Looking for upgrade recommendations from T6s

Hi everyone,

I bought a T6s about a year and a half ago as my first DSLR, mainly to get better pictures of my son (he's 19 months old now) than was possible with an iPhone. Since then I've gotten pretty interested in photography... mainly family stuff but also a decent bit of landscape and wildlife for fun. My current kit is:

Bodies - T6s w/ battery grip, SL1 (bought used)
Lenses - 18-135 STM, 55-250 STM, 24 STM, 40 STM, 50 STM
Lighting - 2x Godox TT685c, Godox X1c, and a basic backdrop and a couple of lightstands / umbrellas

I've been happy with both cameras and plan to keep both (T6s for my wife and SL1 as a cheap/light camera for travel or situations where I don't want to risk an expensive body), but I've learned enough about how cameras work that there are a few things that the T6s is missing that I'd like to have.

Basically, I've come up with the following requirements for a new body and am looking for advice on what to do.

Must haves:
  • Touchscreen (both T6s and SL1 have this and I like it too much to give it up)
  • Anti-flicker mode (I expect to be shooting indoor sports with my son eventually)
  • Full auto-ISO customization (T6s and SL1 both only have a setting for "max auto" - I want some control over the min shutter speed)
  • Custom modes on the mode dial - at least 2
  • DPAF (both the T6s and SL1 are decent in live view but I have heard DPAF is a big improvement)
  • Dedicated rear AF-On button (I'd like to use BBF but find the T6s and SL1 awkward when configured to use the * button)
  • Better RAW buffer depth (T6s and SL1 are both ~7 frames)
  • Better low-light AF (T6s is rated to -0.5 EV and I've had a few situations where it's really struggled)

Nice to haves:
  • Tilty-flippy screen
  • SD card storage (to keep only one card format)
  • In-viewfinder level
  • Better framerate (T6s is 5fps and SL1 is 4)
  • Larger/nicer viewfinder
  • AFMA
  • GPS
  • Built-in Wifi (I don't use it that much but it can be handy to have)
  • Built-in flash (again, don't use it that much but it's occasionally handy)

I haven't had any complaints about IQ from the T6s or SL1 so I'm not specfically looking for improvement there but if it comes along with the above then I won't be upset :)

Budget is, as always, a consideration... I'd like to spend as little as possible to get what I'm looking for, but I'm willing to wait/save for longer if it's really worth getting something more expensive.

It seems like the 80D checks most of the boxes for me, but I have also been considering the 6D II for better IQ and higher ISO performance or waiting for the 7D III in hopes that it has a tilty-flippy or at least a touchscreen. Downside of both is the cost, with the 6D II also carrying the associated lens upgrade costs of going to FF.

tl;dr - Is the 80D a good bet or should I save/wait and get either the 6D II or 7D III? Or switch to Sony or Nikon? :)
 

stevelee

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Zen said:
My opinion . . . 6DII, and be done with it.

You won't be disappointed!

8)

I went from a T3i to a 6DII, and have been extremely well pleased. I already had some EF lenses, and I never use built-in flash, so that would be a difference for my situation. I got the 24-105 STM kit lens to use for general purpose shooting, and have been pleasantly surprised by it all the way around. The low light quality of the camera and the image stabilization of the lens have helped me shoot handheld in quite a range of situations.

I considered getting the 80D, and I think I could have been happy with it, but decided to go full frame at this point. Money was not such a huge factor for me, and I tend to think of it as a false economy to buy something that I think I might be less than happy with in a few years. IOW, I think it is cheaper to spend a few hundred dollars extra now and not be replacing in a short time.
 
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Talys

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You will love either the 80D or 6DII.

As someone who's owned all three -- t6s, 80D, and 6DII -- the 80D and 6DII are worlds apart in functionality from the t6s. I actually bought the t6s as a spare after a 70D, and hardly ever used it. In the two or three years I kept it, I'm not even sure the shutter count got to 4 digits.

The three things you'll probably notice right away with either are: a massively larger viewfinder, AFMA, and DPAF. It's hard to overstate how much better pentaprism is than pentamirror, save to say that afterwards, you'll never want to go back. If you invest in Reikan FoCal and tune your lenses, your AF'd photos will instantly be sharper at a tiny cost. And if you ever use live view AF (for example, for video), DPAF is just a world of difference over the older PDAF.


