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Doing the best I can

Tue. August 31, 2010   |   photographers
This post is mostly about photography for photographers, so if you are a bride, a friend, or my mother, feel free to just look at the pretty picture from Holly & Joe's wedding this past weekend below and move along to the wedding posts below this! If you are a photographer, try to bear with me while I babble blindly about my camera issues!

PLEASE KEEP IN MIND: My comments are just my opinion. I don't know nearly the amount of technical things others do, and my observations about color, graininess, etc are just that: observations.

So, if you follow my Facebook or Twitter, you might have seen that I've been, how shall I say, damn pissed off at my camera lately. For the record, I use the Canon 5d, and have since it came out. Not the 5d Mark 2, the 5d.

My motto for my business is that I ALWAYS try to do the absolute very best that I can. The reason I didn't switch to the Mark 2 is because that camera is great for video but I just plain hate the files for still photos. They're noisy, the color is terrible compared to the regular ol' 5d, and it's absolutely no improvement in low light autofocus mode whatsoever. I'm of the mindset that I only switch equipment when there is something BETTER out there for me--not a lateral move, or worse yet, a downgrade. Since I am not and do not plan to shoot video at least not at the same time I am shooting stills, I chose not to get the 5d Mark 2 when it came out.

(** the things I hate about the 5d mark 2 is the color and the ickiness of the files. dontcha just love technical explanations like that?)

Anyway, lately more than ever, I've been having issues with my 5d (I have three, btw). They all go to Canon regularly for calibrating as do my lenses. However, in the past few months, I've had one blow it's shutter and give me err 99 which Canon informed me would be $500 to fix. How about making a camera that costs several thousands of dollars that doesn't blow its shutter?! The other ones, although I just LOVE the color, just plain don't focus very well, which has become more annoying the pickier I get about such things.

I realize that it's my style to shoot wide open, and when shooting wide open I am going to get more misfocused photos than the average person. BUT, when I'm standing still in broad daylight 5 feet from my subject with the focus EXACTLY on the eyes, shouldn't that photo at least be close?! No? How about at 2.0? 5.0? And forget it if my subject does something stupid like MOVE!!! How dare they! And don't even get me started on what might happen if I'd like to shoot after the sun has gone down.

Now, I think that I do a great job with my weddings, and I shoot a TON, so this hasn't affected my being able to produce plenty of focused images. However, there should be more. Seriously.

So I have to consider switching to Nikon, which I'd rather not do, because of all the money invested in Canon glass lenses, and the fact that I LOVE MY LENSES SO MUCH that i just refuse to give them up. But I'm considering it because I hear that Nikon makes cameras that can focus. Even when people are moving. Wow!

Before I get all hasty though, I decided to try out Canon's bigger cameras first. This past weekend at Holly & Joe's wedding, I shot the 1d Mark 4. I found it to be quite responsive and able to focus accurately using all of the focus points, which the 5d does not. On the 5d, the center focus point is the only one that really focuses well, and not always. But the Mark 4 really was good even at the outer edge of the points.

A positive: The Mark 4 has usable ISO's waaaaay beyond the 5d. I shot this photo below at 8000 ISO and I think it looks great:


A negative: The Mark 4 has a crop factor of 1.3, so even though I am able to shoot my amazing Canon lenses, they just don't quite have the feel that they do on a full frame camera.

The weight of the camera was also an adjustment--it was almost twice as heavy as the 5d with no battery grip--I was in major pain after the wedding! It can't hurt me to get a little workout though.

This weekend, I'll be shooting the 1Ds Mark 3, which I hear good things about. I've seen the files and they're beautiful, and it is a full frame sensor. But the high ISO feature of the Mark 4 isn't there on the 3, and that's a huge bummer.

Where is this mythical 1Ds Mark IV anyway?!

A final note: My main canon lenses are the 24 1.4, the 50 1.2, and the 35 1.4. I also shoot the 100 2.8L for macro. These lenses perfectly capture how I see the world. Can Nikon lenses replace that?
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