dSLR thread

[Stereodude]

No samples of your handiwork?

 

[ddrueding]

Just got home from New Years; it was part of the same trip. I've barely had time to do the photo selection, much less the post-processing stuff. The bride and groom haven't even seen any yet

 

[paugie]

no photography was specifically requested during the ceremony

???
Here, if that happened, they'd hang the photographer. I mean could you explain what memories one can take pictures of in a rehearsal?

 

[Stereodude]

???
Here, if that happened, they'd hang the photographer. I mean could you explain what memories one can take pictures of in a rehearsal?

Yeah, that's a little odd. Even if they didn't request it, I'd still have taken pictures.

 

[ddrueding]

I asked where they wanted me for the ceremony, and they said that I would distract from the moment. I did get pictures all through the rehearsal and party, as well as many posed shots.

It will be some time before I can post them here, I need to show them and then get their permission to do so. You'll likely see some Disneyland shots before then.

 

[ddrueding]

I just finished uploading the batch from Disneyland. If any of them are comment-worthy I would appreciate it.

 

[Stereodude]

I just finished uploading the batch from Disneyland. If any of them are comment-worthy I would appreciate it.

I think you need more rule of 1/3rds.

 

[ddrueding]

I think you need more rule of 1/3rds.

I agree. I'm just not sure how to crop most of them. I don't "see" it yet.

 

[ddrueding]

I borrowed a friend's 75-300 4-5.6 II (non-IS) to see if I'm willing to settle for less than a 400mm long-end.

 

[ddrueding]

Wow. Why didn't I think 300mm would be enough? That is a hell of a lot. And I'll need it faster than 5.6 for any hand-held action. I could barely manage one clean picture in 10 @ 1/60-1/90.

 

[ddrueding]

I keep finding myself attracted to primes because of their speed. Running around Disneyland at night with the 35/2 and the 50/1.8 I felt really empowered. I would stop and take a picture, happy with the outcome, and someone else would step up with their 40D or XTi and a massive zoom lens and get no shot at all. I was able to take pictures on rides, in dark corners, even in a theater. None of them were any good, but not for lack of hardware.

So now I find myself strangely attracted to the 100/2 prime. I know I should spend the $150 more and get the EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM, it would be the more practical thing to do, but I really miss the speed.

 

[Handruin]

I know it's at an odd length for your (or my) camera (crops in general), but the 135mm F/2 L is supposed to be one of the highest rated lenses with awesome bokeh. I'd love to own one but I find it's more of an odd length and can't justify it any more than I have for everything else I've bought. If you're looking for something in that length, you might want to consider it (and it's a prime).

 

[e_dawg]

You could always get a Sigma 150/2.8 macro for a nice tele prime that won't break the bank. It has superlative image quality (one of the sharper lenses ever tested) and isn't ridiculously pricey or heavy (it's "only" 980 g, or 2.2 lbs). The only thing it doesn't have is IS.

But don't underestimate the value of IS. The 70-300/IS is not nearly as limited as the 75-300 non-IS in low-light. The IS will get you 2 more stops. That means at the long end, you're at f/5.6 with the non-IS is now f/2.8 with the IS lens. Try getting a f/2.8 prime in that focal length. It's going to be massive. And at the shorter end, you're at f/4. With IS, you're virtually at f/2. So that's equivalent to the 100/2 in low-light ability with static subjects.

 

[ddrueding]

My first "real" bird pics (ie. pictures of a bird that wouldn't let me pet it).

It's a hummingbird of some kind, I think a Broadbilled or Costa's, but I really have no idea.

I know, the lighting is horrible and the noise @ ISO800 is a bit much.

 

[Tannin]

Now you are getting into the hard stuff, Dave.

