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By my cursory search, it appears that there are no first-party teleconverters for EF-S lenses. Is this because teleconverted EF-S lenses come with significant downsides?
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Dec 5, 2014 04:37
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I've been pretty impressed by the jump in dynamic range and image detail going from an old XSi to a 5Dmkii, but even with an L lens and image post processing the 5D is leaving me with the impression that I could be getting better image quality, just based on what I see on Flickr and various blogs. (Not all of this is down to the camera, of course, and I would say that I am happy with the photos I've been getting) Canon seems to be the most popular dslr brand (again going by Flickr). I'm at a point where I'm going to start sinking a decent amount of money into the canon lens world pretty soon, but I'm not too invested yet that I couldn't sell all my canon gear and pivot to another brand. Is it possible that I could get set up with e.g. a Sony kit for about the cost of a 5Dmkii body plus another thousand or so and have the sensor be truly better in terms of image quality than what I've got right now? I mostly do wildlife and nature subjects. I'd also need to go with a brand that has excellent options in the 500mm+ telephoto range.
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Dec 9, 2014 16:14
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Thanks for the info. Upthread, someone made a comment that called out Sony and Nikon specifically as manufacturers with better sensor technology than canon. Is that conventional wisdom these days? Does the disparity in quality matter especially in full-frame bodies? Do Nikon sensors excel significantly above canon equivalents in areas besides high ISO performance?
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Dec 9, 2014 18:03
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Huh. This is all very interesting. I had read an article on some camera site, the main point of which being that canon vs Nikon was effectively a toss-up, that image quality and lens selection were at parity between the two, etc. It was a few years old, so I guess either camera technology moves fast or this author was misinformed (probably both). Either way, I suppose I'll stay with canon. The number of people I know with big lens collections whom I can swap and borrow among kind of seals it for me. Too bad that Sony doesn't have offer a range of serious telephotos, I really could be making hay with a focus-highlighting viewfinder. And sorry if this is dragging the thread off topic, I think there's a general equipment thread where this discussion would be more appropriate.
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Dec 9, 2014 23:12
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Or if you shoot wildlife most of the time (like me), you get used to falling back to manual focus when trying to get a shot of something in a tangle of branches and vines. I don't know if the 7d/70d are a little better at automatic AF point selection than my 5dmkii or 450d, but neither of the latter could find a poler bear on a black sand beach.
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Dec 17, 2014 04:23
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I got a good deal recently, on a Canon 5D mark II. It came with two EF primes (35mm & 100 macro), a speedlite (ex430ii), and a 32GB, 45mb/s Sandisk CF card. Before getting the 5D, I just had a Sony a6000 with kit lens and some adapted EF-S lenses from my old Rebel XSi. A lot of people like to talk poo poo about Canon these days, but you know what? After using it for a few weeks now, I think the 5Dmkii is really a pretty ok camera. I especially like how I can take it outside in most weather conditions and shoot away without having to worry about it spontaneously disassembling if I don't pamper it constantly.
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Jun 23, 2015 00:31
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The low light AF is pretty, well, non-existent. But the speedlite has an AF illuminator that fixes that. Although I havn't tried to use it for just that purpose (i.e. without firing the flash). Is it possible? (Honestly, I think my a6000 has a slight edge on low-light IQ vs the 5D, which is crazy when you consider that it's an APS-C with much denser/smaller pixels.)
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Jun 23, 2015 01:06
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evil_bunnY posted:The fact that there were better cameras for the money doesn't make mk2's bad. If you canine with the AF for what you shoot it's a nice body. Yeah, this deal was probably better than I could have gotten for a comparable camera, especially with the lenses and flash included. It was sort of a barter. But I still have to rationalize not selling it and getting something else.
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Jun 23, 2015 20:06
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Could just be me, but I think that my 5D's occ jpegs colors (picture styles) are far better than my Sony's. The RAWs have "better" color too, and when I browse pictures on Flickr Camera Explorer, a lot more of the stuff I see from Sony & Nikon bodies looks a little flat, tone wise. Canon opinion: The only product line that produces better minimally-post processed 'snapshot' pictures than Canon's is Fuji's.
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Jun 24, 2015 15:05
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Yeah the caveat to my preference for canon Picture Style is with the red-tinted interiors and skin tones. The first time I tried taking indoor pictures of my orange tabby cat with the 5D2 he came out looking like a moldy carrot. Right now the only custom Picture Style I use is one I brewed up for indoor portraits. I wonder if any of those custom film simulations even approach the quality of Fuji's.
