olli.pekonen

<p>I own both 5D and 5DMkII, and here's my list in my particular usage (photos in portraits, fashion, hitech):</p>

<ul>

<li>5DMkII is amazing in low light, 5D usable up to 1000ISO and then the noise starts to get at you... </li>

<li>5DMkII batteries fare a lot better (but do not expect to be able to use old stuff from 5D) </li>

<li>the ultrasonic sensor cleaner is an advantage, far less dust spots to worry about</li>

</ul>

<p>However,</p>

<ul>

<li>for me, live view, HD video and most digital gimmicks of 5DMkII are wasted </li>

<li>most seriously, I have had to repair the 5DMkII twice, first the thumbwheel was inoperative, and just two days ago the camera (5 days after the expiry of warranty period) went nuts - the buttons won't budge, the shutter won't release for most of the time etc. I have never experienced quality problems this severe with anything I have purchased, esp. having paid 2300EUR for the thingy. Prosumer goods this expensive should not fail this often, and I think something went wrong in the release of this particular model at Canon. </li>

</ul>

<p>If your aspiration is improving your basic photographic skills, a used 5D would, in my opinion, do just fine. My answer to the question "why not buy the latest technology" is "why go through the pain of sorting out the bugs in the cutting edge products", "why have features you do not need" and "if latest technology is what you must have, what might be coming up after 12 months of more wait".</p>

<p>Could it be that for the real estate of 36x24mm2, we are seeing the limits of how much the pixel can collect light and how much it can be amplified. 1DsMII has 16+Megs, and 5DMII has something like 21Megs. Based on my experience, the 5DMII experience is terrific in very low light (you can take portraits during nights on city streets with a fast lens without a flash) but that's probably mostly due to advanced noise cancellation and some semiconductor gimmics in the CMOS sensor. But when you want to collect a lot of photons, you just can not beat large chunks of glass, be it the front lens of your 85/f1.2, or the huge square of Hasselblad or Mamiya back.</p>

<p>The 5DMarkII is great for lowlight situations (very small noise levels) so it might entice you to take photos in such a darkness where the autofocus can not cope with the situation.<br>

However I should warn that 5DMarkII has, IMHO, a severe quality problem - my camera goes to repair for the second time in 10 months having gone out of whack all by itself (first time, the thumbwheel failed, and now the shutter releases from AF on button but not from the shutter release etc). I have used Canons for 6 years and start to get the feeling that new digitally fragile SLR bodies are rolled out at the expense of quality. I wonder how Nikon copes with this competitive situation...</p>

<p>Unfortunately the saga on Canon quality continues. Today the same camera body (1 year and five days after purchase, for a one year guarantee) went crazy again by itself. The buttons fail to response, and the shutter can be, sometimes, triggered from the "AF on" button (but not from the shutter release). This is really hairy, especially having paid 2300EUR for the thingy, and enjoyed it for 9 months (2 months for delivery and one month for fixing it after one day of usage). I'm really dumbfounded and I will keep you posted on how the camera shop/repair/Canon Finland responds in getting this camera body finally working the way it should. It is simply not nice to pay huge amounts of money for digital equipment that all of the sudden decides to turn itself to a piece of *rap and forces the customer to spend another huge amount of money (but this time, for a Nikon...)</p>

<p>Just a closing update on this item: The camera was fixed in a matter of weeks. They had replaced the whole back portion of the camera - thumbwheel, display, side buttons etc. But now the thingy has worked without a hitch.</p>

<p>Thanks for all the feedback and suggestions!</p>

<p>I took the camera back to the vendor. They sent it to the workshop. And I guess I will be hearing from these guys in a couple of weeks. The economy is bad - why serve the customer fast :-)</p>

<p>I'll keep you posted.</p>

<p>Hi there and thanks for the feedback.</p>

<p>No, I get no error msg. The thumbwheel is just plain dead and the zoom out makes the focus points in the viewfinder flash like it was some sort of disco fever. That actually makes this a really spooky feature, QA wise - its like a car that runs perfectly, but when you turn the wheel to the right, the car steers left...</p>

<p>The photo sensor is a quite passive part of the camera. The most significant wear and tear occurs when cleaning the sensor, and this has to be done carefully. With pro cleanup, lifetime of the sensor outlasts easily any other part of the camera (e.g. buttons, shutter, connectors etc). I do not think there can be such a thing as a heavily used sensor (other than cleaning that potentially rubs the dust particles so that the surface of the sensor scratches): the sensor is essentially a planar semiconductor device that turns photons hitting the pixels into electrical signals. There is nothing "wearing" in this process pretty much as there is nothing wearing in the electrical parts soldered into your stereo set.</p>

