The Canon Thread - Page 153

Decided to go with the 5D III, ordered this afternoon along with a 24-105 F4L, 100mm F2.8 and a 50mm F1.4 as well as a new Sachtler tripod and a Tascam sound recorder. I can't take the risk with the A99 being so new and untested...plus the price is relatively high.

I played around with the EOS-M at the store yesterday. Over here Canon Malaysia offers several kits: one with the 18-55 zoom, 22 prime and flash, one with the 22 prime and EOS adapter, and a third which I don't remember.

 

The build quality is really good. It feels more robust in the hand, even compared to the Fuji X cameras. The touch screen is nice and the lenses all have a very nice, solid feel and heft to them. I didn't insert an SD card to take pictures though, so I don't have samples but I assume IQ will be very similar to the 650D.

 

I really want to like this camera. I really do, but the big dealbreaker that I can't get over is the focusing speed. Now it's not as slow or as bad as some claim, but even so when you put them side-by-side with the competition it just feels like it's struggling. The Olympus and Panasonic bodies blow it away completely. The Fujis, which were considered the slowest of the bunch, still feels faster and snapper than the EOS-M. We even took a display Samsung NX1000 unit from the shelf and did a side-by-side -- the Samsung was much snappier to gain focus.

 

My main beef with the focusing is what I call the "focus wobble", the effect when a CDAF algorithm reaches the point of focus and then iterates back and forth that point to obtain an accurate focus. The EOS-M's focus wobble can be quite excessive, especially with shallow DOF, or close focus subjects. It sometimes even misses the point and then goes on to the long and painfully slow hunt to infinity and back. So, good for landscapes, architecture, still life, etc -- not so ideal for people except in a planned portrait session.

usually that stupid fail of an autofocus you re calling wobbling is when you chose continuous autofocus or whatever clever autofocus mod.

if it was, you can expect much better from the camera. if not, well forget it ever existed.

should've used a deeper dof here :-/  otherwise, it's probably my favorite photo i've taken so far  :D  it's uncanny how 2 of my best friends and I love the movie Nacho LIbre. 

 

I was shooting at ISO 1600 and Aperture priority at 1.4 or 1.8 or so and my shutter speed was something like 1/1000............   :-/  Lesson learned I guess...  The whole night I was shooting with similar settings and I was getting this ugly darker banding in some of my shots.....was this due to the fluorescent lights and too high of a shutter speed?   :(   I was asked to shoot this event at my church (unpaid), and I happily did it and the post processing---but I could have saved myself a lot of time if I didn't get like 3-4 different exposures in my shots including a small number with a dark band.  :-/  I kept switching from center average, dot, and evaluative metering, trying to get it right.  It was a fun, learning experience.

 

This last photo shows the banding I'm talking about.  Was a pain to deal with in post, although I did make some strides forward in bulk processing skills learned and saved myself a bunch of time :-/   I shot maybe 600 shots and ended up processing a total of 260 or so.  If I counted the number of individual photos that I adjusted and pasted settings to similarly exposed photos--it was probably around 25...could have been much less had I stuck to one metering method and didn't get this banding (out of the 260 I processed, they accounted for maybe 5%). 

Edited by hyogen - 10/28/12 at 7:38am

Thanks for the review.  I had read similar things about the EOS-M as well.

 

DigitalRev posted their review as well.  Kai is more obnoxious than usual, complaining that the camera won't focus while running down the street but it gets the point across.

 

I'm thinking about an Olympus OMD-E5 now.  I won't be able to easily use all my Canon glass but maybe simplicity will be a good thing.

 

EDIT: DigitalRev review: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4nzXeqkpOE&feature=plcp

 

Yup, I really hate fluorescent lighting because of this. It locks your shutter speed down to a relatively low speed to avoid the banding, which in turn limits action shots. Furthermore, lighting quality is generally not as pleasing compared to other forms of artificial lighting.

Yes, cheap low freq ballasts on the flourescents, or if using fill flash - too high a sync speed. 

Metering mode won't make a difference if the lighting were causing this unusual banding. It doesn't look like any lighting I've ever seen. It looks like some glitch in the camera. Was flash used? Bounced?

flash was used on some - bounced always off the ceiling or side wall. 

ok that may explain a few things. the banding MAY have been caused by the bounced flash hitting something on the ceiling. the florescent light reflectors or something reflective or even restrictive. The color shifts are from white balance differences between flash and the available florescent  light. These are just guesses from what you've told us and what I've seen. These were processed and I'm curious to see the uncorrected raw file to see what happened.

Edited by musubi1000 - 10/31/12 at 10:47pm

If the shutter speeds were still that high, AND flash was used, it was a sync issue. The shutter wasn't open long enough for the full flash duration. So only part of the frame got the additional illumination.

By simply turning on high speed sync this obstacle is defeated. Oh and out of sync shots are obvious as one side or the other is dark but never banded. But then again these new electric shutter cameras are different.
Edited by musubi1000 - 11/1/12 at 1:21am

35mm f/2 IS announced.

 

http://www.canonrumors.com/2012/11/ef-24-70-f4l-is-ef-35-f2-is/

 

YEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSS!!!  Will be on pre-order as soon as possible.  It's going to be overpriced, it's a bit bigger and heavier than I'd like but it's f/2, it's 35mm, and it has 4-stop IS (1/2 exposures, handheld!).  As long as it works out OK optically, I could see this lens living on my camera 80% of the time.

Okay... that just made my 35/2 obsolete. Assuming the quality and price will be in the same league as the 24 IS and 28 IS, I think it's a winner for me too.

I'm glad to see they are updating the 35/2 - though I don't think it needs IS (my own personal preference though). 

 

I'll look forward to distortion samples - if it's as clean as I hope it will be, I'll buy one.