walang_pangalan

I dropped my 17-35/2.8 once, and it had the same problem. Seemed like a no-brainer to me: I sent it in, and it was fixed. Quite quickly too.

<i>I fail to appreciate the distinction. "What the market will bear" is "supply and demand" in action.</i>

 

<p>Classical economic analysis has nice smooth hyperbolic curves intersecting at equilibrium points, establishing the price of a good. We can call this the "supply and demand" case. Think corn, engine coolant, lollipops. Beautiful mathematics, entire government departments are predicated on them, computers are grinding out simulations as we type, pundits get their faces on TV. The continuity assumption is vaguely tenable simply because the number of events in the market is relatively large.

 

<p>Alas, a Canon 1D MkIII's curves are going to look a bit different. The total market is small, and more essentially fixed in size. Lifespan is limited (a new model in 2 years!). Further, given this niche nature and the "captive market" -- almost no one is going to abandon Nikon or others because of the MkIII -- we can expect the total unit sales is going to be a weak function of the price. At least until they walk off the horizontal line into the zone where sales will drop off precipitously.

 

<p>In economics-speak, this means the market is highly inelastic (economists usually plot the graph so the line I describe is vertical, not horizontal, but the idea remains the same). Which is to say you can crank the price up until the fall-off point with negligible impact on total demand. And beyond that price, there is very little market at all. We can call situations like this, where the equilibrium is poorly defined (if it exists at all!) "what the market will bear".

 

<p>And this is exactly what Canon is doing. (And what I would do, if put in the same situation!)

<i>The REAL price may be what CW stated however, what YOU pay depends on demand and supply.</i>

 

<p>A Canon 1D MkIII is not a commodity item. The cost of manufacture isn't all that related to the final sale price (except for sale_price must be larger than manufacture_cost). Limited production, built-in life-span. So the "supply and demand" stuff doesn't apply in the same way as it does to things like oil, sugar and fiberglass insulation. The total demand for this camera is easily characterized by Canon -- they can use sales figures for the MkII, for example. And this number of units is probably a weak function of final sale price within a "sweet spot" (google up "price elasticity").

 

<p>So the better model is "what the market will bear", not "supply and demand" per se.

 

<p>Analysis: when Canon released all the goo on the camera with the expected price of $3,999 back in February, they were probably taken aback by the general response and its tone ("Wow! All that ... for so little!"). No doubt this resulted in hurried meetings around the world, where it was decided to shove the initial promotional material down the memory hole and kicked the MSRP up $500. The net effect on total sales will be negligible, but the net return on their investment will not be.

 

<p>The moral of this story is: equipment soap-opera like this is not in your interests. People should not reveal their intentions prior to them walking into a store with a decision in mind. Canon keeps its new camera production plans very close secrets for a reason. Why not yourself re: purchasing plans?

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00KXqK

 

Mr. Peled, in a few minutes some nice agents of the Ministry of Truth will knock at your door. Please be reassured they are there to help you! In short order, you'll be totally convinced there never was a video you mentioned, nor a specific price, that, in general, no error or false recollections have occurred.

<i>It is an effective technique for astrophotography with a tracking mount or for other forms of night time photography but it does not work for star trails.</i>

 

<p><a href="http://astrosurf.com/buil/gallery/trails/img.htm">They work just fine.</a>

 

<p>As for the inter-frame gap, I usually set the TC-80N3 to 2 seconds to permit a complete flush of the frame. I'm sure if I had quick access to a mountain range, <a href="http://www.photo.net/photo/2417147">my results</a> would be similar to Buil's (above link).

The cheap one is a waste of money: it's too small, and consumes too much power. You would do better to just remove it and ceiling bounce, or just direct-flash it -- you'll hardly notice the difference. The larger one is going to work better, but seems too expensive for what it is (an inert chunk of plastic). But who am I to complain about expense? Last week I bought a Lastolite Ezybox Hotshoe (http://www.vistek.ca/details/details.aspx?WebCode=227790). Fantastic piece of equipment for portraiture, but probably not the sort of thing you want to carry around.

Geocaching was fun ... until one runs into number false and misleading caches. Once you can't trust the database -- and by extension, cache contents -- you find better things to do.

Poppycock. Canon posts MSRP's like everyone else:

 

<p><b>"The retail price of the EOS-1D Mark III at introduction will be $3,999, the same price at which the EOS-1D Mark II N debuted."</b>

 

<p>(see http://www.jirvana.com/pdfs/EOS_1D_Mark_III_WP_070221.pdf). But wait! That was the original PDF. The latest versions now read:

 

<p><b>"The retail price of the EOS-1D MarkIII at introduction will be very similar to the price at which the EOS-1D MarkII N debuted."</b>

 

<p>(see http://www.robgalbraith.com/public_files/Canon_EOS-1D_Mark_III_White_Paper.pdf). Whatever the new reality happens to be, I'm sure it was the only reality and there never was a different one, and anyone who says otherwise needs some attention by the Ministry of Love.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=Search&A=details&Q=&sku=484813&is=REG&addedTroughType=search

 

Discussion with Henry's (www.henrys.ca) and Vistek (www.vistek.ca) reveal similar prices at their usual markups above B&H: $5500 CDN. They too are saying "late May", but wouldn't reveal how many units they expect to get. I guess that would be telling! Henry's wanted $1k to land on the pre-order list.

