still have my canon 6D still works great. its getting a bit heavy though. taking it out with a full kit of 35/50/70-200 starts to wear on you if you’re walking about all day. if i had to pick one lens to take out it’d be the 35 or 50. still a big chunk of camera to carry around. also have a ricoh gr and while the super compact dimensions are nice i still miss using a vewfinder. still hoping one day they’ll make a gr with a built in EVF.
That’s why as soon as I heard of the 28mm-300mm lens and saw that reviews were really good (quality), I jumped on it. Like I said, it does probably 95%+ of all what I shoot, lately closer to 99%.
I got tired of swapping lenses, even the come-with 18mm-55mm and 55mm-200mm, both of which were featherweight and excellent optical quality.
Just having to swap lenses if it’s windy, etc., already opens the innards to dust, dirt, etc. Not having to do that was a B’harni-send.
Dunno if there’s a Canon equivalent, but definitely look into it. I go “taking pix”, I just bring a camera case, not a whole camera bag. Think it’s a Lowepro I got from someone at work. Snug, but everything fits fine. Only stuff that’s in there aside from body+lens is a battery-charger (just so I don’t “forget” where I put it) and some filters.
Grab’n’go. Simple.
One of the other areas a phone can’t handle is ultra wide.
A 12mm lens on a FF camera gives about 113 degree field of view.
Stand in the corner of a room and see both walls with room to spare.
When I was in Antarctica, the Japanese science group had what they called the “All Sky Camera”
It had a custom Nikon lens that covered more than 180 degrees. Yes, it could see behind the camera.
Looked like a glass doorknob sticking out the front of the lens.
There are also tilt and shift lenses that can change perspective and alter the plane of focus in the image.
Most all of the old view cameras could do this. Ansel Adams used this in many of his photos.
Now we have image stacking to increase depth of field.
Spray and pray seems to be the thing in the digital age.
But yes, I chimp even when shooting in controlled light settings.
All the Best,
Jeff
Just out of curiosity,
How many of you use manual settings on your camera?
Full manual?, Aperture Mode?, Shutter mode? Or all Auto?
Outdoors I usually want to control the fStop to get the depth of field I want. As long as the exposure and ISO are within reason.
For moving objects, it’s the shutter speed I want to control.
All the Best,
Jeff
Depending on the day, I like to go fully manual, but most of the time, I’ll control aperture and shutter speed while letting ISO float, and override it with exposure compensation as needed. Sure, it’s possible to simply boost shadows in post, but I like to try and shoot to the right when I can. Gotta preserve those highlights (to a certain extent).
Kind of miss shooting film. Meter for the shadows and develop for the highlights. Pretty hard to fully blow out highlights unless the scene is super dynamic, like trying to shoot into the sun for portraits of people wearing black.
Fixed aperture, -0.7EV, watch the shutter times. Beware the “1/f rule” for whatever f/stop.
I’ve taken handheld wide-open shots with 1sec shutter times, hanging out my attic window of all ways, but taken like 50 of them in a row, and have gotten lucky with at least 1 or more where I could see individual windows in buildings in Manhattan.
-0.7 EV because at even -0.3, let alone 0.0, bright portions might get blown out to white. I can always screw with the gamma in IrfanView later on to brighten pix if needed.
Oh, and ISO400 pretty much all the time, unless I “need” stoopit-high ISOs for night shots. I got 2 tripods, used each maybe once as I’m not about to drag one along wherever I go. If I need stability, I’ll do the “I Dream Of Jeannie” arms-crossing, rest the camera/lens in the crook of my left elbow, inhale, hold, snap, exhale. Also never ever use the viewscreen (turned off, saves assloads of battery life). That’s why God invented the viewfinder.
That H1A’s pretty neat looking. Can’t say I’ve used one of those before, but I did quite enjoy my old Honeywell Pentax Spotmatic F. Those older meters are more or less useless at this point in time, but shooting Sunny 16 was good enough for what I needed. Those old M42 Takumar lenses are still excellent performers today, though they might not be able to render quite as much detail when adapted to high resolution cameras of today.
I do just the opposite, and “shoot to the left”.
Film cameras saturate softly, whereas digitally, once you hit the ceiling, the shot’s all blown out.
Friends’ bbq a bunch of years ago, I got shots of some kind of flowers he had growing on the fence, looked like Morning Glories but not quite. Just for s&g, I set EV to 0.0 to see how things would look, then back to my normal -0.7.
At 0.0, the petals were blown out to solid white. At -0.7, you could actually see the almost sandy “grains” on the surface.
You can’t “put back” what’s lost and gone forever.
Wanna brighten pix, bump the gamma.
