dSLR thread

[LunarMist]

It's been there forever as well. The cost is mostly labor as it is a custom design.

 

[ddrueding]

Did you check out the lens coozie? Its $600 of neoprene.

Really? Forget that, that blows my budget.

 

[udaman]

The 5DI still costs considerably more, so I would expect it to. IIRC, the FF sensor helps as well.

Considerably more, as in how many extra $$$, U mean the 5dmkII don't ya?

ur main cost, unless ur happy w/kit lens, will always be the lenses on a dslr- bodies are replaceable/upgradable part of the system.

Besides, switch to Nikon is not going to cost anymore than the needed upgrades to ur existing ver 1 lenses, all the II versions are going to cost u $2k/lens or more for the L-series improvements.

Apparently the new D300s is a worthy upgrade from the D300, and the G11 (S90 uses same sensor so probably similar IQ) can give you *better* IQ than the 7D...at least as far as detail, if not res...wtf up wit dat??? check the link to wiggett's blog for samples of unprocessed RAW ...get a Nikon & slippery bar of soap S90 for the pocket.

Get a Nikon...get a Mac :rr:

get site here:

http://fakechuckwestfall.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/7d-reviews-shit-are-happen/

Next we have our very own Moses with a review that put a smile on my face. I tell ya, I thank God for people like Darwin Wiggett and Moses because they make my work so much easier for me. Now I have some material to use in my arguments with Tokyo. Moses wrote down a lot of words on his website to essentially just make the following point, and I quote:

Now the 2 year old 40D costing round $800 delivers better image quality than the ’state of the art’ 7D which costs $1700. Does this make sense to you? Not to me!
​

So now we can’t post videos here at Canon while Nikon’s giving away $100,000 to do exactly that! This is just fucking childish behavior on their part. Just rub more salt on our wounds will ya? Fucking wankers. And they couldn’t have picked someone more suitable to do this either. That Jarvis guy’s on crack 24/7. I wish we had him on our side to promote our products. Did you see the videos he posted on his website? Boy that’s something else. A world of difference between those videos and my boring 1D4 sales talk.

So you see now why I need the whisky and the ganja, right? Nikon is encouraging photographers like Chase to use their equipment and even giving away tons of money doing so, while we are here shooting down talented people like Vincent Laforet, peace and blessings be upon him, and ordering them to take down their videos taken with our equipment. Boy that really has to have a positive influence on any good will they have towards us.

And I’m not even going to mention the new Nikon iPhone application. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, keep it that way.

Meanwhile the Nikon D3s is available and people are already raving about the great image quality it offers. I’m quite sure that our 7D would have matched the D3s if it was kept at 10MP. But we all know how that worked out. Wildlife photographer Moose Petersen wrote about his experiences using the D3s on his website. Imagine that… a wildlife photographer called Moose… Anyway, if you look at the D3s samples on his website, it becomes clear that the 1D4 is going to have tough competition. I do know from my own tests here at the office that certainly ISO 102,400 on the 1D4 doesn’t look quite as good as ISO 102,400 on the D3s.

ISO 102k, lol looks worse than the old Fuji F30 @3.2k, can you say
Georges-Pierre Seurat?

 

[Stereodude]

Ahahah... I love Nikon... My dad went Nikon on the DSLR side (poor misguided soul). First of all, their RAW converter isn't free. Second, their free RAW application, Nikon ViewNX, requires a Windows install with the latest service pack slip-streamed on the install disk.

• Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic Service Pack 2* (1)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Service Pack 2*(1)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Business Service Pack 2*(1)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Enterprise Service Pack 2* (1)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Service Pack 2*(1)
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3*(2)
• Microsoft Windows XP Home Service Pack 3* (2)

*Only Pre-installed versions supported.
(1) Both 32 and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista are supported, however the software operates as a 32-bit version under a 64-bit environment.
(2) Only the 32-bit versions of Windows XP are supported

Brilliant... He's not running SP3 yet, but I won't be very happy if I put SP3 on his PC and the application still refuses to run because it wasn't clean installed with a XP SP3 install disk.

 

[LunarMist]

I'm not sure that is true. Did you actually try it?
Have you considered converting the NEFs to DNGs and just working in PS?

 

[LunarMist]

I see. I'll test it on a couple of machines momentarily.

 

[LunarMist]

It works fine in three XP systems.