What can you do with a subject like that? Several things:

1: get closer to the bird. (Yup, that's often pretty hard.)
2: use a longer lens (bearing in mind that this will cost you lots of money, weigh a ton, be difficult to hold steady, and useless for all your other work).
3: use a teleconverter. You gain a bit of resolution but not as much as you expect because a bare lens always performs better than lens & TC, so you only get perhaps half of the advantage you expect in theory. Plus you lose a stop (i.e., slower shutter speed and/or higher ISO, both of which cost you image quality), may run into depth of field problems, and have to live with significantly slower and marginally less accurate autofocus. I use my 1.4 quite a bit if the light is good, hardly ever the 2X.
4: use fill-flash. This introduces a whole new world of complexity, but can produce very good results if you master the technology.
5: Use some +ve exposure compensation. On that shot, about 2/3rds of a stop would be about right.
6: ask the bird to please move somewhere more convenient for you. Most birds will do this if you ask them nicely. (Oh, provided, that is, that you wait around until they do. A couple of days is usually long enough.)

 

[udaman]

Now you are getting into the hard stuff, Dave.

What can you do with a subject like that? Several things:

1: get closer to the bird. (Yup, that's often pretty hard.)
2: use a longer lens (bearing in mind that this will cost you lots of money, weigh a ton, be difficult to hold steady, and useless for all your other work).
3: use a teleconverter. You gain a bit of resolution but not as much as you expect because a bare lens always performs better than lens & TC, so you only get perhaps half of the advantage you expect in theory. Plus you lose a stop (i.e., slower shutter speed and/or higher ISO, both of which cost you image quality), may run into depth of field problems, and have to live with significantly slower and marginally less accurate autofocus. I use my 1.4 quite a bit if the light is good, hardly ever the 2X.
4: use fill-flash. This introduces a whole new world of complexity, but can produce very good results if you master the technology.
5: Use some +ve exposure compensation. On that shot, about 2/3rds of a stop would be about right.
6: ask the bird to please move somewhere more convenient for you. Most birds will do this if you ask them nicely. (Oh, provided, that is, that you wait around until they do. A couple of days is usually long enough.)

2 & 3 will work better if you ditch the Canon, and get a Nikon D3, shoot at 6.4k ISO or if you really need it and can work that Noise Ninja mojo, go for 12.8k or 25.6k.

6: you must have some mighty right friendly, social, civil, and polite Neognathae down under Tannin; cause the blue heron I tried to photo, didn't take kindly to the very quite shutter of my OM2, couple of clicks and it was spooked...flew away. The much noisier Canon 20D would have had it flying away after the very 1st shot, unless you where digiscoping from likely, 100m or more away in distance.

 

[e_dawg]

Good shots, Dave! Always hard to take pics of birds. But if I might say... that's a lot of NR you're using there! Personally, I'd rather see more noise but more resolution and sharpness.

Shooting in RAW helps, so you avoid the crappy in-camera NR.

You can also try something like Unshake -- a freeware deconvolution filter that can improve shots blurred by poor focus (only if it's off by a bit), motion blur (again, only for mild camera shake), or lens blur (i.e., when you zoom lens gets a bit soft at long focal lengths). It will increase your noise, but the good news is that it will shift the frequency of your noise upwards, which allows you to use something like Neat Image (especially if you use it as a PS plug-in so you can use layers & masking to apply it locally) to do NR on higher frequency noise bands.

(Noise Ninja's strength is its standalone application's ability to let the user decide where and how much NR to apply locally; Neat Image's strength is its ability to control the relative amount of NR done by noise frequency and colour channel. NI's standalone app does not allow the user to control where and how much NR is applied locally, but you can achieve that with the plug-in in PS through layering and masking)

 

[ddrueding]

Thanks guys. The whole time I was out there I was thinking that a 300 is way too much; the objects that a 300 captures well I couldn't even see with my corrected vision. I was scanning the trees with the camera, looking through the viewfinder, trying to find something of interest. After about 2 hours I had 3 birds, 2 pictures each. The first bird was well inside a tree, with branches all around. The second was on the ground, in a small piece of shade surrounded by very bright directly lit grass. And the third is what you see.

As soon as I attempted to get any closer it flew away. And to be honest, getting closer wouldn't have helped the shot much; I was already significantly underneath the bird (more than a 45-degree look-up). Based on my birding research, it seems the target was 3 inches (7.5cm) tall; that's macro range.

