[sterling_archer]

Of course man. Supposedly It will arrive tomorrow (bought it in web shop) so this week I will be exploring it for the first time and writing some posts about my impressions.

[MMPerth]

Start out with a 5D2 and 24-105mm lens. It’s full frame, sharp looks professional and takes amazing images. A lot of pros still use these as a go to. If you’ve got lots of money go for mirrorless. To be honest, I haven’t really been able to justify spending pretty much double the money getting a mirrorless camera. If you know how to use the 5D2, your shots will equal or eclipse them.

[sterling_archer]

Are you honestly suggesting 2000$ camera for the newbie photographer?



Waaaay above my price range, camera I bought will surely serve me long ass time and maybe later I will invest into good body on which I will mount specific lenses.

[CaptainChardonnay]

I've seen 5D mark 2s on craigslist for around 500.

[sterling_archer]

I don't live in US and shopping from there is probably last of my options. Ebay could have been better choice, 500$ cheapest (pre owned) also, but just body.

[MMPerth]

You should be able to get a second hand 5D2 with a 24-105 mm lens for about $800, that’s in Australia.

Don’t worry too much about high activations, mine has been dropped, smashed by waves when shooting on the rocks (completely drenched) and basically treated like a rental for the last 6 years. It still works every time, it’s weather sealed and tough.

Aside from that it is a pro camera and looks like one. Pull that out and women want to get their clothes off for some reason. Lol, I’ve never figured out why women associate cameras with getting naked, but they do. Most women are proud of their bodies and for many having some classy naked photos is on their life’s mission list.

[sterling_archer]

Maybe it will be my choice when/if I enter into more serious photography, but for now, I think I will enjoy camera I bought.

[CaptainChardonnay]

Sterling, I think I remember seeing that camera you bought is really good for video. It's really popular among videographers because it has 4k.

A good tip is to get camera insurance which cost around $50 - $100 a year. That way you don't have to worry about your gear getting stolen or damaged in case of drops, etc. It also covers my Macbook Pro.

[sterling_archer]

^Camera insurance? Sounds interesting, I must check out if we have this here in Cro. Yes, it shoots 4k, but supposedly you need super fast memory card, which is expensive. I am not even sure yet what writing speed or capacity it needs to be honest.

[Ringo]

(12-11-2018 12:34 AM)sterling_archer Wrote:  

^Camera insurance? Sounds interesting, I must check out if we have this here in Cro. Yes, it shoots 4k, but supposedly you need super fast memory card, which is expensive. I am not even sure yet what writing speed or capacity it needs to be honest.

Definitely get insurance. Shouldn't be too hard to find. At your gear's price range it may be relatively expensive, but you don't want a moment of carelessness to end your photographic career. I've seen it happen multiple times.

[Ringo]

(12-10-2018 03:29 AM)MMPerth Wrote:  

If you’ve got lots of money go for mirrorless. To be honest, I haven’t really been able to justify spending pretty much double the money getting a mirrorless camera. If you know how to use the 5D2, your shots will equal or eclipse them.

The 5D Mark II is a very solid and reliable piece of equipment.

But the size and weight difference is insane. Look at a comparison of the 5DMII with a 24-70mm vs a Fuji XT2 with a 18-55mm. Not exactly the same, but will shoot comparable quality.



The Fuji setup is almost half the weight and literally fits in a big pocket. As a person who enjoys travelling and shooting, that's key.

I went from a Canon 60D to a Fuji XT20 and also found color processing to be very different on the mirrorless - in a good way. Color and light looks so natural and "organic". Sonys have S-log, which is different but allows even more extreme color grading.

[CaptainChardonnay]

(12-11-2018 12:34 AM)sterling_archer Wrote:  

^Camera insurance? Sounds interesting, I must check out if we have this here in Cro. Yes, it shoots 4k, but supposedly you need super fast memory card, which is expensive. I am not even sure yet what writing speed or capacity it needs to be honest.

I'm big on the camera insurance because I let someone use my camera before and they dropped it totalling a little over 1k worth of damages. They paid for it but it was a pain in the ass. Plus the risk of robbery while travelling to dangerous countries.

