mike_kim

I know the quality of 50mm f/1.8 lens isn't the greatest, but you may have run into bad samples. I've used a couple of 50mm f/1.8 Mark II lenses and they appear to be free from, as you put it, the "dirty stuff". Can you be little more specific regarding what do you mean by "dirty stuff"? On the other hands, I've seen few L-zooms with many visible dust particles and tiny fibers.

 

BTW, if the sales person told you "the lens suck dirty stuff inside as it zooms" he is technically-challenged since 50mm is a prime lens, not a zoom lens. I have Mark I version of 50mm f/1.8 (it's about 15 years old) and it is still free from any debris or dust (50mm f/1.8 Mark I does extend slightly as it focuses, but not as much as some front-focusing zooms).

Call me an old ghost, but I did use it with my EOS 650/620 back in late 80's through early 90's. It was a kit-lens with 650 (even K-mart sold it). It's built-quality is better than current 28-80mm or 28-90mm kit lenses (similar to Mark I version of 50mm f/1.8 lens as oppose to MARK II version of 50mm f/1.8 lens, distance scale, metal mount, ...). It has a usable distance scale and manual focus ring is better than current kit lenses. Optical quality should be slightly better than current 28-80 or 28-90mm, but it is slow to focus and noisy. Frankly speaking, I would recommend save your $$$ and getting a Canon 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 USM.

 

Oh yeah, optical quality of 35-70mm should be slightly better than your Sigma, but probably not noticable.

You haven't provided enough information to answer your question. What mode (say P, Av. T, M) did you use to take your pictures with? What film did you use? What metering mode did you use? And how contrasty your scenes were and so on.

 

Without going into too much details, a built-in meter for camera is adequate for most of general senarios, but it is far from being perfect. Elan 7 also lacks a true-spot meter which sometime can helpful for tricky lighting situation (say, back-lit object).

 

Here is a tip, sometimes slightly over exposing your films will help to reduce the grain on pictures (say rate your Kodak Porta UC 400 or Fuji NPH as ISO 320/250). Often you will need to compensate for challenging scenes. For certain scenes, say snow or brightly-lit sand beach, built-in meter may be fooled and underexpose your films (put less light than actually required), which in turns grainy underexposured films. This happens to most of cameras, including top of line EOS 1V, not just 7e. IMHO, only Nikon F5 had a slightly better auto-exposure in tricky conditions, but it is also far from being perfect. In short, you will need to learn from your past expriences and/or take some tips from experience users to compensate for tricky lighting. Other important factor to consider is that it is difficult to judge your cameras exposure accuracy based on print films. Some labs will adjust to cover up the mistakes or to exaserate the mistakes. Slide films are more desirable for evaluating your camera meter accuracy. If you post the pictures and tell us more about what films and what mode you may have used, then we may be able to suggest some pointers.

The answer is it depends! Once I was forced to shoot wedding in a church without flashlight. It was very challending.

In general, use of flash may be required whether you shoot digital or film. For example, if the scene is too dark or too much contrast for the picture (say over 5 to 7-stop differences). Depends on the shooting style, scene and equipment, you can MINIMIZE the effect of deer-in-the-headlight look of flash. May be the client didn't see a proper usage of flash to produce a mild catch light in eyes yet ;p

 

It is true that with the proper digital equipment and digital dark room (good raw-converter and picture editing program), you can shoot at ISO 800 (sometimes ISO 1600) without noticable grain. That doesn't mean you don't need flashlights. Remember the digital has limited exposure lattitude than print films, so use of flash may be required for scenes with too much contrast when flims do not. Although I have to adminit that the digital has a huge advantage of having a keen color accuracy (skin-tone) under mixed light conditions.

 

Most of my clients still prefers pictures taken with films and request for it. Just my 2KB worth!

For films, try Fuji Reala or Kodak Supra 100 for the daylight, and shoot Kodak Porta 400 UC for evening shots (rate it 320 or 250). I love their eye-poping colors with fairly accurate skin-tones.

 

For the lens, it probably depends on your family (any young children?) and their expectation for you at Disney. I would suggest stick with what you got, unless your main point of being there is to take pictures. I found most usable lens length at the theme park is around 85-135mm since I like to frame tightly around the subject (portrait). 50mm or wider may be better to capture the interaction between your subject and surrounding, but your mileage may vary. You already have a descent zoom for most of coverage.

