hakon_soreide

I've not measured the noise of my 5D objectively, but to me it feels to have very little noise, and I have done most of my shooting at ISO 800 until now since the light is low here in winter. Even set to 800, there is hardly any noise, and when I increase the contrast in the images as I often do, whatever noise becomes more visible in gradient areas where midtone turns to shade just looks like beautiful and unintrusive film grain. I've not seen any noise at ISO 100.<p>

Perhaps there is something technically wrong with your 5D? Of course, if you subjectively can find no fault with your own images and the noise that is measured is something that you yourself cannot really detect when you look at a selection of normal pictures throughout the ISO range, then I'd not be worried about it.

And there's your answer right there - so get both.

It's probably not condensation on the lens - since the condensation is far out of focus being on the lens itself, it would in theory only soften the picture and cause more flare.

It's so easy to adjust white balance, and I don't see the need to get accurate colours, so I just move the LR sliders until it looks good. A photo is never reality.

Sometimes, when you make pictures for them, you don't make them for you, and that can make them bad pictures.

The 50mm f1.8 is sharper from the test crops I've seen. And seemingly no CA.

I bought the 5D kit with the 24-205, and I've been very happy with it, and I don't feel I'll ever want the 24-70. Unless you're taking pictures of moving subjects in low light - in which case a 35, 50 or 85mm fast prime is better and cheaper - the IS makes the 24-105 a better low-light lens for most shooting situations. And unless you simply cannot afford it, I'd have kept both.<p>

I've seen some test target shots with the 24-105 that wasn't so sharp, but mine certainly is.<p>

I do find myself often shooting in the 70-105 range, though, so I've thought of adding a 70-200 f4.0 IS to my kit. With the next generation IS, it is handholdable at the same speeds as the 24-105, and I get that extra reach and it will be enough for most of my semi-macro needs too with 1:5 magnification at 200mm, and I feel that the 24-105 is almost at the right place in throwing the background out of focus when set to 105mm, so a bit more there would be just perfect.

Some kind of diffuser, perhaps?

Monochrome printing would still use a lot of black ink.<p>

One of the reasons many people recommend and use Epson is because they were the first to make truly archival pigment-based inkjet printers for the consumer market. They have therefore the longest time in that segment of the market and perhaps also the most years of R&D.<p>

Today there are competitors to the Epsons that also provide archival pigment-based inks, so they might also be worth considering.<p>

One important thing to consider before buying, though, is how much you expect to print. As a rule of thumb, the smaller the printer, the higher the cost of expendables, that is, ink cartridges, so for certain print volumes, a bigger printer will have a lower total cost. The difference between the Epson P2400 and 3800 for instance means that even relatively low volumes of prints will make the larger printer the most cost-effective option.<p>

Epson's latest generations of Ultrachrome printers do make excellent black and white and monochrome toned prints, with good user controls in the printer software.<p>

Another Epson advantage is that the dominance of the brand on the mass market means that custom profiles for third-party papers often become available faster for the Epsons than for other printers, and sometimes, the only profiles you can find is for the Epsons.

50mm f1.4 are mentioned twice here as not as sharp as one would think, and my experience is the same. I had both the 50mm f1.8 and 1.4 at one point, and the 1.8 was noticably sharper. Right up there with the 50mm Summicron f2.0 and the Mamiya 7 80mm based on perceptive evaluation.

As for the 35-100mm Oly, that is a reduced 4/3 image circle, making it possible to make one without breaking either the bank or your back... A Canon version would be huge.

When you're taking pictures of moving subjects, there is no substitute for fast lenses, and that means primes. 35mm, 50mm, 85mm, 135mm. While a 35-135mm f1.8 with full-frame image circle sounds fun, it would cost and weigh more than getting extra cameras for the different primes.

The 100-400 is already a slow lens, and so you'd get into problems with autofocusing, which on many cameras can't be done when the base aperture is much higher than 5.6.<p>

The 1.4 extender adds 1 stop, and the 2.0 adds two, making the 100-400 f4.5-5.6 lens into approximately a 140-560mm f6.3-8, and the 2.0 extender makes it a 200-800mm f9-f11 - and for bird photography, you're really bordering on blurry pictures for anything except the most still-sitting birds if you use a really steady tripod, mirror lock-up and high ISO on a bright, sunny day...

I've done "contact sheets" on my desktop scanner a few times, and I actually doubt they would be much quicker to make in the darkroom - not to mention it's all less messy and if post-processing and finishing is to be done digitally in any case, it's all part of the same workflow.

Oh, and if your camera gets the centre sharp but the corners blurry, it's a combination of lens limitations and a large aperture (small f-number). The optimum aperture for ultimate sharpness is usually f8 or f11, and at those, you'd need an awful lens to get significant corner blurring.<p>

That said, I have heard rumours that the 18-55 kit lens - assuming that's what you have - might not be the sharpest optic around...