Advantages of 80D over 6DII:

- It's cheaper.

- If you mostly shoot wildlife in lots of sun and can keep it at ISO 100-200, crop is really nice to get more pixels out of your glass. 1.6 crop factor is nothing to sneeze at on a 150-600mm lens.

- Up to about ISO 400, the 80D is stellar, but after that, images from the 6DII are going to be way better. However, it's not like the higher ISO images are unusable; they're just not as clean after post, and not as good.

- If your landscapes are mostly on a tripod, 80D lets you use the Canon EFS10-18, which is a fantastic lens at an absurdly good price. It yields about the same field of view as a FF 16mm on the wide end, and it's super sharp from corner to center to corner, and a LOT cheaper than an EF 16-35.

- On the same note, you can use EFS lenses. And although they're not the most super-exciting thing thereare some pretty cool ones. For example, the 18-135 is pretty awesome, because autofocus is so stupid fast that most of the time you don't even know it's autofocusing. Plus, it's nearly completely silent.

- The 80D is smaller. I personally think that the 80D is the perfect size camera body, but this can work the other way too; some people prefer a 6D, or 5D sizes. Even though they look almost identical in pictures, I can really feel the difference in the grip.


Advantages of a 6DII

- It's a little better at ISO 400, and starting at ISO 800, the 6DII is gets way, way better than 80D.

- Lots of higher ISO shots look great, especially certain colors like browns, which let you really crank up that shutter speed.

- You get wider shots out of 16-35 and 24-70 lenses, and you'll get more mileage (wider shots) out of the super wide angle primes and zooms.

- If you like wireless remote shooting (pairing with PC, tablet, smartphone, etc), the 6DII is a billion times better than 80D. For starters, 6DII lets you pair with as many devices of as many types as you want; 80D lets you pair with ONE, period. If you pair a smartphone, the PC's pairing is deleted. Not only that, but when I first had my 80D, it was a real pain (wouldn't recognize my Surface).

- Bluetooth and GPS in 6DII. The Bluetooth opens up the Bluetooth trigger, which is great if you're taking just single shots (for whatever reason, you can't hold it down for continuous shooting).

- It's got better weather sealing. That includes the little things, like using the 5D style, water resistant remote trigger instead of the mini-mic that is found in 80D and t6s. And that port is in a great place too, by the way, in the front to the bottom left.

- They have slightly different button layouts. Personally, I think the most of the 6DII's button layout choices are slightly superior.
 
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Valvebounce

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Hi Duct Taper.
Just to say don’t limit yourself to APS bodies for the built in flash, there is the beautiful little 90ex which is little bigger than the index and middle fingers of my hand (without the V :eek: ) and about the same power as most of the built in flashes, no it is not built in but it is small enough to carry every time you go out with a camera! Plus it can do optical master flash all for about $50 on eBay.

Cheers, Graham.
 
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Wow, thanks for the feedback all - really helpful! Talys especially, it's super helpful to hear from someone who's used all three. Any thoughts on whether the extra cost of the full frame body and lenses is generally worth it? I'm tempted to go that way to have more ability to use available light without pulling out a flash, especially for family stuff... but the cost difference is significant! (also there isn't a FF single lens equivalent of the 18-135 which is my outdoor go-to lens for everything but wildlife... the 24-105 or 28-135 seem to be the closest)

Overall it sounds like I'll be happy either way, which is awesome :)

PS - Graham, thanks for the tip on the 90EX - I had never heard of it before but will definitely check it out if I go the 6DII route!
 
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stevelee

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The little flash doesn’t appear to tilt or swivel, so bounce flash doesn’t appear to be an easy option. My guess is that with the 6D2 you would use available light much more than you think you will. Maybe the good news is that the flash is weak enough that it would be more of a fill in than a harsh main source in many situations.
 
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The most important difference I see between the 80D and 6D2 (APS-C vs FF) is the lens selection.
You can get higher quality and faster lenses for FF. EF-S lenses are either relatively slow variable aperture with focus by wire or old (like 17-55).
While you can still use FF lenses on APS-C, zoom lenses just don't work the way they are designed to work. 24-70/105 is too narrow on the wide end to be a useful general purpose zoom on APS-C, same for 70-200 for indoor usage, and ultra wide is impossible. And you effectively lose 4/3 stops of aperture on APS-C compared to FF with its effect on DoF/bokeh and noise performance. So in the end it might be cheaper to buy slower lenses and a FF camera compared to faster lenses and APS-C (e.g. 35mm f/1.4+APS-C vs. 50mm f/1.8+FF).