 

However, 70-200mm will be nice addition to your system for tightly cropped or cadid shots. I'm a bit worried that if you are really ready to carry all those equipment around you during family vacation? In my personal note, I have 26 months of son and I went to Renaissance Festival last weekend. I ended up carrying my son (34 lbs), pro camera body + 2 prozooms + flash and batteries, + baby stuffs. I did get a few descent shots, but it would've been more enjoyable if I took only one lens, say 28-105mm instead.

Just my 2k bytes worth!

"For the benefit of doubt", let me answer this question. F2 will be fine for your current list of equipment, F6 may be too small. However, F2 will NOT be a good wedding photographer's bag for AF camera equipment. Most of wedding photographers carry at least two pro bodies, two flashes and either 3-4 fast primes (20mm/35mm/50mm/85mm/100mm/135mm) or fast zooms (24-70mm/70-200mm 2.8L). I found F2 too small for carrying "starndard" wedding equipment. I only use F2 to carry one pro-body plus two zooms and a flash and it is PACKED tight. If you are thinking about shooting wedding you might want to look at Domke F-4 AF bag (holds two pro bodies and several lenses) or Tamrac 612 or 613 pro bags. I've been using Tamrac 613 XP for my wedding assignments and I'm quite happy with it. Finally, please take the wedding photography seriously and learn how to shoot wedding photos first (I may be jumping a gun here, but based on your questions, it is hard to believe you have enough experiences or equipment to shoot wedding).

Wedding ceremony and reception, you will be shooting on-camera flash (probably on Stroboframe Pro or something similar) with small diffuser at the flash. Assuming you have adequate photographic equipment and experience, your major challenges will be portrait and two things comes to my mind, a back ground and lighting.

 

You should know what can be used (if any) as back ground or you will need to provide one. Be sure to know what is available for backgrounds or bring a set with you to the wedding. To avoid deer in the headlight shot, you will need to diffuse the light.

 

If you don't have one already, get a good set of flash diffusers and bracket for your flashes. Depending on the interior of indoor wedding or where you take the portraits, you may be able to bouce the lights off for natural looking portrait. If not (say, non-white interior, say wood interior, dark painted wall), you will need your own reflector/screen/soft-box to bounce off your flahses. I've used the photoflex boxes with good success in the past. Use Av/Tv/M mode for flash since P mode doesn't really work well with indoor flash photography. Use neutral films, such as Fuji NPH (rate it 320 or 250 to get more details).

 

May I suggest to look for indoor garden or something similar for Bride and Groom's portraits? Depending on location or wedding schedule, you can get both bride and groom out to take portraits to save you from carrying background and light/screen brackets.

 

And one more thing, if you do indoor photoshoot with flash, be extra careful not to point at the glass or window directly (perpendicular) or you will have OVER or UNDER exposed pictures with nasty reflections. Good luck!

I'm assuming when you say "original lens" your are talking about Canon EF-line lenses. Most, I emphasis on "most" (not ALL), third party lenses are compatable with Canon EOS cameras. General concensus is that given a choice, most of people here prefer Canon, but Sigma, Tamron or Tokina lenses DO offer descent (some are excellent) performance for lower price.

 

You will need to be more specific here to get help since they are SO many third party lenses and Canon also have good and "ugly" lenses.

Just out of curiosity, what lens(es) are you using? I have used both Elan IIe and 7e back to back using the same lens (85mm f/1.2L) and the difference is very minimal. Even with lesser brighter lens, 50mm f/1.8 and f/2.8L zooms, I haven't really noticed significant differences (there is a tiny difference, but it wasn't that noticible). Are you sure you have used comparable lenses with same maximum f-stop?

In general, around the center of the image, but they can be slightly off center due to manufacturing variation and usage (i.e., impact damage and so on)

Although the kit lens would be equiv. or better than most of P&S lenses, I would suggest getting 28-105mm II f/3.5-4.5 lens (not the cheaper f/5.6 version). For only about 100-140 bucks more than the kit, it is considerably well-built, convinient and has better optic, not to mention faster/longer reach.

 

I would also suggest buying it from B&H or Adorama since they are two of very best mail-order shops around. I dealt with them over 8 years and they are very best in the business (price is VERY VERY good too).

I often use wide angle for group shots and candid shots. Although I use primes for dedicated group shots and portraits, I found zoom lenses to be most effective for wedding coverage. For the best flexibility, you may want to acquire 28-105mm. However for the best quality, look for one wide angle prime (say 20mm, 24mm or 28mm,) in addition to 50mm and 85mm.

