alfred_maragh

The complete explanation is found on page 2 of the user manual of the Canon EOS 620/650. This is one of the early EOS cameras. It states verbatim:

 

"EOS" is derived from "Electro-Optical System" originating from the completely electronic data communication between the camera and lens. Further, "EOS" is the Goddess of Dawn in Greek mythology-heralding the new, genuine AF system generation.

 

"EF" lens stands for "Electro-Focus" and adopts the lens-integral autofocus system which uses special motors to make precise and high-speed autofocusing possible whatever the lens focal length.

 

This is the truth according to Canon themselves.

Yes. It works perfectly all the time. Mine fits well in the hot shoe mount.

Hey guys, I had a somewhat similar experience with my Digital Rebel. While on a tour of a rum distillery here in Jamaica, I noticed a dark spot in the viewfinder of my Digireb. I then saw signs of legs as it started to crawl around. On removing the lens I realise it was on the upper surface of the focussing screen. Since there is no Canon repair facility here I just continued shooting and hoped for the best. Luckily the bug crawled to the underside on the screen later in the day. A Q-tip wrapped with a Pec Pad did the trick in removing the pest. It was a very tiny aphid-looking creature. I am yet to figure out how it got there. I have never had this happen with any of my many film cameras.

You can accomplish "double lighting" with your Elans. The absence of the PC socket is no draw back. The Pocket Wizard Plus radio slave system works perfectly with my EOS 50 as it is attachable directly onto the hotshoe. You can trigger as many receivers (attached to flashes or strobes) as you wish. The one thing you won't be able to do with this set up is mount a flash directly to the hotshoe as the radio transmitter occupies that space.

 

Another method is to use a PC to hotshoe adapter and connect your lights to camera via PC cords. With the Elans, the Wein Safe Sync PC adapter is recommended as it reduces the trigger voltage of your strobes or flashes, thus saving the camera. Of course, you may need a flash meter to determine correct exposure with you multiple light set up.

To use your on-camera flash with a second light, a cheap optical slave will suffice to trigger the second light.

Yes, I have been using one with my Digital Rebel for some time. In fact, I had it shipped with the DRebel. It works great. I had to file off a small piece of the base of the safe sync for it to fit perfectly in the hot shoe. It now fits snugly in the shoe with good electrical contacts. BTW, I just got the Pocket Wizard radio slaves and will be replacing the safe sync with them.

Here are some specs on the 70-210 1:4 macro zoom lens:

 

Length at 70mm with front and rear caps and filter = 6.5 inches.

Length at 210mm with caps and filter = 8.5 inches.

Weight = 24.5 ounces.

Glass elements = 11 in 8 groups.

Minimum aperature = f32

Closest focussing distance = 5 feet, ~4 feet in macro mode.

Filter size = 58mm.

Barrel diameter = 3 inches.

Canon hood = ET-62.

 

Hope this helps.

Yes, I bought one brand new some years ago. The image results are excellent. I still use it for portraiture even with my Digital Rebel. As Jonathan said, it is quite long and conspicuous. It is quite rigid in construction. It is a loose push/pull zoom and zoom creeping is the order of the day. If you try use a tripod with the lens tilted upwards, the zoom will just creep back down; I would have to use masking tape to tape it into position. The autofocus is relatively slow compared top to the newer lenses of today. I agree it may be a better buy than a third party newer lens.

Sad to hear of your misfortune. I have a Sigma APO 135-400mm and recently got it rechipped for free (incl. shipping). Your store certainly misled you in some way. Prior to rechipping, my lens worked fine wide open with the DRebel. Your best bet is to try recovering from the seller some way or selling the lens to someone who uses older EOS bodies.

One of the beauties about shooting digital is instant replay. All you need to do is test what sync speed works during your set up. 1/60 sec is a good starting point. I shoot with the Digital Rebel in studio fairly often using a Speedotron Brown Line D402 kit with M90 heads and Britek monolights. I get excellent results using 1/125 and 1/160 sec. Slow syn speeds will bring up the colours of other lights or reflective objects in the studio; high sync speeds may result in half frames. One very important point to bear in mind is the trigger voltage of the studio lights. It is recommended that such voltage do not exceed 6V for the Rebel. You can check trigger voltage by charging the studio lights then connecting a voltmeter across the sync contacts at the end of the connected PC cord. If you buy a system with higher sync voltage, please get a WEIN Safe Sync adapter to save your Rebel. I use one all the time with mine. My Speedotrons have a sync voltage of 26V while the Briteks are 5.4V.

