BMo said:

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Guitarsoup said:

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85mm 1.4G for Nikon is probably my most used lens.

I have the D500 and it is fantastic. About to cross over the 150k click threshold on the shutter.

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I know this is the case with many Canon users so it makes sense to be the same for Nikon. It just doesn't do it for me.

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Everyone is different. I used to use the 135mm 2.0L lens all the time when I was a Canon shooter because their 135L lens was so amazing.

Some people use the 50mm lens almost exclusively.

I tend to use two cameras at once and the 35 and 85 is on each. Compliment each other really well.

Have a beginner nikon d3400 but looking to get my third lens. Have a 17-55 and 70-300 that came with the kit.

I like to shoot surfing and landscape/outside. What is a good lens that may be preferable. Will a lens help my camera?

Maybe take a look at the Sigma 18-35 f1.8, should be a wonderful landscape lens. Your 75-300 should cover you well for surfing.

Anyone here use Affinity photo? I tend to stick to FOSS stuff, so I've used GIMP a lot and I also use Darktable as a Lightroom alternative, but Affinity (and all the other Serif Labs stuff) is 20% off and was thinking about giving it a whirl.

I love taking firework pictures

Have always been curious how those pluto triggers worked, looks like it was pretty dang wonderful!

AZAG08 said:

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I love taking firework pictures

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We had 4 cameras with us and the Pluto did the best! Hilarious....

Next time I will drink a margarita and just watch while it does it for me. I was manually shooting a 2nd camera with a 24-105 lens but it gets old after a while just trying to "time" the shutter.

Fireworks album

Pluto is on the camera with the file names prefixed as "70D2-10-22". Primarily the wide shots.

At some point I accidentally got on "22" zooming the wrong way; my Tamron's zoom is backwards from Canon and I frequently brain fart. It was late, dark, and I was tired.

AZAG08 said:

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I love taking firework pictures

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I've never taken firework pics with anything but my cell phone.

Guitarsoup said:

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AZAG08 said:

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I love taking firework pictures

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I've never taken firework pics with anything but my cell phone.

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Just got back from a trip to Norway for the northern lights. Was pretty excited about this trip as it was my first time to really push my Fuji GFX 50s in low light situations. I went ahead and grabbed the 45mm 2.8 as it was the widest/fastest lens they offer for the body at this time.

Long story short, I am extremely disappointed in this camera. It was terribly hard to focus as its mirrorless which in lowlight situations you cant see anything in the viewfinder without light.

When you are trying to shoot the Northern lights the last thing you want is light pollution, so most of the time I was in a field with nothing but the stars for light. Unfortunately the stars do no provide enough contrast for the sensor to get a focus lock on. I ended up having to focus manually on infinity, which for some reason is not all the way on when you turn the focus ring, you have to do a full turn and then back slightly to hit infinity... if you miss it too far right then the entire image is blurry, too far left and you are front focused.

Even more frustrating is you cant zoom in enough on the back of the camera preview to really tell if its in focus. I have entire nights of images where everything looked sharp in the zoomed in preview screen only to find they were blurry on a large monitor.

Anyone else have this issue with mirrorless? Im debating on taking a few grand hit and just unloading all of this newly purchased fuji gear so I can go back to Canon.

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I ended up having to focus manually on infinity, which for some reason is not all the way on when you turn the focus ring, you have to do a full turn and then back slightly to hit infinity...

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My Canon lenses are like this on my 70D. Isn't this normal?

When I went to Norway for the same reason, I had to manual focus pretty much everything and I had a couple 5D3s and a 1D body. I was using a 24 1.4L II, 14 2.8L, 35 1.4L. Still everything had to manual focus.

Don't think it is the camera, it is the environment.

I had serious camera envy of anyone using a 35 mm format because they had access to much better lenses for the environment. 14mm 2.8 would have been amazing, but nothing like that exists for medium format.

