I've been away from the blog for a while. I wanted to answer a couple of comments,and unfortunately,I'm not all that handy with tracking down where comments have been left,so I'll try and address a few things that I've been asked about. In answer to the first question a reader asked me, I will simply say I'd favor the Nikon D40 over a good,clean-condition used Fuji S2 Pro. In terms of weight,compactness,and battery performance, the D40 blows away the S2 Pro. Just last week,I took the S2 Pro out,put in a fresh set of lithiums, and four freshly-charged 2500 milliampere hour AA batteries and shot the S2 Pro for part of a day. The battery situation of the S2 Pro is a real weakness of the camera,and a pain in the ass under most conditions. The batteries run out on the S2 in some odd ways,and you need good lithiums in order to keep your AA's endurance up enough to even shoot a portrait session. With a pair of 123A lithium batteries installed in the S2, I can get 350 to 400 shots from a set of four AA batteries, but with the lithiums removed, the camera can be run on the four AA batteries for only 35-60 RAW frames before the AA's are totally exhausted. The S2 Pro is a finicky camera,power-wise,and aftermarket battery grips are a bit tricky to find for the S2 Pro,although most "pro" shooters did modify a grip to their S2 Pros,or bought China-manufactured ones from eBay,and ran their cameras on multiple AA's which added a lot of weight,and size, to the S2 body.
The Nikon D40 on the other hand, has an incredible battery that lasts and lasts and stays charged when not in use,and which can power the camera for 1,000 frames or more, easily,over days and days of use. The D40 is smaller,lighter,and newer than the S2 Pro. I prefer the S2 Pro's dual-button control ethos and lovely color palette, but honestly, the D40 is the camera I would choose to replace the S2 Pro if I wanted a small,compact 6MP d-slr. The one weakness the D40 has is its inability to give autofocus unless the lens on the camera is an AF-S lens. For some people, the D40's inability to focus with screwdriver focus Nikkors and 3rd party lenses is a deal-breaker. After shooting the S2 Pro very recently, I would honestly say that I would rather have the Nikon D40 at $499 than a used S2 Pro,regardless of price. The D40 writes smaller raw files,is smaller and lighter,has a better pop-up flash,and has that wonderful 1/500 top flash speed,and in bright sunlight,the D40 is the better flash camera. While the S2 Pro was groundbreaking in its day, the D40's overall image quality is better,and the file size advantage of the D40's raw files is the main selling point. The S2's DR is no better than the D40's,and the D40 is a very fun little camera,and feels better made than the S2,and is actually easier to grip. My vote goes to the D40 over the Fuji S2 Pro as a generalist camera. For people work,the Fuji still delivers nice images, but with a lot more hoops than the D40 brings with it.
The second article which has received a couple comments is from August,2006 and is at http://derrelonphotography.blogspot.com/2006/08/multi-speedlights-or-studio-lights.html
The poster who uses multi-speedlight setups for lighting locations and interiors might have missed my emphasis on lighting in a studio concept. In studio lighting,of either people or products, modeling lights are critical to success. Lighting locations using multiple,small,easily concealed speedlights makes perfect sense. Interiors are fairly predictable,and multiple SMALL lights,all battery-operated are great for lighting up real estate interiors and creating results which the poster wrote were "not Architectural Digest quality" but which were far better than what hacks get when they shoot with one,single flash,on-camera. My point really is that speedlights like the Nikon SB-800 cost almost four hundred dollars,but give you a far less flash output than 100 watt-seconds fired thru any Speedotron head,of any model,in either Brown or Black Line. AND, the Speedo heads will have modeling lights,which will allow better placement of the lights than when one is winging it with speedlights set into umbrellas. As such, speedlight flashes offer less value for studio lighting than even the cheesiest monolights,let alone Speedotron or Alien Bee or Dyna Lite or White Lightning or any other modeling light-equipped studio flash. Studios are not locations or interiors,and trying to achieve "studio lighting" results using speedlights is best left to very experienced shooters.
One point that might not be clear: I believe learning to use lights requires modeling lights for the best learning. Beginners often shoot like crap without modeling lights,and many lighting beginners make absolutely horrible mistakes when using speedlights in an effort to light things. Beginners benefit the MOST from modeling lights. Experienced shooters can do pretty well without modeling lights,but for the less-experienced, trying to effectively position even one,let alone three flash units,is dicey. Or worse than dicey. I personally do not see the need for automatic exposure calculation of multi-speedlight flash setups as being a necessary feature in a pro-level d-slr,and I think that I would rather determine how much output each flash ought to have....I cannot for the life of me figure out how a camera will be able to make decisions on key,fill,separation,and background flash power levels in a four-light setup. Using a four-outlet power pack with modeling lights,a beginner can visually place and balance the lights to his own eye's satisfaction,using the modeling lights which bring a what-you-see-is-what-you-get benefit when exactly placing one's lights under STUDIO lighting conditions.
As to flash units....monolights are nice,but seem kind of top-heavy when on light stands compared with Speedotron M11 or 102 or 103 light heads. I own only ONE monolight,a JTL 300 watt-second model,and while it's "okay", it's not my favorite type of flash unit.To be fair, the JTL is a new economy-oriented monolight,and is NOT a class-leading product,and my experience with monolights is rather limited. I do think however that the inexpensive, roughly GN 100-150 (100 to 200 watt-second models) monolight flashes of the type that are now popping up all over are a wonderful development, but I've recently had a major change in the way I think about electronic flash. I know Alien Bees are popular beyond all belief. I know a lot of people like the "Bees". But my preference is still for box and cable systems in the 400,600,and 800 watt-second range,using lightweight heads. Still, I see a lot of small monolights that look very,very useful and some of them appear to be excellent values.
A flash meter is a wonderful tool,and I think almost anybody could learn a lot by using the meter to check the ambient to flash amounts,and to se exactly WHAT f/stop outputs the main and fill and hairlight are supplying. One of the reasons I prefer box and cable systems is the repeatability of the ratio of light outputs between three and four light units, and in the case of the brand I am used to, I feel that Speedotron's smaller power supplies like the D402 Brown Line are very,very close to ideal for what I'm using now,which is a Canon EOS 5D at around f/5.6 to f/7.1 with flash. I often make use of an assymetrical power distribution and a 3-or 4-light setup,and for that, splitting 400 or even 200 watt seconds through two channels with assymetrical distribution is exactly the way I want to work,so the two-channel packs work quite well for me,and offer pretty predictable output. The D402 is available brand new from helixcamera.com for $361.95,with very fair shipping. Helix Camera and Speedotron are located in the same building in Chicago,Illinois.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Lens Adapters: Pentax Lenses on Canon Digital SLRs
I've recently bought some adapters that convert M42 universal thread mount lenses to Canon EF mount cameras. Since the 42 millimeter screw thread lens was made most famous by Pentax, this mount is often called Pentax screw mount. It is also known as universal mount among some people,and the mount style has been used on cameras marketed by Pentax,Praktica,Chinon,GAF,Ricoh,Fuji,and some other manufacturers also.
Why would anybody want to use "old lenses" on a new Canon digital camera? For me the answer, "Just because it's fun to use something new and different and cheap to get interesting pictures," springs to mind.
HOW TO FOCUS MANUALLY:The best way to focus by eye is to set the lens to infinity and to quickly and smoothly rack the lens closer until it "looks good", and then to STOP turning the focusing ring. Usually, that initial stopping point will be very,very close to the correct distance. Many times however,you will have run a little bit past the optimal distance,and a slight reversing of direction of the focusing ring, or a little hitch, will be enough to get you to perfect focus. Trust me: on almost any lens, starting at INFINITY and rapidly cranking the lens closer only until the image "looks good",and then stopping, will result in the most accurate focus,under most conditions. Older,manual focusing lenses by top optical companies (Nikon,Canon,Pentax,and Olympus) were designed to focus by hand and eye and often have relatively longer arcs of travel than autofocus lenses are designed with. Older manual focusing lenses often begin with an Infinity focus distance marking,followed by marked distances of 200,100,and 50 feet being found engraved on the focusing scales of 200mm lenses,for example. Newer AF lenses are designed to be focused by a computer working in conjunction with a small,high-precision motor,and most newer AF lenses have very,very poor manual focusing performance due to a typical Infinity focus distance,and then a mere 10-20 degrees of focusing ring travel until one is focused at 10 meters. Manually focusing a manual focusing lens is easier than focusing most autofocus lenses manually,in my experience.