I already dropped on NoiseNinja, I just need to learn how to use it (besides "profile image"->"OK").

I'm shooting in RAW, and as it turns out this image was horribly underexposed. I had to bring it up almost 2 stops in software.

Sigh. Perhaps today I'll go someplace with more interesting and cooperative birds.

 

[ddrueding]

Embarrassed by my bird picture yesterday, I just got back from a decent hike. I intend to show some at least decent images. Let's hope I actually got some.

 

[ddrueding]

Here are my shots for today. Get close? I got close

But this is certainly my favorite (click for full-size):

 

[Tannin]

Nice work indeed, Dave.

E_Dawg is a Nikon man, so can be forgiven for not realising that Canon cameras (at least ones of 20D vintage) don't apply any noise reduction worth mentioning to JPG images, so there is no requirement with a 20D to shoot raw just to avoid the horrible plastic look that some cameras (notably the older Nikons - D200 for e.g.) produce at high ISOs.

I understand that the latest Nikons are much better in this regard, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the latest Canon models (such as my 40D) have gone a short distance in the opposite direction. In short, your 20D remains a very fine tool indeed if you are after birds. (Or pretty much anything else, of course.)

Udaman makes a couple of points above that are, frankly, nonsensical.

2 & 3 will work better if you ditch the Canon, and get a Nikon D3, shoot at 6.4k ISO or if you really need it and can work that Noise Ninja mojo, go for 12.8k or 25.6k.

6: you must have some mighty right friendly, social, civil, and polite Neognathae down under Tannin; cause the blue heron I tried to photo, didn't take kindly to the very quite shutter of my OM2, couple of clicks and it was spooked...flew away. The much noisier Canon 20D would have had it flying away after the very 1st shot, unless you where digiscoping from likely, 100m or more away in distance.

2 & 3: Out of which bottom are you pulling this stuff, Udaloonie? I've seen you claim some fairly ridiculous things from time to time but this one is the #1 prize winner with a bullet. Well done!

In reality, of course, a D3 is a particularly poor choice for this sort of task as it has very low pixel density, which is how it manages such impressive high ISO performance - the bigger the light well, the better the high ISO. The other side of the coin is that there is an inevitable loss of finer detail because the pixels are not small enough to record it. Now if you were talking deep shadow with rainforest birds, where you can generally get quite close but can never get enough light on them, a D3 with something like a 400/2.8 or a 500/4 or even a 300/2.8 would be just the thing. But for most bird shots (including, in particular, the sort of subject Dave has here) you need to get as many pixels on the subject as possible, and for that any other current or recent DSLR will perform better than a D3. In the Nikon world, a D300 (or for that matter a D40x) would outperform it easily, even a 6MP D40 would put more pixels on the bird than the D3. In the Canon world, well, any of them, but the 20D is a good choice.

These days I'm mostly using a 1D III for birding, which in some ways is a step backwards from the 20D or the 40D, as I sacrifice a certain amount of reach, meaning that I have to get closer than I would with a 20D. I accept that compromise because I've spent enough time learning how to read the birds' state of mind that I can get closer, and because the 1D III has several other features that make it a very nice tool indeed, notably in this context the excellent high ISO performance.

Note that it is easily the best-performed high-ISO Canon camera, but that it achieves this through having the lowest pixel density of any Canon model (leaving aside the outgoing 5D) - i.e., you have to get closer to the bird with a 1D III than with (e.g.) a 20D or a 1Ds III, and the Mark III is only out-performed for high-ISO work by the Nikon D3, which has much bigger pixels again. It's a matter of judgement, of course, but the majority of good bird photographers elect to go with something that has reasonably high pixel density (20D, 30D, 40D, 400D, the new 1Ds III) and live with the (relatively) limited ISO performance. I use the 1D III most of the time but have the 40D and the 20D for times when I'm reach-limited and the light is good; I'm currently undecided which gives me better results under those circumstances: 40D and 1.4 converter at (say) ISO 400, or 1D III and 2X converter at ISO 800. Probably the latter, but I'm still experimenting.