 

<p>Hi there!</p>

<p>My new EOS 5D mark II finally arrived. After 30 secs of using I realized that the quick dial (the thumb wheel in the back) does not work... at all! And no, the power switch was not in the middle position (thanks for asking :-) but all the way in the position that should enable quick dial operation.</p>

<p>Then, after 5 minutes I realized that that, when viewing the pictures, "zoom in" works OK, but "zoom out" stops the image viewing function and makes the focus dots flash in the viewfinder (what kind of zoom out is that?) </p>

<p>Two peculiarities in five minutes. I have used digital EOS systems since 2004 in a pro/semipro level.</p>

<p>Now, what the hey is going on here? Should I really start reading the manual, or claim warranty of the product. Has Canon pushed outside of the envelope a bit too much in their attempt to keep Nikon at bay in DSLR wars? Quality Assurance is a poor place to save, IMHO...</p>

<p>BR,</p>

<p>Olli Pekonen</p>

If you want to have good ratings in photo.net, according to

my 2 yrs of tenure here, here's my best advise for a

good picture:

 

Take a shot of a wrinkle faced old man with a funny hat on!

 

You will get those "ooh, I can see how wise he is" kind

of comments. Funny hat implies that he is from elsewhere.

Elsewhere means that someone actually travelled to get

the photo taken! This merits good points. Bad teeth are

also good. Moreover, wrinkles mean wisdom. Wisdom is good. Good means good ratings.

 

It is as simple as that!

Tim: I did not say that "3/3s are shaking" the foundation, I

said that "jerk 3/3s are shaking" the foundation. I find it

hard to believe that the same image fetches 7/7 and 3/3 for

any other reason than abuse. And if it is "for real", the image

receives both 7/7 and 3/3 for some real reason, I do not, in general, understand it *without explanation*, so the rating just

creates confusion.

 

Both conclusions, abuse or confusion, are bad.

 

That is why I would love to see the explanation with as many ratings as possible, but the lower the rating, the more necessary the explanation is.

 

Once more: if my photo annoys someone in the scale of 1/1-3/3,

there is nothing more honest than saying it, but so that I

also understand it. It takes about three words of comment text,

about 5 seconds of time.

How about this one - if you are about to give a rating less than

four, you should come up with a photo in photo.net that

does the thing you do not like (as obviously there is something

that you do not like) better. Say, there is a head shot

fashion picture with no darker tones, and this bothers you

quite a bit. Before your rating is accepted, you should

point to a similar photo that does that particular idea

in the same genre (fashion) better.

 

I can almost immediately see the weak points in this idea -

its is laboursome, and then the smallest "stinky point" would

gradually get higher.

 

However, this would ensure that people spend a little time

wondering what is bad about the photo, and suggest an

improvement in form of another photo.

 

Well, just an idea...

I fully agree with you, Bruce. That is exactly my point. I have

absolutely nothing against someone giving me a 3/3, or 1/1, for that matter, if the person can honestly, even with 3 words, tell me why the photo sucks so much. I could take that input, and improve, and probably be thankful for the input.

 

But is is not nice to see, among 10 ratings, 5s, 6s, and 7s, and then the silent, anonymous 3/3 that sits there at the bottom of the

rating heap just like a turd that some drunk SOB dropped at your

front lawn before sunrise. That stinker helps absolutely

no-one in getting anything done - on the contrary, it just

creates confusion.

I think the rating system is the thing that keeps photo.net going.

Lately, it has been more and more difficult to figure out how

it works, however. I have been member of the community some 3 years

now, and work as a semipro photographer. On average, I get about 1/1

rating point lower ratings now than 3 years ago. Do not worry - I

do not think that 3 years of photograpic experience has made

me about 20% worse photographer. Instead, I have been getting

the "3/3 curse" a lot lately - in virtually every photo there

is one anonymous 3/3 at the bottom of the heap.

 

What could help? My suggestion: unanonymous rating - that is,

the ratings that have effect of the rating average should

linkable to a person. You could have an unofficial anonymous

ratings, too, but the fact is that nowadays one 3/3 can spoil

the show for a good photo of getting it into the "top photos"

list.

