ljwest

<blockquote> <p>If you can't say how you'll use the body, then we can't chose between the 5D MkIII and the 7D MkII for you. They're very different cameras.</p> </blockquote> <p>This.</p> <blockquote> <p>I should be able to figure it out myself. I don't understand why sometimes a decision like this becomes so complicated.</p> </blockquote> <p>It often isn't as complicated as you think. Start by making a list of what is lacking, and/or what you think is lacking, with your current equipment and the results you are getting. This may help you to see things more clearly.</p> <p>Also, ask yourself if you really need to upgrade <em>now</em>. Maybe waiting six months, or a year will bring new insight into where you want to take your photography, and what you want to do, and that may make the choice of body more clear. And, there's always the hope for something even newer, or at a lower price...</p> <p>There's always the option to rent a body for a weekend or a week to test it out. That may help you as well.</p>

<p>Use the "INFO" button to get to the shooting settings screen (same screen as the "Q" button). Then shut the camera off while that screen is displayed. It will come back like that next time you power up the camera. It's buried in the manual, and you need to look at several pages to put it all together.</p> <p>But I agree with Dan, I don't know why you'd want it on all the time. That'll just use up the battery faster. I've even shut off the automatic review function on mine so I don't waste the battery.</p> <p>Most settings can be changed using the viewfinder. I use the top LCD infrequently, and usually only for items that the viewfinder can't display like focusing mode, shots left on the card, etc. ISO I can set using the viewfinder.</p> <p>If you go back and forth between a couple different groups of settings, use the C1, C2 & C3 positions on the mode dial to record those settings for quick retrieval.</p>

<p>If you are talking about <em>rotational</em> movement, similar to when you would mount or un-mount the lens, I believe a slight amount of play is fairly normal. Seems to me I've had it on SLRs back from my Minolta Days through my Canon 7D, and it can vary quite a bit between lenses.</p> <p>I don't think they can design the locking mechanism with that close a tolerance to preclude all motion, at least not without making it more cumbersome or complex.</p>

<p>PPI or DPI only matter when printing or displaying an image. The only thing that is important is that the size in pixels of the image stays the same. If it is important to you, you can usually re-set this number, and it has no effect whatsoever on the actual size of the image in pixels.</p> <p>If the camera takes 3000x2000 pixel images, then the imported image should also be 3000x2000 pixels, regardless of the PPI/DPI.</p>

<p>If this is the "late" 2009 MacBook with the 2.26GHz Core2Duo (aka MacBook6,1), you've still got a little breathing room, but not much.</p> <p>One thing to know, is that although Apple specced it at a maximum of 4GB of RAM, it will actually use up to 8GB. You'll need every bit of that for photos.</p> <p>The biggest issue you may get into - particularly if you shoot a lot, and in RAW - is expandability. The only external interface is USB2, which, today, is extremely slow for external storage and backups. Thunderbolt and USB3 are much better suited for today's digital photographer.</p> <p>Don't be fooled by the clock speed of the different processors! The current MBA benchmarks close to twice as fast as a late 2009 MB, even with the seemingly "much slower" processor.</p> <p>If you see yourself doing a lot of work with photos, I'd recommend taking a serious look at the 13" retina MacBook Pro over the 13" MBAir. For an extra $300, you get 8 GB RAM (which will cost you $100 extra on the Air), and a 2.6 GHz processor, which benchmarks more than 4x faster than your MacBook.</p> <p>Also, with any of the MacBooks that cannot be upgraded with RAM after purchase (Air, retina), I recommend getting the maximum RAM you can buy from Apple. For an extra $100, the Air goes from 4GB to 8, and for an extra $200, the retina goes from 8 to 16. This will help to ensure a long life, relatively immune from the OS or your apps getting ever bigger.</p> <p>The Flash storage on these is a little more complex a decision. It is upgradeable from third parties, but you may need to start off with a higher-end MacBook, and the cost difference between getting it from a third party and getting it from Apple may be negligible.</p>

<blockquote> <p>I have caveman hands, so vertical grips have always made SLR-style bodies more pleasant for me to use.</p> </blockquote> <p>I'm with Matt, here!</p> <p>I used to use a Minolta XG-M and X-570, and the Minolta Motor Drive 1 accessory transforms the handling of those cameras (and others in the series).</p> <p>When I got my Canon EOS 7D, it wasn't long before I splurged on the BG-E7 grip. The grip has hardly left the camera since. And when I do place my order for the 7D Mark II, I'll be ordering the grip for it as well.</p> <p>If you shoot with large, heavy lenses (70-200 f/2.8L, 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L and bigger), the added weight of the grip plus extra battery is almost negligible, and it gives you a much better grasp of the camera when you need to go to portrait orientation.</p>