 

Hope this helps

I really believe the best way to find out is doing a test yourself. Some persons can hold a camera and lens very steadily at slow speeds such as 1/15 sec. Others will need at least 1/200 sec. I can hand hold all my lenses well at 1/60 sec. I am not sure if the relationship between focal length and shutter speed is still relevant for hand holding a lens. This is because a particular focal length lens will be available in a very wide variety of sizes and weights based on manufacturer and features (a 70-200L will be much heavier than the consumer version). Some self test are the only way to be sure what speeds you can hand hold.

I can recommend what I use. With my Digital Rebel, I have a Sigma 135-400mm f 4.5-5.6. The set up is quite OK for me but I wished the lens was a tad sharper. The lens cost $520 at B&H but please note that it was sent to Sigma for free (free return shipping too) rechipping to be DSLR compatible. Sometimes I attach a Kenko Teleplus 1.5X teleconverter ($70 at B&H)to extend the focal range. This reduces the effective aperture to f8 at the long end. I have absolutely no problems with autofocussing even at low light levels, provided the subject is sufficiently contrasty. A cheap but effective set up.

I dont know how much this will help. Both Canon and Nikon make very good systems. They are both good tools or toys. If I didn't use Canon it would be Nikon and nothing else. I find the other brands (Olympus, Minolta, Pentax etc) somewhat backward and limiting. I chose Canon because my brother gave me a Canon T50 when I was a teenager. When I was looking to buy new systems, naturally Canon was the first ones I researched.

I had very similar and additional problems with glasses while taking pictures. One additional factor was the fogging of the glasses in cold temperatures.

Well, I made the big decision to do laser surgery. After 18 years of wearing glasses, and a 20:400 vision, the procedure has afforded me 20:15 vision without any problems. It has been two and half years now. My photography is much more enjoyable. Of course, it is the envy of many of my glasses-wearing photo colleagues.

I have the Canon EF 28-200mm f3.5-5.6 that spends all its time attached to the DRebel. Cost about $350 at B&H. It does everything I want except macro and high speed sports requiring larger apertures.

Hope this helps

I have had the DRebel for about four months and have shot a few thousand images. I get err99 only with a Sigma 135-400mm lens. Sigma said I should return the lens to them for free re-chipping. I also believe the problem only exists with faulty electrical connection between camera and accessories such as lenses, flash, battery, CF cards, or faulty third party accessories.

I still have two EOS100 bodies in very good condition and can definitively say the answer to your question is NO!

Many thanks to you all for your responses. I have learnt a few new things from them. I should mention the following: (1) I am running Windows XP, (2) My cards are always formatted in camera after I copy files to hard drive, (3)Cards are used exclusively with the camera and I never write to them with the computer, (4)Card reader is plug and play with XP, (5)I drag and drop files to my pics folder on the hard drive and it is during this process the error message appears. The copying terminates when the message comes up.

 

I will be trying a few things shortly such as: (1)plugging card reader into a different USB port, (2)using a different computer, (3)trying a new card reader. I will let you know how it plays out.

Hi,

Can anyone help with this:

I have been having a problem with frequent corrupted files from my

Digital Rebel. Whenever I try to copy files from the CF cards to my

hard drive, I get a message saying something to the effect �files

may be lost or corrupted� about 50% of the time. My equipment is

Canon EOS Digital Rebel, Sandisk 256 Mb CF card, Sandisk Ultra II

256Mb CF card, Sandisk 512 Mb CF card and Sandisk ImageMate card

reader. I have been using Sandisk Rescue Pro 2.0 to recover the

corrupted files successfully but this can often be time consuming

and annoying. All the equipment were bought brand new about a month

ago and all the CF cards have the problem. Can anyone advise what to

do to copy files to my hard drive problem free? Thanks.

Just to add: the flash does not allow for varying power on one or other side of the subject (as some Canon Macrolites allow). It has a single continuous circular flashtude. I dont think my images look flat with this flash; I still get the 3D feel. BTW, my flashmeter is the Wein WP1000 and not WP100 as stated before.

The flash tube section of the 6000AF has a 52mm threaded ring. The kit was shipped with metal adapter rings for 49mm, 52mm, 55mm and 58mm. It appears that the 52mm adapter just allows for extension of the native ring on the flashtube. I don't own the 100mm Macro but I think it has a 58mm filter thread and so can be used with the flash. I am almost certain that this flash CANNOT be attached with a lens hood on the lens; the flashtube screws directly onto the filter thread. You should be able to get full coverage with the 100mm lens, however, since the minimum focussing distance is longer than the 50mm Macro Sigma I own, I don't know just how much light fall-off will occur. When the flash is used with my cameras (EOS Elan II/EOS 5/EOS 620/EOS Elan/EOS Digital Rebel)in manual mode, I get exposures of f16-22 with subject 10-12 inches from front lens element (I use an incident flash meter (Wein WP100)at ISO 100). This is very good power and may be suitable for most macro work.