Try Tiffen's Soft FX filter 1 or 3 (one has minimal soft effect and 3 had medium and available 5 has highest soft effect) at 77mm size. They also have Warm Soft Fx series which combines 812/81A and Soft Fx. They also have Pro-Mist which gives mist-effect as well.

Try Fuji NPH (ISO 400) and Reala (ISO 100). I would suggest to rate your NPH to ISO 320 or 250 since it will minimize grain and provide better details on black formal wears. Reala can be shot at 100, but you can dial in extra +1/3 or +1/2 stop as needed.

For most weddings, you will generally need wide and fast lens for group shot and available-light photography. I would suggest to get Canon's 24-70mm 2.8L. If you ever try to squeeze in guests for a group shot, you will definitely appreciate that extra wide angle coverage.

 

Although IS lens may seem attractive, faster lens will let you shoot extra distance with the flash (remember, range of flash = guide number / f-stop), not to mention help to freeze the moment. I have to admit that the 28-135mm IS lens with extra long-end was kinda useful for photojournalistic shooting (no tripod and fast moving casual environment), most of my clients prefered pictures taken by 28-70mm 2.8L/24-70mm 2.8L over 28-135mm IS lens. I've abandoned 28-135mm IS and bought a couple of prime lenses for the dedicate use for indoor and group shots. BTW, I used to own 28-70mm 2.8L until I upgraded to 24-70mm 2.8L. I heard nice things about 3rd party lenses, but I never used them myself. If you thinking about shooting weddings for $$$, you should invest in 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. If you are doing this as one time deal and/or for no-profit, you can probably save $$$ by buying 24-85mm or 28-135mm IS lens. Either way, good luck and don't forget to bracket like crazy and set your Fuji NPH to 320 or 250 (or Kodak equivalent 400 speed films).

 

Mike Kim

"how well would this type lens be supported by the Rebel D's plastic body and metal mount, or would it even matter considering with larger lenses you tend to support the lens itself?"

 

Plastic mount is durable enough for MOST of photographic needs. If you use 70-200mm 2.8 lens (canon, sigma, nikon, ...), you will probably use the lens' tripod mount, thus your camera only needs to support only its weight. Metal vs. plastic debates been going on for quite sometime, but except for very special circumstances, plastic mount will perform just as good as metal.

 

Of course, if you a one of those professionals who gives a heck of beating on your equipment and change your lenses VERY frequently (or carry your camera with a BIG gun mounted and carry your camera by the camera strap), then metal mount MAY BE good to have (but it may not be absolutely necessary still). Given a choice, I would take the metal mount, but the plastic mount should serve most of photographic needs. Just my 4KB worth!

As others have commented already, you may need a better lens for tele-coverage (100-200mm range). F5.6 isn't really fast enough to isolate the subject (enlargement will be limited too). Most prefered shots by my clients are around 135mm-200mm at F2.8 to F4.0.

 

I'm not sure how much experience you have with shooting weddings or portraits, but besure to learn how to use partial metering/spot metering especially for trickly backlight situation. Your cameras are not equiped with spot meter so be extra careful when shooting against challenging light condition. Using a telephoto (zoom) lens or walking closer to your subject, you can mimic the spot meter with your Elan's partial meter. However, with your variable aparture lens, this may be tough.

May I suggest to RATE NPH to ISO 320 or 250 to reduce grain. For group shot and for enlargement, I would consider Fuji Reala too. May I also suggest to BUY and BRING EXTRA and EXTRA batteries and films.

 

Believe it or not, one of the most challenging aspect of wedding photograph is to act as a wedding cordinator. Sometimes, you gotta tell the guests, bridemaids, groomsmen, bride and groom to where to go and what to do next. Depending on how much they are enthusiastic about pictures, you can be quite frank and extreme too. For example, I sometime tell the guests don't take pictures with flash while bride and groom cut the cake until I'm done. You will not believe how much over-exposed pictures you will get for taking pictures during cake-cutting. To compromise, I just turn the cake so that the cutted portion of the cake will face the wall, then have the guests take as much photos as they like while bride and groom cut the cake for the second time. Good luck!