<p>While not <em>officially</em> supported, Bryan at The-Digital-Picture.com has experimented, and the Canon EF 1.4x III extender does work with the 70-300 L from about 250mm to 300mm, which is mostly where you want it, anyway.</p> <p>Look at his <a href="http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/Canon-EF-70-300mm-f-4-5.6-IS-L-USM-Lens-Review.aspx">review of the 70-300L lens</a>, and search for "1.4".</p>

<p>I've had no issues with Mavericks on either my rMBP or iMac. Didn't have any with Mountain Lion, either, but I don't see anything that got "broken" in Mavericks. So I don't know why your computer guy prefers 10.8 to 10.9...</p> <p>OTOH, my second MBP struggles with Lion, the last OS it can upgrade to. Much of that has to do with RAM (3GB vs 16 in my Mavericks rMBP, both maxed out).</p> <p>So, if it starts to feel slow at any point, and you haven't maxed the RAM - and you can actually add RAM - do that first.</p>

<p>Which Mac do you have? If you have Thunderbolt or USB3 available, go with those interfaces over FireWire. Either of those are leaps and bounds faster than FW800.</p> <p>If you don't, try Macsales.com (aka Other World Computing). They have external drives & RAID drives compatible with FW800.</p> <p> I clung onto FW800 for a long time, but when I upgraded to a retina MacBook Pro, I switched everything over to Thunderbolt (via eSATA on the drives) and/or USB3, and that made an immense difference in the speed that everything works at (The quad-core i7 didn't hurt, either...).</p>

<p>Hard drives are the way to go, IMO. "15 gig free" sounds like a lot, but not if you get into shooting in RAW. That'd be barely 600 images out of my Canon EOS 7D...</p> <p>A bare (no enclosure) 2TB drive can be bought for around $100. That would store about 80,000 of my RAW images, and almost ten times that number in JPEGs.</p> <p>Buy a couple (or more) bare drives like that, and a dock for the bare drive like <a href="http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/NewerTech/Voyager/Hard_Drive_Dock">this</a> to swap them out. Keep the two drives identical so you have two copies.</p> <p>Then, take one drive to a friend or relative's house, or rent a safety deposit box from your local bank branch. I rented one recently that'll hold about 10 drives for $75 a year. Since they have 6 TB drives now, that's a ton of offsite storage at a reasonable price.</p>

<p>Direct from Canon's press releas for the 7DII:</p> <blockquote> <p>Ideal for travel or nature photography, the EOS 7D Mark II's built-in GPS* can record longitude, latitude and altitude data as EXIF data, can track movement at set intervals with its logging function, and can even set the camera's internal clock to local time!</p> </blockquote> <p>Personally, I would not want the camera to automatically update time zones. If one lived near a time zone border, this could wreak havoc with the ability to sort photos by time.</p> <p>It would be nice if it auto-updated DST/summer time, but as that comes but twice a year, it's not a big deal to change it manually.</p>

<blockquote> <p>I have seen several people that put the camera in the bag with the lens attached to the camera,, and some others that take the lens Away, put the caps on the lens and the camera and store it that way. I wonder what is the best práctice? I am worried with the sensor getting dirty when you take the lens off. Any opinions?</p> </blockquote> <p>Many good suggestions here, but I think you need to figure out what works best for <em>you</em>. There is no one answer, and what works for me may not work for you.</p>

<p>In addition, you can do a simple test. Looking through the polarizer as the camera would (threads toward you), as you rotate the PL, you will see the scene change: blue sky will darken, reflections from a surface will be eliminated.</p> <p>Now, flip the PL so the threads are away from you, and rotate as above. With a standard PL, you will see no change from the above. With a circular PL, there will be NO polarizing effect when looking through it the "wrong" way and rotating it. This is due to the construction of the polarizer.</p>

<p>Do you have Exposure Simulation on (or off)?</p> <p>Page 207 in the manual.</p>

<blockquote> <p>I thought lack of WiFi in this camera is due to its construction (all the metal inside)?<br> Its too bad Canon does make one of the plug in Wifi modules like Nikon has. Price it at $50. That would get the antennae outside the body interference. Actually, just include it with the body when sold new.</p> </blockquote> <p>Construction: Maybe, but then why can it have GPS, but not WiFi? That's what doesn't make sense to me.</p> <p>Canon does make a couple WiFi modules. Nowhere near $50, though! More like 10 times that! Seriously insane money for a chip that costs a couple bucks in quantity...</p> <p>WiFi or not, I'm planning to get one...</p>

