jespdj

<i>...is L glass good enough to shoot wide open?</i>

<p>It depends. Not all L lenses are equally good. I have two L lenses: the 17-40 f/4 L and the 200 f/2.8 L.

<p>The 200 f/2.8 L is amazing, the image quality is very good even at f/2.8; very sharp, very good contrast, very good colours.

<p>With the 17-40 f/4 L, it's better to stop down a bit, is my experience. At f/4 it is not incredibly sharp, especially in the corners, and I also get vignetting.

<p>I'm using those lenses on a 5D (full frame).

Note that the camera does not have a resolution of 72 dpi.

 

Cameras do not have a resolution that you can measure in dots per inch. Only the image size in pixels is important. The number of dots per inch depends on how big you print the image.

There is a very small handle on one side of the screen. Because of this there is only one way to put it in the metal frame of the camera. You simply lay the focus screen in the metal frame and push the frame up (like a door) until it clicks.

 

Very easy. No need at all to send the camera to Canon. Just look at it carefully. The screen in the 5D was made to be user replaceable.

I fourth the <a href="http://www.sterlingtek.com">SterlingTek</a>s... :-)

Ethan Kuefner wrote:

<p><i>So actually, one could say that the 70-300 DO IS USM is on par with "L" lenses, and Canon's literature and most reviews, as well, prove this.</i>

<p>Ethan, have you actually used the 70-300 DO yourself or is your opinion only based on reviews that you've read? Canon marketing words are also not necessarily something you should believe immediately.

<p>I had the 70-300 DO and I never really liked it - it was not really sharp and contrasty. As Juergen says, the image quality does not come close to that of an L zoom lens in the same range.

<p>I haven't used the new 70-300 IS, but I'm sure it's much more value for money than the 70-300 DO.

50,000 hours for a CCD... Ok, let's just for fun calculate how many photos you could make before you reach this number.

 

Suppose the average shutter speed of all your photos is 1/100 second. You'd have to make 100 photos for 1 second of sensor usage.

 

50,000 hours = 50,000 x 3,600 seconds = 180,000,000 seconds.

 

That would mean that number times 100 = 18,000,000,000 = 18 billion photos! That's probably more photos than have been made since the invention of photography in the 19th century.

I have a 5D, with two original Canon BP-511A batteries ($50, 1350 mAh) and four SterlingTek equivalent batteries ($12, 1800 mAh).

 

I took them all with me on my holiday to Laos and Cambodia for a month. Six batteries was more than I needed. The SterlingTek batteries work very well, no problems with them at all.

Page 26 of the manual, that you can download in PDF format from <a href="http://www.canoneos.com">www.canoneos.com</a>, states:

<p><i>The camera is also compatible with Microdrive and CF cards with 2 GB or higher capacity.</i>

I have two Canon BP-511A batteries. They are 1350 mAh and cost $50 each.

 

I have four SterlingTek replacement batteries. They are 1800 mAh (not 1600 as you said above) and cost $12 each.

 

So for less than 1/4 of the price you can get batteries that have a more than 30% higher capacity.

 

The SterlingTek batteries work well, never had any problems with them.

Page 58.

ISO 50 and ISO 3200 are not "true" ISO settings.

<p>ISO settings between 100 and 1600 are harware settings on the sensor. By changing the ISO, you set the gain of the amplifiers in the sensor (higher ISO = higher gain setting, which makes it more sensitive, but also increases the noise).

<p>ISO 50 is a "trick": the sensor is actually set to ISO 100 and the camera overexposes by 1 stop, and then processes the data that comes from the sensor to compensate for the overexposure. The result is that you loose 1 stop of dynamic range in the highlights.

<p>Likewise, ISO 3200: the sensor is set to ISO 1600 and the camera underexposes by 1 stop, and compensates for this by digital processing. You loose one stop of dynamic range in the highlights.

<p>You can do exactly the same "by hand" if you do this: shoot at ISO 100, deliberately overexpose a stop, compensate for the overexposure on the computer (and vice versa for ISO 3200).

<p>And yes, this is even true if you shoot RAW.