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Jun 24, 2015 20:20
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I can definitely echo the sentiment that manual focusing can be better than AF in certain situations if you have a good aid. The big viewfinder on the 5D is a nice consolation for the super basic AF, but manual focusing aids were a big reason I have a mirrorless camera now. Focus peaking + instant 2x digital zoom take a lot of the guesswork out of getring critical focus, even on fast moving subjects. I use a lot of adapted canon lenses on my a6000; they have full metering and aperture control but are effectively MF only. Still works great with those features. But yeah, I don't get why I can't have something like the split image focusing from an old Minolta XD-7 slr on my 5Dii (or eye focus AF from the EOS 3). Feels like a step backwards.
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Jul 2, 2015 01:26
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BeastOfExmoor posted:The T1200/T1100/T1000 line of bodies is a big waste of time. You lose a lot of functionality for a little savings and nearly everyone who buys these would be way better off just buying used. I'm not sure they're such a bad deal, really. The T1000 at least had a liquid metal coating, and could change its form based on what was needed. ... It also had great weatherproofing, especially against super-cold ice.
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Jul 12, 2015 12:51
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My first camera was a rebel XSi that I bought at a pawn shop for $200 with kit lens in 2013. My intention at the time was to use it for wildlife photography so I added a 55-250 EFS (open box return discount at Target ~50% off retail). I had friends who also let me borrow their canon lenses, and that was the main reason I ultimately went with the brand. I cut my teeth on this setup for a year, and it did everything I needed except keep up as well as I would have liked in low light. But I think if I had been planning on getting into more portrait, landscape and "art" photography I would have found it to be much more limiting. Now that I have better gear (a new mirrorless APS Sony and an older FF Canon) I am really starting to branch out into stuff besides animals and birds, and sometimes I'm even not entirely disgusted with the results I get. I guess the point of all this is that canon crop bodies are... Ok? Sometimes? ... Not really. I wish now I'd gone with Nikon; none of my friends' lenses were all that great. But I still like the 'look' of photos taken with Canon bodies - the colors, especially. And I think a lot of the bird pictures I took with the XSi still hold up very well. EDIT: On a different topic: I just did a little bit of portrait work with my 5Dmkii + 100mm lens, and one of the better shots (in terms of subject expression) was just a bit too dark, so I increased the exposure by a value of about .6 in Lightroom. When I did so, I ran into this artifact. It's kind of like banding and noise in the shadows. It tends to happen when bringing up the exposure in a photo taken at <ISO500. I've seen it before, but it was really pronounced in this case.  Just to be sure, this is just something that you have to live with on the 5Dmkii, right? Either have to ETTR more consistently or fix it in PS/LR, I guess. SMERSH Mouth fucked around with this message at 05:20 on Jul 17, 2015 |
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Jul 17, 2015 03:39
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One place where DSLRs still beat mirrorless is in sensor protection. My 5D2 is loving impervious to dust compared to my a6000, which picks up dust faster than a goddamn swiffer sweeper. Having a mirror helps a lot. So does automatic sensor cleaning every time you power it off.
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Jul 18, 2015 02:17
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It probably isn't noticeable in final images because of Canon's Fly Control Focus... Although I didn't think they carried that feature over to the digital EOS models.
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Jul 28, 2015 01:44
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geeves posted:Photographers really have to stop rubbing their dicks on the sensors. I don't think anyone has wanted rub their dick on a canon sensor since 2009. Except maybe the people on dpreview's EOS Digital subforum.
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Jul 29, 2015 00:30
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Anyone here have the 400mm L super-tele prime? I'm tempted, and badly need something more than 300mm for wildlife & bird shots. Do you feel like the (as far as I can tell, based on reviews) remarkable sharpness is worth the lack of IS and slower aperture? I'm trying to decide between the 400L and something in the same ballpark from Sigma or Tamron. I know I can get more reach and/or IS for around the same price, but I have this problem with pixel-peeping...