I recently bought a trio of lenses in M42 mount. I bought a nearly identical-looking pair of Asahi Optical Company lenses, the shorter of which is a 135mm f/3.5 Super-Takumar and the longer a 200mm f/4 Super-Takumar. Both Super-Takumars have the mechanical AUTO-Manual diaphragm stop-down control on the rear part of the lens,which allows one to focus wide open and then to merely "flip" the lens down to shooting aperture without need for counting click stops or visually confirming that the lens has been stopped down to taking aperture. Both Super-Takumar lenses have purple-ish antireflective coatings on the front elements. Both Super-Takumars are all-metal designs,and both are in excellent mechanical and optical condition.
The Super-Takumar lenses have lengthy, scalloped,ribbed metal focusing rings which rotate somewhat slowly but very smoothly,with ample degrees of turning between Infinity, 200 feet,100 feet,and 50 feet on the 200 mm f/4 lens allowing the photographer to set focus by "eye" over an ample number of degrees. While the focus is somewhat "slow", the ample number of degrees of turning allows the lens to be focused without the hair-trigger touchiness of many of today's low-priced autofocus zooms, where the lens has a 45 degree arc of travel lock-to-lock.
The 200mm f/4 Super-Takumar focuses well by hand on the 5D. It has markings for Infinity, 200 feet, 100 feet, and 50 feet, over a span of something like 20 degrees,and that is just the far focusing range; the rest of the footage range has many degrees' worth of turn. The focusing throw is rather long,and it allows you to get reasonably close to "on" without risk of being grossly "out" on focus using the 5D's large but low-magnification finder. I do not have a lens shade for this lens,and when shooting toward the sun in the late afternoon, I've gotten some bad flare from it-arcing, half-frame bad. The 200 is sharp close-in. At 10 to 15 feet, it renders scenes with high detail on the 5D. The focusing is slowish and geared for focusing by hand and eye,and even though the lens is totally new to me, I'm getting 4 out of 5 shots well-focused. I've shot the 200mm mostly at f/5.6 and at that f/stop it renders very good,sharp images on the 5D.
The third M42 thread mount lens is a Vivitar 55mm f/2.8 Auto Macro made from the late 1970's to early 1980's. I did some on-line research and one fellow wrote that this Vivitar macro retailed for around $275 in the late 1970's,and was thus one of the more-costly third party lenses of the period. This lens extends a ridiculously long way, achieving full 1:1 image magnification with no need for a separate extension tube. It focuses from Infinity to 1:1 in about 690 degrees of travel,or ALMOST two full 360 degree turns of the focusing ring! The lens grows from 2.5 inches when focused at Infinity to just a hair over 4 and 7/8 inches in length when extended fully to its closest focus of 1:1 magnification.This Vivitar 55mm macro has a nice complete set of marked magnification ratios,engraved and filled with bright orange-painted markings and indexes with clearly legible settings of 1:1, 1:1.25, 1:1.5, 1:1.75, 1:2 or 1/2 life size, 1:1.25, 1:1.3, then 1:4, 1:5,1:7, 1:10, 1:20. At the closest macro-range magnification of 1:20, the lens is focused at a marked 4 feet, while at 1:10 the lens is focused at a little bit over two feet. At a foot and half, the magnification is approximately 1:7. This lens is difficult to focus accurately and repeatably at ranges of over about 10 feet on my EOS 5D. The focusing is very,very critical past 10 feet,and this is hair-trigger focusing outside the macro range is typical of most all macro lenses. At close ranges however, this lens focuses reasonably well in decent light,even when stopped down to f/5.6,as I am typically going to be doing with this lens.Bokeh is pretty good for a macro lens,especially foreground bokeh.
Why would anybody want to use "old lenses" on a new Canon digital camera? For me the answer, "Just because it's fun to use something new and different and cheap to get interesting pictures," springs to mind.
HOW TO FOCUS MANUALLY:The best way to focus by eye is to set the lens to infinity and to quickly and smoothly rack the lens closer until it "looks good", and then to STOP turning the focusing ring. Usually, that initial stopping point will be very,very close to the correct distance. Many times however,you will have run a little bit past the optimal distance,and a slight reversing of direction of the focusing ring, or a little hitch, will be enough to get you to perfect focus. Trust me: on almost any lens, starting at INFINITY and rapidly cranking the lens closer only until the image "looks good",and then stopping, will result in the most accurate focus,under most conditions. Older,manual focusing lenses by top optical companies (Nikon,Canon,Pentax,and Olympus) were designed to focus by hand and eye and often have relatively longer arcs of travel than autofocus lenses are designed with. Older manual focusing lenses often begin with an Infinity focus distance marking,followed by marked distances of 200,100,and 50 feet being found engraved on the focusing scales of 200mm lenses,for example. Newer AF lenses are designed to be focused by a computer working in conjunction with a small,high-precision motor,and most newer AF lenses have very,very poor manual focusing performance due to a typical Infinity focus distance,and then a mere 10-20 degrees of focusing ring travel until one is focused at 10 meters. Manually focusing a manual focusing lens is easier than focusing most autofocus lenses manually,in my experience.
I recently bought a trio of lenses in M42 mount. I bought a nearly identical-looking pair of Asahi Optical Company lenses, the shorter of which is a 135mm f/3.5 Super-Takumar and the longer a 200mm f/4 Super-Takumar. Both Super-Takumars have the mechanical AUTO-Manual diaphragm stop-down control on the rear part of the lens,which allows one to focus wide open and then to merely "flip" the lens down to shooting aperture without need for counting click stops or visually confirming that the lens has been stopped down to taking aperture. Both Super-Takumar lenses have purple-ish antireflective coatings on the front elements. Both Super-Takumars are all-metal designs,and both are in excellent mechanical and optical condition.
The Super-Takumar lenses have lengthy, scalloped,ribbed metal focusing rings which rotate somewhat slowly but very smoothly,with ample degrees of turning between Infinity, 200 feet,100 feet,and 50 feet on the 200 mm f/4 lens allowing the photographer to set focus by "eye" over an ample number of degrees. While the focus is somewhat "slow", the ample number of degrees of turning allows the lens to be focused without the hair-trigger touchiness of many of today's low-priced autofocus zooms, where the lens has a 45 degree arc of travel lock-to-lock.
The 200mm f/4 Super-Takumar focuses well by hand on the 5D. It has markings for Infinity, 200 feet, 100 feet, and 50 feet, over a span of something like 20 degrees,and that is just the far focusing range; the rest of the footage range has many degrees' worth of turn. The focusing throw is rather long,and it allows you to get reasonably close to "on" without risk of being grossly "out" on focus using the 5D's large but low-magnification finder. I do not have a lens shade for this lens,and when shooting toward the sun in the late afternoon, I've gotten some bad flare from it-arcing, half-frame bad. The 200 is sharp close-in. At 10 to 15 feet, it renders scenes with high detail on the 5D. The focusing is slowish and geared for focusing by hand and eye,and even though the lens is totally new to me, I'm getting 4 out of 5 shots well-focused. I've shot the 200mm mostly at f/5.6 and at that f/stop it renders very good,sharp images on the 5D.
The third M42 thread mount lens is a Vivitar 55mm f/2.8 Auto Macro made from the late 1970's to early 1980's. I did some on-line research and one fellow wrote that this Vivitar macro retailed for around $275 in the late 1970's,and was thus one of the more-costly third party lenses of the period. This lens extends a ridiculously long way, achieving full 1:1 image magnification with no need for a separate extension tube. It focuses from Infinity to 1:1 in about 690 degrees of travel,or ALMOST two full 360 degree turns of the focusing ring! The lens grows from 2.5 inches when focused at Infinity to just a hair over 4 and 7/8 inches in length when extended fully to its closest focus of 1:1 magnification.This Vivitar 55mm macro has a nice complete set of marked magnification ratios,engraved and filled with bright orange-painted markings and indexes with clearly legible settings of 1:1, 1:1.25, 1:1.5, 1:1.75, 1:2 or 1/2 life size, 1:1.25, 1:1.3, then 1:4, 1:5,1:7, 1:10, 1:20. At the closest macro-range magnification of 1:20, the lens is focused at a marked 4 feet, while at 1:10 the lens is focused at a little bit over two feet. At a foot and half, the magnification is approximately 1:7. This lens is difficult to focus accurately and repeatably at ranges of over about 10 feet on my EOS 5D. The focusing is very,very critical past 10 feet,and this is hair-trigger focusing outside the macro range is typical of most all macro lenses. At close ranges however, this lens focuses reasonably well in decent light,even when stopped down to f/5.6,as I am typically going to be doing with this lens.Bokeh is pretty good for a macro lens,especially foreground bokeh.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Post-PMA 2008: What Did We Learn?