<p>If you want to hear it from a Canon director himself, check out <a href="http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0604/westfall.html">Chuck Westfall's Tech Tips</a>:

<p><i>"There is about a stop less dynamic range in the highlights at ISO 50, which is the reason why this setting is normally locked out."</i>

The answer is also: it depends on the lens! Some lenses do report distance data, some don't.

<p>Here is a list: <a href="http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/#distancedata">Canon EF lenses with distance data for E-TTL II</a>

I like to do travel photography a lot, and IMO a good zoom lens in the range 24/28 to 105/135 is absolutely indispensible for that type of photography. I feel I just need the flexibility of such a lens for street shots and walking around when I'm travelling.

 

So I would go with the 24-105 L.

 

I have a 5D, 17-40 L and 28-135 IS myself. I'd love to have the 24-105 L, but the 28-135 works very well for me and I find upgrading to the 24-105 L not worth the money.

Isn't there something else you can sell... maybe your car? ;-)

I could have told you so! ;-) Altough I sold my 70-300 DO IS and bought a 200 f/2.8 L without IS instead...

 

I especially like the shot with the flying geese, very nice.

Sensor cleaning is a fact of life when you have a DSLR, it's no big deal, it may be scary at first but you just have to get used to it.

<p>I use a simple bulb blower and only if there is really so much stuff on the sensor that I can't blow it off, I use the <a href="http://www.copperhillimages.com/index.php?pr=tutorials">Copper Hill</a> method to clean it. The less you touch the sensor with anything, the better.

<p>It's not nice of Canon that their cameras are not completely clean when they come out of the factory, but it really is not such a big deal.

Why should Canon name their models after the number of megapixels? (6D, 8D, 8D-2, 12D, ...)

 

As if the number of megapixels is the most important feature of a camera! (it is not!).

There is no difference, there are not multiple versions of sRGB.

 

I'm surprised you noticed this difference. If I open an image converted with DPP, Photoshop automatically recognises the sRGB profile in the image. I don't get a warning that tells me the photo is in a different colour space than the working space (sRGB ie...).

People who buy the 1Ds Mark II over the 5D don't do so just because the first one has 30% more pixels (which is 14% in the vertical and horizontal direction).

That's normal.

 

The Canon 180mm macro is an f/3.5 lens. The 2x extender takes away 2 stops of light, so this makes it an f/6.3 lens.

 

What camera do you have? Non-1-series cameras can only AF upto f/5.6. If your lens is less bright than f/5.6, AF is automatically disabled. (1-series cameras AF upto f/8).

Also the 70-300 DO is not really a great lens, so I'm not surprised you don't get top quality photos out of it with your 1Ds Mark II.

 

I had the 70-300 DO but I never really liked it, because it was soft, especially at 300mm. Sold it and got the EF 200mm f/2.8 L, which is super sharp.

On f/20 you can expect less sharp pictures because of diffraction.

 

<p>I've tried this out on my 5D. Up to f/11, everything is sharp, at f/16 the photo is very slightly less sharp, and at f/22 it's clearly not really sharp.

 

<p>Try shooting at f/8 or f/11 and you should get better results.

 

<p>Look at this if you want to learn more about diffraction: <a href="http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/diffraction-photography.htm">TUTORIALS: DIFFRACTION & PHOTOGRAPHY</a>

You need spare batteries. Don't get the ridiculously expensive original Canon batteries. I use <a href="http://www.sterlingtek.com">SterlingTek</a> replacement batteries in my 5D, they work well, have more capacity than the original Canon batteries (1800 mAh vs. 1350 mAh) and they are more than 4 times cheaper ($12 vs. $50).

Any Canon EX flash is compatible with the 20D, as you can easily see if you look at <a href="http://www.canoneos.com">Canon's website</a>.

Another simple answer: If you don't know what colour spaces are and how colour management works and you don't want to get involved with that now, shoot in sRGB.

<p>Adobe RGB is a larger colour space that could give you richer colours, but if you don't setup your software correctly it will give you bad results (like washed out colours). Search for "colour management" on the Internet, or read a book like <a href="http://www.colorremedies.com/realworldcolor/">Real World Color Management</a> by Bruce Fraser et al.