1. OEM XP32 SP2 -> XP32 SP3
2. 2K SP2 -> 2K SP4 -> XP32 SP2 -> XP32 SP3
3. OEM XP64 SP2

 

[Stereodude]

I'm not sure that is true. Did you actually try it?

No, I haven't actually tried it yet. I'll take a look at it on Thursday when I'm at their house. I was just taking Nikon's word for it.

 

[Stereodude]

It works fine in three XP systems.

1. OEM XP32 SP2 -> XP32 SP3
2. 2K SP2 -> 2K SP4 -> XP32 SP2 -> XP32 SP3
3. OEM XP64 SP2

Good to know. Thanks!

 

[Will Rickards]

Works fine is relative. It works fine on my system until it crashes unexpectedly.
Haven't used it enough in windows 7 64bit yet to see if that still happens. But in XP 64bit it used to happen about every 3rd time I used it.

 

[Chewy509]

Ahahah... I love Nikon... My dad went Nikon on the DSLR side (poor misguided soul). First of all, their RAW converter isn't free. Second, their free RAW application, Nikon ViewNX, requires a Windows install with the latest service pack slip-streamed on the install disk.

Have you considered using UFRaw? ( http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/index.html )

While it's *nix application, they do have Windows port that works with GIMP.

It also has a cmd line utility - ufraw-batch - that will batch convert your RAWs into TIFF / PNG / JPEG as needed...

 

[Stereodude]

That's probably not so feasible for my Dad. I'll see if I can get Nikon ViewNX running when I'm there for Turkey Day.

 

[LunarMist]

Works fine is relative. It works fine on my system until it crashes unexpectedly.
Haven't used it enough in windows 7 64bit yet to see if that still happens. But in XP 64bit it used to happen about every 3rd time I used it.

I still have some problems with various apps in XP64. That OS was never quite right compared to the 32 bit one.

 

[Handruin]

Check out this neat video from Canon on creating the glass and assembling their 500mm lens. Go into the virtual lens plant to see the videos.

 

[ddrueding]

You have to be a geek to enjoy something so dry. I know I did.

 

[Handruin]

I enjoyed it. I wanted to learn more. I even watched the section on lenses.

 

[Stereodude]

That's probably not so feasible for my Dad. I'll see if I can get Nikon ViewNX running when I'm there for Turkey Day.

Well, even after installing SP3 it was still a no go. The application installs and runs, but when it attempts to process a file (JPEG or NEF) it crashes.

I wonder if it doesn't support the Athlon XP 2800+ processor in the system, or requires SSE2 or something the Athlon XP 2800+ doesn't have.

 

[LunarMist]

You have to be a geek to enjoy something so dry. I know I did.

Or an engineer.

That is an old video, BTW.

 

[ddrueding]

Almost bought a 7D this morning. Instead, I got an emergency root canal. Same price, but a lot less fun.

 

[LunarMist]

Wow. You were able to find a dentist today? I'm surprised someone so young is having a root canal. I thought it was usually not needed until 50s or perhaps 40s at worst.

 

[ddrueding]

This is my fourth

Bad teeth run in the family, something about my saliva being incompatible with the enamel on my teeth.

My wife was awesome, and spent most of the morning looking for a dentist that was open and breaking into the house stash of painkillers.

 

[Handruin]

Sorry to hear that. A root canal can't be a fun experience.

I ended up having to go to the ER last night, actually early this morning. I have asthma, but normally in a very limited way (usually induced through exercise or alergies) but never serious. I've been sick for over a week and was having lots of trouble breathing even with my inhaler the last two nights. Last night I was getting seriously winded even when walking up one flight of steps and had to use the inhaler once an hour (I needed it more but it shouldn't be used that often) so I decided to go get it checked out. The doctors and nurses were great and I feel a ton better after steroids and a nebulizer. Seems I was inflaming and agitating my lungs far too much from all the coughing I'd been doing. The lung x-rays were clean which is a happy result.

 

[ddrueding]

ER can't be a fun experience. I've never had to go (never even had to bring someone else), so I have no idea what it's like.

 

[Handruin]

It was a good experience. The service was good and as soon as I arrived I signed in and saw a nurse within 5 minutes. Discussed what was going on and within another 10 I was being seen by others to go over my breathing issues. I was there for a while though waiting for results from the xrays.

 

[udaman]

LOL, Dan Chung said 6400 ASA

Would have liked to see less (shallow) DOF, 3.5 & 12.8k ISO shots, I hate ubiquitous shallow DOF in movies as it looks far too 'surreal' to me.

http://www.dslrnewsshooter.com/

^all that extra heavy duty (and expensive) gear needed to get better video...ugh! Tripods or Steadycam's...no thanks...dSLR's are more than bulky enough.