Hope this helps.

Yes Bobbie, I have been using the Vivitar Macroflash 6000AF with my EOS system. Of course you know that you have to get the model that is dedicated for Canon; is has the notation 6000AFC.

I use it both with my film EOS bodies and the Digital Rebel. The TTL is quite accurate with film (transparencies). For the Digital Rebel I shoot in manual mode usually at 1/125 sec at F32 or 45 (with a Sigma 50mm f2.8 1:1 Macro lens). The results are simply astounding!

The minimum focussing distance with my set up is about 1.5 inches. When I add the Canon Life Size Converter this distance increases to about 3 inches keeping the 1:1 macro ratio (I get 2:1 at 1.5 inches with the converter). This close focussing distance can be a problem in many instances as you may imagine.

One of the problems I have is that I get a ring-like reflection with shiny subjects.

There is no compatibility problems between the flash and the EOS system (both film and digital) provided you get the 6000AFC model dedicated for Canon EOS.

Try it!

Here is my experience with the Digital Rebel and my Sigma 135-400mm APO:

The first time the lens was used with the camera, it autofocused but gave "Error 99" when the shutter button was fully pressed. I cleaned the contacts and all seemed well; the lens focussed and the shot was successful. I tried various shooting modes and found that error99 was routinely displayed when in manual mode and landscape mode.

Sigma replied to my emails saying that the lens qualifies for free modifications. All I needed to do is to ship to their repair facility in NY. (BTW, Sigma sincerely apologised for the probelms with their lens when mounted on newer EOS bodies.)

I am not sure if I will do this as I rarely shoot in the affected modes. My Sigma 50mm macro EX works very well with the DRebel.

It is clear that there is some sort of electronic incompatibility between some Sigma lenses and some EOS bodies.

It would be good to hear if any one has problems with other third-party EOS-dedicated lenses (Tamron, Tokina, Vivitar, Phoenix, etc) when used with EOS Digitals.

I have shopped several times at B&H especially this year (2003) I have been both a walk-in customer and online customer. Generally, experience has been good with them. They have almost everything I need in store. They also ship promptly.

My worst experience with them was last month when I ordered the Digital Rebel online. The asked for copies of utility bills and drivers' license to verify shipping address. They said that the address was not listed and as such not verifiable and their insurers would not allow them to ship in situations like that. This was understandable as the items were being shipped to a friends house and this house was recently bought. They responded well to my emails and phone calls regarding this matter. The item was shipped as soon as the required documents were emailed.

I regard their store as a mecca for any serious photographer visiting Manhattan.

I tend to request very little information from camera store clerks as I believe their job is to sell whatever earns the most for them. Prior research is key. One often finds that he/she knows much more than the clerks.

Hi,

I have the same scanner which was bought exactly one year age (I think it has since been upgraded to the PF3650 PRO with improved firmware. I do ocassionally get the dark band which is the separator between frames on a negative strip. All I do is simply eject the strip and reload (this can be quite time consuming). The firmware does allow you to reposition the strip but this can also be very time consuming depending on how far into the scanned area the band falls. If you look at two top corners of the image area in the software there is an "L" at each corner (I think one of them is back ways). If you click on one of the L's, the scanner will automatically reposition the film. I dont recall which L shifts the frame left and which shifts it right, so just experiment. You will need to do several clicks to get the frame properly positioned.

The manual is very lously and does not explain this aspect of things properly.

I this the electronic version of the manual (comes with the firmware and accessible from the onscreen display) is better.

Driver and firmware updates are available at www.scanace.com

The manufacturers never reply to my messages posted on their website.

I get satisfactory results from the scanner and I have won many awards with slides and negs scanned with it. Slides scan better and quicker.

If you have any other troubles with the scanner I will be happy to help.

I do a limited amount of studio portraiture with both soft boxes and umbrellas. I see no significant differences in the quality of the light. However, very large umbrellas (>48 inch)are required for good lighting on full length subjects. For product photography, soft boxes are preferred expecially due to the quality of the reflections the allow off very reflective subjects such as glass bottles. One thing to note is that you may need a safe sync adapter for the 10D. The sync voltage for the 10D should be <7V. Many monolights and packs have much higher sync voltages (it is 70V for my Speedotron D402 with M90 heads. The delicate electronics of digital cameras can be affected by high sync voltages whether you use the PC socket or the hot shoe. Many types of safe sync adapters are made by Wein and sold by B&H.Hope this helps.