dSLR thread

ddrueding

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Bought. I was playing with the 35/2 and decided I wanted a wider angle. So far this lens is just awesome. I've only had it for a day, but it is tons of fun. Trying to shoot an uncooperative subject (5-month old) with a shallow DOF prime lens is an interesting challenge.
 

LunarMist

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Many of my useable cards (400x+) are 32GB, and none are under 16GB. The most recent few cards are 64GB 1000x.

The problem is that I'm traveling far south and may have to abandon the laptop to save on weight in favor of sufficient photo hardware. Normally I travel with the ~3lb. laptop which has two internal 1TB drives (one of which is the Crucial 960GB). An external drive (bare SSD) is used for the third simultaneous copy, and resides mostly in my pants. By the time I add up the weight of the slipcover, AC adapter, cables, card reader, mice potato, etc. it is over 5 lbs. :( In addition there are usually two 1TB PSDs and a portable 2TB HD.

I'm going mental for memory storage. My 64GB cards don't work in the original UDMA. :cursin: PSDs are practically obsolete in the 2010s, so I'm at a loss for a strategy that won't cost $2.5-$3K or be unmanageable. :(
 

ddrueding

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So you're looking for something that can copy CF cards to a hard drive and is lighter than a laptop? Perhaps a tablet or phone with a host-mode USB adapter + hub?
 

LunarMist

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So you're looking for something that can copy CF cards to a hard drive and is lighter than a laptop? Perhaps a tablet or phone with a host-mode USB adapter + hub?

There are very few good options, basically the NVS1501 or the 2730. It is expensive and warranty is gone once it is opened to install the 1TB SSD.
 

LunarMist

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Normally I would get the lowest capacity and toss the HD, so that 2730 is fine. Nobody in the US sells the empty version. :(
 

Tannin

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My Tokina 35/2.8 macro was knocked off a while back and I practically never used it as a macro anyway (simply as a 35mm general-use prime), so I replaced it with a Canon 35/1.4, at vast expense. I don't seem to use it much. Once in a while for low-light things, yes, but portrait type stuff I tend to do with the 24-105 or even the 100-400. I prefer to be further away from the subject than you have to be with a 35.

It comes into its own (for me) as a landscape & general-use lens. I love that slightly wide-normal length (this is using it on the 1D IV, where it's just a bit wider than a 50mm lens is on a film camera). But I seldom - too seldom - do what I should do more: go for a walk with just the 35 and the 1D IV, nothing else, and let the light and the imagination work their magic.

Dave, your answer is a 5D II. (Or any of the various more modern and expensive replacements for it.) The 5D II has a shockingly primitive focus system - the worst of any DSLR I have ever owned, and that's a few - but if you can live with that one large fault, it is a wonderful performer in all other respects. Don't fuss about the frame rate, you won't even remember to notice much difference. What you WILL notice is the fantastic high ISO performance. You can work with quite insane light levels and get excellent results. Excellent camera that the 7D is, for what you are doing, a 5D II (or better) would be vastly, vastly better.

I have huge respect for mine - but I will never love it 'coz the focus system is so bloody primitive. I should really replace it with a 5D III or a 1D X but I can't justify that when I hardly ever use it for anything except landscapes and one shouldn't need a high-tech auto-focus system to manage a damn landscape.

One day....
 

ddrueding

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Thanks Tannin. I'm still loving the 35/1.4. Before that I was all over the 17-40/4 for the very sharp images and versatile range. I didn't really realize how much I missed the wider, shallower more creative shots that a very fast prime requires of you. I don't think I've even taken the 35/1.4 off the camera in a couple weeks. Granted, having it on an APS-C body makes it fairly "normal", but shooting the kid from 1-2' away is ideal.

I keep looking at the 5DIII, but I'm not ready to pull the trigger on that yet. Perhaps with the IV.
 

Handruin

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Thanks Tannin. I'm still loving the 35/1.4. Before that I was all over the 17-40/4 for the very sharp images and versatile range. I didn't really realize how much I missed the wider, shallower more creative shots that a very fast prime requires of you. I don't think I've even taken the 35/1.4 off the camera in a couple weeks. Granted, having it on an APS-C body makes it fairly "normal", but shooting the kid from 1-2' away is ideal.

I keep looking at the 5DIII, but I'm not ready to pull the trigger on that yet. Perhaps with the IV.

For whatever it's worth the 5D MK III's auto-focus system is much....much better than the 5D MKII. I believe the auto-focus is based on the same one in the 1D X.
 

LunarMist

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For whatever it's worth the 5D MK III's auto-focus system is much....much better than the 5D MKII. I believe the auto-focus is based on the same one in the 1D X.

It has the same AF sensor, but the 1D-X has a faster AF processor with better tuned algorithms.
 

Tannin

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None the less it's better than the 5D MKII.

My 400D was better than the 5D II. My 20Ds were much better. The 7D isn't even in the same postcode. The 5D III system is apparently pretty similar in practice to the 1D III and IV systems, which is to say really, really good. Pretty pricy unit, but worth it I suspect. But in the end, I just can't justify spending that kind of money for, when it's all said and done, functionality I don't need. For the stuff that really needs a decent AF system, I use the 1D IV and the 7D anyway, and I have an old 50D as a spare that does odd jobs, so the 5D II is only used for landscapes, nearly always using the 24-105. Yep, I have to do a lot of tedious focus and recompose 'coz the AF points are (a) not much good at getting a grip, and (b) all clustered incontinently in the centre of the viewfinder instead of spread out where they might be useful, but landscapes don't fly away in a hurry, so it's just annoying, not critical.

