very usefull. One of the features that led to my buying the 5DIII was the ability to take 7 bracketed shots. However, I find that I cannot do this, the camera will only rattle off 6 shots. I can get the 7 exposures if I reduce to mRAW which rather negates one of the benefits of the 5DIII. I shoot RAW to the CF card and JPEG to the SD card. Reducing the JPEG to minimum makes no difference.

My fastest CF card is 300x and my SD cards are newer Class 6 UHS-1. Will faster CF cards solve the problem?

filipmakowski · Mar 4, 2014

Hi all,

I've pulled together a short video of our recent sailing trip in the Whitsundays Australia, all shot on a Canon 5D Mark III.

Although most days were fast and furious, I didn't use any fancy stabilisation gear. I just shot with a tripod attached to the camera and carried it handheld. The inertia of the tripod smoothed the motion of the video footage... quite effective.

http://youtu.be/stoRJxX3b_k

Canon Rumors · Mar 4, 2014

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DPReview has posted an couple of interviews it has had with Canon executives. Once in late 2013 and another at CP+ last month. Most of the interview is about what you’d expect a Canon executive to say.</p>
<p><strong>On the topic of Smartphones</strong>

<em><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">“Realistically, thanks to the global prevalence of smartphones there are more photographs being taken. And as such I anticipate an organic growth of people who are using their smartphone and come to want to take better photographs. Regardless of what device they’re using, whether it’s a smartphone or a compact camera or DSLR, I’d like to encourage people to take more and more pictures.”</span></em></p>
<p><strong>On Canon being stagnant or boring

</strong><em>“They may perceive us in that way, but we are incorporating technological innovation into our products. The EOS 70D’s Dual Pixel AF technology is a good example of innovation that is unique to Canon.</em></p>
<p><em>Dual Pixel CMOS AF was born out of the concept of allowing the user to freely choose which kind of finder they wanted to use. The optical finder, the camera’s LCD or the screen of a mobile device via our EOS Remote app.”</em></p>
<p><strong>On 4K video taking over from true still images

</strong><em>“Yes, definitely. There will always be a need for still photographs, in my opinion. I believe that still images contain more information, and have more depth and meaning.”</em><strong>

</strong></p>
<p><strong>On the EOS M2 coming to North America or Europe

</strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><em>“It’s a possibility but we haven’t made a final decision yet. We’re looking at the market.”</em>

</span></p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.dpreview.com/articles/2097339172/cp-2014-canon-interview-we-dont-see-the-smartphone-as-an-enemy" target="_blank">Read the full interview</a></strong></p>
<p><strong><span style="color: #ff0000;">c</span>r</strong></p>

Aglet · Mar 3, 2014

DxOmark's new king of the DR hill is a crop video sensor. ouch!

Red's Epic Dragon - so video is not a handicap to excellent sensor performance. I guess I'd based that tenet on some other companys' products.

www.dxomark.com/Reviews/RED-Epic-Dragon-review-First-camera-to-break-the-100-point-DxOMark-sensor-score-barrier

Altho not very flexible as a still camera, just goes to prove that well designed hardware can produce excellent performance metrics even at video framerates, ... with a crop sensor. I'm impressed, too bad we don't get to view the basic measurement data.

I wonder how that Arri would test.

Canon Rumors · Mar 3, 2014

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Two separate folks have written in to say we should expect some kind of a DSLR announcement for NAB 2014 in April.</p>
<p>NAB is generally for Cinema EOS and other cameras that could be looked at as professional videography tools. For this reason, I have a hard time thinking the EOS 7D Mark II would be announced for this show, even if it is rumored to have cutting edge videography features. I think the camera will still fall into the prosumer still photographer segment with some bonus sales to videographers.</p>
<p>I think we’re going to be getting a lot of 7D Mark II information in the next little while, most of which being wishful thinking.  I’d bet on an announcement after NAB, with Cinema EOS products being announced for the show in late March or early April. We are told to expect 2 cinema lens announcements from a separate source.</p>
<p>We will see another round of PowerShot announcements, headlined by the SX50 IS replacement some time this spring, I think an EOS 7D Mark II announcement at that time is more likely.</p>
<p>This is also a Photokina year (we’ll be there), so I suspect we’ll see a big DSLR announcement in late August for that show.</p>
<p>More to come…</p>
<p><strong><span style="color: #ff0000;">c</span>r</strong></p>