I don't know why all these dSLR vid guys keep saying 'it was really dark' when shooting ISO 6.4k, to me it looks like what you'd see with your own eyes, but far less than you'd see with your own eyes, as the DR is greatly limited compared to what the human eye sees in the same lighting/lack there of.

LOL, That

The star of the show is 28 year old Marvin who spends all his money on a Mercedes SLK to drive around Singapore in, mostly cruising with his friends at night.

....seems Marvin is just a vapid, shallow, and superficial with no life, like his American/Western cultural counterparts.

 

[Pradeep]

It was a good experience. The service was good and as soon as I arrived I signed in and saw a nurse within 5 minutes. Discussed what was going on and within another 10 I was being seen by others to go over my breathing issues. I was there for a while though waiting for results from the xrays.

Do you have a nebulizer at home? Sounds like a course of steroids may be best.

 

[Handruin]

I had a course of steroids for several days after my visit (prednisone) and they gave me one in the hospital.

 

[LunarMist]

Does anybody have the 1D MK IV on pre-order?

 

[Handruin]

I thought about it, but no. I saw crutchfield was taking pre-orders like lots of other people. Did you pre-order one?

 

[LunarMist]

No, I did not. I was afraid it might ship it during my travels and USP/FedEx sometimes leave packages around despite any signature requirements.

 

[Handruin]

Is it good enough for what you do? Seems like a step back in MP. I mostly want it for the video which is a bit insane. I think I might just end up with a 5D MKII instead and use the difference on gadgets.

 

[LunarMist]

The 1D MK IV is a wildlife body.

I may sell the practically unused 5D II, since I have the pair of 1Ds MK III bodies. You are correct that the 5D II MK is better for videos due to the FF, unless one is working in very low light. On video one can get away with many less-than-stellar fast, old primes.

 

[Handruin]

Is there anything wrong with your 5D II? If you decide to sell it, let me know what you might want for it.

 

[LunarMist]

There is nothing wrong with the 5D MK II. It has been one of the most reliable Canon cameras introduced recently. The 5D MK II suffers from average peripheral AF performance and a lame AF pattern like the 5D before it. It is a weak choice for action.

 

[Handruin]

I'd mainly want the 5D MKII for video work anyway, so the AF performance isn't much of a concern. Maybe 80/20 video/photo.

 

[LunarMist]

Vidoe is great I suppose. How do you edit it? I am clueless about that.

 

[Handruin]

I would probably use Adobe Premiere or one of the Avid programs on the PC. If you're a Mac user, probably Final Cut Pro would be one of the standard choices. For basic stuff, the windows movie maker will work if you want to play around without spending money.

 

[ddrueding]

Shot my first night football game last night. I ended up retreating to the 50/1.8 at 1600ISO because it was so dark. I keep thinking about a 100-400, but without higher ISO settings, it wouldn't be practical in too many applications.

Edit: I think the 85/1.8 would have been the right lens.

 

[LunarMist]

Usually people want to see relatively tight still shots of the critical players rather than a play formation, so think about the 300/2.8 and 400/2.8. Amateur and local night sports are often the most difficult since the lighting is substandard. 200/1.8 or 200/2 are also useful sometimes, but more useful for basketball or similar sports. The EF-S Canon bodies are not good at very high ISO and neither are the 1Ds series. You may want to get a camera that is useable at ISO 3200, such as the 1D III or D3, etc.

 

[udaman]

Would you guys, pullleeeze stop dicking around, and go take some decent, wildly vivid and inaccurate color images with 'real men' photo equipment, 70+ yr old Leica lens & Velvia 50 re-issue. I mean FFS already!

http://kenrockwell.com/tech/death-of-photography.htm

It's obvious looking back at old magazines that the only thing that mattered was getting to the right place at the right time to take a picture of the right thing, and the choice of developer and wash treatments, 90% of what the magazines went off about, was irrelevant.

Today, its the same thing. Magazines go off about how to "fix" your pictures in your computer, but let's face it: the only way to fix them is, as always, get to the right place at the right time and see the right picture before you press the shutter.

If you waste your time making 3,600 exposures from the same place to stitch in four dimensions, it doesn't matter how much spatial (gigapan and pan-focus) or luminous (HDR) range or resolution you have, if it's a picture of something boring.