The company that drove us around each night in search of the northern lights used a full frame Sony mirrorless and it was so much better in the lowlight scenarios. Their image preview on the back of the camera had much better low light sensitivity and was able to focus.

dubi said:

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Quote:

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I ended up having to focus manually on infinity, which for some reason is not all the way on when you turn the focus ring, you have to do a full turn and then back slightly to hit infinity...

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My Canon lenses are like this on my 70D. Isn't this normal?

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it very well might be normal, it was just my first time having to manually focus on infinity. I have used manual focus before, but it was never on infinity. It was also my first time using a focus by wire setup, so I had to trust the digital focus meter on the back of the screen, which doesn't have the sensitivity/granularity needed.

The difference between front focus, in focus, and completely blurry was about a 1/8th of a turn of the focus ring on the lens, but on the back of the camera all 3 would be the same point on the focus meter.

Foamcows said:

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I had serious camera envy of anyone using a 35 mm format because they had access to much better lenses for the environment. 14mm 2.8 would have been amazing, but nothing like that exists for medium format.

The company that drove us around each night in search of the northern lights used a full frame Sony mirrorless and it was so much better in the lowlight scenarios. Their image preview on the back of the camera had much better low light sensitivity and was able to focus.

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Best focusing on the Canons then was to enable live view, zoom in to 5x or 10x and manually focus it. Nothing else was accurate in the least.

I mainly ignored my 14mm for the 24 1.4.

I had never heard of the pluto trigger before. interesting. I've had luck shooting lightning with the motion detection setting in Magic Lantern (3rd party firmware for Canon Cameras).

In addition to my focus issues noted above, I am not very happy with the quality of the long term exposure photos. First the grain is out of control, even at ISO 800 it was terrible. Everything I have read about this camera suggested that its low light performance was amazing all the way up to ISO 6400... I dont recall getting this much grain out of my 5Dii ever.

I also have a second issue, which is I have a band of light that is on the edge of the sensor that shows up on my 4 second exposures and gets worse as the image exposure time increases. It looks like a stuck shutter, but it doesn't make sense why it would only show on long term exposures as a stuck shutter should impact those the least. I also shot all of these using the electronic shutter, so a stuck shutter should be impossible.

Here is a link to a dropbox folder that has two photos. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qq4seoulrtlx5mk/AADQ7lRwLQcO0OWINpRSQJ8Aa?dl=0

One is a photo taken at ISO 800, (image ending in 1739) and note how bad the grain is. I have sharpening in lightroom set to zero and its still this bad.

Second image (ending in 1718) shows the band of light on the right side of the screen. This image has even worse grain as the ISO I bumped up to 6400 to compensate for the 4.0 aperture of the lens I used.

Neither are amazing shots, but just selected to show some of the issues I am having. I just expected more out of a 5000 dollar body.

Foamcows said:

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Just got back from a trip to Norway for the northern lights. Was pretty excited about this trip as it was my first time to really push my Fuji GFX 50s in low light situations. I went ahead and grabbed the 45mm 2.8 as it was the widest/fastest lens they offer for the body at this time.

Long story short, I am extremely disappointed in this camera. It was terribly hard to focus as its mirrorless which in lowlight situations you cant see anything in the viewfinder without light.

When you are trying to shoot the Northern lights the last thing you want is light pollution, so most of the time I was in a field with nothing but the stars for light. Unfortunately the stars do no provide enough contrast for the sensor to get a focus lock on. I ended up having to focus manually on infinity, which for some reason is not all the way on when you turn the focus ring, you have to do a full turn and then back slightly to hit infinity... if you miss it too far right then the entire image is blurry, too far left and you are front focused.

Even more frustrating is you cant zoom in enough on the back of the camera preview to really tell if its in focus. I have entire nights of images where everything looked sharp in the zoomed in preview screen only to find they were blurry on a large monitor.

Anyone else have this issue with mirrorless? Im debating on taking a few grand hit and just unloading all of this newly purchased fuji gear so I can go back to Canon.