Well, Well, on January 23 Pentax was first out of the gate with their pre-PMA announcement of two new d-slr models. Pentax's announced K10D update, the K20D,will be a 14.6 MP APS-C sensored d-slr with body-integral anti shake and a price point aimed squarely at the Sony Alpha 700 and Canon 40D. I like the idea of a compact 200mm f/2.8 D* Pentax lens,also announced. Samsung will be making the sensor,and will have its own clone-like version of the K20D,but sold under the Samsung brand.
We also learned Nikon was rushing to iterate the D40x by calling its revision the D60, whose main claim to fame seems to be a new two-part anti-dust and self-cleaning sensor strategy that I think is an important selling point among a lot of consumers. Self-cleaning ovens were good,and sold millions of unneeded new ovens. Cameras with self-cleaning sesnors are what buyers of low-end bodies probably want. It's a feature battleground out there,and sometimes features simply must be added,and the D60 is a feature-update iteration of the D40x in my opinion.
But the BIGGEST thing we learned is that Sony has developed a new full-frame d-slr image sensor,packing oh, almost 25 megapixels worth of imaging capabilities. Oh,and how slow is it you ask? Well, Sony claims a respectable all-channel pixel write speed of 6.3 frames per second. Wow. That's pretty good,spec-wise. Sony says they plan to have this in production before the end of the year. As you will recall LAST year, in early 2007, Sony showed a mockup camera with a positively HUGE pentaprism,and this year too the large-prismed mockup was around. I smell a Sony A900 in the works sometime in the summer of 2008. Full-frame. Solid. Well-engineered. And capable of good image-making,especially when one considers the select top-quality lenses found in the Zeiss portion of the Sony lens system.
We saw no Canon 5D replacement announced. Nikon did not announce a full-frame,high megapixel companion to the 12 megapixel ISO champ, the D3, but many speculate that the Sony 24 MP chip will make its way into the Nikon D3x later this year. 2008 is an Olmpic year,and Nikon has used the Olympics as a tie-in with the introduction of numerous pieces of their cutting edge technology, going back to my favorite 400mm f/3.5 ED-IF, which was premiered at the 1976 Montreal Olympics.
A high-MP D3x body at this year's Olympics would make for a lot of nice buzz for Nikon.
We learned too that the hot-selling D40 and D40x cameras have gotten Sigma and Tamron into high gear,with both lens makers scrambling to retrofit ultrasonic motors to several very popular,wide-ratio consumer zoom lenses. Sales of D40 and D40x bodies are VERY,very high worldwide,due to the great little camera at the low,low price,and the packaging with an 18-55 kit lens.
We also learned Nikon was rushing to iterate the D40x by calling its revision the D60, whose main claim to fame seems to be a new two-part anti-dust and self-cleaning sensor strategy that I think is an important selling point among a lot of consumers. Self-cleaning ovens were good,and sold millions of unneeded new ovens. Cameras with self-cleaning sesnors are what buyers of low-end bodies probably want. It's a feature battleground out there,and sometimes features simply must be added,and the D60 is a feature-update iteration of the D40x in my opinion.
But the BIGGEST thing we learned is that Sony has developed a new full-frame d-slr image sensor,packing oh, almost 25 megapixels worth of imaging capabilities. Oh,and how slow is it you ask? Well, Sony claims a respectable all-channel pixel write speed of 6.3 frames per second. Wow. That's pretty good,spec-wise. Sony says they plan to have this in production before the end of the year. As you will recall LAST year, in early 2007, Sony showed a mockup camera with a positively HUGE pentaprism,and this year too the large-prismed mockup was around. I smell a Sony A900 in the works sometime in the summer of 2008. Full-frame. Solid. Well-engineered. And capable of good image-making,especially when one considers the select top-quality lenses found in the Zeiss portion of the Sony lens system.
We saw no Canon 5D replacement announced. Nikon did not announce a full-frame,high megapixel companion to the 12 megapixel ISO champ, the D3, but many speculate that the Sony 24 MP chip will make its way into the Nikon D3x later this year. 2008 is an Olmpic year,and Nikon has used the Olympics as a tie-in with the introduction of numerous pieces of their cutting edge technology, going back to my favorite 400mm f/3.5 ED-IF, which was premiered at the 1976 Montreal Olympics.
A high-MP D3x body at this year's Olympics would make for a lot of nice buzz for Nikon.
We learned too that the hot-selling D40 and D40x cameras have gotten Sigma and Tamron into high gear,with both lens makers scrambling to retrofit ultrasonic motors to several very popular,wide-ratio consumer zoom lenses. Sales of D40 and D40x bodies are VERY,very high worldwide,due to the great little camera at the low,low price,and the packaging with an 18-55 kit lens.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
What's RIGHT with the Canon EOS 5D?
A few months back I wrote my second experience report after having shot the Canon EOS 5D for a few months. That blog article was entitled "What's Wrong With The EOS 5D". I pointed out the various weaknesses of the camera. But in all fairness, I think it's only fair to take a look at what's "right" with the EOS 5D. Let me right off the bat, summarize what the EOS 5D has gotten "right". Size. It's almost the same size and proportions as the Nikon D70, but with a grip that's a little bit clubbier-feeling than the D70's grip. Simply stated,the 5D is compact, and *if* one wants or needs a bigger camera, then the accessory grip can be added. Picture quality is excellent at the lowest ISO's of 100 to 400. At 800 and 1600 the image quality is very good. At Hi-1, the image quality is pretty good. And, to boot, the ISO ratings are very,very conservative. Put it this way, the 5D shoots a bit "hot" to my taste, and dialing in negative EV compensation is no problem whatsoever with the 5D. And finally, with the 580 EX-II flash unit, the 5D can shoot beautiful, rich flash shots at up to ISO 640 indoors. The 580 EX-II is a well-designed speedlight. For documentary-style bounced flash pictures, there's no need to shy away from using the 5D at 500 or 640 or even ISO 800 with flash to cut down on flash power needs and to fill-in shadows.
The 5D's sensor performance is pretty good in relation to overexposure. The ability to recover "lost" highlights, or just "kinda' hot highlights" from the CR2 raw files is an area where the 5D really beats the D2x. Actually, the look can be quite, quite good with the 5D on generously-exposed images, where D2x files' highlight tones would be hopelessly unrecoverable. To me, the workability, the malleability, of the 5D's raw CR2 files is one of the absolute strengths of the 5D camera. The 5D gives you a BETTER RAW file to start with than the D2x does, in many conditions, at many light levels, at more ISO settings,and across a broader range of over- or under-exposures. Especially over-exposure. Again, as I wrote the other day, if the D2x had the sensor capabilities of the EOS 5D, there wouldn't be a damned thing wrong to complain about in the D2x. As Evan Effa wrote in a comment to me on my pBase site, the 5D's sensor is the one Nikon ought to have put into the D2x two years ago. How true.
Overall, the 5D offers an excellent value proposition to my way of thinking. Full frame digital SLR's have tended to be priced at $4500 to $8000, from Kodak and Canon. Nikon's first full frame d-slr,the D3, is selling as fast as Nikon can make and ship them, and they cost $5,000.The Canon EOS 5D began its life on the market in the mid-$3000 range, but has for the past 18 months or so, been available at a little over $2,000 to $2199,depending on Canon rebates/printer bundles/e-Bay ridding one's self of said printer,etc,etc. Canon's body and lens rebate programs and special promotions have at various times, allowed many Canon 5D buyers to get their 12.8 MP full frame image sensor camera for a little over two grand. That's a good value, I think.