 

I passed.

 

The MSRP for the MkIII is supposed to be $4k (Canon white paper). The extra $500 is probably B&H/Henry's/Vistek/etc fleecing the flock of the willing. Nothing wrong with this, of course: I just find paying more than the MSRP about as sensible as paying more than the asking price for a house. So Shun Cheung is probably right: the price will rapidly drop to the MSRP. Have money, can wait...

Your terminology is confusing: there isn't much difference between "viewfinder screen" and "focusing screen". Are you talking about the eyepiece?

As per Geoff Sobering: "expose to the right" is the only thing you need to remember while behind the camera. The rest can be dealt with later.

I've used "canned air", brushes, and blower brushes. I've even used my own breath. One day I'd like to try the trick some car-wash joints use, and bring hydrofluoric acid to bear on the problem. What's a little toxicity when it comes to such a critical problem?

 

So I suggest you use your head. But remember that whatever you choose, the absolute worst case is that you have to buy a new one. Maybe $35?

Thanks for your opinion, Mr. Szulecki. Here's mine:

 

With the exception of some species that, for whatever evolutionary reason, have little concern about people, I'd hazard that most wildlife images are of subjects that are naturally stressed to the point that they don't care much about that strange looking thing with the camera over there. It's either find food or shelter or die.

 

My best images of ducks, for example, are invariably obtained in the late winter, when months of cold have created a weakened population that comes close to shore to feed, where they don't need to dive as far, offer relief from the relentless environment, etc. Just a few weeks ago, I was photographing a redhead(!) some 3m away (normally they are in with the mats of scaup, hundreds of meters off shore, and take flight at the flimsiest excuse).

 

Why is spring migration such a good photo-opportunity? Same reason: priority is given to eating instead instant flight. Dead is dead, be it by starvation or predation, and they'll take the chance if they have to. (Not that the animals are sitting around making conscious risk-assessments. Evolution is what evolution does.)

 

A simple experiment. Try feeding chickadee's in winter. In most places, they will come right to your hand. (Heck, I've had nuthatches and even downy woodpeckers come to my hand.) Now try again in the summer. A surfeit of food, easy climate, and general good health makes even attracting their attention a difficult job.

 

You can also read some of Bernd Heinrich's material on ravens ("Ravens in Winter", "Mind of the Raven"). He has probably supported an entire population of wild ravens over years, and with no visible effect. (The ravens didn't know this either!)

 

The point here is simple: the animals don't care what we think or do. Not in the slighest. They are also more capable than you imply: hundreds of millions of years of evolution is not going to be voided by half an orange nailed to a tree. A little (or even a lot) of food you offer isn't going to "hurt" them, but neither does it "help" either (sick animals are probably going to die anyways). The healthy ones will naturally adapt to their locality: once the food is gone, they go back to their 'normal' foraging behavior. (There was nothing abnormal in the first place, of course).

 

So if anyone wants to take advantage of this kind of thing for a few photographs, who cares? The photographer gets what he wants, the bird gets what it wants. Everyone is happy.

No one takes pictures of the planets with 20s exposures anymore. The best images are collected with inexpensive (usually video) cameras, and stacking hundreds of carefully selected frames.

 

http://www.astronomie.be/registax/

 

From your description (note: your image does not bear this out!), it sounds like you have a simple case of mis-tracking. Check your polar alignment, buy a better mount, etc.

 

The business about focus is a serious problem in general re: astrophotography. The referenced article above was appropriate for 1998. With a digital camera you would do much better to obtain an ASCOM motorized focus setup, with readout, and some focus software. The usual advice:

 

http://www.dslrfocus.com/

 

Generally speaking, taking good pictures of the night sky is hard. Really, really, REALLY, hard. A lot of equipment to acquire, setup times are measured in hours, many things to learn and monitor while working, the slightest of mistakes, changes in environment, and so forth can flush large amounts of time down the tube. Think large format photography, but with cameras and tripods that have 10x the mass, and you have to drive 3 hours to begin to use them to their best, and it takes 90 minutes to get everything into a state where you can finally begin to work. And most of the the time you are washed out by the Moon, clouds, or the need to work at a normal job.

 

Not that this should deter you. It certainly hasn't deterred me! Eventually, more likely because of luck, I'll finally get a good M31.