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Were you using focus peaking? I haven't shot astro yet with my GFX 50s but did a full architecture shoot with it the other day and didn't have any problems (huge difference in environments, I know).

I have Sony mirrorless cameras as well and manually focus when I'm shooting the Northern Lights, I just don't trust any camera with such a (relatively) small amount of light coming off a star.

EDIT: and, for the record, the GFX rear screen is pretty awful for zooming in to manually focus, the Sony is light years (pun intended) better

focus peaking isnt that great on the fuji... its hard to see the peaking. There have been multiple requests to put a more extreme focus peaking option.

Unfortunately it didnt work at all in the low light areas because there was nothing to focus on, the ISO of the preview is so low, that there wasnt anything it picked up.

I really like the fuji for daytime landscape photography, the dynamic range of the photos cant be beat... but for any 4+ second exposure it seems to really under perform.

Let me know if you have any need for an extra battery or two (I have two extras) or need the 32-64 4.0, or 45 2.8. I will most likely sell everything and go back to Canon.

Foamcows said:

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I really like the fuji for daytime landscape photography, the dynamic range of the photos cant be beat... but for any 4+ second exposure it seems to really under perform.

Let me know if you have any need for an extra battery or two (I have two extras) or need the 32-64 4.0, or 45 2.8. I will most likely sell everything and go back to Canon.

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Definitely could use the batteries, no need for the lenses, I really just use the 110 and use Canon tilt-shifts via adapters for architecture work, I use my Sonys for everything else.

DDP

dubi said:

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AZAG08 said:

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I love taking firework pictures

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We had 4 cameras with us and the Pluto did the best! Hilarious....

Next time I will drink a margarita and just watch while it does it for me. I was manually shooting a 2nd camera with a 24-105 lens but it gets old after a while just trying to "time" the shutter.

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I like the sound of that! I always end up just trying to time the shutter instead of enjoying the show

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Best focusing on the Canons then was to enable live view, zoom in to 5x or 10x and manually focus it. Nothing else was accurate in the least.

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This is what we do.

FYI to anyone with American Express. One of the offers this month is to spend $250 at Adorama, and get a $25 credit to your statement. You have to log into your AMEX account and add the offer before purchasing anything.

Actually I might be interested in the 32-64 depending on what you want for it.

bthotugigem05 said:

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Actually I might be interested in the 32-64 depending on what you want for it.

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My wife wants this lens for her birthday (which is actually today - I put this off too long):

Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II USM Lens for Canon DSLR Cameras

Anybody wanna sell me one or know where I can get it cheaper than $1899???

Holy expensive lens!

Just buy it used.

peteratm02 said:

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My wife wants this lens for her birthday (which is actually today - I put this off too long):

Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II USM Lens for Canon DSLR Cameras

Anybody wanna sell me one or know where I can get it cheaper than $1899???

Holy expensive lens!

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I would definitely get the 85mm 1.4L IS over the 85mm 1.2L II.

This is the place to get the f/1.2, though:

https://www.keh.com/shop/canon-ef-85mm-f-1-2l-ii-usm-medium-telephoto-lens.html


FWIW, when I shot Canon, I preferred the 135mm 2.0L significantly more than the 85mm 1.2L II. It is also half the price, if not cheaper, focuses faster and is significantly lighter.

So my family went on a whale tour in SoCal... it was an incredible experience. I brought my 1dm3+70-200. I wish I had a longer lens at times but our small boat (not the big tourist boats) were able to get very close to the dolphins and whales.

Problem.... camera mirror or sensor was dirty. Maybe from our trip to the grand canyon and antelope canyon last month. I'm going to get all of my lenses and body cleaned now.

Are there any tricks to reducing the spots on my pics? It's very visible especially on a blue sky. I probably didn't notice previously since I mainly take indoor volleyball shots. I think the ocean and creature parts look ok.

Not much excuse now for running out of memory on your camera's card!

1TB SD camera card available now.

Except Lexar = trash