The old rule of thumb for handheld shots is a shutter speed of 1 second divided by focal length - for 35mm, so for 1.6 crop, that must be multiplied.<p>

That means that at 55mm - 88mm equivalent field of view, nothing slower than 1/90s - to be assured of a steady shot almost every time, that is.<p>

For macro, that rule doesn't apply anymore since smaller movements of the lens and camera means a much bigger movement of the image. I've not seen any rules of thumb for 1:1 shots, but for handheld, I'd estimate adding two stops or so, so 1/400 for handheld shots with 100mm.<p>

Often overlooked, and important on a tripod too, is mirror shake, which rears its ugly head particularly between 1/60s and 1s - and if you get shutter speeds in that area, use mirror lock-up.<p>

To avoid subject movement, it naturally depends on the subject and its speed of motion. For subjects in motion, I'd say that anything slower than 1/125 is basically useless unless you want the blur.<p>

Now, to avoid getting shutter speeds in the danger-zone, it's actually better to increase ISO. I'd rather have an ISO 1600 sharp image with a bit of noise that can be reduced than an ISO 400 blurry shot that I just have to delete.

I actually suspect that although Fuji seems a bit slow in the field right now - not coming out with new things as often as the big ones, their focus is on getting film-like image quality in digital - and that philosophy has produced and will produce some excellent cameras that will always have their niche with professionals for certain qualities that other digital cameras lack.

This is not really an answer to your question, just a comment on your posting title, which actually makes it less likely that the ones who knows will find your post. The title of the post should be "Connecting Nikon SB-28 flash to Polaroid 110" and if that rang a bell with someone, they would look in on the post. Hopefully, someone will be curious about "what would be best" who actually knows... =)

With the picture quality coming from today's crop of dSLR bodies, ergonomics might actually be one of the single-most important distinguishing features, and if you're not happy with a camera, I'd advise you go to a camera shop, try and feel all the ones they have until you find one that really agrees with you. Or you could try really hard teaching yourself to find all the buttons on your current camera blindfolded. It might be a lot of exercise, but if you miss pictures because of it, that's exercise that might be worth it.

Oh, by the way, how big prints do you make with your stitched images? What the term "megapixel myth" really means is of course that you don't need many of them to make excellent pictures and big prints as long as you use sharp lenses, avoid focus and motion blur, and - most importantly - that they are interesting and in line with your own artistic vision.<p>

A 6 megapixel dSLR will make a nice 13x19. And, if you're going to view a picture in its entirety and not go any closer, 6 megapixels might actually be all you ever need, regardless of the output size. We all know, however, that people do like getting a bit closer with their noses to pictures, so it's nice to have a bit more. And it also depends on image detail. Fur and distant trees are things from which you might first see the lack of resolution, but pictures with softer shapes and areas of colour might work well even down to 100dpi and still stand up to relatively close scrutiny.

I think I've said this in this forum before in other threads, but he's right - when the sensor is small, you basically cannot get any added detail beyond 6 megapixels, and you risk adding noise, so 6 megapixels is about the practical max there, and sometimes, you can get cleaner and nicer pictures with 3 megapixel cameras, for instance.<p>

Since this is relative to sensor size, a dSLR with, say 4 times the size of the sensor as a typical compact (I think it's more than that, but just for argument's sake), will max out at 24 megapixels - but you would still get a cleaner picture with less noise if you stopped at 12 megapixels, for instance.<p>

The limitations are down to the actual size of the photosites on the sensor together with diffraction and other physical limitations. Also, you're really pushing the resolving power of the lens too when you're getting into that small pixel pitch area, and even the most advanced top notch optics ever designed simply cannot resolve that many pixels for such a sensor size.<p>

Anyway, for your stitching use, the actual megapixels of the camera isn't as important, but other things like user comfort focus and most of all speed is important, and for those reasons alone, you could consider upgrading to something snappier, like for instance a 40D. That also has the added benefit of 14-bit processing, which seems to add a bit of shadow detail in some tests I've seen, reducing the need for HDR, and those bracketed shots would be lightning fast when you need HDR. When set to multi-shot, it's almost difficult taking just one shot, that's how fast it is. <p>

And the newer processor would, I assume, handle noise better than the old one, even if the photosites on the sensor are smaller.

UPS or FedEx will come at your door, and they seem to only just call the phone number on the packing slip after they've tried that, so if your amazon of a housemate is at home during delivery hours, you're in big trouble.

<p>

The safest bet would probably to get a friend of yours to make the purchase for you, and get the stuff delivered to his address... or, if he turns out not to be at home during delivery hours, he could get them to deliver it at your workplace, for instance.

I would have thought that a good maximum aperture was a big advantage, and a mirror lens would normally be f/8 or f/11 fixed - but for focal range compared to price, and not to mention light weight - it certainly is a lot of bang for the buck.<p>

If your subjects often are still when you push the shutter release and you're on a tripod, or you shoot at high ISO on a sunny day, I am sure that a mirror lens can be wonderful.

0.9m and 1.6m would be the focus limiter, setting the close focus limit to either 0.9 metres and 1.6 respectively - to avoid as much focus travel and focus hunting when in general use (ie. more than 1.6 metres).

Yes. Many. All digital SLRs I know of do.