The 5D is compact,portable,and comfortable to use. The body itself is smallish but not small, and it uses an accessory grip with dual battery capability and an added set of controls for vertical format shooting if you need that added grip,or the added battery capacity. While some prefer the large size of the 1-series Canons and the D1-D2-D3 Nikons, there is something to be said for a camera that allows half-height use and carry AND which can accept an add-on dual battery pack-control wheel-handgrip accessory. The mono-body construction of the 1-series and the pro-series Nikons gives them increased weather resistance, but it drives up the size and weight tremendously, and always saddles you with that Big Brick camera, even if all you want to carry is a light-tight box fitted with a 10-ounce 35mm f/2 or a featherweight 50mm lens. The 5D has the body size, and weight, and versatility advantages of a half-height camera, combined with a BIG VIEWFINDER image.
While the 5D's finder does allow a lot of dust inside, the camera offers a BIG VIEWFINDER. The image you see through the viewfinder is LARGE. And easy to SEE. It's got a nicely-padded eyepiece that does not scratch your eyeglasses. The viewfinder is transparent. It just works. There's absolutely no tunnel vision feeling and no cropped-down viewfinder effect. The view through the 5D's finder is excellent. It's easy to frame and compose and to actually SEE what you're getting, as you look through the camera in actual use.
With the 5D, you can shoot at ISO 400,and ISO 500,and ISO 640 and get images which do not suffer from obvious image quality compromises, such as the D2x suffers from at those three ISO values. With the 5D, ISO 800 can be used without the clear, significant, and very real IQ hit that the D2x takes at ISO 800. The 5D is good when you need to shoot without flash, and WITH flash added for shadow fill-in indoors, the 5D is a very capable camera. Under studio electronic flash with umbrella or softbox lighting, the 5D and Canon 70-200 f/2.8 IS lens offers beautiful quality images, especially at lower ISO settings like 100 to 200. The degree of fine detail the 5D can reveal under studio lighting is stunning.
The 5D adapts extremely well to Nikon manual focus and autofocus lenses. The 5D allows Manual match-LED metering with Nikon lenses, and also allows aperture-priority automatic shutter speed setting with Nikon lenses. Pretty impressive. With top-quality Nikon optics, the 5D does pretty good light metering, and makes pretty good images; the better the lens, the better the image quality. The Nikon autofocus 85/1.4 and 105/2 Defocus Control lenses perform very,very well on the 5D,as does the 300 f/4 AF-S. Telephoto lenses focus the easiest by hand and eye, and all of the mentioned lenses perform quite well as manual focusers in their optimum aperture ranges. Canon's 85mm f/1.8 EF lens is a very NICE imager for very little money. Canon's 135mm f/2 L is a very good telephoto lens. The 5D's sensor makes great images with both Canon autofocus lenses, and with many, but not "all" Nikon lenses, using F-to EF mount lens adapter rings that cost me $17.99 each in a 10-pack carton from a USA eBay importer.
The 5D's small size, reasonable weight, big viewfinder, half-height body form factor, well-designed 580 EX-II flash unit accessory, excellent adaptability to Nikon lenses, and its excellent, large sensor with its wide useful ISO range all combine to make the 5D a very,very good value at the $2199 price point it's at right now, in late January of 2008.
[Addendum March 4,2008: The EOS 5D also works very well with Pentax thread mount lenses, yielding full infinity focusing with my Asahai Optical Co. 135mm f/3.5 and 200mm f/4 Super-Takumar lenses ,as well as the nifty 1970's-early 80's era Vivitar 55mm f/2.8 Auto Macro in thread mount.
The 5D's sensor performance is pretty good in relation to overexposure. The ability to recover "lost" highlights, or just "kinda' hot highlights" from the CR2 raw files is an area where the 5D really beats the D2x. Actually, the look can be quite, quite good with the 5D on generously-exposed images, where D2x files' highlight tones would be hopelessly unrecoverable. To me, the workability, the malleability, of the 5D's raw CR2 files is one of the absolute strengths of the 5D camera. The 5D gives you a BETTER RAW file to start with than the D2x does, in many conditions, at many light levels, at more ISO settings,and across a broader range of over- or under-exposures. Especially over-exposure. Again, as I wrote the other day, if the D2x had the sensor capabilities of the EOS 5D, there wouldn't be a damned thing wrong to complain about in the D2x. As Evan Effa wrote in a comment to me on my pBase site, the 5D's sensor is the one Nikon ought to have put into the D2x two years ago. How true.
Overall, the 5D offers an excellent value proposition to my way of thinking. Full frame digital SLR's have tended to be priced at $4500 to $8000, from Kodak and Canon. Nikon's first full frame d-slr,the D3, is selling as fast as Nikon can make and ship them, and they cost $5,000.The Canon EOS 5D began its life on the market in the mid-$3000 range, but has for the past 18 months or so, been available at a little over $2,000 to $2199,depending on Canon rebates/printer bundles/e-Bay ridding one's self of said printer,etc,etc. Canon's body and lens rebate programs and special promotions have at various times, allowed many Canon 5D buyers to get their 12.8 MP full frame image sensor camera for a little over two grand. That's a good value, I think.
The 5D is compact,portable,and comfortable to use. The body itself is smallish but not small, and it uses an accessory grip with dual battery capability and an added set of controls for vertical format shooting if you need that added grip,or the added battery capacity. While some prefer the large size of the 1-series Canons and the D1-D2-D3 Nikons, there is something to be said for a camera that allows half-height use and carry AND which can accept an add-on dual battery pack-control wheel-handgrip accessory. The mono-body construction of the 1-series and the pro-series Nikons gives them increased weather resistance, but it drives up the size and weight tremendously, and always saddles you with that Big Brick camera, even if all you want to carry is a light-tight box fitted with a 10-ounce 35mm f/2 or a featherweight 50mm lens. The 5D has the body size, and weight, and versatility advantages of a half-height camera, combined with a BIG VIEWFINDER image.
While the 5D's finder does allow a lot of dust inside, the camera offers a BIG VIEWFINDER. The image you see through the viewfinder is LARGE. And easy to SEE. It's got a nicely-padded eyepiece that does not scratch your eyeglasses. The viewfinder is transparent. It just works. There's absolutely no tunnel vision feeling and no cropped-down viewfinder effect. The view through the 5D's finder is excellent. It's easy to frame and compose and to actually SEE what you're getting, as you look through the camera in actual use.
With the 5D, you can shoot at ISO 400,and ISO 500,and ISO 640 and get images which do not suffer from obvious image quality compromises, such as the D2x suffers from at those three ISO values. With the 5D, ISO 800 can be used without the clear, significant, and very real IQ hit that the D2x takes at ISO 800. The 5D is good when you need to shoot without flash, and WITH flash added for shadow fill-in indoors, the 5D is a very capable camera. Under studio electronic flash with umbrella or softbox lighting, the 5D and Canon 70-200 f/2.8 IS lens offers beautiful quality images, especially at lower ISO settings like 100 to 200. The degree of fine detail the 5D can reveal under studio lighting is stunning.
The 5D adapts extremely well to Nikon manual focus and autofocus lenses. The 5D allows Manual match-LED metering with Nikon lenses, and also allows aperture-priority automatic shutter speed setting with Nikon lenses. Pretty impressive. With top-quality Nikon optics, the 5D does pretty good light metering, and makes pretty good images; the better the lens, the better the image quality. The Nikon autofocus 85/1.4 and 105/2 Defocus Control lenses perform very,very well on the 5D,as does the 300 f/4 AF-S. Telephoto lenses focus the easiest by hand and eye, and all of the mentioned lenses perform quite well as manual focusers in their optimum aperture ranges. Canon's 85mm f/1.8 EF lens is a very NICE imager for very little money. Canon's 135mm f/2 L is a very good telephoto lens. The 5D's sensor makes great images with both Canon autofocus lenses, and with many, but not "all" Nikon lenses, using F-to EF mount lens adapter rings that cost me $17.99 each in a 10-pack carton from a USA eBay importer.
The 5D's small size, reasonable weight, big viewfinder, half-height body form factor, well-designed 580 EX-II flash unit accessory, excellent adaptability to Nikon lenses, and its excellent, large sensor with its wide useful ISO range all combine to make the 5D a very,very good value at the $2199 price point it's at right now, in late January of 2008.
