Lavender Cottage (uses Flash unfortunately)
All handheld, the 100L performed flawlessly.
Lavender Cottage
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Tag Archives: 5D2
5D Mark III sample images and videos at Canon jp
They look very impressive.
My biggest gripe about the 5D2 is the AF pattern, looks like they’ve fixed that in the best possible way, the GPS accessory is also nice, too bad it’s an attachment and not built into the body. Most likely I’ll be getting an 5D3. I’m not shooting professionally anymore, and I’m actually really happy with the 5D2, so not in a huge hurry to upgrade. (That said, I’ll probably jump on Amazon pre-order as soon as that’s available, pretty easy to pick up a freelance photo gig to pay for the upgrade. 🙂 )
Update: Pre-order now available on Amazon. I just pre-ordered one.
dragging the shutter
Dragging shutter on a lens with the best image stabilization produces interesting results.
Does your 5d Mark II overexpose when you’re not shooting full manual? Check your focusing screen setting.
I shoot M 95% of the times, gotta use that lightmeter whenever I can, you know. But when I shot Av in the last several months, the images were often bit overexposed. I would usually check the histogram and adjust and didn’t think much of it, but it bothered me that the exposure was a bit off if I didn’t change the EV compensation myself.
I was casually shooting at a park last weekend and it dawned on me that I forgot to change the focusing screen settings to Eg-S after I upgraded the firmware. I got the Eg-S for more accurate DOF display, but it’s a much dimmer focusing screen, and it pretty much requires f/2.8 lenses to be bright enough to see. After changing the focusing screen I changed the settings in the camera so it would meter appropriately, but I guess upgrading the firmware must have reset that setting to the default factory focusing screen, so the processor thought the frame was darker than it actually was and bumped up the EV.
Now the setting is back where it should, I find myself shooting at aperture priority a little bit more.
Lake Tahoe
Sherry went to Taipei for Lunar New Year so Bear and I spent 2 weeks at our cabin in Tahoe. I snowboarded most days and it was pretty awesome. Riding Sierra on weekdays means pretty much having the slopes to myself, we got huge amount of pow the first weekend and yesterday it started snowing again so I rode pow on my last day as well. This weekend and next week should be awesome so we will probably go there again.
On my way to the cabin I took a few snaps on 50 around Echo Lake, here’s one:
The mountain closes at 4pm so I had about an hour and a half before sunset, and I ventured out around the lake to take some shots. I didn’t plan to take landscapes there so I left my tripod in SF, these shots were all taken at ISO settings just barely low enough for handheld.
I googled to find photo spots in Tahoe and the top spot was Emerald Bay, I took Bear there and got a decent shot of it:
The following day we went to Zephyr Cove, I think I was at around Zephyr Cove but wasn’t quite there. I went to this private convention center or something like that, had to hike a bit to get to the beach, but the sight was worth it:
After that I drove back to the California side and stopped by Ski Run Blvd by Heavenly:
There was a public beach nearby, the sunset on the beach was spectacular, there were properties with backyards facing the beach. These shots were taken ISO3200, a bit noisy for colors (at least to me so I converted them to duotone:
The next day I went down Luther Pass toward Kirkwood:
I meant to stop by a Pony Express remount station that was used for only 5 weeks in Woodfords but it was getting dark so I turned back and headed back home.
5D Mark II
Those who follow my Twitter and Flickr photostream probably already know that I got a new camera – the Canon EOS 5D Mark II (Amazon link, B&H link). Before last Friday I had been shooting with a 20D, my first dSLR. I’ve had the 20D pretty much since it was released, and I was really happy with it. I never felt the need to upgrade to a newer 1.6 crop factor bodies, I really wanted to go full frame so I had been waiting for the 5D2 probably for more than 2 years. When Amazon got it in stock I JUMPED on it.
My 2 main lenses work a lot better at full frame, the 70-200/2.8L becomes a lot more useful without the crop factor, now I actually shoot in my studio with it pretty often. The 24-70/2.8L becomes a wide angle lens at the short end. The color rendition of the sensor is amazing, Adobe camera profiles in Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom 2 further bring out the colors in the images. I’ve also started to work in the ProPhoto RGB space for even larger gamut.
Noise performance in high ISO is impressive, with ISO expansion turned on it goes from ISO 50 to ISO 25600. I shot in a pitch dark lounge in ISO 12800 and the results look fine after a little bit of NR and B&W conversion in post-processing. I would say, loosely, the ISO 12800 is the ISO 3200 on my 20D.
Pretty much everything works better on the 5D2, going from the 20D is quite an upgrade for me. One thing I would really like to have is a better AF points pattern, but I guess Canon only put that on the 1D and 1Ds series bodies. The 9-point AF pattern on the 5D doesn’t really make much sense to me, especially if you’re shooting portraits and working with relatively shallow depth of field. I always avoid the “focus-and-recompose” technique, as that easily put things out of focus, it’s simple geometry. The camera has enough resolution to crop, but I generally avoid cropping whenever I can. The AF-on button is very useful, I set it up to do AF-stop, so I can use the shutter half-pressed to focus, and then I can press and hold the AF-On button to prevent the camera from focusing again. The 20D didn’t have such feature so I had to move the switch on the lens to MF.
The video capability of the camera is interesting, I am slowly learning how to use Final Cut Pro to edit and process videos. Shooting videos also require manual focus tracking, which is not something I used to do.
I’ve had the camera for 5 days and I’ve done a couple of casual shoots with it already, I’m at over 1200 frames. I’m doing 3 days of catalog shoots next week with it. I also picked up an extra AlienBees B400 and an octobox from Craigslist. I’ll probably have a lot more to write about the camera a week later. Here are some selected shots I’ve done with it so far…
Quick test shot after I unpacked the camera, lit by available light from ceiling only, ISO 1600, with 24-70/2.8L:
That night Sherry modeled for me in my studio to test it out, I shot this with a single AlienBees B800 with a softbox on her right, with a silver reflector from her top left for fill and hair, 70-200/2.8L:
Drinks at Wish last Saturday night, ISO 12800, NR’ed and duotone conversion in post-processing, image looks pretty clean, the place was almost pitch dark:
Did a shoot with Kourtney for her website last Sunday, this was lit by a 580 EX II on the side triggered by PocketWizards:
Sherry got me an RS-4 R-Strap, and it got here yesterday, so this afternoon I went for a photowalk to test out the strap, I attached it to the D-Ring of my Manfrotto QR plate, which was screwed into the tripod ring of my 70-200/2.8L, after 4 hours of walking my shoulder felt just fine, but then I am pretty used to carrying heavy photography setup. Some images from the photowalk:
I also shot some video footage and attempted to put it together in Final Cut Pro: