I thought for a moment or two I might be the lone voice crying in the wilderness, “Don’t forget gimbal heads.” I’m not, but I’ll toss in 2 cents worth.
First, I agree with those who’ve noted much of this is personal preference...sort of. Early on I bought a ball head to replace my kit pan/tilt head. Thinking a ball head is a ball head is a ball head I went for least expensive. Then I ran across a differently designed ball head. “Look at that - it’s got a different quick-release design. This was Manfrotto’s 486RC2 head, and it changed my life. But wait - there’s more! Sticking with Manfrotto because the RC2 quick release system is the best (in this application most of the time), I found the MHXPRO BHQ2 head, and except for air shows and sports (where the gimbal is king), it’s just the best IMHO because instead of round knobs to tighten they give you flanged knobs.
That is unless you’re shooting something active and you want to track with it - something like the Blue Angels, your grandson running the bases or your granddaughter riding her mount across the finish. A gimbal (when properly adjusted) distributes the weight evenly and allows you to move freely in all three directions. There’s no getting around their being heavier comes up - I needed a sturdier tripod, but saved some $ via eBay. Sometimes I just want that tripod with the ball head.
I think I’ve said enough.
150-600mm for Canon - did it sell?
Within the last week or so I saw an ad here where someone was selling a 150-600mm lens for Canon EF cameras. I believe it was a Sigma, priced at $450. But whether that or Tamron, did it sell?
Thanks for your reply, cautions, & suggestion. My thought in part was that someone saying they get good results shooting at ISO 12800, for instance, means one thing if they’ve got the latest 5D Mark lV and another for a 10-year old camera.
To your point on reading reviews, I’ve done a bit of that. I’ll probably take your advice and start a new topic later.
A quick caveat: I haven’t read all comments here, so if others have been discussing this please direct me there.
I’m wondering what camera(s) folks are using and the sensor, and what your ISO range is (those the manufacturer gives numeric values to), and then what Expandable ISOs you also have. Finally, have you gotten acceptable images using the Expandable ISOs?
I have two cameras.
Canon EOS 1D Mark lll, CPS-H sensor, ISO range: 100-3200, Expandable to L (ISO 50), and H (6400)
Canon EOS Rebel T3i, CPS-C sensor, ISO range: 100-6400, Expandable to H (12800)
I have used L a bit on my 1D Mark lll and don’t recall any problems. Above 1600, if I've gotten anything useful it’s been because I managed to fix the noise artifacts using some combination of filtering steps between PhotoShop and Topaz DeNoise 6. I have some decently fast lenses (Canon EF 80-200mm f/2.8L, and EF 50mm f/1.4). I run into this shooting musical bands performing and at my grandson’s evening baseball games.
The T3i is likewise troublesome above 1600, the exception appearing to be 20-30 sec photos of the Milky Way or doing star trails photos.
If you don’t mind, your answers here will help me. What is the highest ISO value you have access to without selecting one of the “expandable to” values? When was your camera built? And when you’ve used ISO 12800, what aperture were you using?
I know a number of folks that use the sling straps where the camera just dangles at your side. I don’t like my camera flopping around like that, and the neck straps from Canon, etc. definitely result in neck strain. So I. Use a harness by Cotton Carrier.
Mr. Kuzano - I related an opinion based on my experience and information gathered to this point in my journey. I’ve never thought I had it all figured out or that there weren’t many other ways people might view this. Thanks for sharing yours, but going forward should you have a comment you care to relate on something i’ve posted could I ask you to remember this: what I said may have pissed you off, but I promise you I did not sit down to write with pissing you off anywhere on my list if objectives.
I too resisted shooting in RAW until I grasped the real advantages (well, a few anyway). As you gain confidence shooting in Manual mode you’ll begin to see the creative possibilities that this opens up to you. So you’ll begin to experiment to learn more. And then you’ll start wondering why your images don’t come out of your canera looking like you think they should. Answer: because you’re letting the engineers at the manufacturer decide what adjustments to make in converting your RAW file into a jpeg. As you can imagine, they want to sell lots of cameras, so they’re not likely to push the limits much. They’re going for averages so as to make the most people happy so they don’t complain that their new camera is broken, etc.
Learning how to process your RAW files 1) will take time, and 2) never really ends. You check your local adult ed program for classes in Lightroom and/or Photoshop or Photoshop Elements (PSE). As you’ve probably heard Adobe has a
Photographers subscription for $9.99/month for Lightroom, Photoshop and Bridge. Most of us likely balked at this notion at firsf but I know I was never going to buy the software - too expensive. With this program I’m always working with the latest version.
A word about PSE. You can think of it as Photoshop lite, but it’s still very powerful and you have to purchase the software. It’s a little more user friendly and it doesn’t have some features. I mention this because though a number of people are fans of Lightroom I do not find it to be very intuitive whereas PSE & Photoshop I did. So I just wanted to make sure you know of this option. Whatever direction you decide to go, give yourself time. You can and should take classes and watch tutorial videos on YouTube, but if you only follow an instructor’s directions and don’t work through it on your own, and fail and start over and over and over you’ll struggle to remember what you did.
If I haven’t scared you into never shooting RAW then picture this (ha, ha...photography pun): Ansel Adams took 15 years working in the darkroom on Moonrise Hernandez, New Mexico before he got what he wanted. So post processing has a long and noble history even if sometimes it feels like hitting yourself with a 2x4 - it feels so good when I stop. Join the party.
My wife & I are talking about going on a cruise to Alaska. I recently bought a Phantom 3 quadcopter with a 2.7k/12mp camera, so naturally I’m thinking about all the awesome video and photos I could get...that is if the cruise line and/or tour operators along the way don’t have policies against the use of drones.
Anybody had experience with this?
Thanks,
Mark
I started taking underwater photos on scuba vacations in the hopes of sharing the amazing things I would see there. My problem was I started with a film camera and couldn’t take a decent photo to save my life. That changed somewhat when I switched to a small digital set up. That eventually led to the purchase of a digital point & shooting on terra firma on Auto. After a year or two I wanted more control than the P&S gave me easily, so I bought a DSLR. I shot on Auto with that until a Canon workshop at the Grand Canyon moved me to Program mode. Finally a couple of local adult ed classes put me through the paces of learning about shutter speed ISO and aperture. For a while I shot nothing but Manual mode - until I lost a number of images I really wanted to see on my computer because the lighting of the scene I was shooting changed (the red tail hawk went from below the horizon to above it). So now I use Shutter priority if I’m shooting something I think might see that happen (grandson’s Little League games, for example).
I haven’t exactly answered your question because I can’t say “It was x hours (or days, weeks, etc.).” I’d say I got several nudges along the path. Once I grasped the creative potential shooting Manual mode affords me I started experimenting and the pace of learning picked up. Like another responder said, I’m always learning.
Quick addendum - I mostly car travel, so I’m not so worried about weight. If I were flying a lot I’d probably look for a way to lose the computer.
I follow your practice of making a file for each day of a trip. I hate letting images sit on the camera’s card, so I carry a laptop and an external hard drive - a1TB travel drive. So I download from camera to computer then back up to the HD. If I wanted a second back up I think I’d copy files from the camera instead of downloading them and take several memory cards to swap out until I got home. So I’d have them on the memory cards and two separate hard drives. The part I had to stop briefly to recognize was that downloading moves the files. To back them up means I need to put a copy somewhere else to reduce the risk of losing them somehow.