[Addendum March 4,2008: The EOS 5D also works very well with Pentax thread mount lenses, yielding full infinity focusing with my Asahai Optical Co. 135mm f/3.5 and 200mm f/4 Super-Takumar lenses ,as well as the nifty 1970's-early 80's era Vivitar 55mm f/2.8 Auto Macro in thread mount.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Evaluating D-SLR Features Camera by Camera
So, I was thinking, what matters in a d-slr? It's gotten to the point that the limitations of earlier generations of cameras have largely been overcome. The earliest d-slr's might have had SINGLE-area AF (like the Fuji S1 Pro had),instead of five-area,or nine-area, or 11 area, or 45-point ,or 51-point AF systems,as various Fuji,Canon,and Nikon bodies now have. Auto-exposure and shutter and aperture control mechanisms now offer 1/3 stop precision on all bodies (with user-settable 1/2 stop capability on many bodies),and exposure systems have become pretty good, although not infallible by any means. As one marketer said of household and consumer goods, "It all works now. The cleaners all clean, the shampoos all clean your hair well, you know, it all just works. Nowadays the difference is in the marketing message,more than the products themselves." I think to a great extent, that's the current state of things in the d-slr market.
The way I view things, Newer is Better. Usually. At least if it's got to do with flash units or camera sensors. Onboard or pop-up flashes now,like laundry soaps, just work. Newer pop-up flash units deliver better exposures,under a wider range of distances than older pop-up flashes did. Nikon's D40 does pretty well with its pop-up flash; the D40 gives much better exposures on the whole than the D70's pop-up flash did,based on my own experience. Canon's Xti does pretty well too. Selling millions of cameras involves making one that has a GOOD pop-up flash. Nikon's D40 is the best selling consumer d-slr for a good reason. The flash works great. The D40's onboard pop-up flash can do some amazingly subtle balancing with ambient light.
The EOS 40D versus EOS 5D versus EOS 20D comparison photos I have seen show that the new $1,300 40D does ALMOST as well as the older 5D,even though the 40D has a 1.6x APS-C sensor,and the 5D has a no-crop or full-frame sensor. See above: Newer is Better, when it comes to sensors. The Nikon D300's 1.5x APS-C or Nikon DX sensor shoots faster and with higher resolution than the Nikon D2x pro camera from 2005,and as far as I am concerned, that means that if you had wanted the D2x's imaging capabilities, the new D300 at $1899 represents a very,very good buy. The D2x's sensor was ISO-challenged,and operated best under a fairly narrow range of ISO settings,and lost color very,very badly at the extremes of its ISO range,and demanded rigorous post processing to achieve the kind of results that more versatile sensors can do without post work. But the D300's sensor is newer,and better,across a wider range of ISO settings than the D2x's sensor. Bottom line--the serious enthusiast/semi-pro camera segment has finally seen a SIGNIFICANT INCREASE in imaging potential and imaging quality that makes users of older-generation 6- and 8-MP models probably realize that _this generation_ of cameras is really worth having,and offers great value for many types of shooting. Buffer depths are now very good, frame rates are now as high or HIGHER than "pro" cameras before,and in the case of the D300, Nikon is installing the identical flagship-level focusing system in both the D3 and the D300. Hooray!
Currently, in the 1.5 and 1.6x 10.1 to 12.2 MP semi-pro serious enthusiast camera class, Nikon,Sony,and Canon all have very nice cameras. The Sony A700 has in-body stabilization and is $1,400 body only. The Canon 40D costs the same. The Nikon D300 is more, at $1899 MSRP,but is arguably a "better body"" than either the Sony or Canon offerings.
So,what matters in this class of camera? Features and suitability for your shooting style,mainly. The Sony A700 and Nikon D300 both offer high definition HDMI-out which will allow them to play images directly on high-definition TV's and the reports I've read of the Sony's output are of excellent image quality on High-Def Sony TV's. If you wish to project your work onto a large,high-definition TV set, the Nikon D300 and Sony Alpha 700 are the only game in town. Features,you say? Canon's direct print button is a feature I don't give a rat's ass about. The Nikon and Sony have the newest,state-of-the-art LCD screens,with vastly superior image review quality over other cameras. This is a big advancement,technologically, but not absolutely a critical feature--just a new technological milestone. The new 920,000-spec screens blow away all the older ones.
Some people ares still enthusiastic about the FujiFilm S5 Pro as a serious enthusiast/semi-pro body,and I can understand why. I'm currently waiting on PMA 2008 to see if Fuji announces an S5 Pro follow-up (I doubt they will,unfortunately) because I think I'd like an F-mount 6MP d-slr that can be optimized several ways for OOC JPEG shooting,and also because I think the way the S5 handles tonality and skin tone is pretty nice. The sensor's not the best,not the highest-resolving,and does not produce the type of artifact-free,high-resolution images the 5D does, but I think the Fuji has richer tonality,and more color variation,more nuance, than other cameras can output in JPEG capture mode,and I kind of LIKE the way the S5 can put an impression on its pictures with its decided Fuji color tendencies. This is a camera more about tonality and color and nuance and "feel",and less of a cold,crisp,faithful camera like the 5D. Fuji S5 Pro images often have a decided "look" that I do not see from Canon or Nikon digital images,and I can understand why somebody who has a family or child to photograph, or who likes to do portraits and people and pet pictures and general day-trip type shooting would absolutely LOVE shooting with an S5 Pro. It's not a camera for pixel-peepers, and it does have its share of small artifacting problems,especially when shot in 12 MP mode, but the "look" and the "feel" of the S5 Pro's images both make this camera viable in its class. The S5 Pro uses pretty heavy Noise Reduction at elevated ISO's,but then it's designed that way,and the pictures look acceptable without a lot of post work,so...
What has me conflicted is the D40 versus S5 Pro conundrum....I could buy three D40 kits for the price of one S5 Pro body. And the D40's a pretty good little imager, and very small and light. Both are really GOOD 6 megapixel cameras,offering roughly 3,000 pixel wide images that have pretty good file size economy in JPEG mode. The D40 is an excellent RAW camera, but offers only a very tiny, BASIC size jpeg capture (704 k. apprx.) in its RAW+JPEG mode.The S5 Pro shoots big raws;no let's call the raw's from the S5 what they are:huge,inflated 25 megabyte RAWs when in Wide-DR RAW mode and 13 Megabyte raws in Normal DR RAW mode,and it writes raw files rather slowly,and so all together the S5 Pro would probably be considered a poor raw camera by some people. Both the Nikon D40 and the Fuji S5 Pro do a good job of controlling image noise,and both allow good High ISO captures to be made. I'd like to own both cameras, but cannot justify buying both. Maybe I'll just continue to borrow my wife's D40 until she actually demands that I buy my own; she has already suggested,directly, that I might like to buy my own D40,since I like shooting hers so much. The D40 offers good in-camera image processing, and excellent file size economy in a small,light,affordable camera. The S5 Pro uses more storage space than a conventionally sensored camera,and its files can actually be seen as bloated for its resolution class, and yet the images one can obtain are prettier and more,well,Fuji-good than one gets with other systems,so what's the use worrying about a few gigs more in hard drive and DVD storage per week?
One of the things that I've found is that once I get used to a particular camera's control layout and the shutter's exact timing, I can shoot the best with that camera. Period. The one area where the Nikon D2x has been the absolute best camera I've ever used has been in its incredible speed,with the shortest shutter lag,fastest mirror return time,and all that stuff. The simply incredibly SHORT time between pressing the shutter and making and exposure makes the D2x seem to me a camera that is as quick as my thought processes. It's a camera you do not have to wait for. At all. I keep image review turned off with the D2x, to make it the absolutely fastest it can be,since turning off the image review reduces the D2x's shutter lag time. For shooting sports assignments where timing has been critical, I've always felt that the D2x's title as world's quickest camera was a big advantage in getting my timing down. On events like pole vault and high jumping, there's really only ONE best moment,and the lag time difference between a D70 and a D2x is truly significant in terms of keeper rate. The pro-class cameras offer much shorter lag time,and when timing is critical, the less time the camera takes to make the exposure, the more time you've got to sit there and be a slow,human being,with human-like reflexes. With the D70, on a field goal or place kick,you must begin the press of the shutter as the kicker's leg moves forward--you have to allow a rather lengthy period of pre-firing to get the kick contact; with the D2x, you can wait much,much longer until you need to press the button to actually GET the image. In my estimation, one of the biggest advantages the Nikon pro-d-slrs have always brought to the table is their extremely short shutter release lag times compared with consumer models. The pro-class cameras also shoot more frames more quickly, which can turn some things from one-frame opportunities to two-frame opportunities.
