henry_minsky1

I have the Sigma 18-50, and it is very good, but not at f2.8. At f2.8 it is too soft for me to use. However, at f/4 it is fine.

 

I sometimes wonder if I ought to have sprung for the Canon 17-40L but

the reach at 50mm is useful.

Bob, can you tell me where do I find the "one click" correction for Photoshop CS, for my Sigma 18-50 lens? Is there a 3rd party plugin with a database of lens corrections?

I had the 28-135 IS, and it worked great. But I found I always wanted wider angle for the kind of things I used it for - sightseeing and other things.

 

I finally ended up using the Sigma 18-50/2.8 for most things, and the 50mm 1.8 lens for portraits and the highest quality photos. For telephoto I found the 55-200mm USM canon lens was superb, although not the fastest lens. But in good daylight it is amazing.

 

 

If I had a full-frame camera, the 28-35 IS would be ideal, but with the 20D, it just was never quite wide enough.

After going through a lot of lenses, here is what I have found is what gives me the best for my 20D, for my style of photography.

 

 

+ Sigma 18-50/2.8 zoom lens my primary lens

 

+ Canon 55-200 USM my telephoto lens, very comparable to the 70-200 f/4 (I used to own that lens)

 

+ Canon 50/1.8 portrait lens, and for low light and outdoors

 

These are not very expensive lenses, compared to what is available, but they give me very good results, and are small and easy to carry.

 

The Sigma is pretty fast, but the performance at f/2.8 is a little disappointing. At f/4 though, it is fine.

Another vote for the Sigma 18-50 /2.8. I have the 28-135 IS, and I find that it isn't wide enough for a lot of things.

 

The Sigma 18-50 is not so great at f/2.8, but it is quite good at f/4 or more.

Is there any manual camera which has a meter that uses no batteries? I am thinking of some kind of "solar" powered light meter. It would be nice to have no reliance on batteries, but still get some exposure guideline.

The issue is really that photographs carry a lot of power. When the media latches onto one set of images, they cause people to focus on it as if it is the only thing that is important, until the next shocking image comes along (call this the "OJ Simpson effect").

 

If you look at the media objectively, you see that people are easily manipulated by emotional and visceral images. Rodney King being beaten caused huge riots because it was amplified by the media.

 

If there were images of every crime comitted by everyone, it Iraq, or elsewhere, then perhaps people would not single out individual cases and concentrate all their attention on one issue for months, while allowing all the thousands of other equally shocking or outrageous issues to be ignored.

 

I think the true promise of the "Blogging" movement is that they can make an end run around the monopoly of distribution of images by the media. That may make the power of images become more properly proportional in their effect, since there will not be a bottleneck of network television or media outlets on deciding which images are viewed by the mass of people.

I got the updated DPP from the Canon web site someplace, I forget where though. In the same area that the firmware updates came from I think, under Applications.

That does look like results I see at ISO 3200. What RAW conversion software are you using? If you're using the version of DPP that came with the camera, you need to update it, that version had some serious bugs in it.

I find the Sigma 18-50/2.8 is significantly better than the 18-125. I don't use the telephoto focal lengths much anyway. I have the 28-135 and some other long lenses. But for "walk around" I tend to get by with the 18-50 and am very happy with it. I did some informal comparisons with the Canon 17-40 F4L, and the Sigma was very close optically.

I own the Minolta DImage Dual Scan IV, I got it to scan in a bunch of old negatives which were taken with point and shoot cameras, so it was of sufficient quality for that.

 

But the film I shoot now is on Pentax Super ME 35mm with the 50mm/1.4 lens, and I find the quality of the Minolta scanner isn't quite what I need, and I would rather have whole rolls scanned when I get things developed.

I define good quality as comparable to the images I get from the 20D, i.e, around 6-8 megapixels, some lossless format like photocd would be good but JPG is acceptable if it is comparable parameters to what the 20D does in fine mode.

I mostly use a Canon 20D now but still like to take pictures with my

35mm film cameras, but I am not particularly interested in getting

prints. I would like my negatives digitized with good quality when

they are developed.

 

Can anyone recommend a mail order place that develops and scans 35mm

film (and slides) with good quality and is low cost?

 

I sometimes want some high quality prints later from the digital

scans, or possibly from the negatives, but what I really want is the

high quality scanning right when the film is processed.

I have the 400 model, it holds my 20D, 70-200 F4, 18-50/2.8 on the camera, 420 EX flash, 50mm, 28mm, and stereo lens, and can also hold the 28-135 if I really want to carry all that.

 

 

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I don't think the camera is at any risk, but it probably is not good for the batteries to have one of them drained well before the other. They are probably wired in parallel, so the one that drains first would put a load on the other battery.

I tried out a 28-135 IS at a camera store, the lens was pretty beat up, and I could see and feel a vibration through the lens. I don't know if the IS was working properly or not. On my copies of the lens I never heard or felt that. I think when the 28-135 gets old, something starts to have more slop in the IS and causes oscillation.

If the F-stop is the ratio of aperture diameter to focal length, then

when you use a 1.6x crop sensor, isn't the apparent f-stop different

than when you use a full frame camera?

<p>

 

For example, say you used a 80mm lens on a full frame camera, with an

aperture of 40mm, to get f/2.0. You focus your camera at a subject in

a scene, covering a certain angle of view <b><i>A</i></b>, say

standing a distance

<b><i>d</i></b> from your subject. Let's call the depth of field

<b><i>l</i></b> at this time.

<p>

If you put a 50mm lens on a 20D, and move your viewpoint so that the

field of view you have is the same as in the first picture, and you

have an aperture of 25mm, to get f2.0 again, would you still have the

same depth of field <b><i>l</i></b> as you had in the first image?

The illusion of floating is because the camera motion is decoupled from the image motion. That shows the IS is working...

the 18-125 is OK at the wide end, but not really that great overall.

 

I recommend the Sigma 18-50 for a wide-angle zoom. It is smaller and lighter than the 17-40L, but is comparable in many ways in image color and contrast and sharpness.

http://www.photocleaner.com/

 

This utility costs almost nothing, and if you set the saturation up all the way, you get something which looks quite good. It doesn't seem to clip like Photoshop would do if you just crank up the saturation.

I have had the 20D since it came out, and the 300D before that for a year.

 

I played with the new 350D in the camera store today. It was very compact, with the 17-85 IS lens on it. I liked it a lot, but my hand felt kind of cramped after only a short time holding it.

 

I like the heft of the 20D more, but the 350D is so much smaller, with a small lens on it, that I feel like it would be easier to take more places, to stick in a jacket pocket or a backpack (assuming you don't baby your equipment too much).

 

Ideally I would get both :-)

 

I think I will wait another year and a half or so, until the successor to the 350D, and then get it as a small portable DSLR.

 

What I am really waiting for is a full frame DSLR under $2000. I will buy that in an instant.

I misread your post, I meant the 55-200 USM II. I don't know about any newer 55-200 Canon lens.

I had a copy of the 55-200 and I think it was outstanding. It had excellent color and sharpness and contrast. I can send some links to photos if you like.

 

I think it is a good rival for the 70-200 F4L. Plus it is very light and small. Build quality is plasticy, but it's the images and focus performance that counts.

Is there a good lens hood that people have found for the Canon

50mm/1.8 II lens? That doesn't cost as much as the lens?

The cheap $10 battery I got on ebay seems to work as well or better than the one that came with the camera.