Anyway, short answer is that, on this point, Udaman is far enough off base to leave some doubt as to which planet is the one of interest.

Now to shutter noise. I've written about that before, so you can just go back and re-read the appropriate post to get some fairly detailed hints, but in short, it is up to you (the photographer) to figure out a way to get the bird comfortable with the shutter. Usually, it's not difficult. One thing to note is that the sheer volume of the shutter noise is not the point. Birds have, as a rule, excellent hearing, so they can detect a quiet shutter just as effectively as a loud one. What they react to, most of the time, is first the degree to which they are expecting the noise, and second, the quality of the noise. For example, on my old Nikon Coolpix digiscoping rig, it wasn't uncommon to have birds that didn't mind the sound of the shutter in the least, but spooked immediately at the (much softer) sound of the zoom motor. Similarly, depending on the species, many birds react more to the (fairly quiet) 1D III shutter than they do to the (very loud) 20D, but if you switch the 1D III down to 5 or 6 FPS instead of the full 10 FPS, they are OK with it.

Short answer that works >80% of the time: fire of a few bursts while you are still some distance away. They soon get used to it. Hell, you could probably fire a starting pistol 5m away from a bird if you spent a few weeks letting it get used to the noise first.

 

[udaman]

Nice work indeed, Dave.

E_Dawg is a Nikon man, so can be forgiven for not realising that Canon cameras (at least ones of 20D vintage) don't apply any noise reduction worth mentioning to JPG images, so there is no requirement with a 20D to shoot raw just to avoid the horrible plastic look that some cameras (notably the older Nikons - D200 for e.g.) produce at high ISOs.

I understand that the latest Nikons are much better in this regard, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the latest Canon models (such as my 40D) have gone a short distance in the opposite direction. In short, your 20D remains a very fine tool indeed if you are after birds. (Or pretty much anything else, of course.)

Udaman makes a couple of points above that are, frankly, nonsensical.



2 & 3: Out of which bottom are you pulling this stuff, Udaloonie? I've seen you claim some fairly ridiculous things from time to time but this one is the #1 prize winner with a bullet. Well done!

In reality, of course, a D3 is a particularly poor choice for this sort of task as it has very low pixel density, which is how it manages such impressive high ISO performance - the bigger the light well, the better the high ISO. The other side of the coin is that there is an inevitable loss of finer detail because the pixels are not small enough to record it. Now if you were talking deep shadow with rainforest birds, where you can generally get quite close but can never get enough light on them, a D3 with something like a 400/2.8 or a 500/4 or even a 300/2.8 would be just the thing. But for most bird shots (including, in particular, the sort of subject Dave has here) you need to get as many pixels on the subject as possible, and for that any other current or recent DSLR will perform better than a D3. In the Nikon world, a D300 (or for that matter a D40x) would outperform it easily, even a 6MP D40 would put more pixels on the bird than the D3. In the Canon world, well, any of them, but the 20D is a good choice.

These days I'm mostly using a 1D III for birding, which in some ways is a step backwards from the 20D or the 40D, as I sacrifice a certain amount of reach, meaning that I have to get closer than I would with a 20D. I accept that compromise because I've spent enough time learning how to read the birds' state of mind that I can get closer, and because the 1D III has several other features that make it a very nice tool indeed, notably in this context the excellent high ISO performance.

Note that it is easily the best-performed high-ISO Canon camera, but that it achieves this through having the lowest pixel density of any Canon model (leaving aside the outgoing 5D) - i.e., you have to get closer to the bird with a 1D III than with (e.g.) a 20D or a 1Ds III, and the Mark III is only out-performed for high-ISO work by the Nikon D3, which has much bigger pixels again. It's a matter of judgement, of course, but the majority of good bird photographers elect to go with something that has reasonably high pixel density (20D, 30D, 40D, 400D, the new 1Ds III) and live with the (relatively) limited ISO performance. I use the 1D III most of the time but have the 40D and the 20D for times when I'm reach-limited and the light is good; I'm currently undecided which gives me better results under those circumstances: 40D and 1.4 converter at (say) ISO 400, or 1D III and 2X converter at ISO 800. Probably the latter, but I'm still experimenting.