The main reason I went FF (apart from the better ergonomics with the 5D4) was that lens-wise APS-C was a dead end.
If you are fine with your lenses, go 80D. If you wish your lenses were faster (for DOF or noise reasons), go 6D2.
 
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I have a SL2, and I love it. But, as soon as ISO levels rise above about 800, images lose color and clarity. A FF body really shines under the same circumstances.

I took my new SL2 and my 5D IV to shoot low light theater last week, the first I've tried the SL2 for that. I had to slow the shutter way down to 1/30 sec to keep ISO from totally running away, and used my Sigma 177-35mm f/1.8. The slow shutter speed did cause some blurring. I set my 5D MK IV to 1/80 sec for the most part, with a f/2.8 lens and still got far nicer looking photos. I did not bother to use the SL2 after that first night.

If you can afford to update your camera and lenses, get FF. Otherwise, a SL2 is a nice low cost upgrade over the SL1. A 80D is a good value as well.

I'm convinced that for your use, once you try a FF, you will not give any use to the 7s.

I like the touch screen, and the SL2 has no AFMA, so its best used in live view for accurate AF.

Here are a couple of shots from last week,

SL2 ISO 250

Jan%2020182034-XL.jpg



5D MK IV ISO 1600

Thur%201-126303-XL.jpg
 
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Talys

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Duct_Taper said:
Wow, thanks for the feedback all - really helpful! Talys especially, it's super helpful to hear from someone who's used all three. Any thoughts on whether the extra cost of the full frame body and lenses is generally worth it? I'm tempted to go that way to have more ability to use available light without pulling out a flash, especially for family stuff... but the cost difference is significant! (also there isn't a FF single lens equivalent of the 18-135 which is my outdoor go-to lens for everything but wildlife... the 24-105 or 28-135 seem to be the closest)

Overall it sounds like I'll be happy either way, which is awesome :)

PS - Graham, thanks for the tip on the 90EX - I had never heard of it before but will definitely check it out if I go the 6DII route!

As others have said, the cost of the lenses is what's going to determine whether or not the 6DII is in the cards, because they're sure not cheap once you add them up.

However, if you're used to (and happy with) STM lenses, the 70-300 is a decent lens that won't break the bank and covers a lot of focal length -- it was about $350 recently with discounts, about a hundred more than that now -- but the used prices are excellent. For the lower end of the focal range, consider the 24-105. You can go STM and get one used about $300, but if you can afford it, I'd really recommend a Mark 1 L for about $400 used, or $700-ish grey market. The Mark 2 L is about $900, and is probably over budget, and in that price range, you can also consider the 24-70 f4 IS Macro, which is superior in every respect except that it doesn't give you 70-105 on that lens (which can be really useful).

So, short version , between $600-$1500 to give you between 24mm - 300mm. Keep in mind that because of crop, 24mm will give you as wide a field of view as 15mm on the APSC. I wouldn't worry too much about the telephoto end, because your cropped picture out of the 6DII if you're shooting at anything over ISO 400 are going to be as good as the 80D, even though it's 1.6x less crop.

The built-in flash on the 80D is a crime. Pictures you get when it's up look like a cheap point an shoot, just like every other photo shot with a flash pointed directly at the subject, because a super bright tiny light pointed at the subject washes out all the details.

Don't get me wrong, though, I think that flashes are awesome. You just have to point them at something other than right smack in the middle of the subject, and that's impossible when it's a fixed position right above the lens. Instead, invest in a $100 third-party bounce flash, set it to manual, and point it at something that it can reflect off of, like the ceiling, or in the worst case scenario (like outside), pull out the built-in bounce card and point it straight up. Don't set it to ETTL and point it at the subject; that's the same as the built-in flash, and will just give you a whole slew of washed out pictures. If you get a cheap light stand and a remote trigger, you can also do really cool things with your flash.

But anyways, sorry, totally off topic :D Just mentioning it as the built-in flash NOT being a reason to choose the 80D. The high ISO shots from the 6DII in poor lighting will probably be as good/bad as the built-in flash shots out of the 80D (ie devoid of contrast and interesting shadows).
 
