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Grain is dead

Canon 5D

From the Canon 5D Mark II.

Vince LaForet’s work with the new Canon 5D Mark II at 1600 and 3200 ISO confirms that, for all practical purposes, grain is dead.

Click the picture for large JPGs at high ISO speeds from the new Canon body. In many you will see color fringing near the corners suggesting Canon has some way to go to better Leica in its optics, albeit even L lenses are mostly chump change compared to those from Germany. The fringing (correctable in post processing in Lightroom or Aperture) is especially noticeable in the snaps taken with the 45mm TS-E and the 15mm Fisheye (which I own and love). High time Canon started adding in-camera processing to fix this sort of thing. Obviously, the body ‘knows’ which lens is mounted and it’s not like Canon is ignorant of the aberration patterns in their optics. Adding a lens ‘map’ for each lens doesn’t sound like nuclear physics.

What you will not see is grain.

It would seem that the resolving power of Canon’s latest sensor significantly exceeds that of many of its lenses. I would suggest that use of any of the consumer zooms on this body is a complete waste of time – the proverbial Coke bottle lens on a Hasselblad. The cheaper non-L primes are fine (I love the fisheye, the 50/1.4 and the 85/1.8) but ‘kit’ lenses are a no-no. Garbage in, garbage out.

So, if you want grain, you are going to have to add it at the processing stage!

Signs of intelligence at Leica

Cameras, Leica

A medium format DSLR.

With all the money wasted in making the underwhelming Leica M8, a dated and obsolete 35mm format SLR and the silly rebadging of Panasonic point-and-shoots, you would think it was all over at Leica. With its modest resources the company is foolishly trying to compete against the vast capital of Canon, Sony, Nikon, Pentax, etc. all of whom make cameras far superior to anything from Leica at a fraction of the price.

Well, finally, Leica has taken a leaf out of Apple’s book and is Thinking Different.

The Leica S2. A 30 x 45mm 38 megapixel sensor and a new range of lenses.

Clearly a premium product which should appeal to many professionals, this camera would seem to compete directly with the Hasselblad H range of digital cameras and, I would guess, would be priced similarly, meaning $30,000+ for the body alone. The DSLR format (much like the Pentax 6×7 in concept, but digital) makes for a far easier to use camera than the more tripod oriented Hasselblads and the lens range promised is impressive.

The sensor is made by Fujitsu, and unknown quantity, so it will be interesting to see how it performs. Much of the design work seems to have been done by Phase One, an established presence in larger format digital cameras. That’s encouraging.

Of special note is the fact that all the lenses will have leaf shutters which are ideal for flash sync, as they will properly expose the whole frame with flash at any shutter speed. Of course, the inclusion of a shutter in each lens makes the lenses costlier and Leica lenses are already very expensive, thanks to an overpaid, lazy, unionized German workforce. In fairness to Leica, the many Leica lenses I have used over the years have, without exception (OK, the 1930s 50mm f/2 Summar was a real dog above f/4) been superior to just about anything out there. The Apo-Macro Summarit f/2.5 120mm (equivalent to 85mm on a full frame camera) looks especially mouthwatering. And, joy of joys, Leica has finally discovered autofocus, some 20 years after Japanese SLR makers added this great technology to their interchangeable lenses. I would guess the lenses will retail well north of $5,000 each though who knows what the dollar price will be once the kindergarten known as the US Congress gets through with destroying our currency.

Promised for the summer of 2009, if the company survives that long, you can read more at Leica’s poorly designed, lugubrious web site – if you have the patience to get through all the mindless and time wasting flash videos.

If the camera ever gets into volume manufacture, it could fairty be said that this is truly the first innovative camera design from Leica since the M3, which I used for some 30 years. That game changer first sold in 1954 ….

Vince LaForet on the Canon 5D Mark II

Canon 5D

A real user – that I trust.

I haven written before of the exceptional commercial photography of Vince LaForet.

Click the picture to see LaForet’s first impressions of the still and movie modes of the 5D Mark II.

When a great commercial photographer extols the image quality of a camera, (“The 5D MKII camera produces the best stills in low light that I’ve ever seen – what you can see with you eye in the worst light (such as sodium-vapor street lights at 3 a.m. in Brooklyn) – this camera can capture it with ease.“) I tend to be somewhere between belief and skepticism. Is the writer conflicted? Does the manufacturer pay him with free gear or hard or soft dollars?

