Guest post by I moved into the realm of digital SLR photography back in 2003 when when I got myself a Canon 10D. The 10D served me very well for 7 years and 14 000 pictures. Then I decided it was time for an upgrade so, I got myself a full frame 21 Megapixel monster, the EOS 5D MkII. It’s quite an upgrade, it even does video. These are my impressions after having it for a few weeks.
I think you should look at upgrading your lenses too. That 28-105mm doesn’t look like it does justice to your camera. Some fast primes like the 50mm f1.4 would be really awesome and you’ll enjoy the shallow depth of field immensely.
Thanks for this review, very interesting. I’m a Nikon shooter using a D90, my video comes out in AVI, so it blew my mind to see the file size of video that the D2 does, even though it comes through as mp4. Admittedly, the D90 only does 720p, so 1080p at 30/fps is crazy – it’s better than my video camera.
I’m curious about the lens that came with your body. Did you buy a kit or use a lens you already had?
Since this is OS news and a story on photography, let me post this link to “Linux Photography”
http://jcornuz.wordpress.com/
It has a low post count so as of now the latest article is still his April Fool’s day post, so don’t get fooled.
Disclaimer: Its just a site that I enjoy reading, I’m not affiliated in any way.
I still remember his “The future of computing” series here on OSnews. Pretty crazy stuff(not the good kind of crazy, though). According to him the PC,X86 and compiled languages should be dead by now and we all should run scripted appz on PPC/Cell
The future is not what it used to be. I think static typed languages will be around for a long time (Scala could actually win scripter over again) and only the slow emergence of FOSS everywhere will break the Wintel monopoly … but fairly slowly..
Right. The new Palm platform, ARM Netbooks, JavaScript applications in browsers talking back to cloud servers running Python in Virtual machines. And the Java and CLR aren’t even worth mentioning.
He was way off the mark.
What is it like for low light photography? I mean evening shots and night shots, indoor candlelit scenes and even moody light restaurant scenes. A lot of cameras really don’t do these well.
What are people’s experiences or opinions as to what the best camera is for low light shooting?
On modern DSLRs the biggest and i mean the biggest thing is the quality of lenses you have. If your lens does not have a large aperture like a 1.8/2.8 then low light shooting is quite tough. However if you lens does support that, and you play around with your ISO you can get some incredibly low light photography.
Well I haven’t used the 5D2, but I have used the Nikon D700 and D3 and they’re excellent for that kind of shooting, especially when combined with a fast f1.4 or f1.8 lens. I imagine the 5D2 will be very good as well since really the large sensor size is what you’re after.
Of course you have to look at the price. While not quite as good, both the Nikon D90 and the Canon 50D with a fast lens will to a very good job and less than half the price.
If you already have an SLR and you’re using the zoom lens that came with it, my first step would be to buy a fast prime lens. You’ll get significantly improved low light performance for very little money.
For low light shooting, you’ll want a full-frame camera like the 5D, in order to let in as much light as possible.
Thanks for the article. It sounds a great camera to have though too high-end for many folks perhaps, unless you are a professional. Pentax here, and I go for their “Limited” prime lenses. Tiny but so good.
I’m not sure I completely agree with what some folks have said about fast lenses. There are depth of field issues of course, but a more promising and certainly more economical way round this may be by camera-makers generally improving performance at higher ISOs. In fact, if camera and sensor technology continue to improve it may be that fast lenses purely because of low light won’t be nearly so important any more. Digital has already made a huge difference to shooting at high ISOs.
I like that link about Linux software. Could become a whole article. At the moment I am using rawtherapee and Gimp with the fx-foundry plugin. Digikam does a good job of importing and cataloguing but Picasa under wine isn’t too bad either. I get some colour management by using icc profiles and xcalib64 to load them. Don’t feel I’m missing out, anyway, by not running Photoshop for stills, though video files may be another matter.
There’s a limit to what you can achieve with sensor technology. You’re essentially limited by the amount of light per area, and that’s a reason why a current compact or bridge camera (like the Canon SX1) will give much worse high ISO performance than a DSLR from 5 years ago (like the Canon EOS 10D).
With a fast lens, you get great low light performance today. Compare a fast 50mm f1.4 lens with some mickey mouse kit lens. With such lenses, you’re looking at around f5.6 at 50mm. This is a 4 stop difference, i.e. the f1.4 lens lets in 16 times more light. To put it in a different perspective, to get the same shutter speed as a f1.4 lens at ISO 100, the f5.6 lens requires ISO 1600.
If low light photography is important to you, a fast lens is a must.
9 – 3 = 6
Nice in-depth review of the EOS 5D. Interesting pictures on the linked pages. The high-end specs of the 5D make my Nikon D60 seem like an Asus EEE next to a MacBook Pro.
Before you go feeling sorry for yourself, remember that you paid $550, and he paid $3550.
Yeah good advice. I’ve got a Canon EOS 400D and next to this piece of hardware, mine makes me feel like I’m shooting with the camera built into my phone.
The 400D is an excellent camera. Pair it up with some high end glass and you’ll be wowed by the results. You might want to buy a battery grip though, since high end glass = heavy glass and this tends to off-balance the entry level DSLRs since their bodies are too light.
Don’t get me wrong, I love it, but the one in this article seems a whole lot better.
You are right though, get better glass and the quality of images goes up remarkably.. well to my eye anyways.
Yes I should get a battery grip but I’d rather get the top end flash attachment instead. I really hate the built in flash.
Here’s some untouched photos from my 400D:
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=fdf2xf&s=5
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2pzl4t4&s=5
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=10yntw4&s=5
You really should never use JPEGs from Canon bodies. The in-camera conversion is not good and your images will look much, much better by converting them on the computer.
It is scary trying to find space for them, though, when using a 35mm frame camera body.