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Talys said:
The built-in flash on the 80D is a crime. Pictures you get when it's up look like a cheap point an shoot, just like every other photo shot with a flash pointed directly at the subject, because a super bright tiny light pointed at the subject washes out all the details.

Don't get me wrong, though, I think that flashes are awesome. You just have to point them at something other than right smack in the middle of the subject, and that's impossible when it's a fixed position right above the lens. Instead, invest in a $100 third-party bounce flash, set it to manual, and point it at something that it can reflect off of, like the ceiling, or in the worst case scenario (like outside), pull out the built-in bounce card and point it straight up. Don't set it to ETTL and point it at the subject; that's the same as the built-in flash, and will just give you a whole slew of washed out pictures. If you get a cheap light stand and a remote trigger, you can also do really cool things with your flash.
As a fill flash to reduce shadows caused by direct sun light the on-camera flash is perfectly usable.

And using the bounce card without anything to bounce off does not make sense. It is meant to produce a little catchlight with the main light coming from the ceiling. You would be wasting most light and the bounce card is not much bigger than direct flash.

But by looking at the first post, Duct_Taper does not seem to need much advice on lighting.
 
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Valvebounce

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Hi Stevelee.
The little 90ex tilts and swivels exactly the same amount as a pop up flash which the op put down as a nice to have occasionally. As far as I know none of the FF offerings from Canon have pop up flash so the 90ex is a close approximation for power and functionality negating the need to carry his much larger better specification Godox TT685c. :)

Cheers, Graham.

stevelee said:
The little flash doesn’t appear to tilt or swivel, so bounce flash doesn’t appear to be an easy option. My guess is that with the 6D2 you would use available light much more than you think you will. Maybe the good news is that the flash is weak enough that it would be more of a fill in than a harsh main source in many situations.
 
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stevelee

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I had acknowledged that OP's needs/wishes differ from mine. I never use direct flash, neither the pop-up or hot-shoe variety, and I can't imagine anybody liking the effect other than fill-in. My point was that the low-light capability of the 6D2 very often gives a good alternative to using flash, and I think a better-looking alternative.

My G7X II does let you move the pop-up flash around on a spring, so with practice one perhaps could develop some consistency for a bounce flash, but that seems more trouble than it is worth.

But, yes, the little flash should substitute for the pop-up kind.
 
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Talys

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midluk said:
Talys said:
The built-in flash on the 80D is a crime. Pictures you get when it's up look like a cheap point an shoot, just like every other photo shot with a flash pointed directly at the subject, because a super bright tiny light pointed at the subject washes out all the details.

Don't get me wrong, though, I think that flashes are awesome. You just have to point them at something other than right smack in the middle of the subject, and that's impossible when it's a fixed position right above the lens. Instead, invest in a $100 third-party bounce flash, set it to manual, and point it at something that it can reflect off of, like the ceiling, or in the worst case scenario (like outside), pull out the built-in bounce card and point it straight up. Don't set it to ETTL and point it at the subject; that's the same as the built-in flash, and will just give you a whole slew of washed out pictures. If you get a cheap light stand and a remote trigger, you can also do really cool things with your flash.
As a fill flash to reduce shadows caused by direct sun light the on-camera flash is perfectly usable.

And using the bounce card without anything to bounce off does not make sense. It is meant to produce a little catchlight with the main light coming from the ceiling. You would be wasting most light and the bounce card is not much bigger than direct flash.

But by looking at the first post, Duct_Taper does not seem to need much advice on lighting.


@midluk - If you point your bounce flash straight up, extend the bounce card and flash at full power, 80%-85% of the light goes nowhere, and 15-20% of it is caught by the bounce card and goes forward (or whatever direction the bounce card is pointing). But the light is much softer and doesn't sear through all the detail of the subject.

Personally, I think it produces much nicer than setting your flash at 25% with a bounce flash and pointing it straight at the subject, as you must do with the built-in flash.

Just preference, I guess. A Rogue Flashbender, a $15 knockoff, or even a piece of white cardstock and a rubber band is better, but there are lots of times when I just don't have time to fiddle, and the built-in card is better than nothing.