Seeing Through The Viewfinder Matters! To some people! This is one area where the full frame cameras,both digital and 35mm film SLR bodies, have a big advantage. Eyeglass wearers often benefit from longer eye relief specifications of full frame cameras,which have viewfinder systems that have with slightly lower magnification factors than those of crop-cameras. Nikon's F3 HP camera, with its High Eyepoint prism,was a huge success for millions of eyeglass wearing camera buffs. Seriously, it allowed better composing by giving photographers a better VIEW through the viewfinder compared to earlier cameras and compared to its contemporary competing models. Earlier-generation d-slr's often had tunnel vision finders. Squinty,cropped-down finders that made composing in poor light or following fast action more difficult than it ought to be. The newer-generation cameras, even small-bodied and ultra comapct ones like the Nikon D40 have MUCH better viewfinder systems than many prior d-slr cameras had. I find the larger capture cameras that shoot to 24x36mm, have more useful information that I can see easier,and better, than on APS-C cameras. Finder quality varies widely. The better the viewfinder, the easier it is to shoot in challenging light with that camera. Under good light, almost anything modern is workable; at twilight, the best viewfinders offer you a decided advantage.
Flash Matters in a D-SLR. At least, if you shoot flash pictures. I dunno....I'm impressed with how well the SB 600 works on the D40. I'm impressed with how well the 580 EX-II works on the 20D and the 5D. I was not that impressed with the SB 800 on the D2x--the D40 is a better flash camera,in many respects. But overall, I think the modern serious enthusiast camera class is where the benefits of high-end flashes (costing $399 to $459 or so) has become a marketing ground for claim after claim,without a lot of real user input into the engineering or even the feature sets the makers are coming up with. Wireless remote control and slave/commander flash technology has made Nikon's flash marketing the best flash marketing. Canon's E-TTL II might be where Canon finally figured out how to do TTL flash more or less right. For use with a single,on-camera or bracket-mounted speedlight, all the makers have you covered. Nikon has more-capable wireless remote flash technology than any other maker, and Canon is surprisingly NOT in second-place in wireless flash technology,but is the laggard. Not that that's all that bad, since I don't think wireless flash command capability from the body is all that needed in most situations,and I think Canon feels the same way. But,electronics being what they are, Nikon is the clear leader in wireless flash tech. But, on a one body-one flash basis, the 5D + 580 EX-II flash unit gives superb results,and the D40 + SB 600 gives good results;bottom line, in this newest generation of cameras and flashes, I think the top flash unit from every mfr will give acceptable results at least 90% of the time when used correctly. Exceeding distance limitations and flash units confounded by misguided camera setting don't count.
What matters in a d-slr varies greatly from user to user. I'm very,very impressed with the Nikon D40 in the ultra-small d-slr category,and when the SB 600 is added, it does pretty good flash work. It does surprisingly well with its pop-up flash too. The D40 has the somewhat intense,punched-up color look Nikon premiered with the D50,and for good measure, it allows flash sync to 1/500 second,and has in-camera image editing and filter effects. The Nikon D300 looks like the most feature-rich d-slr the semi-pro segment has ever seen.
Canon's EOS 40D at $1,300 and 10.1 MP looks like the latest new Canon in the 10D-20D-30D series family body,but with a really significant increase in image quality at HIGH ISO being the main area Canon has improved over the 20D and 30D models that came before. From what I have seen so far, the 40D looks like a very,very solid imager right up to ISO 1600. I know among a certain set of feature snob type hobbyist shooters, the 40D is kind of looked down upon compared with Nikon's new D300,with the Canon being perceived by these folks as "trailing" on body features and trailing in megapixel count too. But, the price difference is $500,and I think the 40D and D300 really are not competing for the same dollars. What I see in this current marketplace is Canon beginning to feel the effects of Nikon's increasing feature-packing of its cameras. The D200 and D300 certainly have a LOT more high-end features than the 20D-30D-40D EOS models that Canon has had and in this higher-end amateur segment of the market,Nikon's attracting tremendous reviews for its excellent work in R&D and camera deign too. The inclusion of the professional Nikon's focusing system in the lower cost D300 is an example; Canon's 40D has added some more cross-type sensors apparently, but I still find Canon's diamond-shaped array too tightly centrally-biased,and do not like the diamond-shaped array which leaves the left and right margins,and the top and bottom,represented too "thinly" as it were.
What surprises me the most is that Canon has not figured out how to implement an Auto ISO feature that works like the ones Nikon has had now for several years. Canon is clearly,clearly behind on the Auto ISO feature,which is something many hobbyist (and many serious shooters) can put to good use. On this one feature, Auto ISO,Canon lags behind Nikon QUITE badly. Of course,Canon has that awesome Direct Print button that three people in Illinois asked for, so...let's give props to Canon.
Nikon's broader,much higher AF point count of 51 AF points in the D300 makes me think that Canon's prosumer/semi-pro models are suffering right now from sort of a feature disadvantage on AF. At least on paper. However, from actual,practical experience, I just do NOT like Canon's diamond-shaped array in either the 20D or 5D; it's too-centrally weighted in the 5D.
Speaking of which, Nikon's new 51 Point System looks to ME to be a bit more-center weighted than the D2x's AF layout with its fewer, 11 AF points and broader grouping of AF zones. The Canon and Nikon families have become more similar now; in both brands, the same basic AF point pattern is shared,and in the 20D-30D-40D models, the diamond-shaped 9-point array covers a wider percentage of the frame than it does on the larger-framed 5D. The same hold true on the D3 and D300 Nikon's with the 51-point AF rectangle now more dispersed toward the center parts of the frame, with a less-broad area where AF brackets are located. To me, the D3's 51-point AF system looks,well, too-centrally weighted for my taste. There's been a reduction by one in the number of AF mode selections between the D2x and the D3,and that's causing me a little bit of angst. Not to mention that the D3 has the exposure meter info on the RIGHT hand SIDE of the viewscreen! Where that brain fart of an idea came from,I'm not sure. Moving the exposure info there is not to my liking,and is just inscrutable. A true "what the fuck were they thinking" kind of mental lapse from NIkon. The sides of virtually every viewfinder offer LESS visibility than the top or bottom. Nikon really screwed the pooch on the move to the right hand side of the finder for the D3 exposure info,and a VERTICAL display of the information to boot. It's not only a locational switch, but a psychological representational change of aperture ring direction and camera control representation in dial direction and display. The switch to a VERTICAL representation of exposure does not jibe with the old Nikon ethos which was basically set by the N8008. But then again, why should the direction the display moves,and the control wheels move,mimic the direction the lens's aperture ring moves when there is no longer an aperture ring on the newest G-series Nikons?
In some very interesting operational ways,like the wholesale adoption of this fucked-up G-series Nikon lens mount and the switch to centrally-located,high-point count AF systems,Nikon and Canon seem closer than ever before. With the development of E-TTL II flash and the newest EX flash units, Canon finally seems to be able to provide pretty good flash performance. With Nikon dropping the concept of aperture rings on its lenses,and getting more AF-S focusing zooms on the market, Nikon has made its lenses and cameras handle more like Canon equipment,with all aperture control being inputted on the body,and with even things like "macro" lenses losing their aperture ring (Nikon's new 105mm f/2.8 AFS VR-G Nikkor for example), Nikon is throwing away a lot of the backward compatibility and off-list use that made their original F mount lenses so versatile. The G-series is harmful to the macro lens category,and it diminishes the off-list value of many exotic lenses by limiting their use only to NIKON-made bodies,of today's current specification.
