It's between the Sigma 50 1.4 and the Canon 1.4

I've had the Canon in the past on a crop and wasn't that impressed by the micro motor. The DoF wide open was nice but not THAT good and the price is right. I believe on a FF it will shine a bit brighter.
I hate the dicey risk you take with Sigmas. I have had decent luck with them but I know it's hit or miss.

Is the Sigma THAT much better that it's worth it to try 2 or 3 attempts at a good one?

(On a 5D3 and Elan 7)

Last night I got my new 24-70mm II from B&H – I noticed the serial number was xx00000050. Knowing this lens is in high demand, I was a bit puzzled to see such a low number.

I tested the lens and at first sight it seems to be in good condition. I need to test more this week-end though, especially the sharpness in corners and edges.

I guess my main concern is making sure I got a brand new lens, and not something that was returned by a previous buyer, Is there any way to check that out?

Thanks
Luc

Maybe Canon will learn that we want new camera with new potentiel.
http://www.slashgear.com/canons-q3-2012-crunch-income-down-a-third-as-cameras-struggle-25253973/
It's not because people doesn't buy new camera, it's because you don't sell new product.
Why not doing digital camera with all the feature you got 15 years ago in the eos 3, EOS elanIIe or EOS 7e etc.
Why not a "real new sensor"
Why not a real good AF like the one in the eos 3, EOS elanIIe or EOS 7e etc.
Look Canon you loose the game, time to act.

I think I probably heard a thousand times in our forum ... "22Mpx is more than enough ... how much more do you need?" ... Whenever this question pop-up at me, I always wonder ... if there is ever a living Ansel Adam or Richard Avedon hearing this .... what will be their responds?

Back in the old film days, these two Grant Masters used 8x10 films to create the absolute best images (both in terms of IQ & creativity) in the field of Landscape (Ansel Adam) and Fashion & Portrait (Richard Avedon) respectively ... and I am sure their works will always remain in the books and museums for generations to come!

If one converts a 8x10 film with a modern scanner ... say with 4000dpi ... a single 8x10 film will look like (4000 ppi)(8 in)(4000 ppi)(10 in) = 1280 Mpixels or 1.28Gb !!!!

So ... my question is ... is our current DSLR technology still coming a long way behind, in the eyes of the Grant Masters? Or ... if you are a Grant Master, will you be happy with 22Mpx or even with the Hasselblad H4D-200MS of 200Mpx, if you are leaving a legacy of works behind?

I'm considering switching out my older 580 EX II's with a set of new 600 EX-RT's. I was also considering Radio Poppers to get my 580's wireless TTL. I've seen the 600EX's for as low as 550$ on Evilbay.

Is they're a better or cheaper way to get TTL off-camera flash? I like the idea of not having to mess around with triggers but If its cheaper, Why not?

Hi guys,
My friends came to me and asked for help on a music video.
I have never done one in my life, so this was quite a mission.
To put things into perspective, we only had half of the song during the recording, making it very difficult to film a proper "story".
I was in charge of the video whereas my friends were in charge of the audio.
Audio equipment includes the IRig (cheesy, but handy) and Zoom h1 I believe.
Anyway, camera used was 60D, no rigs or any stabilizers (except for a tripod!)
Mainly used the 50mm 1.4, and occasionally switched to the 24-105mm when I needed wide shots or non-shaky shots.
Hope you enjoy it guys, give me some feedback (both video wise and singing wise)!
Thanks!

Payphone Music Video Cover - http://youtu.be/dpKtQ-1cOxE?hd=1

I also made a short film - Impossible (Short Film)
The script was a bit of a problem, so the acting was improvised.

Hello all,

I have been asked to shoot an event tonight, kind of a last minute thing. It's a cocktail party at a museum. My understanding is that they want pictures of the guests, atmosphere, etc. The event is indoors and the room has *decent* lighting. I'm told the photos will be used primarily for their Facebook page.

I'll be shooting with my 60d, and the lenses I have are the 50mm 1.4 and 28-135. I do not have an external flash.

I realize this is all kind of vague...but any advice? This is entirely on a volunteer basis, so I'm not all that nervous. And of course I'll do some minor post processing before I hand the images over.

Thanks!

I dug through the forums here, and I didn't see a dedicated thread (there was some good info in the 12-24mm thread tho).

I'm looking into this lens mostly for astrophotography, so I can shoot a wide view of night skies, milky way mostly.