This photo was taken with a 600EX-RT flash using the built-in bounce card (and the flash head pointed to the sky), on a dark, rainy day, for exactly that reason -- there was no time to set up anything better. Without the flash, the rain would have been flat and the blacks would have lacked any definition. Without the bounce card (if I had just lowered the power and pointed it at the bird), I would have lost detail and the center of the image would have been noticeably brighter than the rest.

Oh, and the photo is on a 6DII! :D


Edit: I totally forgot about one other thing: CTO gels! Really, all the gels, but I'd really miss CTO's (color temperature orange). When I discovered flash gels, it was hobby-life-changing for my flash photography. I was like, where have you been all my life.
 

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Talys said:
@midluk - If you point your bounce flash straight up, extend the bounce card and flash at full power, 80%-85% of the light goes nowhere, and 15-20% of it is caught by the bounce card and goes forward (or whatever direction the bounce card is pointing). But the light is much softer and doesn't sear through all the detail of the subject.

Personally, I think it produces much nicer than setting your flash at 25% with a bounce flash and pointing it straight at the subject, as you must do with the built-in flash.

Just preference, I guess. A Rogue Flashbender, a $15 knockoff, or even a piece of white cardstock and a rubber band is better, but there are lots of times when I just don't have time to fiddle, and the built-in card is better than nothing.

This photo was taken with a 600EX-RT flash using the built-in bounce card (and the flash head pointed to the sky), on a dark, rainy day, for exactly that reason -- there was no time to set up anything better. Without the flash, the rain would have been flat and the blacks would have lacked any definition. Without the bounce card (if I had just lowered the power and pointed it at the bird), I would have lost detail and the center of the image would have been noticeably brighter than the rest.

Oh, and the photo is on a 6DII! :D


Edit: I totally forgot about one other thing: CTO gels! Really, all the gels, but I'd really miss CTO's (color temperature orange). When I discovered flash gels, it was hobby-life-changing for my flash photography. I was like, where have you been all my life.

I seriously doubt that the bounce card throws 20% of the light towards your subject. It's definitely less then 5%. Less than 25% of the light hits the card, and only a small part of that is actually scattered at a ~90° angle towards the subject. I set up a 600EX pointing straigt at a wall and made the image just not saturate at 1/128 flash setting. Only at 1/8 flash setting the parts not hit by direct flash started to saturate (and the saturation only appeared in a small area that was likely still hit by direct light scattered in the window of the flash head). Only at 1/2 flash settings the parts definitely only hit by bounced light saturated. And this is with still some light bouncing around in the room, so in a free space the light loss through the bounce card is likely even worse.
The ratio between light from the bounce card and bounced light from the ceiling migth actually be around 20% for usual distances between camera, ceiling and subject.

The area on the bounce card actually hit by light is about twice the size of the flash tube. I don't think this small difference matters much in cases where the flash is not the only light source.

If you get a brighter image center with direct flash, set your flash head to a wider setting. If with "center" you mean "foreground", this only depends on your ratio between flash light and ambient (25% direct flash is much stronger than the small percentage from the bounce card at 100% flash setting). A small bounce card does not change the 1/r^2 falloff, so it will not change the exposure ratio between foreground and background assuming you get the same amount of light from flash on the foreground.
 
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Thanks again for all the additional help!

Re: lighting, indeed the only reason I'd ever look to use the built-in flash is for daylight fill... which may not really be enough of a case to justify it. I've found so far that using it for fill in most daylight situations requires the aperture to close down so much for sync speed that the end result isn't of much better quality than just not using the flash and adjusting highlights/shadows in post. I'm going to experiment with the TT685 for daylight fill since it does HSS but a full-size flash is a bit unbalanced on top of the SL1/40 STM combo which I often walk around with. If I'm using the flash for primary lighting it's always set up as bounce and/or off-camera.

