After the Rain

Tonight, on my way out from work — a window in the stairwell, sprinkled with rain drops.

Luckily I had my digicam with me… 

Do I Need a Full-Frame dSLR?

If I were to really, and I mean really stretch my budget, I could get a Canon 5D mark II (5DmkII).  And if I were to ever get it, now is the ideal moment — so I’d be able to use it on my upcoming trip to India.  So, should I?

What would be the advantages of a full-frame body for me personally?

• Great high-ISO performance.  This is very important for me, so two thumbs up.
• Larger viewfinder due to the larger sensor.  Very nice!
• Canon’s newest imaging technology.  According to DxO mark I can expect highest quality images, overall 33% better than from my 3-year old 30D.  That’s very significant, but I already talked about high-ISO performance above, so when I limit the comparison to color depth and dynamic range, the numbers show only 11% improvement.  That’s not enough, especially since I subscribe to the theory that a great photographer with a mediocre camera will take much better pictures than a mediocre photographer with a great camera.
• No crop factor.  Intuitively I used to think of myself as a wide-angle type of guy, so full-frame would be just the thing for me, right?  Well, not quite.  I just examined my four- and five-star images and guess what? It seems that I am a mid-tele kind of guy!

  If I were to get a full-format camera, I’d use the 17-40 for 19% of my shots, the 50mm lens 16%, the 70-200 lens 40% of the time, and I’d miss or have to crop 25% of all shots! So for me no crop-factor seems to be a disadvantage.

• Better AF.  Apparently the AF is a bit better than the 30D, but not radically better.  I recently used a Nikon D300 in the light of three candles and a TV, and the AF did not hesitate once — pretty amazing.  Such performance is much better than my Canon 30D, and according to first test reports on the Internet, also better than the 5DmkII.

Unfortunately, the 5DmkII also has several other disadvantages:

• Very expensive.  OK, so it’s space-age technology and cheaper than a few other bodies.  I don’t earn any money with my camera, so for me the price alone is almost a deal-breaker.
• Very large.  Yeah, there are even larger bodies out there, but I want small.  Something between a Canon 450D and 30D would be ideal.
• Too many pixels.  21 MP is just too much for what I do.  I’ll have to buy more memory cards, a larger hard drive, a faster computer, wait longer for backups, etc.  I’ve learned to sharpen images properly, so I get very good 30×45 cm (12×18″) prints from my current 8 MP body.  If I had 10 or 12 MP I could crop more, but that’s it.  In case I do get the 5DmkII, I’ll set it permanently to sRAW1 and produce 10 MP files.
• No in-body IS.  I would very much like IS, but none of my lenses are IS, and Canon and Nikon do not offer in-body IS.  If I were to change systems, Pentax would be the top contender, mostly due to IS and my familiarity with the system.
• I need a new lens strategy.  If I look at the graph above again, I see that it makes sense to swap the 17-40/4 for a 24-105/4.  I’d miss 3% of the wide-angle images, but I’d be able to take 32% more normal and short-tele images without changing the lens.  Wow, that would be good!  But it would cost money, and if I don’t want to miss 25% of my tele-shots, I’d also have to swap the 70-200/4 for a 70-300/4.5-5.6 DO IS or 75-300/4-5.6 IS.  But that would mean putting non-L lenses on a top-notch body, which makes little sense.  So I’ll have to live with the 200 mm limitation and crop 25% of my shots.  Which would speak for the 21 MP, which I wanted to turn off.
• 14 bit RAW images.  On paper this sounds good, but it makes for even larger files, and noone has reported any real-life increase in image quality.
• Not that reliable. Michael Reichmann reports that although not exposed to extreme weather or temperatures 23% of the 5DmkII on his Antarctic expedition failed at one time or another.  Hmm…

So, what to do?  It seems that the Canon 5D Mark II produces mixed feelings, and in my case the negatives seems to outweigh by a good margin.  So what are the alternatives?

1. 5DmkII + 24-105/4 and 30D + 70-200/4, then sell the 17-40/4.  Sounds good, but I’ll have to spend a lot of money, lug two cameras around, and I’d still only have IS in my shorter lens.
2. Get a 5D (mark I).  It is moderately priced, has the large viewfinder and the ideal pixel count, but only a slight edge over my 30D in terms of ISO and overall image quality.  Plus it’s still large and heavy.
3. Switch to Pentax.  A K20D + 16-50/2.8 + 60-250/4 sounds sweet: IS, relatively small, relatively light, relatively inexpensive.  But I’ll have to change systems, will not gain image quality, and the viewfinder will not be as large as with a full-frame camera (but nicer than the Canon 30D).
4. Change to Nikon D700 or Sony Alpha 900.  This is just theoretical, since it brings virtually no advantages, but all the disadvantages of a new system.

And the winner is …  alternative 5: stay with the 30D for as long as it works and concentrate on the images.

Slow Shutter Blues

OK — it’s not even middle of February, but what the heck — I nominate Blues Caravan for act of the year 2009.  What a performance!

They are white, young and good looking, so what the hell do they know about the blues?!  Well, I don’t know what it is, but they’ve got it!  If you like electric blues, go and see them!

I was in “Die Fabrik” tonight, and it was a great concert. Joanne Shaw Taylor started it up, Oli Brown stepped up a notch and Erja Lyytinen with “Steamy Windows” absolutely lit up the crowd. And then, over two hours in total, it kept getting even better.

I’d completely forgotten about the concert, so I only had my digicam with me (but I did have it!). At first I thought I shouldn’t even bother, with the low light, fast-moving subjects and all, but I couldn’t resist and took a few shots. I put the Ixus in manual mode, chose auto ISO, turned off the flash and I fired away. The AF was very slow and unreliable, the shutter speeds were too long, and the shutter released about half a second after I’d pressed the button, but hey — I still got a few decent images.  And I like the dreamy and blurred look of the photos.

BTW, Canon calls this shooting mode “manual,” but focus and exposure are still determined automatically. What you can do is turn the flash off, set a custom white balance or dial in exposure compensation.

Before you accuse me of too much Photoshop reickery let me assure you that all images, also the first one, are straight out of the camera. I don’t know how, but for the first image I’d somehow manged to put the camera into a funky custom white balance, and for whatever reason the blown highlights were rendered orange. I like the result very much!

Digicam with a Cell-Phone?

I recently wrote that since my dSRL is too large to carry along at all times I’ve been missing some photo opportunities.  Consequently I did some market research and bought a Canon PowerShot SD870 IS (called Digital IXUS 860 IS in Germany). This digicam is quite recent but no longer in production.  Its main advantage over its current brethren is the relatively low pixel count — 8 MP instead of 10 or 14 — and its advantage over the more advanced models (G10, etc.) is its small size.

I’ve now had the Ixus for a week, but I haven’t taken any images with it yet. The reason is the old one — no camera at hand when I need it. Even though I put the Ixus in my work-briefcase, I still didn’t have it with me when I went shopping, picked up a friend from the train station or walked over to the cafeteria for lunch.

I now vow to put the camera in my pocket and have it within reach at all times! Hmmm, isn’t that funny?    I just promised to carry my digicam everywhere I carry my cell-phone.  Maybe they should finally build a cell-phone with a reasonable camera in it.  Or, since digicams are larger as cell-phones, integrate a cell-phone into a digicam?

Anyhow, let’s see if I get into the habit of taking the Ixus everywhere with me and if I have any images to share with you next week…