I tried this out with my 24-105 for the meteor shower last weekend, and found that I need something faster, and something wider, so the Rokinon seems to satisfy both of these needs.

I have two big questions:

1) does anyone have any experience shooting at infinity @ f/2.8 with this lens, does it have a fairly flat field of focus?
2) Has anyone had experiencing correcting the strong distortion in ACR 7? Is there a profile for a FF camera plus this lens in it that works well?

And of course, any general opinions about this lens would be great.

Thanks in advance!!

Has anyone here used a B+W ND1000 Filter on a 5D MKIII and knows the correct white balance setting to avoid the red shift of this filter which it usually produces on daytime long exposures?

An interesting couple of articles from Chipworks [via Canon Watch]:

http://www.chipworks.com/blog/technologyblog/2012/10/23/full-frame-dslr-cameras-part-1-nikon-vs-sony/
http://www.chipworks.com/blog/technologyblog/2012/10/24/full-frame-dslr-cameras-canon-stays-the-course/

Refreshing to actually read some facts amongst all the rumours and speculation. The second part throws some light on why Canon seems stuck around 20MP and what the future might hold.

These were shot in the neighborhood park I frequent for my birding.
Canon 7D

Shikra was shot with this EXIF:
Shutter Speed 1/125
Aperture Value 5.6
ISO Speed 200
Lens EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM
Focal Length 340.0mm

Owlet was shot with this EXIF:
Shutter Speed 1/60
Aperture Value 5.6
ISO Speed 200
Lens EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM
Focal Length 400.0mm

do you guys know is there any sample pics around? any reviews?
when is the release date??

I disassembled my 5DII to get some dust out from behind the focusing screen and the superimposed indicating plate by the prism. There are two metal shims between the focusing screen and the SI indicating plate - one a gold colour and the other silver.

When I took it a part I swore the gold shim came out first and was closest to the focusing screen, and the silver spring second and closest to the SI plate.

Now I am not too sure...

My questions are:

1) Does anyone know the correct order of them?, and

2) Does the order even matter as long as they are both there?

For those who are interested are examples of 1DX low light performance in high DR environment.

Also this is illustration why high DR performance is required for those who keeps repeating " why on earth your need high DR and why you need to underexpose images"
Image RAW conversion is in LR4.
Screen snapshots for posting by Win7 Snipping tool - to be quick

1. Image "AS IS" from 1Dx - evaluative metering - camera is trying to protect highlights so average weighted image exposure shifts to the left (to the shadows) - so most part of the image is underexposed
2. 1Dx Image is normalized as close to human vision - image DR compressed in LR using basic tone sliders
3. 1Dx ISO1000 crop 100% - no NR
4. 1Dx ISO1000 crop 100% - NR Lum=20
Please observe noise in shadow recovered areas and sky and what we could do with it in LR
Next post is the same for ISO100

I haven't still read this in detail, but it looks incredibly interesting:
http://www.chipworks.com/blog/technologyblog/2012/10/23/full-frame-dslr-cameras-part-1-nikon-vs-sony/
http://www.chipworks.com/blog/technologyblog/2012/10/24/full-frame-dslr-cameras-canon-stays-the-course/

A few things I've learnt here already:
* Nikon still designs some of its own sensor. The one in the D800 is a Sony model, but the on on the D4 is a Nikon design manufactured by Renesas.
* Sony uses the most advanced manufacturing process by far: Sony=180nm, Renesas = 250nm, Canon=500nm
(I think it was in 2000 that a 500nm process was state-of-the-art for manufacturing CMOS image sensors)

Here's my contribution - tis the time of the season for sure.


Laird Road- Colts Neck Township, New Jersey by Revup67, on Flickr


Dorbrook Park-ColtsNeck, NJ by Revup67, on Flickr


Dorbrook Park Colts Neck, NJ by Revup67, on Flickr

I'll soon be giving a number of presentations using various digital projectors (those owned by the hosts: typically libraries, schools and businesses). The ambient lighting and age/quality of the projectors will vary.

Sadly, the projectors I've seen typically lack adequate contrast and sharpness--especially in rooms without good window blinds--resulting in washed out photography that diminishes the quality of the show.