Anyway, short answer is that, on this point, Udaman is far enough off base to leave some doubt as to which planet is the one of interest.

Now to shutter noise. I've written about that before, so you can just go back and re-read the appropriate post to get some fairly detailed hints, but in short, it is up to you (the photographer) to figure out a way to get the bird comfortable with the shutter. Usually, it's not difficult. One thing to note is that the sheer volume of the shutter noise is not the point. Birds have, as a rule, excellent hearing, so they can detect a quiet shutter just as effectively as a loud one. What they react to, most of the time, is first the degree to which they are expecting the noise, and second, the quality of the noise. For example, on my old Nikon Coolpix digiscoping rig, it wasn't uncommon to have birds that didn't mind the sound of the shutter in the least, but spooked immediately at the (much softer) sound of the zoom motor. Similarly, depending on the species, many birds react more to the (fairly quiet) 1D III shutter than they do to the (very loud) 20D, but if you switch the 1D III down to 5 or 6 FPS instead of the full 10 FPS, they are OK with it.

Short answer that works >80% of the time: fire of a few bursts while you are still some distance away. They soon get used to it. Hell, you could probably fire a starting pistol 5m away from a bird if you spent a few weeks letting it get used to the noise first.

Diehard Canon fan I see Tannin is, couldn't ever get a rational comparison out of him with any Nikon... never mind. Canon's new 1Ds MkIIIIIIII has how many dense pixels, compared to the D3's that are what, equal to the 5D perhaps???...sheeesh! Tannin's opinions are in the minority as usual...you'd think he would be a fan of Ken Rockwell then (hehe, j/k j/k)

As far as quiet shutters, I don't spends weeks on end trying to track down birds, not a hobby of mine. Leica Rangefinder will not disturb your blue heron in the quiet solitude of a backcountry road. I don't think Tannin has ever heard the sound of an OM2 shutter, very quiet compared to all dSLR's. But the bl heron was, as Tannin suggests not accustomed to the sound, faint as it would be from a distance. The bird noticed me as I was driving by, as it was used to the sound of passing cars. I turned off the engine, there was silence, a few ticks later, it was spooked...nothing to do from there other than to MOVE on. end of story.

On another note, for me 2nd lens, I might get this sickeningly expensive 17-55 2.8 IS USM, even though I could probably bear the lower quality images of the $200 18-55 3.5-5.6 IS 'kit' lens.

http://www.slrgear.com/reviews/showproduct.php/product/1114/cat/11

That would make it $200 for the 300D body (until a 5D MkII comes out...we well see how excessively packed the tiny pixels are then, lol) & $2000 worth on just 2 lenses...are my priorities out of whack

 

[ddrueding]

Thanks for the info Tannin.

Uda, The EF-S 17-85MM f4-5.6 IS USM is on my shopping list to replace my kit lens. IS plus a little more reach. Of course, if a FF body is in your future, forget it.

 

[e_dawg]

E_Dawg is a Nikon man, so can be forgiven for not realising that Canon cameras (at least ones of 20D vintage) don't apply any noise reduction worth mentioning to JPG images, so there is no requirement with a 20D to shoot raw just to avoid the horrible plastic look that some cameras (notably the older Nikons - D200 for e.g.) produce at high ISOs.

Actually, more of an Olympus man these days. Unfortunately, noise is a fact of life with the smaller sensor.

The way I've thought about Nikon and Canon NR is that Nikon tends to prefer less luminance NR with the goal of preserving detail better, but ultimately, that "trick" does not give them an edge; it only allows them to approach Canon in detail vs noise tradeoff. Yes, they were a little behind Canon in the old days, but I think they have pretty much caught up. Or maybe it's because they're using CMOS sensors now.

 

[jtr1962]

I don't know how useful this will be, but there's an open source project to hack the firmware on certain Canon cameras called CHDK.