What matters in a d-slr is that it fits the need you have for it to fulfill. Right now, almost all of the choices look reasonably good to even excellent. The bargain-priced Nikon,Pentax,and Canon bodies are quite impressive. Pentax's practically giving away the farm to get people to buy its product,and is working very hard on new,exotic yet affordable lens designs that leverage their 6MP-10MP APS-C bodies.Sony's offering a lot of features and great design,plus some seriously good Zeiss lens offerings. Nikon is packing more and more and more features and goodness into each camera design. Canon's moving smoothly upward in MP count and offering good values at several price points, while adding a few high-end optics and some nice consumer and serious enthusiast lenses every 18 months or so. So, whatever matters to you in a d-slr, you can find it today.If you get the chance to go to one of the really large camera stores,you really,really owe it to yourself to look at what a fine state of affairs we're in right now!
The way I view things, Newer is Better. Usually. At least if it's got to do with flash units or camera sensors. Onboard or pop-up flashes now,like laundry soaps, just work. Newer pop-up flash units deliver better exposures,under a wider range of distances than older pop-up flashes did. Nikon's D40 does pretty well with its pop-up flash; the D40 gives much better exposures on the whole than the D70's pop-up flash did,based on my own experience. Canon's Xti does pretty well too. Selling millions of cameras involves making one that has a GOOD pop-up flash. Nikon's D40 is the best selling consumer d-slr for a good reason. The flash works great. The D40's onboard pop-up flash can do some amazingly subtle balancing with ambient light.
The EOS 40D versus EOS 5D versus EOS 20D comparison photos I have seen show that the new $1,300 40D does ALMOST as well as the older 5D,even though the 40D has a 1.6x APS-C sensor,and the 5D has a no-crop or full-frame sensor. See above: Newer is Better, when it comes to sensors. The Nikon D300's 1.5x APS-C or Nikon DX sensor shoots faster and with higher resolution than the Nikon D2x pro camera from 2005,and as far as I am concerned, that means that if you had wanted the D2x's imaging capabilities, the new D300 at $1899 represents a very,very good buy. The D2x's sensor was ISO-challenged,and operated best under a fairly narrow range of ISO settings,and lost color very,very badly at the extremes of its ISO range,and demanded rigorous post processing to achieve the kind of results that more versatile sensors can do without post work. But the D300's sensor is newer,and better,across a wider range of ISO settings than the D2x's sensor. Bottom line--the serious enthusiast/semi-pro camera segment has finally seen a SIGNIFICANT INCREASE in imaging potential and imaging quality that makes users of older-generation 6- and 8-MP models probably realize that _this generation_ of cameras is really worth having,and offers great value for many types of shooting. Buffer depths are now very good, frame rates are now as high or HIGHER than "pro" cameras before,and in the case of the D300, Nikon is installing the identical flagship-level focusing system in both the D3 and the D300. Hooray!
Currently, in the 1.5 and 1.6x 10.1 to 12.2 MP semi-pro serious enthusiast camera class, Nikon,Sony,and Canon all have very nice cameras. The Sony A700 has in-body stabilization and is $1,400 body only. The Canon 40D costs the same. The Nikon D300 is more, at $1899 MSRP,but is arguably a "better body"" than either the Sony or Canon offerings.
So,what matters in this class of camera? Features and suitability for your shooting style,mainly. The Sony A700 and Nikon D300 both offer high definition HDMI-out which will allow them to play images directly on high-definition TV's and the reports I've read of the Sony's output are of excellent image quality on High-Def Sony TV's. If you wish to project your work onto a large,high-definition TV set, the Nikon D300 and Sony Alpha 700 are the only game in town. Features,you say? Canon's direct print button is a feature I don't give a rat's ass about. The Nikon and Sony have the newest,state-of-the-art LCD screens,with vastly superior image review quality over other cameras. This is a big advancement,technologically, but not absolutely a critical feature--just a new technological milestone. The new 920,000-spec screens blow away all the older ones.
Some people ares still enthusiastic about the FujiFilm S5 Pro as a serious enthusiast/semi-pro body,and I can understand why. I'm currently waiting on PMA 2008 to see if Fuji announces an S5 Pro follow-up (I doubt they will,unfortunately) because I think I'd like an F-mount 6MP d-slr that can be optimized several ways for OOC JPEG shooting,and also because I think the way the S5 handles tonality and skin tone is pretty nice. The sensor's not the best,not the highest-resolving,and does not produce the type of artifact-free,high-resolution images the 5D does, but I think the Fuji has richer tonality,and more color variation,more nuance, than other cameras can output in JPEG capture mode,and I kind of LIKE the way the S5 can put an impression on its pictures with its decided Fuji color tendencies. This is a camera more about tonality and color and nuance and "feel",and less of a cold,crisp,faithful camera like the 5D. Fuji S5 Pro images often have a decided "look" that I do not see from Canon or Nikon digital images,and I can understand why somebody who has a family or child to photograph, or who likes to do portraits and people and pet pictures and general day-trip type shooting would absolutely LOVE shooting with an S5 Pro. It's not a camera for pixel-peepers, and it does have its share of small artifacting problems,especially when shot in 12 MP mode, but the "look" and the "feel" of the S5 Pro's images both make this camera viable in its class. The S5 Pro uses pretty heavy Noise Reduction at elevated ISO's,but then it's designed that way,and the pictures look acceptable without a lot of post work,so...
What has me conflicted is the D40 versus S5 Pro conundrum....I could buy three D40 kits for the price of one S5 Pro body. And the D40's a pretty good little imager, and very small and light. Both are really GOOD 6 megapixel cameras,offering roughly 3,000 pixel wide images that have pretty good file size economy in JPEG mode. The D40 is an excellent RAW camera, but offers only a very tiny, BASIC size jpeg capture (704 k. apprx.) in its RAW+JPEG mode.The S5 Pro shoots big raws;no let's call the raw's from the S5 what they are:huge,inflated 25 megabyte RAWs when in Wide-DR RAW mode and 13 Megabyte raws in Normal DR RAW mode,and it writes raw files rather slowly,and so all together the S5 Pro would probably be considered a poor raw camera by some people. Both the Nikon D40 and the Fuji S5 Pro do a good job of controlling image noise,and both allow good High ISO captures to be made. I'd like to own both cameras, but cannot justify buying both. Maybe I'll just continue to borrow my wife's D40 until she actually demands that I buy my own; she has already suggested,directly, that I might like to buy my own D40,since I like shooting hers so much. The D40 offers good in-camera image processing, and excellent file size economy in a small,light,affordable camera. The S5 Pro uses more storage space than a conventionally sensored camera,and its files can actually be seen as bloated for its resolution class, and yet the images one can obtain are prettier and more,well,Fuji-good than one gets with other systems,so what's the use worrying about a few gigs more in hard drive and DVD storage per week?
One of the things that I've found is that once I get used to a particular camera's control layout and the shutter's exact timing, I can shoot the best with that camera. Period. The one area where the Nikon D2x has been the absolute best camera I've ever used has been in its incredible speed,with the shortest shutter lag,fastest mirror return time,and all that stuff. The simply incredibly SHORT time between pressing the shutter and making and exposure makes the D2x seem to me a camera that is as quick as my thought processes. It's a camera you do not have to wait for. At all. I keep image review turned off with the D2x, to make it the absolutely fastest it can be,since turning off the image review reduces the D2x's shutter lag time. For shooting sports assignments where timing has been critical, I've always felt that the D2x's title as world's quickest camera was a big advantage in getting my timing down. On events like pole vault and high jumping, there's really only ONE best moment,and the lag time difference between a D70 and a D2x is truly significant in terms of keeper rate. The pro-class cameras offer much shorter lag time,and when timing is critical, the less time the camera takes to make the exposure, the more time you've got to sit there and be a slow,human being,with human-like reflexes. With the D70, on a field goal or place kick,you must begin the press of the shutter as the kicker's leg moves forward--you have to allow a rather lengthy period of pre-firing to get the kick contact; with the D2x, you can wait much,much longer until you need to press the button to actually GET the image. In my estimation, one of the biggest advantages the Nikon pro-d-slrs have always brought to the table is their extremely short shutter release lag times compared with consumer models. The pro-class cameras also shoot more frames more quickly, which can turn some things from one-frame opportunities to two-frame opportunities.