Hey Timothy, do you have access to a film body or 1Ds to do a full frame report on those lenses? According to popular photograhy's report on those lenses, Canon should offer slightly better performance for 50mm and 70mm, but inconclusive at 28mm since the report only shows 24mm, 50mm and 70mm for Canon and 28mm, 50mm and 70mm for Sigma. Although, I think comparing two lenses with non-equal coverage is not a fair comparison, but some of us can still benefit from it. Also it is dang good opportunity to see how fair Popular Photography's reviews are! Check

http://www.popphoto.com/assets/download/782003105411.pdf for Canon and http://www.popphoto.com/assets/download/311200313351.pdf for Sigma. Tokina's 28-70mm test is also available from http://www.popphoto.com/assets/download/572003105657.pdf

 

Better yet, can anyone loan me a Sigma for few hours in Madison, WI area so I can shoot some tests on my own at full frame :) ?

Option 3 (assuming you are refering to 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 USM II). 75-300mm is OK lens, but if you have some more $$$, try Option "5". 28-105mm f3.5-4.5 USM II and nicely used 100-300mm f5.6L.

Oops, I meant to say "they are NOT selling well" for the reason discontinuing version 5 of Tiffen's Hollywood/FX soft filter series.

I've used Tiffen's Pro-mist filters with very good success. They have 0.5, 1, 2, through 3 rating (0.5=most subtle, 3=most aggresive), "warm" version (pro-mist+81A/812) and "black" version (useful) for cutting glares. A more aggresive version of warm pro-mist for the portrait use is called "warm-soft fx" 1 through 3. All of these filters used to be available between 1 through 5, but they discontinued the version 5 since they are selling well (too aggressive and can't get any real details).

 

I found Pro-mist 3 and Warm soft-fx 3 to be most useful for my use (mostly portrait use and limited landscape use). If you want to keep the details on your landscape shot, I would suggest try pro-mist 1 or 2.

 

Of course, if you are not a purist, then you can use P.S. 7 or Paintshop pro 8 to do a post processing for SIMILAR effect.

I've bought 7e for my wife (she wanted a light SLR), but we returned it after one week since it didn't offer SIGNIFICANT advantage over IIe (I already have 1V-HS, EOS 3, 10D, IIe, ...) Unless you go with EOS 3 or higher (1V/1V-HS), you won't see SIGNIFICANT benefit since IIe is a very capable camera. It has a brighter viewfinder and faster focusing indoor (without the EX Speedlite) than 7e. So if you already have Elan IIe, I would not recommend the upgrade. Although 7e offers some minor advantages (more focusing points, faster rate...), I don't think the upgrade is worth the hassle.

 

I would say spend $$$ on the external flash and nice flash diffuzer (photoflex, Lumiquest,...) and off-shoe cord for external flash.

If you don't have 50mm f1.8, I would highly recommend getting one for indoor shot (85mm f1.8 if you have $$$). A descent portrait lens and indoor flash setup are much more useful for baby pictures and indoor pictures.

F X, I'm sorry to hear about your lens. Where are you located? May I suggest that you should take it to local Canon authorized repair center and ask them in person. I think no one can provide you with the accurate amount of repair over the email. Depends on the demage and nature of the problem, local shop can do a quick/economical fix or send out to Canon.

 

I zapped my 28-70mm 2.8L with static electricity while I took it out of camera and putting in the bag (hey it was a cold winter graduation assignment while I wore a wool/silk/cotton combo). It fried the circuit and the lens had to sent out to Canon (in NJ) to get it fixed. It costed me $170 (including 5.50 that local shop charged me to send out to Canon in NJ). My local shop didn't charge me a penny (only the actual UPS shipping) since they didn't repair it locally. For the mechanical failure due to impact, repair cost can vary significantly. Knowing how much Canon fisheye cost ($$$=expensive), you should take it to the service center or send it to Canon directly to figure out the actual $$$ amount. Canon may or may not charge you $$$ for diagnosis, but they will tell you how much the repair bill is going to be. Good luck!

DX code is read by the six silver-colored contacts on the film chamber (where you place the film).

Simple answer: your maximum aparture is NOT large enough. it must be f/5.6 or larger aparture.

 

A lightly longer answer: When you focus, you are using your maximum aparture (f4.0 for 70-200mm f/4.0L) not your picture-taking aparture setting (say f/11). When you press the shutter (take the photo), your lens stops down to f/11 then the shutter releases. Your 400mm f/5.6 becomes maximum of f/11 when you attach 2X extender. f/11 is too dark for Elan IIe (or any Canon EOS body) to make its autofocus to function. As someone said in previous posint, you can point at the sun, it still won't auto-focus unless you use f/5.6 or faster lens on Elan IIe body (EOS 1V or 3 can autofocus with f/8.0).