 

[ddrueding]

Neat utility, but only for PnS, not dSLR.

If you have an a620, a630, a640, a700, a710, S2IS, or S3IS, you have lots of options ... A560, A570, SD500, SD700, and G7 have a more limited selection currently, although growing.

 

[Gilbo]

I've been seriously thinking of getting a very compact Canon (smaller than the G9) and using CHDK to get RAW files out of it. At the moment I use a Panasonic LX1 as a Point & Shoot, but the lens on it makes it inconvenient to pocket.

 

[e_dawg]

You'd better get one fast, Gilbo. All the DIGIC II models are out of production now, and the supply of remaining units in the retail channels are drying up quickly.

DIGIC III models have not been successfully hacked yet, and it remains to be seen if they can pull it off.

IMO, the SD cameras are not a great choice due to their complete lack of manual settings. Yes, they are compact, but cannot touch the A-series models is image quality in less than ideal conditions due to said lack of adjustability.

 

[e_dawg]

Whoops. Turns out they managed to crack the DIGIC III firmware with the A570 and G7 DIGIC III cameras. Still, those two models are hard to find now, so get them while you can.

OR, you can take your chances that they have made initial progress with the DIGIC III and it's only a matter of time before they get to yours...

 

[e_dawg]

BTW, if you're interested in the A710is, I have a New In Box A710is I could make available, bought as a backup of my current A710 in case it breaks. I'm using my Olympus E-510 as my main travel camera these days, and it doesn't seem as worthwhile to have a spare A710 around just in case when it's no longer my primary camera.

The A720is CHDK hack still has a ways to go before it's usable, and the sensor is a little noisier than the A710's due to the higher pixel density.

 

[LunarMist]

Hacking or cracking cameras is quite scary. What if the procedure fails and one is left with a $8,000 brick? How expensive would a repair cost be and would Canon know the cause?

 

[e_dawg]

Oh, not to worry. These are cheap P&S models, not an $8,000 dSLR. And for end-users, there is no real "hacking". It's just loading a TSR extension from your SD card into memory on startup, not writing a modified firmware onto the EPROM. There can be no evidence that you have modified your camera because you haven't, really. Just erase the .BIN and .DAT files from the root folder of your SD card and you have done away with the evidence (and don't forget to delete the RAW files if your camera doesn't actually support RAW mode out of the box ).

 

[Gilbo]

Whoops. Turns out they managed to crack the DIGIC III firmware with the A570 and G7 DIGIC III cameras. Still, those two models are hard to find now, so get them while you can.

OR, you can take your chances that they have made initial progress with the DIGIC III and it's only a matter of time before they get to yours...

Hmmm. A G7 with RAW would be as good as G9, maybe even better (less noise).

BTW, if you're interested in the A710is, I have a New In Box A710is I could make available, bought as a backup of my current A710 in case it breaks. I'm using my Olympus E-510 as my main travel camera these days, and it doesn't seem as worthwhile to have a spare A710 around just in case when it's no longer my primary camera.

The A720is CHDK hack still has a ways to go before it's usable, and the sensor is a little noisier than the A710's due to the higher pixel density.

Thanks for the offer. I have no idea if I even want to buy another point and shoot at the moment though. I'll keep it in mind if I ever decide to pull the trigger.

 

[Gilbo]

E_Dawg, could you tell me how long the 12-60mm f/2.8-4.0 is from flange to the tip of the lens hood? I'm going to go and see if my local Henry's or Vistek have ones I can look at this week, but I figured I'd fire it out there while I thought of it.

I wonder if it would fit in my camera bag without reversing the hood...

 

[Gilbo]

LATE EDIT: Not that I plan on buying more camera gear!

I just wish Pentax had a good extended-range Standard Zoom like a 24-105 f/4L, Olympus 12-60, or Nikon 18-135. There is the Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4.5, but it's a little short on the long end for my liking.