The cost/selection of lenses to cover the FL range I have now is definitely something I'm trying to figure out - I had been looking at the 24-105 IS Mk1 or 28-135 IS and 85 1.8 or 100 2.0 as options alongside the 70-300 IS II which covers most of what I would need... just not sure if I'll really miss the 300-400 equiv. that I get from the 55-250 on APS-C. I end up using the 55-250 at 250mm quite a bit, but at least half of that is for the magnification on flowers, bugs, etc where the 70-300 is probably close enough (.25x vs .31x). For longer distances, based on Talys' comment here as well as reading through the crop vs FF for lots of mms thread, it sounds like in many cases cropping from the FF will be as good or better quality than having the extra reach on APS-C. I'd love to get a 100-400 II no matter what body I end up with but that's at least a few years further off :)

Finally, re: STM vs other focusing types - I've really only used Canon STM lenses (plus the Sigma 35 Art which I rented) so I don't know any better, but am certainly looking to try out some USM ones to see if it makes a difference in the stuff I shoot. I don't really expect to see a big difference on the zoom lenses as the 18-135 and 55-250 are both pretty fast and I rarely focus manually shooting with them, but I do find the 24/40/50 can be a bit slow to keep up with a high-energy 19mo old.
 
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Talys

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Duct_Taper said:
I'd love to get a 100-400 II no matter what body I end up with but that's at least a few years further off :)

This is a beautiful lens, quite possibly my favorite zoom lens. I guarantee you that you won't regret the investment :) :)

Regarding the crop factor -- after using the 6DII, which is my first full frame camera, I find that the wider crop on lenses is more useful than the higher density of pixels on the narrower crop, by quite a bit, because it's almost always easier to get a closer or crop a tighter (and get a lower resolution image), than it is to shoot a wider.

The exception is that the alternatives to the 10-18 STM on FF are pretty expensive (or, that the 10-18 is awfully cheap for good optics).

I think that 70-300 on 6DII is pretty good reach, generally speaking. I'm sure you can give it a shot in a store and evaluate the difference. My biggest problem with the 70-300 on 80D is that at f/5.6, it isn't easy to get ISO 100-200, and often not even ISO 400. Really, no different than the 55-250. How often do you wish you could have a lower ISO/higher shutter/wider aperture on your T6s with the 55-250... and it will be about the same on the 80D. The noise is definitely improved, but you're still stuck wishing you could use low ISOs. I don't know if you ever run into it, but something like an action shot in a gymnasium taken at f/5.6 looks way times better on the 6DII.

Also: the IQ of the non-nano 70-300 are pretty similar to the new, and much nicer/modern looking 70-300, though the AF on the new nano 70-300 is a lot better. I mention that only because you can probably get the old one really cheap, used.


Duct_Taper said:
Finally, re: STM vs other focusing types - I've really only used Canon STM lenses (plus the Sigma 35 Art which I rented) so I don't know any better, but am certainly looking to try out some USM ones to see if it makes a difference in the stuff I shoot. I don't really expect to see a big difference on the zoom lenses as the 18-135 and 55-250 are both pretty fast and I rarely focus manually shooting with them, but I do find the 24/40/50 can be a bit slow to keep up with a high-energy 19mo old.

Just go to a camera store and try any L lens out, like the 24-105. The big difference is that if you need to manually focus - having to power the lens to focus is a real pain, and with STM, you can't really feel how far/quickly you're focusing, especially with some of the new ones where fast twist = bigger focus jump, slow twist = little focus jump.

If you use tripod / live view / magnify / manual focus to get shots into perfect focus, or the part of the picture you really want in focus (like a flower), ring USM is feels more precise and (at least for me) feels easier to get just where I want it.

The other thing that you'll probably notice if you're a focus nut is that the L lenses are generally a lot more consistent in AF than their STM counterparts, which makes microadjust more useful.

midluk said:
I seriously doubt that the bounce card throws 20% of the light towards your subject. It's definitely less then 5%. Less than 25% of the light hits the card, and only a small part of that is actually scattered at a ~90° angle towards the subject. I set up a 600EX pointing straigt at a wall and made the image just not saturate at 1/128 flash setting. Only at 1/8 flash setting the parts not hit by direct flash started to saturate (and the saturation only appeared in a small area that was likely still hit by direct light scattered in the window of the flash head).

If you use a Sekonic and measure it outside from about 3ft from the flash, a 1/80 ISO 100 exposure might look something like -

no flash f/2 (direct exposure, ambient light)
flash pointed up with built-in bounce card pointed at meter f/4
flash pointed straight at meter f/16

Take it for what you will, I find that in the day, outside, when I need some fill in a bind, a bounce card aimed at the subject will often be enough to improve a shot, whereas pointing the flash directly at the subject almost never improves the shot. Of course I would rather bounce it, have a softbox, use a flashbender, have someone hold a reflector, or whatever.
 
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