TrabimanUK · Mar 3, 2014

Hi,

My wife and I do a bit of wedding photography, and have been using remote flashes for a while for some great shots. She shoots 7D and I shoot a 5D II. We use the Yongnuo 622C wireless Tx/Rx boxes, one on the camera and one per remote flash. We use a mixture of Canon 430 EXII and Yongnuo YN-565 EX on each YN 622C.

Everything works fine. Well, it did until we tried to be clever. Initially only my wife had the 622C on her 7D and only she controlled the remote flashes. I just ran with a 580 EX II on my 5D II and had no remote flash control. I know that the 580 EXII can be used as a commander, but we bought it after the remote units and use it as an on-camera flash unit.

However, last week we tried to get clever. We both ran with a 622C on our cameras, so that both of us could use the remote lash units, and this is where problems arose. On taking a shot, one would trigger the other's on-camera flash as well. Not ideal.

I have tried to read the "chinglish" that the instructions are written in, and I thought I understood them, but I was wrong. I thought that I could set the flash remotes to work on 2 channels so that independent cameras could trigger them, but but I can't seem to get it to work.

Is there any way that we can set up a bank of remote flashes, each with a YN-622C unit attached so that they can be independently fired by two cameras, both with a YN-622C unit and a Canon 430-EX II on them?

Please help

Grant

Canon Rumors · Mar 3, 2014

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<p>A new patent showing the 600mm f/4 optical formula. Is Canon already working on the replacements to the current super telephoto lenses? It’s quite possible! Although I suspect we’re talking 7-10 years from now. These sort of patents could also be for technology that will appear in  other lenses. Such as the upcoming replacement of the EF 800mm f/5.6L IS.</p>
<p>I do expect we’ll be seeing more DO lenses in the future. There seems to be an awful lot of patents for DO optical formulas. I suspect the cost of production is the hinderance to bringing these lenses to market at the present time. We already have <a href="http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/973129-REG/canon_5176b002_ef_200_400mm_f_4l_is.html/bi/2466/kbid/3296" target="_blank">$11,000 200-400 f/4 lenses</a> and <a href="http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/918849-REG/nikon_2205_af_s_nikkor_800mm_f_5_6e.html/bi/2466/kbid/3296" target="_blank">$18,000 800mm lenses</a>. I suspect we’re at the ceiling of what people will pay for a lens…. or not. :)</p>
<p><strong>Patent Publication No. 2014-26210</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Publication date 2014.2.6</li>
<li>Filing date 2012.7.30</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Example 1</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Focal length f = 588mm</li>
<li>Fno. 4.12</li>
<li>Angle of view 2ω = 4.22 °</li>
<li>BF 56.0mm</li>
<li>Total lens length 374.7mm</li>
<li>Inner focus</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Example 5</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Focal length f = 588mm</li>
<li>Fno. 4.12</li>
<li>Angle of view 2ω = 4.22 °</li>
<li>BF 55.0mm</li>
<li>Total lens length 343.5mm</li>
<li>Inner focus</li>
<li>Diffraction optical element</li>
<li>Effect of the glass material</li>
<li>Fluorite (Fluorite)</li>
<li>In the long lens fluorite + total length, correction of chromatic aberration is easy</li>
<li>In short lens fluorite + total length, correction of chromatic aberration is difficult</li>
<li>Diffractive optical element (DOE)</li>
<li>Diffractive optical element can be corrected if the chromatic aberration</li>
<li>Flare caused by light diffraction</li>
</ul>
<p>Source: [<a href="http://egami.blog.so-net.ne.jp/2014-03-03" target="_blank">EG</a>]</p>
<p><strong><span style="color: #ff0000;">c</span>r</strong></p>

mackguyver · Mar 3, 2014

Post your strange weather photos - I'll start with a "Fogbow" - taken on 10/10/10 - and yes, they are real (see link)

Chainshaw · Mar 3, 2014

I have just upgraded to the 70D from a T3i. Baby steps. I am still learning my way around a much more detailed camera.

