M
McDonut
Guest
I have a 40D and I use it to shoot my kids and family events as well as landscape photography. For lenses, I have the following:
- Canon 50mm f/1.4
- Canon 17-40mm f/4 L
- Canon 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS
I am considering the following upgrades but can’t afford all of them right now – Would appreciate your thoughts on which you think would be the most important to accomplish first.
Camera Body- Like many on here, I would like to have a full frame body- both for effect for my landscape photos as well as increased sensor size and what I expect to be an increased dynamic range and better high iso performance. I am also very interested in lens micro-adjustment that the 40D doesn’t have (but I realize that I could get that on a 7D as well)- my 50 1.4 could use it. The combination of these factors made me think that the 5DMII would be the best choice for a new body. Because of the focusing issues that I have heard of on this forum and elsewhere on the internet and the possible near term unveiling of the 5DMIII, I am thinking of waiting for the unveiling of the next FF Canon body to see whether the bump in price will be worth the feature upgrades. I have the luxury of waiting to see what happens as I use the camera solely as a hobby and not for my income.
17-40- Love it for landscape thus far but am very limited in low light. My kids are 5 and 8 and the lighting conditions for candid shots are seldom ideal and often in low light and f4 gives me the choice of either (i) getting a blurry shot or (ii) going to a very high iso speed which gives me a noisy shot. I am thinking of choosing the 16-35 (which is the other that I considered when I bought the 17-40- should have just spent the money then…) or the 24 f/1.4L. The 16-35 gets me a wider aperture and the convenience of zoom. The 24 would seem to solve all of my low light issues and be perfect if I could live without the convenience of zoom. I hear that the 35 f/1.4L has better image quality than the 24, but I like my 50 f/1.4 just fine and the difference of only 15mm between the 50 and the 35 make me think that they would be too close and also I wouldn’t want 35mm to be my widest lens (and I can’t afford both the 24 and the 35). Has anyone out there gone solely with a wide prime for candid shots and wished that they’d kept the zoom instead?
70-300 IS- I use this lens the least. Partly because it is f/4 at its widest and then quickly goes to f/5.6. I usually only use this lens to take shots of my kids playing sports. But because I really want those shots (and those shots of my kids are the most important use for all of this camera equipment in my wife's opinion), I think that I need to hang on to this for now- especially if I move to a full frame camera body (I may have to sell my 40D to afford the 5DMII or 5DMIII depending on the price point). But I am also interested in the 135 f/2. I would love to upgrade to this image quality and low light capability for portraits and close distance sports photos of my kids. But it doesn’t sound like this lens (either on a crop body or a FF body) can be counted on to take sports shots for things like baseball, football, etc. – on a FF, it doesn’t seem like enough zoom and on a crop, the lack of IS would be a problem. Are there folks out there who have found the 135 to be useful for sports on a FF or crop body?
Finally, where do you all purchase your used equipment in the US? Ebay?
Any suggestions or opinions would be really helpful. I am certain some of my conclusions are probably wrong and would love to hear what folks think- Including if you think that I should stick with everything that I have now and just go out and shoot. Thanks very much.
- Canon 50mm f/1.4
- Canon 17-40mm f/4 L
- Canon 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS
I am considering the following upgrades but can’t afford all of them right now – Would appreciate your thoughts on which you think would be the most important to accomplish first.
Camera Body- Like many on here, I would like to have a full frame body- both for effect for my landscape photos as well as increased sensor size and what I expect to be an increased dynamic range and better high iso performance. I am also very interested in lens micro-adjustment that the 40D doesn’t have (but I realize that I could get that on a 7D as well)- my 50 1.4 could use it. The combination of these factors made me think that the 5DMII would be the best choice for a new body. Because of the focusing issues that I have heard of on this forum and elsewhere on the internet and the possible near term unveiling of the 5DMIII, I am thinking of waiting for the unveiling of the next FF Canon body to see whether the bump in price will be worth the feature upgrades. I have the luxury of waiting to see what happens as I use the camera solely as a hobby and not for my income.
17-40- Love it for landscape thus far but am very limited in low light. My kids are 5 and 8 and the lighting conditions for candid shots are seldom ideal and often in low light and f4 gives me the choice of either (i) getting a blurry shot or (ii) going to a very high iso speed which gives me a noisy shot. I am thinking of choosing the 16-35 (which is the other that I considered when I bought the 17-40- should have just spent the money then…) or the 24 f/1.4L. The 16-35 gets me a wider aperture and the convenience of zoom. The 24 would seem to solve all of my low light issues and be perfect if I could live without the convenience of zoom. I hear that the 35 f/1.4L has better image quality than the 24, but I like my 50 f/1.4 just fine and the difference of only 15mm between the 50 and the 35 make me think that they would be too close and also I wouldn’t want 35mm to be my widest lens (and I can’t afford both the 24 and the 35). Has anyone out there gone solely with a wide prime for candid shots and wished that they’d kept the zoom instead?
70-300 IS- I use this lens the least. Partly because it is f/4 at its widest and then quickly goes to f/5.6. I usually only use this lens to take shots of my kids playing sports. But because I really want those shots (and those shots of my kids are the most important use for all of this camera equipment in my wife's opinion), I think that I need to hang on to this for now- especially if I move to a full frame camera body (I may have to sell my 40D to afford the 5DMII or 5DMIII depending on the price point). But I am also interested in the 135 f/2. I would love to upgrade to this image quality and low light capability for portraits and close distance sports photos of my kids. But it doesn’t sound like this lens (either on a crop body or a FF body) can be counted on to take sports shots for things like baseball, football, etc. – on a FF, it doesn’t seem like enough zoom and on a crop, the lack of IS would be a problem. Are there folks out there who have found the 135 to be useful for sports on a FF or crop body?
Finally, where do you all purchase your used equipment in the US? Ebay?
Any suggestions or opinions would be really helpful. I am certain some of my conclusions are probably wrong and would love to hear what folks think- Including if you think that I should stick with everything that I have now and just go out and shoot. Thanks very much.