My question is this: I currently shoot RAW with a T3i, 10-22 EFs, 15-85 EFs, and 70-300 EF DO. I need a compact/lightweight kit, since I travel solo and internationally via motorcycle. The results I achieve with this body and these lenses is acceptable when zoomed out to maybe 50%. But when I'm editing at 100%, I'm more often than not dissatisfied with the sharpness, color fidelity and detail (on a Dell 24" Ultra-Sharp, color-calibrated monitor). This leads me to spend too much time in post trying to right the wrongs.

So, being a perfectionist, I'm considering biting the bullet and purchasing bigger/heavier/more expensive gear, in spite of my serious space/weight limitations, in the hopes that IQ will dramatically improve when I peer at it at 100%. But then I think, "you're only posting to the web in small sizes that already look fine. You rarely print anything (although I'd like to start printing more). And you just don't know enough about projection technology to say whether a 5D3 image is going to look one iota better than a T3i image, regardless of lenses employed, when thrown across the room onto a screen or wall."

Any advice from those of you with projection experience would be greatly appreciated.

Do you keep 5DIII's High ISO Speed Noise Reduction off or enabled. If enabled, then do you set it to standard, low or high? It says in the manual that at low ISO the noise in the shadows are reduced if NR is kept on. What are your thoughts on this? I dont like the smudged look when heavy NR is applied, and I was wondering what others have experienced with this feature turned on. Is it helpful for night time shots? Or do you feel keeping NR off, and handle it in LR.

Same question for the Long Exposure Noise Reduction.

Another question, out of topic though. How do you guys downsample? I end up downsampling within LR when uploading to sites like flickr. Do you feel the downsampling appears to be better in PS or is it just as same?

I am trying to do more portrait photography and so far my equipment consists of a 5d3, 2x 580exII and some lenses.

last weekend i had to do some portraits and what i did was borrow another 580exII to mount on the 5d3, then put my other 2 580 behind the subject shooting at the cream coloured wall behind them to make it white. All this was fired via the 580's master/slave function.

However, when i did some group shots after, the single output light from the camera mounted 580 wasnt even enough although i used a lightsphere (yea yea not the best, but it was a small room, worked well enough and was nowhere near as harsh as bounced/straight flash)

So what i want to do is potentially get some cheaper yongnuos as background lights so i can then relocated the flashes to have 2 behind, 2 infront and 1 on camera for a better distribution of light.

Which yongnuo is recommended if all i want to do is get them to fire via optical slave and they will be in manual mode?

Alternatively is there a better solution?

Im also researching to buy some light stands and umbrellas off amazon too as they ship to australia (cowboystudio umbrellas and manfrotto stands maybe) if anyone has any suggestions on that too.

Thanks

Got a 7D. New.

It came with 2.0.3 - but I'm not going to blame the firmware.

I like to shoot fast lenses, and shoot them close to, or at wide open.

28/1.8 at f/2 - close distance - five feet or so... backfocus. At 30 feet - front focus.
50/1.4 at f/2 - same thing
100/2.8 macro - same thing

I'm talking a shift of "-7" at close distance, to +4 at further distances, and +9 at close to infinity distances (300 feet or so).

I'm basically... going nuts here.

Just received my MarkIII. Am curious if anyone has experimented with the two (apparently mutually exclusive settings) Auto Light Optimizer vs Highlight Tone Priority? I shoot exclusively in RAW. Are these two options helpful for a RAW shooter? If so, only in contrasty scenes? Would HDR be more effective, either in camera or postproduction? Thanks for sharing your experience.

I'v been thinking about getting a camera that's smaller and more condusive to "walking around" than mu current one is

I've been considering the G1 X and the EOS M, however my only gripe with the M is its limited range of focal ranges...... yes I could use an adapter, but remember I don't want this to be a "big" camera


.........thoughts?

.
Anyone yet made images of the new Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island in New York?

It looks like a great place, both for park pictures as well as city skyline, river sites, bridges, etc. Can't wait to start seeing some images. The granite blocks have slight separations between them -- tempting to shoot through.

I will go up there if we get a great winter day, otherwise I'll wait until spring. I expect since it's new there will be crowds for a while.

Hi All,
Does shutter speed and/or the choice of lens contribute to the amount of noise?
I shoot a lot of hockey. My settings with my 5Dm111 and 70-200 (mi) are 1/1000 sec and iso 2000
Last night I threw my 300f4 with an old 1.4 extender on and shot at 1/640 iso 3200. The pictures were outstanding for noise....better then the 70-200 with the above settings.

Any comments?

Thanks