"White Balance" attempts to make every kind of light look like daylight - that is OK in some instances, but certainly not all - I applaud the OP's decision to show it as it was.

Your 550D is an 18Mpxl camera - a 24Mpxl camera would have 56+inches the long way - would the 4" extra still be enough for you to upgrade?

Sorry, but your D500 is in full mirrorless mode when you are shooting video, with the major disadvantage of a non-functional viewfinder when it is doing it (the mirror is locked up and the "Shutter" is electronic)! Your archaic analog viewfinder has nothing to do with shooting video. When I am shooting live performance video with my bleeding-edge tech mirrorless cameras, I can turn off the rear LCD screen and use the EVF - thus avoiding annoying the audience with the rudeness of a bright screen shining in their eyes. That also applies when I am checking the stills and/or videos - I can see them in my big bright EVF, again avoiding annoying people in the audience.

I also have adjusted the EVF settings so that the live finder view looks precisely the same as the recorded images, so no surprises there! It is also an easy matter to dim the LCD and/or the EVF to avoid the momentary blindness that can occur when looking away from the display(s) when shooting in a dark venue. Oh, and don't forget the live histogram, the depth of field scale, the wonderful manual focusing aids, etc., all of which make it so much easier to "get it right in the camera" - all in my mirrorless camera's beautiful EVF.

HarryB

[quote=crphoto8]Thanks to everybody for your comments, they're very helpful. A couple of additional comments - <snip> 3) A big advantage of FF is in wide angle coverage. I went to Central America recently and was the only photographer in our group that could handle the full width of churches interiors. Yes, I know about panorama stitching but it's handy if you can do it all in one image. <snip> [end quote]

Panasonic and Fuji both have very good extreme wide zooms: The Lumix Lens is 7-14 (14-28 ffEq) and the Fujinon is 10-24 (15-36 ffEq) I own them both and they are great lenses - how wide do you want, anyway?

HarryB

For real world clarity's sake, putting a 1:1 macro on a crop sensor will produce a magnification factor equal to the crop ratio, just like any other lens. For a couple of examples, I have attached images from my FF Nikon and my 2x "crop" Lumix GX7 - the 2 images were taken one right after the other with the Lens focus ring at the closest stop (about 3" from the ruler. As y'all can plainly see, the 2x crop GX7 results in 2x as large an image when compared to the FF. So, yes, the 60mm is a 2:1 macro lens when used on a 2x crop camera. If I was into shooting bugs and butterflys, I would be using a 200mm macro on a Micro Four Thirds camera. Of course, the OP has a 1.5 crop APS Nikon, so it is in between the two cameras as for the macro factor - it will be 1.5:1 with any FF macro lens. No extension tubes required either way.

BTW, Wikipedia has an excellent article on Macro/micro photography. I strongly recommend it for anyone who is interested in learning all the ins and outs of the subject, particularly regarding the hardware involved and how it all goes together.

HarryB

Actually, the 18 is 27-e on the Nikon - even closer to twice the angle!

Excellent! I wish I could have said that so eloquently!

B&H has a pretty good selection of used XT10's in very good to like new condition mostly hovering around $500 - The XT10 is to the XT1 as the new XT20 is to the XT2. I am seriously thinking about getting one myself for casual shooting mainly because it has a built-in flash, and is a little smaller and lighter overall with pretty much the same characteristics as its more expensive sibling in terms of performance and IQ. The main negatives (for me-YMMV) are the lack of weather sealing and the downgraded EVF.

DP Review has a great comparison of the XT10 vs XT1 at:

https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/fujifilm-x-t10

HarryB

Most point and shoot cameras have EVFs that are very inferior when compared to modern interchangeable lens or high end fixed lens cameras. The same goes for point and shoot cameras with optical finders.

HarryB

I have pretty strong glasses (bifocals) with a lot of correction and I have not had any camera with an adjustable diopter whether EVF or OVF that didn't have enough range to allow me to keep my glasses on. Of course, YMMV applies.

Harry B

I have several years of experience with modern EVFs - Fuji Xt1 & 2 along with a Panasonic GX7 - they are all more than fine with glasses - I greatly prefer them to DSLR optical finders - I love the WYSIWYG nature (What You See Is What You Get) of the EVFs and the ability to see in the dark, especially if you are trying to do manual focus! I also love having all of the shooting info I want to see in the EVF, including a live histogram (and a depth of field scale with the Fujis). Of course, I have earlier cameras that have EVFs that are not so hot - that also goes with earlier DSLRs, especially with crop sensor cameras with their little, dim "tunnel vision" optical viewfinders.
Those early crappy viewfinders are the main reason for my ultimately going to "Full Frame" DSLRs - I could finally actually do a decent job of manual focus (as long as the light was good)!

HarryB

Suntouched wanted to put the camera into shutter preferred autoexposure mode so she could set a specific fixed shutter speed while retaining autoexposure by allowing the camera to set the aperture.

I have the XT2 along with a 23/2.8 "pancake" that has no aperture ring. It works just as you describe with your zoom. I also have the XT1 with which I have shot thousands of images - the 27/2.8 behaves the same on it. What I found out is if you want to shoot in shutter preferred with auto aperture, you need to go past the smallest aperture (biggest aperture number) once you have set the desired shutter speed. When you do that, the aperture numbers in the viewfinder will go from blue to white, which is the functional equivalent of the "A" setting on the lenses with an aperture ring.

I appreciate your bringing this up, because although I very rarely use anything "Auto" other than ISO, I know I would eventually want to know how to do this, and being a Fuji fanatic, I just couldn't believe that Fuji could have missed something this elementary!

Thank you,

Harry B

Check this out - and watch the video embedded in the page - pretty amazing:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1315017-REG/ikan_ms_pro_beholder_3_axis_gimbal.html

And this: http://www.ken-lab.com/

We used to dabble in art show slides, mostly of jewelry and small art objects. One of our clients had a few slides that he wanted to convert and print to 16x24 to display in their show booth. The results from print labs were always disappointing. We had a flatbed scanner and a 35mm scanner - neither was up to the client's expectations.

Fortunately, we had just acquired a D700, and already had a 60mm Micro Nikkor lens and a small light table that had very even LED daylight illumination. I set the camera up on a boom pointing down at the slide/light table, and filled the viewfinder with the positive image inside the cardboard frame. Voila! - I was rewarded with the best slide copies I had ever seen! After some cleanup in PS, I did some 6x9 proofs, which turned out great. Finally, I took the cleaned up "scans" to my favorite print lab for the 16 x 24's.

After getting the prints, we matted and framed them, and handed them over to our client - they were ecstatic over the quality and faithfulness to the projected slides! Since then, We have never bothered to use a scanner for 35mm slides.