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Aug 3, 2015 03:14
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Welp, I pulled the trigger on the 400L. Some of my favorite spots for birding are a good hike out so the light weight was a big consideration for me. Still, I hope the lack of IS isn't going to burn me too bad during golden hour. Maybe it's time to start thinking about a good ball head tripod/monopod. I can always throw it on my a6000 if I want the extra reach. Although long-term I'm considering ditching the 5D2 for a 7D2, or maybe a 6D. Does the 7D2 even come close to the 6D when it comes to high-ISO performance? Edit: another concern about the 400mm was of course the close-focus limitation. 11ft is pretty far. Canon sells a close-focus attachment for this lens... Anyone here ever used it? SMERSH Mouth fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Aug 4, 2015 |
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Aug 4, 2015 01:27
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800peepee51doodoo posted:Is it an extension tube? Extension tubes will let you focus closer but you'll lose out on infinity focus. They're hard to use if you are just hiking around but if you're set up in one spot and expect birds to land at like a feeder or something they can be really useful for getting tighter shots on long lenses. It looks like canon offers two different options for close focus: quote:77mm Close-Up Lens 500D quote:Extension Tube EF 12 II The extension tube is cheaper, but the close up lens attaches like a filter so it's probably more convenient. Not exactly sure what "It changes closest focusing distance from infinity to 500mm" means, though. But I think it's trying to say that you lose infinity focus, and change closest focusing distance from 3.5m to 500mm? If extension tubes don't have any glass elements, then they probably offer better image quality? (Not that I'd be buying either unless I can get a good blind set up to take photos from a stationary position)
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Aug 4, 2015 15:09
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Checking out flickr's 'explore by camera' feature is my favorite way to find out just how green the grass always is on the other side. One thing I've noticed when comparing photos from the two camera models that I own (5D2 and a6000) is that the majority of posted photos taken with a 5D2 are resized down so small that they hardly ever reach the edges of my monitor when I click over to the full screen view. A6000 photos on the other hand are generally p66osted at such large sizes that the magnified view takes up the whole screen and then some; you end up having to scroll around to view the entire picture. I know that the a6000 has a few extra megapixels, but to my eye there doesn't seem to be much of a difference between images out the respective cameras in terms of resolution, i.e. by the time I've cropped and run them through LR, they both look about the same size, and both hold up well too a close inspection, in my opinion. So why are so many people resizing their images so dramatically? Also, has anyone else noticed that the keyword search in the 5D2 section of Camera Explorer is broken, or its it just me?
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Aug 27, 2015 06:22
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Graniteman posted:Many people who take their photography "seriously" deliberately upload down-sized images to flickr to help combat people stealing their work. It happens a lot that pro photographers' work gets used without permission in billboards, signs, ads, etc. Sometimes they even leave the author copyright image on it! So, it's often recommended to just not upload a billboard-printable image to flickr. That also supports your later claim in court that you have the original, since you have a higher res file (or a raw file) which nobody else has. Ah, ok. I did notice that there seemed to be a correlation between scaled-down photos and tacky watermarks or 'signatures'. But your explanation makes a lot of sense. I've always figured that if I ever sold any prints of my work, that I would take the corresponding file down off my Flickr page (if it was up there in the first place), but yeah, it would certainly suck to have someone else take a high-res version from your Flickr and use it for commercial work without your knowledge. Sadly, I don't think that's something I'd have to worry about  Many of the photos in the various 5D2 groups on Flickr go a little heavy on the the HDR effect, too. Then again, many of them are from before 2011. (That's in part why I wondered why the majority of images taken with that camera on Flickr were scaled down... I thought maybe it was a storage or bandwidth thing.) It seems like HDR had its heyday along with the 5D2. mrlego posted:Can you link to an example of what specific photos you are looking at? It's more like what photos I'm not looking at, because I can go to https://www.flickr.com/cameras/canon/eos_5d_mark_ii/ (Flickr's 'explore by camera' page for the 5D2), but submitting a query into the search bar at the bottom returns either 1 image, or nothing. For example, the result for 'macro' in the 5D2 section is quote:Oops! There are no matches for “macro”. SMERSH Mouth fucked around with this message at 15:25 on Aug 28, 2015 |
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Aug 28, 2015 15:22
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1.4x? What does it do to max aperture and AF? I have the 400 5.6 on a full frame body and just throw it on my a6000 when I want more reach; you lose AF and/or it becomes f/8 when when you put a TC on it so I don't bother. I guess that's the luxury of having a second camera, though.
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Sep 2, 2015 02:06
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Oh, f/2.8. That seems to be quite a decent lens. At least I would think so, seeing as how it costs more than my car.
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Sep 2, 2015 03:18
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Yeah that does seem strange / lucky(?) ... I don't know anything about battery grips, but I'd be checking to make sure that everything was working with my camera body first, and then thinking about the grip. I'd think that service on the grip might be comparable to buying a new one, especially a third-party brand. I (stupidly) packed my backpack with both my 5Dmkii and 400mm L lens and took them with my on a bicycle commute to work the other day. On my way, I hit some kind of debris on the road and blew my front tube, causing me and my backpack to go tumbling over to the side. I tried to land on my feet but ended up rolling into the curb. The gear definitely took a good whacking. I can't tell what damage, if any, I did to the precious cargo. Everything seems to be in working order. This poo poo is pretty tough. I'm sure you'll still get years of service from your camera. Too bad about the grip though.