<i>And I don't believe the ST-E2 will wake up a flash though, as I had to manually wake it just last night.</i>

 

<p>Actually, I'm going to clarify this: I put the flash on its support, failed to enable the slave switch, then got distracted while mounting the ST-E2. Flash went to sleep and later, post-distraction, wouldn't responds to the E2. The slave switch woke it up, and apparently kept it awake.

 

<p>If you think about this, any other behavior requiring the photographer to go around pressing buttons on flashes would be quite obnoxious (at least more irritating that the extra power suck on the slaves). Ditto when the flash is directly mounted to the camera (or via a cord).

I've never had a problem: the flash appears to wake up when you start using the camera again (at least I've never had to wake it up on my own). And I don't believe the ST-E2 will wake up a flash though, as I had to manually wake it just last night. Most of the rest of your questions can be answered by simply using the flash or reading the manual:

 

http://eosdoc.com/manuals/?q=580EX

<i>I have had a plastic camera case melted to runny goo by a leaking bottle of DEET - make no mistakes Palang - it does melt stuff.</i>

 

<p>I said that it will attack some plastics. Countless citations can be offered for this, as well as my direct testimony. What I said it will not attack are lens coatings. If you have evidence that it does, please present it.

 

<p>As for the Bounce Anti-Static Dryer Sheet: <a href="http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/household/bounce.asp">nonsense</a>.

If you want a discussion of film vs. digital, you'll find that going through the motions in the "Zone System" actually consumes more time than fiddling with the image in PhotoShop. (At least after the learning has taken place in both realms.) So if you don't want to take the few seconds to move a knob in your raw converter software because it takes too much time, you'll almost surely find standing around in the dark with stinky chemicals in the air, for many minutes (if not hours), will also be a show-stopper.

 

Moving on, I don't understand the connection between contrast and noise. Appeal to basic physics says there is going to be none: the signal to noise ratio is a function of the photon count. Not only that, my direct experience shows me there is none, and even the examples given above show this (the dark area noise is there).

 

As I said before, the more photons you gather, the less noise you have. And it turns out that the SNR ramps up very quickly as you go from dark to bright. This is why pushing the histogram as far to the right without substantial clipping and then backing off during raw conversion is so effective re: noise in dark areas. I strongly suggest that you just try it.

 

If you still hate the result or the process, then here are a number of suggestions (in no particular order):

 

1) buy a better camera (some Canon equipment have pseudo ISO 50 modes, and real ISO 100)

 

2) trade low noise for resolution: down-sample your images

 

3) buy some noise filter software (which is basically step 2, but where the trade-off is adaptive to image content)

<i>where the signal to noise ratio is at a minimum.</i>

 

<p>Maximum! Maximum! Who let that idiot in here anyways? ;-/

If there is, in fact, "nothing past the half-way point", then you under-exposed the image. General rule: more photons == less noise. Next time 'over-expose' it and then, back at the computer, shift the histogram back to the dark side (of the force?). This is the essence of the usual advice to "expose to the right" -- cram as much of the image up against the right hand side of the histogram, where the signal to noise ratio is at a minimum. When you shift the exposure back, you get low(er)-noise dark areas than you would have obtained at the "right" exposure.

 

And yes, you can do this with film, cf. "The Zone System".

My experience with the 1325 parallels Kent Staubus'. My only regret is that I didn't buy it much earlier than I did ...

<i>should I be looking at the vertical grip?</i>

 

<p>Don't just look at it: buy it. The user-experience for the entire camera improves significantly, not just for the vertical.

Kinesis belt, large lens pouch (for the 500/4), backpack harness, and so on. I gave up on the "portable filing cabinet" solutions (Lowepro et al) a while ago, sad to see that I had wasted the money (and suffered the pains). They are heavy and ill-designed for the purpose of carrying stuff around. If it's just a wrapper for the gear while it sits in the car or house, some lens pouches and a small duffel bag does the same job for less.

It is nonsense to buy lens X, sell it later and buy lens Y ... when it is possible to just buy lens Y at the outset. If saving time and money is "efsphobia", then so be it:

 

http://www.bythom.com/support.htm

 

(While reading it, substitute "lens" every time you see "tripod". The principle is a general one, and needs to be more widely promulgated.)

The "blur diameter" for distant objects is found in the <a href="http://www.photo.net/photo/optics/lensFAQ">Lens FAQ</a>:

 

<p>c = f M / N

 

<p>where f = focal length, M = subject magnification and N is the focal ratio. f/N = objective diameter D, so we can also say that:

 

<p>c = M D

 

<p>Which means that if you want to have a nice creamy smooth background, you need a lens with a big objective (70mm or more across), or you need to ramp up your subject magnification, or, preferably, both. The latter is usually a difficult physical constraint, and the former is a difficult financial constraint. Sadly your 18-55 "kit lens" meets neither, and no amount of camera firmware will be able to solve this problem.