If it sucks, who cares if it's GPS geotagged? If it's great, it's because of the lighting and timing, which has nothing to do with the location.

A photo of an important event is rarely important by itself. It is the event which was important, not the photo. Making a strong photo is much more difficult than just being there with a tripod.

Hobbyists are so distracted by wondering which raw converter to use, worried about printer and camera profiles, wasting hours doing gigapan and HDR and pan-focus captures, and then wasting even more hours in front of their screens putting these all together back into photos and then screwing them up further with more plugins, that no hobbyists have any time left to look for better pictures.

Today's hobby has perverted itself into little more than something men do on their computers between porn sessions.

Artists and photographers are still out shooting, but the hobbyist of today is crippled by wasting the majority of his potentially creative efforts dicking around on his computer.

As always, there would be little available for photography today if it wasn't for those nutty hobbyists buying so much gear and software. Without them, we'd still have what we had back in the 1990s, which is fine with me.

Many of the popular hobby techniques that require multiple exposures to create just one big crappy picture are actually technically incapable of making a good picture, precisely because they require multiple exposures.

Still photographs need dynamic elements to be successful. Moving and living subjects have to be caught at the peak of the action, the decisive instant that says it all. Landscapes, nature and architecture needs to be caught in the right light. The right light isn't in the middle of the day: the right light is very short-lived at the ends of the day. Clouds come and go, and the best syrupy golden light of dawn often only lasts for seconds. The strongest photos are those that capture something in transition.

Think of the best photos you can imagine. Is the subject just sitting there? Not likely. Most likely, something is happening, be interaction between people, or it's nature doing something interesting. You can't capture any of that with multiple exposures.

Ansel Adam's Clearing Winter Storm? Similar conditions have repeated, but as the clouds blow around, multiple exposures won't stitch or stack because the clouds can't match.

Ansel Adams' Moonrise over Hernandez? Ansel was driving around New Mexico, and saw something crazy happening before him. He stopped, and realized he had about 120 seconds before he lost the light on the crosses. He took 110 seconds to set up his 8x10" camera, took 5 seconds to guess his exposure from experience because he forgot his light meter in the car, and 5 seconds to get off one shot before he lost his light. He had no time for bracketing, or even for a second safety shot.

If he had brought a DSLR, he would have lost it before he even started any series of exposures intended to be stitched or stacked.

No, simply lightening the crosses later in Photoshop would not have made a picture if he had already lost his light.

Those are what people call still-lifes, shot with large-format cameras. Just think of all the iconic news shots that are even more difficult to time.
If you take more than a half-second to fire all the shots you need to stitch and stack, you cannot possibly create a photograph as powerful as can be captured in one snap of my Powershot.

Sure, some few people make good photos with whack techniques, and those same people are the sort of people who could make great photos with any technique.

The people who can pull off good stitched photos are those who already know exactly where to set their tripods for great photos. If you don't already have this knack, and few people do, then the worst way to try to get better is by handicapping yourself with a system that paralyzes you for a half an hour at a time.

Women don't have this problem, since they'd rather go shoot, which is why they create a lot less crap than we men do.

Oh man, Ken is so right on! Imma gunna go get me a Tiffen steadycam for my iPhone right now, and start takkin great images just like him!

http://www.imaging-resource.com/NEWS/1262989126.html

^^^And this is why I have my supadupa new 1D MkIV, cause it's so friggin fast. Actually I beat Ansel, so bad on that shot, I set up in less than 60sec, and got a full 50sec of primo, perfect moment lighting and exposure...I actually moved the cam to another angle in that same amount of time, with my all new supadupa Red 4k Scarlet camcorder, that is so wicked great I don't need no stinkin skillz at all...well, barely.

I just need to be able to shove all the other paps outta the way to get the perfect angle to shoot Lindsay Lohan when she's in an embarrassing moment, or Brittan-o, or Paris. :cyclopsani:

Then Imma gunna go back to my computer and beat-off selecting all the great stills I can choose from all of that footage, whereas Ansel only got one shot... I am... da man

Now if someone would just figure out how to stuff all of the Scarlet 4k abilities into something the size of the Sanyo VPC-SH1 (now there's a really, really easy model name you can recall in a flash)and a real f2.8 or faster 24mm-wide zoom lens (w/real optical stablization, none of that mamby-pamby electronic crap), I'll be set

http://us.sanyo.com/News/SANYO-Anno...ns--30x-Advanced-Zoom-2-Full-HD-3-Dual-Camera