 

So, as a counter argument on "why do people care about ratings":

why do people care about posting photos to photo.net? To

get them rated. Preferably, with comments. But always with

a true named person behind the rating. This is not a democratic

election, this is a about developing one another in the fine

art of photography. The anonymous jerk 3/3s are shaking the very

foundation of the system this entire site was built upon!

 

Regards,

 

Olli Pekonen (www.petrilux.com; www.iki.fi/ope)

I have 64bit Athlon with Media Center XP in a HP Media Center

Pavilion m7350.fi, originally with 1GB RAM. Initially Lightroom

was a joke in this box, nothing happened with some 50 images.

I just slapped in another 1G worth of RAM, and now it works

like a breeze. So yes, there is something very nonlinear

(like an instruction set emulation requiring a lot of RAM)

going on here. But with suitable amount of RAM (as much as fits

in), things should start rolling...

I have a HP Media Center PC with 64 bit AMD Athlon, 1G

ram and Win XPsp2, and it is completely impossible to use

Lightroom in this box - working with 50 images from EOS 5D,

the computer, after 3-4 minutes of working, gets stuck...

I guess it is swapping, running out of memory. But hey

come on, 1G is pretty much. I have used RawShooter Free Edition

(that was made by Pixmantec until it got purchased by

Adobe) and it works like a breeze with 500+ images.

 

Frankly, with this experience the chances are slim I would

purchase Lightroom. I fear Adobe has tried too hard of making

a slick piece of software that, unfortunately, looks nice

but makes your PC about as useful for image processing as

a toaster.

... sorry, forgot to mention that this is a shot

with 85/1.2 at f=1.2 .

here's a recent shot with the oldie 85/1.2. With some

light, the focus is OK... and with a suitable model,

the results are ... well, acceptable :-)

 

http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/4833114-lg.jpg

I have shot a couple of outdoors fashion catalogues

with the older version of 85/1.2, and I wonder the new

lense have the same feature (bug?) as the old one - when

the lights go dim so that the camera (mine is 5D) is only

barely able to focus, 85/1.2 focuses constantly some 10-15cm

too far from the intended target. Thus, if I focus in the eyes

(as one usually does), the wall on which the model is leaning

is sharp, not the eyes. This is of course a bit silly as the lense

is meant also for such low-light work. Of course I'm pushing

it to the limits, but no focus at all would be almost better here

than the 15cm wrong focus.

I'm wondering what would be the best way to lock the exposure

over multiple shots to a fixed value with Canon speedlites

to avoid the following problem: I shoot a "lot" of fashion,

and one nice gimmick is to place the model over a shiny surface,

say a door with metallic plating. Shoot this with ETTLII,

and the face of the model is 3 stops underexposed because

the shiny metallic surface reflects so much light back

to camera, fooling the metering. OK,

 

(i) I can try to adjust to this situation with the flash unit over

exposure setting. However, this is valid only to +2 stops, not

enough for high reflections.

 

(ii) I can also try to use the * button to set the exposure

level before the actual shutter click (e.g. zoom to the model's

face and then read the exposure from there, with the flash).

This, however, is very clumsy (zooming back and forth).

 

(iii) there is probably also a manual power setting in the flash,

but this is probably the clumsiest way to do this.

 

Optimally, the flash power should be adjustable to a fixed

value with the * button over a multitude of exposures. However,

I do not know a way to do this with Canon cameras - after the camera

fires, the * setting is gone, and it has to be redone.

 

Do you know a way to keep the flash exposure in memory with

Canon cameras?

yes, thas's

 

c:

 

CD %TEMP%

 

DEL RS93AF3BE1.X$X

 

EXIT

hmm, it appears that pixmantex support pages already

have a post on this... it's a temp file problem: run these

commands e.g. in a batch file, and the problem goes away:

 

c:

CD %TEMP%

DEL RS93AF3BE1.X$X

EXIT

I had to reboot my computer while rawshooter was running. Now

after the reboot, after clicking the RawShooter icon,

nothing happens, not even an error message. I tried even to

uninstall the program, but to no avail. Please help! This

is very odd!

Whoa... lots of discussion here! Thanks!

yes, I know... it is the old "it is not the size, it is how you use it" proposition. However, why bigger is better. Well, why do you

take pictures with 6x6 (Hassel) cameras instead of 36x24... or even do 5x4 (Linhofs)... it is not the pixel resolution... it is the

color depth, reality... the ability to "step into the picture".

 

But yes... it seems that 16 Megs should be more than adequate

for any work in prints up to A3 sizes.