Also, the 5D II's metering seems to be shonky. I'm not sure what the go is there, I'd have thought it would be the same, more or less, as the 20D and the 40D. But it isn't. It consistently gets things wrong no matter which mode I use and I don't know why. Possibly the metering sensors, like the AF sensors, are badly distributed, or may there is some other reason. You just can't tell what it's going to do, whether it's going to under-expose by 2 stops, over by 3, or confuse the daylights out of me by doing it perfectly. Anyway, with the 5D II in hand I wind up doing a hell of a lot of manual exposure instead of using aperture priority (my usual habit unless I'm using flash). The 5D II gets stuff wrong so often that I find it easier just to figure out the exposure myself. I kind of like that, in a way, it forces me to become a better photographer and hone my own skills instead of just mindlessly letting the technology do everything for me.

Despite those glaring faults, it produces beautiful images, and does so under all sorts of lighting conditions. So yes, when the time comes I'll very gladly swap it for a 5D III (or a 5D IV probably by then) and be thankful for the vastly better AF and metering systems. But in the meantime, I can't imagine what would improve the actual pictures it takes (as opposed to the annoyance involved in taking them), so I guess it will be a few years yet.
 

Tannin

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While I'm at it, I'll muse on my other gear. The 1D IV is a no-brainer. It is the best possible camera for bird work regardless of price (allowing that there may or may not be a superior something in the Nikon world, but that's not something I'd consider given my investment in lenses) and there is no hint of a replacement on the way. Not that I need one anyway, nor could I afford it.

The 7D is getting old, but it's still a very nice unit. I'd much prefer that it was a 1.3 crop unit and that it had better noise at ISO 800 and above and especially that it had a bigger viewfinder. Maybe the eventual 7D II will fix two out of those three things. I'll almost certainly buy one unless I do the other thing I'm pondering, which is buy a second-hand 1D III (or a 1D IV if I can get one cheap enough). Then the 7D would become the spare camera.

As for the old 50D, it still gets used, mostly with whatever thing I'm using least. For example, the 24-105 is very wide on the 5D II (equivalent to 15mm on a 50D) so the 10-22 ultra-wide is often not required. The 50D only gets used when I need ultra wide in the 10mm-14mm range. Or similarly with the beautiful little Tokina 10-17mm fisheye zoom. Sometimes I have a macro lens on it instead. I'd like to step up to a full frame camera for the ultra-wide stuff, but (cost aside) I'm not in love with any of the available lenses. I guess I'd go for the 16-35L, not that I need or want f/2.8 in an ultra-wide, but there is nothing suitable in a fish. the Canon fisheye zoom is perhaps the most stupid design I have heard of since the welded-on lenscap. Then there is the amazingly wide Sigma 12-24 - not the sharpest knife in the drawer, they say. hmmm.... On the whole, I think along these lines and then decide to do nothing. Again.

But I would like one of these little 60D/70D units with the swivel screen. Brilliant for macros and hard-to-reach stuff. Shame about the plastic body and the stupid SD card slot, but I can live with those things.

Err ... what was the question?
 

ddrueding

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The only hesitation I have about the 5DIV is the change in sensor size, it will make me rethink all my lenses (and get rid of all my -S lenses, not that I've used them much lately).
 

ddrueding

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A bunch. The ones I use the most are the 35/1.4, 50/1.4, 17-40/4, 180 macro, and occasionally the 100/2. I have a 10-22, Sigma 75-500, 18-55 IS, and the pancake 40/2.8. I also have a 2x extender that I like to strap to the 180 for unusual stuff.

Lenses still on the "to buy" list are the 85/1.2 (to replace the 100/2) and the 100-400 (to replace the 75-500).
 

ddrueding

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I'd forgotten how infuriating Lightroom is. There should always always always be an "open" and a "save" option in the "File" menu.

Just took me 15 minutes to open a CR2 file from a CF card, make basic changes, and save it. Gah.
 

Tannin

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I'd forgotten how infuriating Lightroom is. There should always always always be an "open" and a "save" option in the "File" menu.
Yes. God yes! Incredible. Truly appalling "design" skills reflective of a company so far out of touch with its users and their wants that it is strongly rumoured to be hiring bright young astronomy graduates with a view to tasking them with a major project to renew the company: their challenge is going to be finding Planet Earth.
 

Handruin

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I've tried to like Lightroom several times over the years and it lasts all of 5 minutes before I'm done and it's uninstalled. The fact that I had to try to like it is enough wrong in that statement that I shouldn't have even proceeded. None the less I felt the urge to re-educate myself with Adobe's nastiness.

I had a good laugh around this time last year related to Lightroom. My fiancee went to the New York Photo Expo and stopped at one of the vendor booths where she was having a conversation with a representative from that company (of which I can't remember). He was making her feel inferior for not knowing lightroom by claiming all the industry "experts" use it. We had a few good laughs over his claim. She remarked to him why would she use Lightroom when she's using Photoshop but it didn't register with him.
 

LunarMist

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I don't think it would of use to me for video, but for use on static subjects with Canon lenses. AF and IS are only supported on some lenses by the Metabones, but that is much better than with most adapters.
 

LunarMist

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I hadn't even thought of using an adapter to work with the lenses I already have. That makes it far more attractive.

Since the A7/A7r lenses will be practically non-existent until next year and still quite limited thereafter, most of the early bodies will be sold to Canon users. The D800e is a far more capable body, so there is little to no point for Nikon users. There are also adapters for nearly all major SLR lenses including some rather old ones.
 
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