Live oaks at Hofwyl Broadfield Plantation

USWNT vs. Russia at the Georgia Dome. Unfortunately, I could not get the 70-200 2.8 in the door, so I had to take the 55-250STM. It is just not quite fast enough for indoor action shots.

Same deal with the Alton Brown tour. I could take the camera, but not the big lens. Again, the 55-250STM was small enough. I thought that it did pretty well in the low light with less action. The drummer is a good friend of mine.

I still have so much to learn, but I am certainly impressed with the camera, so far. It is way smarter than I am. I have to catch up to it.

gshocked · Mar 3, 2014

Hi all,

I'm keen in purchasing a prime Tele on a budget. I've been looking at the Canon 300mm f4L for sports but not sure if I should wait? Is there a rumored replacement coming out for this lens? I hopping the new one is weather sealed...

curtisnull · Mar 2, 2014

If money is no object which lens would you choose. Obviously, the 16-35 is a full stop faster. But this isn't a lens that I would use that often. What are the pros and cons of each? Which one is better quality...I mean really better quality...not just, "well the 16-35 is the more expensive one, so it has to be better". Comments appreciated from those of you who have or have used both.

grey4 · Mar 2, 2014

Does anyone consider the 7D to 70D an actual upgrade. The 70D is newer, has better ISO performance, it has a flip out LCD as well as the whole live view AF thing. It has the exact same AF system and a very similar frame rate. Has anyone made the "jump" to the newer body?

I'm a 7D shooter here and I'm considering making the switch, basically, is the 70D 200$ better than the 7D?

PhotoConceptsDT · Mar 2, 2014

Hello All,

I just got into DSLR photography over the past couple of years. Last summer, I wanted to try my hand at creating those typical long exposure waterfall pictures. What I had at the time was my t3i, 24-105 and a two-stop ND filter. Now, most of my friends and family all say nice things about the photo, but I was hoping to get a bit arm's length with the critiquing.

Your thoughts?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/conceptsbydt/9529656047#

Marek Truchlik · Mar 2, 2014

Hi Guy,
I stored mentioned lens with hood attached as I rarely put it down. Today I decided to pack light but stayed surprise as I was not able to remove hood from lens. In the end I managed with applying some force, but another surprise came as I m not able to attach it back in regular or reverse way.
Did you faced any similar problem?
What could the solution be?

Thanks

agierke · Mar 2, 2014

Just ran across this article online..

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/jul/17/5d-superman-memory-crystal-heralds-unlimited-lifetime-data-storage

Really fascinating. The potential for limitless data storage and it's various applications is pretty exciting. Hopefully we see this available to the mass market in the next decade or two.

Menace · Mar 2, 2014

Was wondering how often fellow CR members visit this forum.

Unfortunately, I'm 'Option 5' - It could be from my smart phone, tablet, laptop or the pc! I suppose I just want to stay up to date with all things Canon.

JLRoyal42 · Mar 1, 2014

Went out to shoot some photos for Lotuss Clothing Supply's Spring LookBook and ended up shooting some Raw Video.
This was my first project using ML raw and I'll definitely be doing more.
Shot on my 5D Mark lll with a 35mm F2 and a FlyCam.

https://vimeo.com/87812777

Andy_Hodapp · Mar 1, 2014

Thought I would try today the brenizer method aka bokeh panorama. Asked my friend to help me with it, by modeling. The photo itself isn't really anything special but I know I'll need this technique down the line for clients looking for extremely large portrait prints. 24 shots on a Canon 5D MKii with 200mm F/2.8 L II at F/4, ISO 400, 1/200th.

Full sized file, http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2885/12866656185_633f4c5aa5_o.jpg

you can see some of the mistakes I make with the spot heal tool in Lightroom, should have used the heal brush in Photoshop and taken more photos further way from my subject.