I find that metering varies quite greatly from camera to camera. Nikon’s D810 actually has a setting for highlight-weighted metering, where it aims to preserve highlights, but for others, it’s usually one of three options: matrix, center-weighted, or spot. I’ll usually leave things on matrix, but since I back-button focus, will switch to spot now and again. Works well enough, but at the end of the day, everybody’s got their shooting preferences, and develop their own methods for dealing with complicated situations.
Most of the time aperture priority, manual focus set at hyperfocal distance.
Mike
For still life, full manual.
For most other things, manual with Auto ISO. I’m fairly happy with the D850 up to ISO 3200. Beyond that it starts to look like a mess, but you can get away with higher if you don’t need to crop very much. DXO Photolab (post processing software) prime noise reduction is fantastic.
I generally set the ISO, and frequently the white balance and exposure bias. I typically try to use ISO 80 or 100 if possible, and if I can’t hold it still enough, I pick the next lowest setting I can. I don’t often use a tripod, but I frequently use whatever is nearby to stabilize the camera.
Sometimes I exposure-bracket and then generate HDR manually in post. I frequently adjust curves and levels and saturation and stuff in post too, seasoned to taste.
I know relatively little about cameras, but I’ve been thinking on and off recently about trying to get some better beamshots. How much dedicated camera does $200-300 get you these days? Enough to be worth it over a high end phone (S23 Ultra)? Fine to go used if it’s a recent enough model from a reputable brand.
Maybe the S23 in RAW mode and a decent tripod? You can force “old”-ish cheap DSLR’s to take very good pictures even in dark conditions since some old kit lenses ten to be very sharp and accurate (and dark) but it won’t necessary be a fun process.
Beamshots you do in full manual mode. If you can do it with S23 its enough.
Used is always an option. you won’t need anything fancy.
This place is very fair price wise and has an excellent rep.
BHphoto and adorama both have used Eq. sales.
All the Best,
Jeff
Sheesh, i cannot figure out how to quote on mobile…anyways
I have the s23 Ultra and really love the camera. It should be more than you need for beamshots.
The samsung camera app is pretty good but there are some others that give you more finite control (open camera being one). You should be just fine using manual controls to fix your settings.
I dont think raw will be needed and frankly, although the 200mp images are neat the pixel binning it uses is better and you will get better, usable, pictures letting it bin down to 50mp or even the lowest setting.
The stylus is also nice for these shots since you can trigger the shot without touching the phone which reduces vibrations
I think the phone vs slr is a bit misplaced.
Yes, slrs take better pictures from a pixel peeping perspective, however that comes at a significant cost. Considering a mid range phone today is around $400 and the best camera phones hit about $1k that equates to $600 in “camera” equipment. You would be VERY hard pressed to get a decent slr setup for $600 WITH a variety of lenses.
So yes, a slr is better, but at a much higher cost. And like anything quality has a price.
This is ignoring the convience factor.
I also argue that a good phone with a person who knows how to control the settings will likely exceed a near-price slr with someone who does not.
Technology wise yes you cannot beat a big lens with a lot of light, but small lenses and small sensors are not completely pointless.
Take the lens for example. A big lens is hard to manufacture with tight tolerances across the entire surface, small lenses phycially have less area to have issues with.
Beyond that is the pixel binning. As i said above the 200mp images on my s23 ultra are not any better than the lower quality ones. Those pixels dont gain you anything quality wise. However the 50mp or 12.5mp shots that use those 200mp are binned down to really make a difference. I would argue that a binned 12mp shot from TINY optics are as good as from a 12mp slr of a similar price point. The 50mp shots are also quite good and getting a 50mp slr requires a significant investment.
For me i have been quite impressed with my s23 when it comes to the camera. For fun i do photogrammetery and i was able to get results similar to my work camera (Canon r5 with the 100-500 “L” lens) just off my phone. If you are not fimilar with photogrammetery it is very sensitive to picture quality (technical quality, not artistic). Admittedly though the canon lens was not ideal for this work as the 100mm was much too long, it is however the only lens we have). The big downside to the s23 though was an inability to play with lenses and settings to change dof.
Of not, Here the 50mp shots from the s23 were the perfect balance, the 200mp just added processing time and didnt increase quality and the fully binned 12.5 had too few pixels.
I notice toykeeper mentioned his oneplus. It is a good point to make that sensor quality makes a big difference in camera phones and the oneplus being a somewhat more budget minded phone wont have the best sensors. Assuming it is a 3 camera rig that is a 7 or 8 which does use a Sony sensor (that is good) for the primary (48mp binned to 12mp). The macro however is a dismal 2mp sensor though and it looks like the revies said just to use the primary and crop as it will give better images.
All in all i love a good slr, but dropping an extra $600 to get a good camera is less than even an r50 and lens kit would run.
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Hi there @Snoman002 , does this work for you?
There it is, thanks!
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