Seeing Through The Viewfinder Matters! To some people! This is one area where the full frame cameras,both digital and 35mm film SLR bodies, have a big advantage. Eyeglass wearers often benefit from longer eye relief specifications of full frame cameras,which have viewfinder systems that have with slightly lower magnification factors than those of crop-cameras. Nikon's F3 HP camera, with its High Eyepoint prism,was a huge success for millions of eyeglass wearing camera buffs. Seriously, it allowed better composing by giving photographers a better VIEW through the viewfinder compared to earlier cameras and compared to its contemporary competing models. Earlier-generation d-slr's often had tunnel vision finders. Squinty,cropped-down finders that made composing in poor light or following fast action more difficult than it ought to be. The newer-generation cameras, even small-bodied and ultra comapct ones like the Nikon D40 have MUCH better viewfinder systems than many prior d-slr cameras had. I find the larger capture cameras that shoot to 24x36mm, have more useful information that I can see easier,and better, than on APS-C cameras. Finder quality varies widely. The better the viewfinder, the easier it is to shoot in challenging light with that camera. Under good light, almost anything modern is workable; at twilight, the best viewfinders offer you a decided advantage.
Flash Matters in a D-SLR. At least, if you shoot flash pictures. I dunno....I'm impressed with how well the SB 600 works on the D40. I'm impressed with how well the 580 EX-II works on the 20D and the 5D. I was not that impressed with the SB 800 on the D2x--the D40 is a better flash camera,in many respects. But overall, I think the modern serious enthusiast camera class is where the benefits of high-end flashes (costing $399 to $459 or so) has become a marketing ground for claim after claim,without a lot of real user input into the engineering or even the feature sets the makers are coming up with. Wireless remote control and slave/commander flash technology has made Nikon's flash marketing the best flash marketing. Canon's E-TTL II might be where Canon finally figured out how to do TTL flash more or less right. For use with a single,on-camera or bracket-mounted speedlight, all the makers have you covered. Nikon has more-capable wireless remote flash technology than any other maker, and Canon is surprisingly NOT in second-place in wireless flash technology,but is the laggard. Not that that's all that bad, since I don't think wireless flash command capability from the body is all that needed in most situations,and I think Canon feels the same way. But,electronics being what they are, Nikon is the clear leader in wireless flash tech. But, on a one body-one flash basis, the 5D + 580 EX-II flash unit gives superb results,and the D40 + SB 600 gives good results;bottom line, in this newest generation of cameras and flashes, I think the top flash unit from every mfr will give acceptable results at least 90% of the time when used correctly. Exceeding distance limitations and flash units confounded by misguided camera setting don't count.
What matters in a d-slr varies greatly from user to user. I'm very,very impressed with the Nikon D40 in the ultra-small d-slr category,and when the SB 600 is added, it does pretty good flash work. It does surprisingly well with its pop-up flash too. The D40 has the somewhat intense,punched-up color look Nikon premiered with the D50,and for good measure, it allows flash sync to 1/500 second,and has in-camera image editing and filter effects. The Nikon D300 looks like the most feature-rich d-slr the semi-pro segment has ever seen.
Canon's EOS 40D at $1,300 and 10.1 MP looks like the latest new Canon in the 10D-20D-30D series family body,but with a really significant increase in image quality at HIGH ISO being the main area Canon has improved over the 20D and 30D models that came before. From what I have seen so far, the 40D looks like a very,very solid imager right up to ISO 1600. I know among a certain set of feature snob type hobbyist shooters, the 40D is kind of looked down upon compared with Nikon's new D300,with the Canon being perceived by these folks as "trailing" on body features and trailing in megapixel count too. But, the price difference is $500,and I think the 40D and D300 really are not competing for the same dollars. What I see in this current marketplace is Canon beginning to feel the effects of Nikon's increasing feature-packing of its cameras. The D200 and D300 certainly have a LOT more high-end features than the 20D-30D-40D EOS models that Canon has had and in this higher-end amateur segment of the market,Nikon's attracting tremendous reviews for its excellent work in R&D and camera deign too. The inclusion of the professional Nikon's focusing system in the lower cost D300 is an example; Canon's 40D has added some more cross-type sensors apparently, but I still find Canon's diamond-shaped array too tightly centrally-biased,and do not like the diamond-shaped array which leaves the left and right margins,and the top and bottom,represented too "thinly" as it were.
What surprises me the most is that Canon has not figured out how to implement an Auto ISO feature that works like the ones Nikon has had now for several years. Canon is clearly,clearly behind on the Auto ISO feature,which is something many hobbyist (and many serious shooters) can put to good use. On this one feature, Auto ISO,Canon lags behind Nikon QUITE badly. Of course,Canon has that awesome Direct Print button that three people in Illinois asked for, so...let's give props to Canon.
Nikon's broader,much higher AF point count of 51 AF points in the D300 makes me think that Canon's prosumer/semi-pro models are suffering right now from sort of a feature disadvantage on AF. At least on paper. However, from actual,practical experience, I just do NOT like Canon's diamond-shaped array in either the 20D or 5D; it's too-centrally weighted in the 5D.
Speaking of which, Nikon's new 51 Point System looks to ME to be a bit more-center weighted than the D2x's AF layout with its fewer, 11 AF points and broader grouping of AF zones. The Canon and Nikon families have become more similar now; in both brands, the same basic AF point pattern is shared,and in the 20D-30D-40D models, the diamond-shaped 9-point array covers a wider percentage of the frame than it does on the larger-framed 5D. The same hold true on the D3 and D300 Nikon's with the 51-point AF rectangle now more dispersed toward the center parts of the frame, with a less-broad area where AF brackets are located. To me, the D3's 51-point AF system looks,well, too-centrally weighted for my taste. There's been a reduction by one in the number of AF mode selections between the D2x and the D3,and that's causing me a little bit of angst. Not to mention that the D3 has the exposure meter info on the RIGHT hand SIDE of the viewscreen! Where that brain fart of an idea came from,I'm not sure. Moving the exposure info there is not to my liking,and is just inscrutable. A true "what the fuck were they thinking" kind of mental lapse from NIkon. The sides of virtually every viewfinder offer LESS visibility than the top or bottom. Nikon really screwed the pooch on the move to the right hand side of the finder for the D3 exposure info,and a VERTICAL display of the information to boot. It's not only a locational switch, but a psychological representational change of aperture ring direction and camera control representation in dial direction and display. The switch to a VERTICAL representation of exposure does not jibe with the old Nikon ethos which was basically set by the N8008. But then again, why should the direction the display moves,and the control wheels move,mimic the direction the lens's aperture ring moves when there is no longer an aperture ring on the newest G-series Nikons?
In some very interesting operational ways,like the wholesale adoption of this fucked-up G-series Nikon lens mount and the switch to centrally-located,high-point count AF systems,Nikon and Canon seem closer than ever before. With the development of E-TTL II flash and the newest EX flash units, Canon finally seems to be able to provide pretty good flash performance. With Nikon dropping the concept of aperture rings on its lenses,and getting more AF-S focusing zooms on the market, Nikon has made its lenses and cameras handle more like Canon equipment,with all aperture control being inputted on the body,and with even things like "macro" lenses losing their aperture ring (Nikon's new 105mm f/2.8 AFS VR-G Nikkor for example), Nikon is throwing away a lot of the backward compatibility and off-list use that made their original F mount lenses so versatile. The G-series is harmful to the macro lens category,and it diminishes the off-list value of many exotic lenses by limiting their use only to NIKON-made bodies,of today's current specification.
What matters in a d-slr is that it fits the need you have for it to fulfill. Right now, almost all of the choices look reasonably good to even excellent. The bargain-priced Nikon,Pentax,and Canon bodies are quite impressive. Pentax's practically giving away the farm to get people to buy its product,and is working very hard on new,exotic yet affordable lens designs that leverage their 6MP-10MP APS-C bodies.Sony's offering a lot of features and great design,plus some seriously good Zeiss lens offerings. Nikon is packing more and more and more features and goodness into each camera design. Canon's moving smoothly upward in MP count and offering good values at several price points, while adding a few high-end optics and some nice consumer and serious enthusiast lenses every 18 months or so. So, whatever matters to you in a d-slr, you can find it today.If you get the chance to go to one of the really large camera stores,you really,really owe it to yourself to look at what a fine state of affairs we're in right now!
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