In LaForet’s case I trend to the belief end of the scale. He has too much great work out there to risk his reputation.

The intriguing thing about his blog entry is that he seems most enthused with the movie mode of the new camera. Who would have thought it? If he is right, then it is indeed a game changer – 1080p HD video from a DSLR! I don’t make movies (though the genre fascinates me) and don’t need the awesome low light capability, but for many these facets of the new body may put them on the upgrade path.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II

Canon 5D

No more speculation.

Hop over to DPReview for all the details you could possibly want on the new Canon EOS 5D Mark II.


The new camera looks less well balanced than the old, looking top heavy to my eyes

I speculated about the features a few days ago and was dead wrong in some important ways.

  • The sensor is 21 mp, similar to that in the top of the line 1Ds Mark III. Wonder how they are addressing the cannibalization of sales?
  • Price. $2,700 in the US, not $3,000. This will clobber used prices for the 5D, making that a very attractive entry into full frame digital.
  • Full weather sealing. Seems like they added it.

Here are some other features which add value:

  • Movie mode. If you don’t like it, don’t use it. Nice to have.
  • Highlight tone priority – cuts down on burned-out highlights.
  • An allegedly improved LCD screen. Given how awful the one in the 5D is it’s hard not to believe Canon on this one.
  • Three Custom modes, up from one. Great. Especially as that Print button is still there and still useless, though it now doubles for Live View.
  • ISO 25,600 maximum, which may work well with the improved sensor. We will see. If so the expense of ultra large aperture lenses can largely be avoided, as this is three stops faster than the 3,200 on the 5D.
  • Wireless file transmission using the new removable handgrip. Great for studio previews.
  • The ability to fine tune the focus setting for up to 20 lenses – a great way of keeping lens cost down by forcing the user to tune the lens to the body.

And yes, Canon has still to Fix that flap!

All in all, a worthwhile update and a boon for those looking to get a 5D whose used price will likely head south of $1,500 with the glut of amateurs updating for the latest and greatest. Don’t knock them. These gear heads are your friends. If you can live without the new features (sensor dust removal is nice!) then save $1200 and get a 5D.

A handy backpack

Cameras

From LowePro.

When I sold my Rollei medium format film gear the LowePro bag in which it was stored was sold also. Way too large for anything I would contemplate in terms of equipment given the Canon 5D’s more compact size.

I finally got around to deciding on a new bag for the 5D gear and settled on the LowePro Mini-Trekker AW. LowePro has such a huge selection of products that it’s not easy finding what suits your needs best and though they have a selection aide on their site it’s not as good as it could be.

I narrowed it down knowing that I wanted a comfortable backpack design for trekking through the woods and aware that a handful of lenses, a ring flash, a few spare CF cards, batteries and the 5D’s instruction book (yes, I still get lost in all those menus and buttons sometimes) would be my companions on such trips.


Loaded for bear

In the above configuration, reading clockwise from the top left: 85mm/1.8, 15mm fisheye, 24-105mm L, 5D/200 L, 100mm macro, 50/1.4, 20mm, ringflash. I use UV filters on all lenses (except the fisheye whose bulbous front element precludes the use of a filter) so have need of only one lens cap – for the fishy. Alternatively, I can exclude any one lens and mount the 400mm f/5.6 L on the camera instead. It fits nicely with the lens hood collapsed. A neat attached fold-out plastic cover makes the whole thing weather resistant and quality is top notch – a notable feature of LowePro bags. It comes in green or black (ugh!), does not scream ‘Steal Me’ and has external straps and a supporting pocket for a tripod. (I prefer a shoulder bag for the tripod to spread the load and use a Tamrac for my 30 year old Linhof tripod). Add the QD sternum and waist straps, included, and you have something clearly thought through at the design stage by a working photographer. As I want for nothing gear wise, this bag should have a long and useful life ahead of it.

LowePro’s site asks for $182 for one of these which is ridiculous. I bought mine on ePrey for $120 delivered, new with all OEM instructions, labels, what-have-you.

By the way, here’s my old one with the Rollei 6003 kit:


A throwback to the bad old days of film

The scale is different, but the old bag was some 50% larger than the Mini-Trekker.

As usual, I find that all those zippers need some breaking in but once you get over that the bag is as user friendly as these things can ever be.