John Crowe

From a quick comparison on the internet it appears that the 17-55 is significantly sharper than the 16-80 at all comparable focal lengths so modern does not always mean better. So is range and VR more important for your purposes?

I will have to take a photo of my setup and post it. I bought a Saunders LPL 6600 for $25, a Canon FD 50/3.5 macro for $60, a full set of Canon FD extension tubes for $25, a Canon FD to EOS adapter with no glass, two 5600k fluorescent tubes for my light table, a 4x5 enlarger film holder, a 6x6 enlarger film holder, and a 35mm film holder. So for under $200 I created a duplicating station to use with my Canon 5D II. I made the 35mm slide holder out of black matte board and I made a two axis sliding holder for each film size out of black matte board and some left over bits of black wooden picture frame moulding. The two axis slider allows me to easily align each film size for 1:1 stitching of 6x6 and 4x5 images without moving the camera. For 35mm I go even closer and shoot three images and stitch them. I removed the enlarger head from the sliding holder and jerry-rigged some old tripod parts to allow me to mount the camera lens parallel to the base of the enlarger and then place my light table and film holding jig on the base. The LPL has a super smooth and efficient height adjustment which makes placing the lens extremely easy. I keep the film well above the light table to make sure the translucent panel is not in focus. Results are superb. I made lightjet prints of 16x20 of the 4x5 and 11x14 from the 35mm to confirm that the copies would stand up to larger printing. I see now that I could easily print much larger for all formats and likely get to 28x35 for 4x5 no problem. That is pretty much my limit for doing my own mounting and framing anyway. I am astonished that Velvia 50 in any of these formats copied using the 5D II, have far superior depth of colour than the same image taken with the 5D II itself. I cannot fathom how this works. The camera can render the colours from the film but not from the real scene! I no longer have 6x6 or 4x5 but this experience has me hoping that within a year I will be able to build a very specialized 6x6 camera to shoot Velvia again! I have recently upgraded to a 5DS R so I am going to try reducing my macro ratio to reduce the amount of stitching required. Hopefully get by with 1:1 on 35mm, do the 6x6 with 2 or 3 images instead of 6, and redo the 4x5 images with 6 frames instead of 18! I found the 4x5 very difficult to stitch 18 images due to light falloff created by my light table. I will try it with the new camera/system and see what happens. I may have to get a Logan light pad or try using my flash as a light source. I will try the flash first since many photographers use this method. Converting colour negative film through this process and using Photoshop is not easy. Some scenes convert relatively easy and others take hours of painstaking work and experimentation. When I start shooting 6x6 again I will not shoot any colour negatives. I have not tried B&W, but I am confident that this would be much easier. So you could use this method to actually make digital prints or simply avoid the stitching method to create very good resolution images for your evaluation and sharing via the internet. I don't recall which 6x6 you ended up selecting. Refresh my memory if you get a chance.

Your fisheye compositions are good so I don't mind the curvature as much as I thought I would. Here are a few from my trip to DC. Yes, in most I have used black and white and colour together.

Now that I have seen your portfolio I see that photography is only a means to an end for your talent, artistic ability, and creativity. The 100 will only add to that and you will have the confidence in your equipment to strive ahead. I can only guess at your process but you must spend an inordinate amount of time on each piece. No idea how you make even your straight photographs look so painterly. You have inspired me to see if I can somehow apply your ideas to my interest in motorsport photography.

I have never regretted selling a camera body. Lenses, yes, but bodies are so much easier to replace. However, if I had kept those lenses, I could not afford to have made the changes to my system that I have. While the 7D is a good camera, it is out dated. I have always preferred having a crop body for sports and a full frame for landscape/architecture but I too am finding out that my FF is vastly superior to the crop body even though they have the same pixel density. I hate to give up the speed of the crop but this summer I am going to shoot sports with just the slow FF because the image quality is so incredible. If all goes well I will sell the crop body to buy a lens or a vertical grip, or both! You really don't seem to have a logical reason for keeping the 7D, so I would not hesitate to sell it, and the 60mm, for what should be a stunning 100/2.8 L Macro. I highly recommend buying used if budget is a concern.

I had the FDn 200/2.8 non-IF and the FDn 200/2.8 IF. Image quality was virtually identical but the IF was easier to use and took the 1.26x FD-EOS that I had at the time. In my opinion these are not heavy lenses, but perhaps that is because of the rest of the lenses that I have owned over the years. I have to implore you to consider the Canon FDn 80-200mm f4 L. I don't care that some people say that it is poorly made, it is vastly superior to the 200/2.8 in resolution and contrast. It likely blows away any FD lens in it's range except either of the FD 85/1.2 lenses. I loved my 200/2.8 for 20 years because it blew away the typical zooms that were available at the time. As soon as I got the 80-200/L and put it up against the 200/2.8 I just about cried at the quality I had lost for those 20 years. I cannot emphasize enough how good this lens is and again it is not heavy too me, and it is a tremendous sleeper of a bargain. I would buy one again just to see if it is even better than the EF 70-200/4 L that I now have, but my better half would not be happy.