<p>Ideally, you would want two mics, one for the vocalist, one for the guitar, and a mixer to adjust levels and combine the audio before sending them to the camera (or to a computer to be combined with the video later). Such a setup can cost anywhere from a couple hundred dollars to almost a thousand, depending on the gear you buy.</p> <p>Short of that, mic position is everything. Similar to light, sound falls off with distance. Also, like flash, the first thing most folks will tell you is to get the mic OFF the camera!</p> <p>In this case, I'd try to get the mic closer to the singer than his guitar. You may need something to suspend the mic from or support it. If it's a low ceiling, you could even tape the cable to the ceiling and let it hang. But if the singer tends to keep his head down, that may be a problem.</p> <p>Experiment with different positions & locations for the mic, keeping it from pointing at the guitar, if possible.</p> <p>As far as your mic's hi-pass filter, in general this type of filter will "pass" (allow through) frequencies that are <em>above</em> a certain threshold (in your case 80Hz), and block frequencies below that threshold. In a mic, a Hi-Pass filter is likely there to cut off bass frequencies, which can easily overwhelm other frequencies you may desire more. (similarly, a low-pass filter passes frequencies below its set threshold, and a band-pass filter allows frequencies to pass that are between two thresholds).</p>

Make sure the contacts on the drive & camera are clean. A little alcohol helps. Have you tried all the switch positions? If I recall. There is off, single shot, low speed and high speed. Try them all, if you have not. Also, switch on and try the "portrait" shutter button. BTW, I assume you are using the shutter button on the MD1, right? Verify that your finger touching the MD1 shutter buttons activates the meter in the camera.

<p>The retina MBP display is a glorious thing to behold. I wouldn't want to have anything between it and me!</p> <p>I've never used a screen protector on my Mac (or any...) laptops. It really doesn't need one, because, unlike an iPhone, you're not carrying it exposed in your pocket or purse with your keys. And it's not a touch screen, so you've really little reason to be getting fingerprints on it (though most of us do, anyway).</p> <p>And I haven't used one on my iPhone 4 & 5S, either. I just stopped carrying the phone in the same pocket with the keys...</p>

<blockquote> <p>I would guess that the housing (and add-ons) costs 2-3 times as much as the camera...</p> </blockquote> <p>Easily!</p> <p>I always wondered why Nikon hasn't brought the Nikonos into the digital age. Especially in 2014, where sync could be wireless, and charging could be via induction. So no, or very few, user-accessible seals to worry about... Sell em like tablets or phones, pick your storage options at sale time, and don't look back. If the battery goes soft, send it back to Nikon for a swap.</p>

<blockquote> <p>Dynamite fishing has been prohibited for good reason. Not a good example of a stupid law.</p> </blockquote> <p>You're probably right, but I'd offer that the "stupid" part here is that <em><strong>there needed to be a law!</strong></em></p>

<p>A 50D does have phase detection AF. That is the "through the viewfinder" type of AF, and, until LiveView came along, was the normal AF type for most DSLRs. Contrast Detection is the term for what is used in "LiveView".</p> <p>The 100-400 with any extender should autofocus with LiveView on any EOS Digital that supports it. The LiveView focus is not affected by the restrictions of lens aperture as the Phase Detection AF is.</p> <p>I have the 1.4x, and my 100-400 with it will AF in LiveView on my 7D. I've also rented a 2x, and the lens will AF with that in LiveView also.</p> <p> </p>

<p>One of the big deciding factors for many folks is what the camera feels like in the hand. The 550D is very noticeably smaller and lighter than the 60D. This may make a difference for you. It did for me, where I decided that a larger frame camera was a better "fit" for me than the XXXD (Rebel here in the USA) line. You may find the opposite is true, or that it does not matter.</p> <p>If you plan to take a lot of photos, the feel of the camera and - as others mentioned - the features and menu system, can make a big difference in your enjoyment of the camera.</p>

<p>For the AA chargers, at least, splurge on something like <a href="http://www.mahaenergy.com/chargers/">one of these</a> from MAHA Energy. They charge up to 8 AA cells, each independently. You can also condition the cells with some models of charger. It takes up only one wall socket, and it is not a wall wart (at least not on the model I have), but a plain plug attached to a power brick.</p> <p>You can also get wall outlets with built-in USB chargers. Though, IMO, if the outlet is buried behind furniture, it is a lot less useful than if it were above a desk or kitchen counter.</p> <p>One project I need to get on is to replace all of my 12v wall warts for various drives, etc with a single power supply feeding them all. The plan is to get one 20-30 amp power supply of the type Ham operators use, and the appropriate connections for all the drives, feeding each via a fuse. Not cheap, but losing the rats nest of wall wart wires under my desk would be priceless.</p>

<blockquote> <p>If you want the best results do as Larry suggested and embed via Flickr or other photo host.</p> </blockquote> <p>Thanks for that. Just know, though, that I've had comments from folks about the thumbnail that shows up on FB from Flickr. I've even seen that the thumbnail that FB posts is often quite poor, almost to the point of being a blurry mess, at least initially. That does seem to fix itself after a few hours or so...</p>

<p>Raw @ full resolution. If I'm extremely pressed for space, or on a vacation or other sojourn where the vast majority of my images qualify more as "family snaps" than "photography", I switch to JPEG, but still with all the pixels. If something comes up that I may want to play with later, my Canon 7D has a one-button function I can enable to switch me back to raw capture for that shot.</p> <p>If I need to post something online, I resize in post. Why let the camera do it?</p> <p> </p>