I suggest getting the best memory card you can find so that you can take full advantage of all the cameras features. I don't know if you will be shooting stuff in motion, but having a fast memory card will allow your camera to shoot more frames a second. For example if you were to shoot a sporting event say a local soccer game. You would change the setting to burst mode and take a burst of photos of say someone shooting into the goal instead of just taking one shot trying to capture the perfect moment. Having the faster card allows your camera to take more frames and at the same time it will process those frames into the card faster.

I found my card on ebay and did some research to make sure it was a real card and I remember getting a pretty decent deal for it. Amazon also has good deals on cards. You also wait for boxing day sales. I think I bought my card for 50USD.

Just remember that you're not suppose to leave images on your card. After a shoot make sure to transfer the images onto your computer and then before you shoot again, format the card. Because of this, I bought a 32gig card and have basically never run out of space during a full day of shooting and I have a backup 8gig slower card in case I do run out of space. Avoid the cards that are bigger then that.

Another tip I just thought of Sterling, I just saw from one of the links you posted that your camera can shoot RAW. Watch some youtube videos explaining how to shoot in this setting. Its a little more complicated post production because you will need specific software to edit your photos however the amount of data you will be able to pull from each image is roughly 10x the amount of data you will get from a JPEG image, this means pulling out richer details and colours from photos. Shooting RAW is another reason to have a good memory card as the file size is just bigger.

[CaptainChardonnay]

(12-11-2018 07:39 AM)Ringo Wrote:  

(12-10-2018 03:29 AM)MMPerth Wrote:  

If you’ve got lots of money go for mirrorless. To be honest, I haven’t really been able to justify spending pretty much double the money getting a mirrorless camera. If you know how to use the 5D2, your shots will equal or eclipse them.

The 5D Mark II is a very solid and reliable piece of equipment.

But the size and weight difference is insane. Look at a comparison of the 5DMII with a 24-70mm vs a Fuji XT2 with a 18-55mm. Not exactly the same, but will shoot comparable quality.



The Fuji setup is almost half the weight and literally fits in a big pocket. As a person who enjoys travelling and shooting, that's key.

I went from a Canon 60D to a Fuji XT20 and also found color processing to be very different on the mirrorless - in a good way. Color and light looks so natural and "organic". Sonys have S-log, which is different but allows even more extreme color grading.

I wouldn't say this is a good comparison because one is a full frame and the other is a crop sensor.

With a full frame sensor it allow the camera to capture more light in low light settings and also allows for a lot more detail to be captured. This makes a really big difference in image quality especially when you enlarge the image.

The price and bulkiness also come into play as you mentioned so it depends on what your needs are.

I had no problem lugging my 5d with a 24-70 along with a spare lens around in my backpack and taking it out when I wanted to frame shots or when I was doing photoshoots.

A cool pocket sized camera would be the Sony RX100 I first saw it in this thread. Here is a comparison between imagine quality.

[sterling_archer]

@CaptainChardonnay

Got to store this afternoon and bought 64GB SDXC class 10 memory card. It has writing speed of up to 74 mb/s and reading of up to 90 mb/s. It is a bit over 50$ and I think it is worth it.

I knew already about possibility of shooting RAW and I want to shoot almost exclusively in that format and use Adobe Lightroom to work on images. Also experimenting in 4k filming will be cool. Since camera was a big investment for me, I want to give all of myself into it to learn. This will not be used just for the lolz point and shoot, no. I have already prepared dozens of books and am also looking for courses in photography. Photography will be a serious hobby for me, just like bow making is and maybe it will have some benefits in the future regarding money and Game.

What do you mean with formatting the card, why? Just cut and paste raw files or really formatting using computer or camera itself?

[CaptainChardonnay]

Because you have the 4k, 64gigs makes sense now that I think of it.

You can go into your camera settings and format all the file on your card. It's important to do this in the camera before shooting.

Around the 3:20 minute mark.

http://tbexcon.com/us/2012/10/24/memory-...-be-doing/

Quote:

1. Format instead of Erase
Simply erasing, or deleting, images on your memory cards doesn’t fully clear the cards of leftover data.
Instead, it’s better to get in the habit of formatting your cards.

Formatting is a more complete way of clearing old files from your card and can reduce the risk of data corruption.

A word of caution, though. Formatting is typically irreversible, so always be sure all of your images are backed up before doing this.