I tried to find the listing but couldn't. My pre-war, about 1933, was gun metal grey and black, no shiny metal at all.

I often use Sunny 16 even with my DSLR since I always shoot manual, and it gets me in the ballpark until I can check the image on the LCD. For 120 and 4x5 I would usually be shooting my film camera alongside it and simply transpose the exposure reading from my camera to the larger format. Neither had a light meter. Thirteen years ago when I got my first DSLR I was really looking forward to using it with the 4x5 and 120 to nail exposure every time. Far more useful than any meter, but then I went and sold them. I do hope to be back into 120 by the end of the year and intend to use my DSLR for all metering requirements. So, if you already have a digital camera of some sort you could do the same.

I gave up 4x5 eight years ago. I have copied my 4x5 and 120 images using my DSLR, a macro lens with extension tubes, light table, and converted enlarger stand. It is quite paradoxal but my copied digital files from 4x5 and 120 produce far deeper colours of the same scene than my DSLR on its own! This has lead me to the possibility of taking up 4x5 and/or 120 again, with the sole purpose of shooting fine grain chromes (Velvia 50) again and copying them for digital printing. By the end of the year I hope to be shooting 120. I don't think shooting the GG of a 4x5 is going to yield anything terribly useful, but copying the images you make on film, with your DSLR certainly will. For this I suggest shooting transparency film since copying negatives and converting them is inconsistent and extremely time consuming.

Optical performance is very similar however the reduced weight of 1 kg is astonishing. My concern is where did they get the weight reduction from and if it is going to have a negative affect on the build of the lens over time. While the electric manual focus should be an improvement be sure to handle both to evaluate the actual effectiveness.

I had considered an SWC for many years and could never justify it. I had not even thought of the viewfinder/rear glass viewing/focusing issues! I always considered a 500CM with 40/4 to be more practical and with the added ability to use many different focal length lenses. I ended up with a Mamiya TLR and 55mm lens, and a 4x5 with 65mm lens instead. The Bronica seems like a very good idea.

File size was the problem. It did not even give me the posting options before. Still bigger than I wanted, so I will correct that too.

Thank-you Michael. I also see the files loaded in a huge format, so I have tried reducing size as well. Here goes.

Not as convenient, but Photoshop does an amazing job with focus stacking. Apparently Lightroom does it too.

Why am I not getting the option to post in-line?

I just copied these slides with my camera, have not even had a chance to remove dust, so apologies for that. I have not done much of this since going digital. I had forgotten how much fun I had doing these, will definitely take it up again!

I agree with all posts above. Your keeper rate is based upon focal length rather than the lens. The Canon EF 1.2 lenses have had similar problems.

Yes, I got very similar results with K25, K64 and K200. Polarizers would eliminate reflections, enrich colours, but absolutely kill contrast and resolution. Even when correctly exposed the polarized shots always looked underexposed. As soon as I started replacing my third party zooms with manufacturers primes the colour was like using polarizers, so the polarizer went in the garbage.

That is a nice shot. About the right amount of blur. I am very surprised and excited that you found a part of the track with very simple background/foreground to isolate the car. I rarely get good multiple vehicle shots..pretty hard to get nice ones. That is a good challenge to set for yourself. I have a handful of great ones with superbikes but rarely get multiple cars. Would love to get some with panning, but that is crazy tough. Nice to hear there are indeed a few places to shoot over the fence. Always wondered since it seemed so flat. I hope to be their next year and will check out the spots that you mention. Medical reasons stopped me this year too. Take it easy and recover well.

I stopped using polarizers decades ago for just this reason. Mine was circular, but not one of the $300+ ones. I tried ND filters about 10 years ago, Cokin P system, and once again stopped using them as soon as I realized it softened images drastically. I am once again considering filters again but fear that even the $300 ones may not perform to my standards. It could be that pixel peeping now, brings out the inherent flaws in your filter, which you may not have noticed before.

Hi Eric. How did you make out at Sebring? Hopefully you caught the WEC under good weather conditions, I guess it pretty much rained during the 12 hours? Would love to here your experience and see some shots.

Hmmmm...an $8000 camera for someone who does not know a digital image requires a battery to create it.

The Canon T6i should fall within your budget. It is the cheapest and lightest 24MP crop DSLR Canon has. I am suggesting a light body to convince you to take your Canon EF 17-35/2.8 L lens. Not many lenses are sharper than this. Even the cheapest lenses can be made to look better with more MP, hence my suggestion of the 24MP body. The industry has been stuck at 24MP crop bodies for 5 years now, so one of these bodies will compare favourably for many years yet. The two full frame bodies you could consider that would go really nicely with that 17-35, are the 5D II and 6D. If you do want an IS lens or two then you could add either EF-S or EF depending on the body you end up with. You must have been fairly serious about photography to buy two of the best lenses at the time, (which are still excellent) so I find it difficult to believe you will abandon photography as soon as you get home. With digital it is so much easier to get excellent results. You get instant confirmation of correct exposure, focus, and composition. Who knows you might get right back into it.

Still very good. I think the AIS likely only introduced slightly better coatings.