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Sep 8, 2015 00:15
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That's still the big advance to DSLR's in a lot of my use cases. Dust and grit on a focusing screen or mirror is a mild annoyance compared to getting (and removing) stuff stuck to your sensor's AA filter. Also even the consumer grade stuff being rugged enough to take a few good falls and resist moisture.
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Sep 8, 2015 00:29
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How well do you think a 70-200 f/2.8 L with a 2x TC would hold up to the 400mm f/5.6, in terms of sharpness at 400mm?
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Sep 22, 2015 00:59
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Thanks. I have the 400 already but am tempted to get some kind of faster, stabilized 70-200ish zoom for sports and general outdoor use. Just wondering if I could conceivably lose the 400 in favor of a TC if I did so. (Love the 400 though.)
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Sep 22, 2015 02:43
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Cool, thanks for sharing. Those don't look bad at all in terms of detail reproduction. They do look a little washed-out though, as you say. Good to know about the AF. Right now on my 5D2 the 400mm's performance is barely tolerable as it is (which is down to the body, not the lens) so maybe I'll just go for the 70-200 f/4 instead, and not worry about teleconvertibility.
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Sep 23, 2015 01:35
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torgeaux posted:Look at the sigma 120-300 f2.8. It's sharp, good AF performance, and good IS. The second version is very good, and not too expensive used. the third version is fantastic, but costs what it's worth. Thanks for pointing that out. Sigma has had so many drat telephoto zooms in it's lineup, all with slightly varying focal lengths and appended feature abbreviations, that it's hard to keep tack of what's out there. Doesn't help that they vary so wildly in quality, either. I had a Sigma 170-500mm for a short time, and boy was it a turd of a lens. On the other hand, a lot of Sigmas in that range are pretty well-regarded, especially the newer stuff.
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Sep 23, 2015 17:11
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I've had good luck with the 55-250 STM on APS-C and the 400 L on FF and APS-C. Those are as cheap as you can get a usable super-tele (250mm is equivalent to 400mm on FF) and still have a max aperture bigger than f/6.3. 400 L on APS-C is equivalent to 640mm and if like me you're looking to shoot birds that's just barely long enough. I haven't used any of the newer Tamron or Sigma super-tele's but if you want something that goes past 400mm they are pretty much your only options under $2000. I wanted to photograph birds so I needed long reach, but I also didn't want to spend over a grand on a lens. I messed around with an older Sigma but hated the bad IQ. Eventually I just had to accept that forking over the cash was the only answer for me. Even then I went with pretty much the cheapest L-series super-tele. It works fine.
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Oct 8, 2015 02:47
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Most zooms are difficult to calibrate correctly with AF micro adjustment. I'd think that the larger the zoom range, the more imprecise the focus will be. I'd be glad if the center alone was accurate throughout every focal length on a lens like that, never mind the peripheral points.
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Oct 14, 2015 06:03
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Is there really such thing as an actual optically good superzoom lens? I assume I'd be an L-series, but which one? ... I'd be interested in something that could allow me to take a single camera and lens along on hiking & camping trips, that could handle landscape and bird/wildlife duty without needing to change lenses. It's just that I end up becoming very critical of final image quality and peep pixels a lot on my own stuff.
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Oct 14, 2015 14:56
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I tried using my 5D2 with the Canon EOS Utility v.2 on my Macbook to do some macro focus stacking. I had live view and camera focus control routed through the laptop for remote shooting. It seemed like a good idea but there were two issues: Saving an image was incredibly slow. I needed to take a couple dozen exposures in less than half an hour, and it honestly didn't seem like it would be able to do that. Sometimes the camera would be ready immediately after I took a shot, but most of the time there would be a 30 second to 2 minute delay right after. The live view screen would be static during this time. I tried changing the image file destination from my laptop to the camera's internal (UDMA 7) memory card and switching from RAW to JPEG, but that didn't seem to affect the delay much. Also, shutter speed bottoms out at 1/30th when using live view with remote shooting. I guess that's normal behavior? Kind of a shame considering the long exposure potential it would have otherwise. Are these issues to be expected, or is there something wrong with my camera? I don't really ever use live view or tethered shooting so this is a new realm for me.
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Oct 15, 2015 01:46
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Yeah, I'd like the convenience of a superzoom, but even going L series isn't likely to cut it for my purposes. Hell, I don't have any EF zooms at all right now. Although if I had to pick just one more lens to add to my system it would probably be a 70-200mm, because I generally prefer mirrorless for street and landscape stuff that needs wider focal lengths. Also, SMERSH Mouth posted:I tried using my 5D2 with the Canon EOS Utility v.2 on my Macbook to do some macro focus stacking. I had live view and camera focus control routed through the laptop for remote shooting. It seemed like a good idea but there were two issues: Both of these got fixed. As mentioned, I was in move+stills mode, which disables slower shutter speeds. And the delay problem went away. I think it may have been that I had image review time set to 'Hold'. It appears to be working fine now.