I'm not sure I'd even use it. The main reason I crave more reach on the long end is for discrete face shots at social events, and the 77mm f/1.8 is beautiful for that. I use it and the 31mm alternately. It's annoying to switch, but a zoom intimidates people with its size, so I stay away from them, but I do like to think about it...

 

[e_dawg]

E_Dawg, could you tell me how long the 12-60mm f/2.8-4.0 is from flange to the tip of the lens hood? I'm going to go and see if my local Henry's or Vistek have ones I can look at this week, but I figured I'd fire it out there while I thought of it.

I wonder if it would fit in my camera bag without reversing the hood...

That would be 13.5 cm. I rarely use lens hoods for this reason and it makes it harder to put the lens cap on/off.

 

[udaman]

While I still don't have my TS-E lens yet (supposedly in transit), Canon has updated the Rebel to a 450D model. Brings it up to similar features added to the 40D, and updated features lacking in the previous model that the competitors had, like spot metering. It's now up to what it should have been in the 400D model...except once again, Canon has dumbed down this model, like the very 1st Rebel, by removing the high gain ISO 3200 option. This when all other dSLR makers are going to even higher ISO modes.

They have also gone to 'fashion' with a 3in LCD (and removed the column of function buttons that the 400D had room for with it's 2.5in screen).

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0801/08012404canoneos450dhandson.asp

Pentax (and new comer Samsung) have gone to 14MP, with ISO 6400 joining the D300's 6400, the 40D stuck at 3200 after so many years, just as the Rebels are stuck at 1600 for so many years.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0801/08012312pentaxk20dhandson.asp

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0801/08012412samsunggx20handson.asp

Still no announcement of a 5D replacement, but it is almost a certainty when this oldest of Canon dSLR models get updated, that it too will be stuck at ISO3200, and get a rather useless (except for Tannin ) bump in MP's, and nearly equally useless live view function.

 

[Piyono]

In reality, of course, a D3 is a particularly poor choice for this sort of task as it has very low pixel density, which is how it manages such impressive high ISO performance - the bigger the light well, the better the high ISO. The other side of the coin is that there is an inevitable loss of finer detail because the pixels are not small enough to record it. Now if you were talking deep shadow with rainforest birds, where you can generally get quite close but can never get enough light on them, a D3 with something like a 400/2.8 or a 500/4 or even a 300/2.8 would be just the thing. But for most bird shots (including, in particular, the sort of subject Dave has here) you need to get as many pixels on the subject as possible, and for that any other current or recent DSLR will perform better than a D3. In the Nikon world, a D300 (or for that matter a D40x) would outperform it easily, even a 6MP D40 would put more pixels on the bird than the D3. In the Canon world, well, any of them, but the 20D is a good choice.

I'm unclear on this point, Tony:
What does pixel *density* have to do with bottom-line resolution? If you're filling your D3 viewfinder with that Yellow-throated vireo you've got twelve million pixels on it. Period. No? What's it matter how close together those pixels are on the sensor?


Oh, have I ever mentioned that I'm full-time photography nut, albeit one who cannot currently afford DSLR? It's true. For the last 5 years I've carrying my CoolPix 4500 wherever I go, whenever possible. It's mainly for posterity and pure, unbridled narcissism (the 4500 is the camera to beat for arm's-length self-portraiture), although I do like taking artsy-ish close-up shots of things in "macro" mode and "swooshy" trailing light shots at weddings and concerts and parties and anywhere else that combines people and dark rooms with spots of light in the background.

My ideal camera would have a swiveling body like the CP 4500 only with good responsiveness, interchangeable lenses, fast, accurate AF, imperceptibly short shutter lag and exceptionally clean high-ISO output because I take lots of pictures in low light and often do not want to use a flash.

For the record I'm a Nikon guy, born and bred. I totally respect Canon gear but those cameras and I just don't gel.

There, that's a good intro.

 

[ddrueding]

Nice Piyono, admitting you have a problem is the first step to losing yourself in the problem.

 

[Piyono]

Nice Piyono, admitting you have a problem is the first step to losing yourself in the problem.

Woohoo!
Eleven more steps to go and I'm a free man.


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