howard_slavitt2

For one lens on your xti, I'd get the Tamron 17-50mm f2.8. The best lightweight prime is the Canon 24mm f2.8. I have a 5D and xti. I use the Canon 24mm f2.8 most on the xti. After that the Canon 35mm f2. Both small and lightweight. I have used the Tamron 17-50mm f2.8; it's excellent (I tested it for my brother for his 30D). I also use the Canon 17-40mm f4L on the xti; it's excellent too. But if I didn't also want to be able to use it full frame, the Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 is a lot less expensive, as good of quality as the Canon 17-40mm f4L, and has an f2.8 vs. f4 aperture.

I preordered the Photoshop CS-3 upgrade (for a Mac) from Amazon, and just

received notice that it has shipped. I am currently using CS-2, and have quite

a few actions that I've developed over the years. Will all the same actions

work on CS-3? Is there something I should do to ease the transition to CS-3?

I have the 24mm f2.8, 28mm f1.8, 35mm f2.0, and 50mm f2.5 macro, all of which I use on my 5D. For indoors, I'd probably go with the 35mm f2.0 to start. If you want a bit wider the 28mm f1.8. If you don't mind the extra weight and have the money, I'd consider the 35mm f1.4, though it's an awful lot bigger than the f2.0. . . . The 35mm f2.0 is really a superb choice; only downsides are chromatic abberation wide open (will barely see the CA, if at all, up to prints up to 11" x 14", but you will see it on screen), and the bokeh can get harsh above about f3.2 or so.

One more question -- the filter size is listed as "E55." Does this mean that a Tamron 55mm lens cap should fit it? Does it also mean that normal 55mm filters should fit, or is E55 different from 55mm?

This is probably a stupid question, but: I just got my first Leica R lens

(used), a Summicron 35mm. It has the built in extending hood. Is there a

particular, recommended method for extending the hood? I can pull it out, or

pop it back in. It's heavily dampened, but feels appropriate to just pull it

out and push it back it. The hood will also turn/twist, but that doesn't seem

to have any effect. There is a slight pop after I pull it out and twist it

counterclockwise a tad, but the slight pop doesn't seem to lock it. Thanks for

answering what may be an obvious question.

I've had two copies of the 17-40mm f4L, both purchased new. One was manufactured in August or so 2005. It performed ok, but was bested by my 24mm f2.8 and 35mm f2.0 primes on a Canon 5D. I bought another new one with a manufacturing code of Jan 2007 and recently tested it (actually two that I tested against each other; both performed similarly). The January 2007 17-40mm f4L is excellent, corner to corner, edge to edge from f8 up at all focal lengths from at least 20mm - 35mm (the only focal lengths I'm likely to use; hence the only ones I've tested). So, yes, there's a lot of sample variation with this lens, and it appears that Canon's quality control has recently improved. The 16:9 website by Mark Welsh has tested about 5 copies of this lens and his findings concur.

Actually, David the corners on the 17-40mm f4L are excellent by f8 (or earlier) from the 24mm setting and up. They're very good at f8 at the 20mm setting, and excellent at f11 at 20mm. I had an earlier copy of the 17-40mm f4L that I bought in fall 2005 that was mediocre; I just bought and tested two new copies of the 17-40mm f4L (date code shows they were manufactured in Jan '07) and they're both excellent performers from 20-35mm. (I haven't tested 17mm or 40mm yet.) Also, you can easily go to 24" wide on prints from this lens and a 5D without a noticeable drop off in quality; you can probably squeeze out an excellent 30" print, though that would be the limit as far as I'm concerned.

I'd either get the 17-40mm f4L (great on both of your cameras, which are the same cameras I have, by the way), or use a couple of small primes -- for the 5D the 28mm f1.8, 35mm f2.0, 50mm f2.5 macro are all great -- and for the Rebel xti I'd use the 24mm f2.8 or 35mm f2.0. A great three lens combination for walking around Paris with your two bodies would be the 24mm f2.8, 35mm f2.0 and 50mm f2.5 macro, changing them between the bodies would give you a full range of perspectives.

A Canon 24mm tse.

You must have gotten a bad copy of the 35mm f2. Mine is fantastic. I used it yesterday on my 5D, about 75 images, all at between f2.2 and f2.8. They're all tack sharp, except for the few where I missed focus. Now what I don't like about it are: (1) the bokeh can get weird, though at f3.5 and wider, it usually does fairly well, (2) there is some CA, and (3) the focal plane is not flat, the focal plane of the corners are curved inward, which, when shooting wide open can yield some odd results. But overall it's a great, light, hi-performing lens.

Diffraction limit in general for 35mm is between f5.6 and f8. It also varies a bit with focal lengths, the wider focal length hitting the diffraction limits earlier than the longer focal lengths. Given, however, that lenses are practical, not theoretical devices, they have practical imperfections which are usually improved as you stop down. So that "sweet spot" is where both diffraction limits and practical limits are minimized.