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Oct 15, 2015 05:01
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This is something I find myself wondering, too. 400mm on a full-frame just isn't enough for my wildlife photography needs, so going crop is looking attractive. And I need something with a big bright viewfinder because I'm spoiled by EVFs. I know the 70D has better AF in live view mode, but that's of no value to me, and its viewfinder is smaller and lower magnification, although not terribly so. I like the extra AF point coverage that I would get with any of those three cameras, really. I think the other big improvement would be in continuous tracking. AF improvements would be significant with any of these cameras, compared to a 5D2 or 40D. Compared to a 40D, the 7D and 70D would offer slightly better dynamic range and ISO performance, but not a lot. The resolution bump is more significant. The 7D2 also gets you closer to contemporary quality ISO and dynamic range, but still lags behind even the 5D2 in that department. What I really want to know is if I will see an improvement in center AF point accuracy with an f/5.6 lens on any of these cameras, relative to a 5D2. The 7D is about $200 cheaper than the 70D on average. It's the price you pay for having something newer. But is newer necessarily better? Unless the dedicated AF module offers significantly better performance and accuracy over the 7D's (again, if you don't use live view a lot the new on-sensor AF system in the 70D doesn't do much for you), there's not much going for the 70D over the 7D, IMO. It has marginally better ISO and DR again over the 7D, but that is offset by the smaller viewfinder. Maybe there's something else I'm missing? And yeah, 7D2 is comedy option territory for me as well. Would be nice, though.
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Oct 17, 2015 04:20
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I would spring for a newer XXXD series body, except I've come to rely on a large, high-magnification VF and a top LCD. For me, it's just a matter of practice; it improves the experience too much for me to do without. They seem just fine otherwise.
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Oct 17, 2015 23:46
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If you don't mind composing with the rear LCD, that is. And speaking of focusing screens, does the Eg-D (precision matte with grid) focusing screen for 5D2 perform better for manual focusing than the standard Eg-A screen? I've gotten mixed answers to this question from browsing various websites. I know it has the grid to assist with composition, but is it 'more matte' (I guess better for manual focusing??) than the Eg-A? I would like to have a focusing screen that lets me see what's in focus more clearly, but I use a 5.6 lens much of the time so the Eg-S super precision matte would be too dark. (?)
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Oct 21, 2015 13:48
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timrenzi574 posted:Apparently Leica thinks you're dying to put like a 400/2.8 on a mirrorless *raises paw* I am. ... But I'm also down with EVF/mirrorless for wildlife. MF with peaking has about the same success rate for me tracking birds in flight as AI Servo on my 5D2. So not that great but still as good as my current DSLR. And AF micro adjustment with the 5Dmkii is a bitch; I'm always second guessing just how critically in-focus my wildlife shots are. That doesn't happen when I'm using eg my a6000 with kit lens in an underwater housing to take pictures of fish. Even in that weird light the tracking and single-shot AF is always comfortably sharp, provided it lands on the right subject. I just wish there was anything that wasn't short and slow and was worth a poo poo for sports & wildlife in Sony's system. Until then, I'm really really tempted to grab a 7Dmki or 70D. I can't justify a 7Dmkii unless I sell my Sony gear. Not a furry Edit: Yeah I'd expect Sony to release a 400mm f/4 (maybe not a 2.8) way before Canon goes consumer-level FF mirrorless, and that's still on a cold day in hell. SMERSH Mouth fucked around with this message at 03:59 on Oct 22, 2015 |
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Oct 22, 2015 00:54
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It's such a pain in the rear end. My cheap plastic Sony babbycamera does perfectly competent auto ISO in M mode, but not my 5D2. But hey, I guess manual really means manual in the world of Canon. At least until 2014 I guess. Or is it just the 7D2 that finally incorporated that feature, and not the newer rebels? I assume the 1DX has had it all along?
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Nov 11, 2015 01:16
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 11:22 |
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Canonrumors is saying that the 7Dmkii is going to be the last 'pro level' aps-c camera the company makes. I wonder if the title of this thread in a few years will mirror the Nikon one... Canon Thread: The 7D Mark III Will Literally Never Exist. Why would wildlife & sports pros ever go full frame? I guess if Canon crop sensor performance is going to continue to lag, they might as well cut their losses?
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Nov 23, 2015 03:42
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