My advice is to have a good professional shop do your scans. From years ago, Nancy Scans in NY, would do 8 bit scans of medium format of up to about 100MB, I think, for $50 or so each. I also suspect that if you did a package deal, say 50 scans of slides you sent them at one time, you could negotiate a decent discount. You'll save a lot of time, and get much better scans, even if it's only 8 bit vs. 16 bit, by paying a professional drum scanning outfit to do them for you. I know -- I had an Imacon and was shooting 6 cm x 9cm transparencies for several years before converting to an all digital workflow. In retrospect, I'd have been better off paying for scans than buying a scanner, it would have been cheaper or as cheap; I would have spent more time taking images than scanning; and I would have had better, dust-free files (albeit fewer). . . How many images do you really want to work on a year? If you're not doing this for a living, I'd be surprised if you have more than 25-50 images a year that you really want to work on printing.

I agree that the XTI's viewfinder is it's weak spot. I use the XTI as a backup for my Canon 5D, and also as a compact point and shoot. The beneficial tradeoff for the small and dark viewfinder is that the XTI is inexpensive, compact, light and has great image quality (the dust buster sensor shaker is nice too).

I've used shutterfly for several books. Works well. I'm intrigued by www.blurb.com. Patrick: have you used shutterfly? How do you think the two compare? They actually look similar to me, but blurb.com looks like more work, and I'm not sure it really offers anything that shutterfly doesn't.

I looked at the adobe usa website. It shows $199 as the upgrade price.

Up to 24" on the long end yields results comparable to medium format. Beyond that you'll see diminishing quality. Assuming excellent technique and top quality lenses, 30" is still very good to excellent, beyond that you're pushing it, depending on the use.

There are a lot of used versions of the 16-35mm f2.8 I on sale now on the fredmiranda buy/sell forum. In my experience it's a "safe" place to buy and sell camera gear; better than EBAY. If you can get the "old" 16-36mm, in excellent + or better condition, at about 65% of what it sells for new, I'd say that's an excellent deal, assuming the "I" version of the lens meets your needs.

Microtools is excellent. I've dealth with them on many occasions.

It's common to get grease on the 5D sensor glass using the Arctic Butterfly. I did too. Now I only use the Copperhill method. Be patient. You may need to do several swipes and you need to apply a bit of pressure to get rid of stubborn grease or dust, but it works well.

OTOH, Lightroom, which is written natively for the Intel Mac, screams on my Intel Mac.

Marcelo: Some tips based on about 10 years of using Photoshop, and studying it: (1) I'd recommend purchasing photokit sharpener for sharpening. It can be downloaded. On my own, I had developed various sharpening techniques over the years. Photokit sharpener is by far the best sharpening program/technique I've used, or read about. It also has a good section in the manual on uprezzing and sharpening workflows. (2) I uprez in Photoshop after having down a round of capture sharpening using photokit sharpener. For larger print sizes, I find that bicubic "normal" (neither smoother or sharper) works best. YMMV. (3) Most practiced printers who uprez biw recommend adding noise at the final stage when you uprez to give texture, grain, or the appearance of resolution (although noise in reality would only degrade resolution). You can do this in photoshop using the noise filter; I'd recommend gaussian and monochromatic and in only very small amounts. (4) Many people, myself included, now believe that the 10% increment approach -- often called stair-step interpolation or something like that -- gives no benefits. I'm in that group.

I'd get the xti. I did, as a backup for my Canon 5D. I love using the xti with a Canon 24mm f2.8 prime. Compact, very lightweight, excellent images. BTW, you can use all of your old Zuikos very effectively on the Canon xti as telephotos on it as well, by purchasing an oly to EOS focus confirmation adapter from a guy going by the name of happypagehk on ebay (or a name close to that). You won't be able to focus ANY manual lenses very well on any crop sensor digital slr, so you need to find a system/solution that will let you use the camera's focus confirmation capabilities, assuming the camera (like the xti) offers that feature.

Go to the Fred Miranda "alternative" forum. Two people who contribute regularly on that forum will do a 5D mirror shave: CInstance (first name Le Song) and Phan Minh Son (I think that's his name, I may be butchering it a bit). I've bought lenses from both of them, and had good experiences, and they both have sterling reputations on that forum. Neither has been contributing as much on the fred miranda forum in the past 2-3 months (frankly, the discussions aren't as interesting there as they once were), but they still show up from time to time, and thought the fred miranda search function sucks, you should be able to track down their emails to contact them from that site as long as you're patient.

The lens I use most on my Rebel xti is the Canon 24mm f2.8. I find it to be the perfect "walk around" lens. It's sharp, compact, and relatively inexpensive. I've used the Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 also on the xti, and the Tamron is a great lens if you want a zoom. It's a lot larger and a bit heavier than the Canon 24mm prime, however, and I prefer prime lenses. The Canon 24mm will give you about a 38mm or so equivalent on the 1.6x sensor. If you want wider than that, you need to look at the various zooms that are available. At 24mm, the Tamron zoom btw probably is a bit sharper than the Canon prime, but I still prefer the prime lens.

If you're planning on shooting on a tripod at f16, it sounds like you're using it for landscapes. The 24mm tse is clearly the way to go. The big advantage it has is that if you focus in the midground or background and apply about 1 degree or so of tilt, it's very easy to hold sharp focus from very closeup to mid ground to background. No other wide angle 35mm lens can do this. Although depth of field on a 24mm lens at f16 is large, you will sacrifice a lot of sharpness either in the fg or backround unless you have tilt. I own the 24mm tse, the 24mm f2.8, had and sold the 17-40mm f4L and tried a couple of Olympus 24mm f2.8 lenses. For landscapes the 24mm tse is the clear winner.