2. Format in Camera
Without getting into the technical details, the general consensus is that you should always format your memory card in your camera and not on your computer.

If you use your computer to format your cards, there’s a chance your camera may not be able to read the file structure properly.

3. Format New Cards Before Using
When you buy a new memory card, it’s always good to reformat in your camera before using it. This ensures the card is ready for that particular camera.

4. Format Cards Before Using In Other Cameras
While you could encounter some issues using the same memory card in different cameras, it’s normally not a problem so long as you format the card in the new camera before using it.

[sterling_archer]

Didn't have much time today so I just glanced over the manual. At beginning I saw there is a section for formatting and it implies what you and this linked article say. Honestly, didn't knew that common practice in photography is just filling memory card during one photo session, copying files to computer and then formatting card. I thought it is supposed to be used like in mobile phone, i.e. until it fills up. I learn something new each day.

[MMPerth]

When you use the camera your best bet is to start out in AP (appature priority). So set your appature - Big F Stop numbers = everything in focus and less light. Small F stop numbers, small areas of focus (blurry background) and more light.

Your Appature (F Stop) now dictates your shutter speed based on available light.

High shutter speed numbers means you’ll freeze things.

Low shutter speed means things will be blurry with out a tripod.

To control your shutter speed, adjust your ISO. ISO is your cameras light sensitivity.

Low ISO numbers means dark images.

Big ISO numbers mean lighter images.

For taking photos during the day where you want to get a bit creative and maybe create some blurry background images, try this.

Lowest F Stop you have (F2) AP mode, ISO 300. Adjust the ISO until the exposure looks about right and meters correctly. Pro tip, don’t be tempted to take it over 2000, you’ll introduce noise into you pictures.

If you want to make pictures of a sunrise, your settings are f11, ISO 100 in AP.

So you see in AP mode, the camera chooses based on the light the shutter speed for you. It’s like driving an SMG car, you can still change gears, but the car does most of the heavy lifting.

Or forget all of that and just put it into full auto.

[sterling_archer]

Tried navigating the options on my camera and man, there are shitload of them. Using the manual I selected some basic default settings such as exclusively taking RAW format, aspect ratio and default photography mode (I will use manual adjustment focus/aperture/shutter). I formatted the card, played with focus and shot some pictures but I didn't took them to computer and deleted them all.

Until the next week, each afternoon for an hour I will just explore the camera, see what it offers. This weekend will supposedly snow and first snow around here is always something pretty to look at so I think I will have some interesting material for my first photos.

[CaptainChardonnay]

Try looking into some basic rules of photography such as rules of thirds, balance, composition, lines, not having big gaping blank spaces, etc. Also starting out with only black and white can help you focus more on the skills I just mentioned and then you can switch into colour when you have the bare bones down. Something my friend who is a professional said to me is that everything looks good in black and white.

Also I want to emphasize on what MMPerth said. I think most new photographers think they have to use manual mode to really know how to use their camera but in my opinion, the pros most of the time are using aperture or shutter priority.

For example say you are shooting a wedding (one of the basic ways to make money from photography). If you use manual mode you will always be changing your settings and that means not taking photos if you are moving around and the lighting is changing. If you use aperture priority, you can set your focal plane and then instantly dial in the other settings at the touch of a button, shutter speed and iso, and then take the shot.

Aperture priority being really good for taking photos of people (what I like to shoot) and shutter priority for things in motion.

Manual mode is mostly for if you are in a studio and you can control the environment and know its not going to change for example a studio photoshoot where the model is in one spot changing poses and the distance from the camera to model doesn't change nor does the lighting.

[MMPerth]

Most pro shooters shoot in AP (AV) mode. The hardcore ‘Street’ guys that shoot ONLY in manual, including manual zone focus and not ‘ ‘chimping’ are normally lucky if they only get one well exposed shot of a pigeon or homeless person.

In saying that, you need to master your new craft. You need to make it look easy or else you risk looking like a hipster cock monkey that just got his tax return.

[sterling_archer]

Hmm... I guess I was one of those who think "man, you must do it everything manual or you are newb for life". Thanks for the advice guys, it makes a lot of sense what you two wrote.

[sterling_archer]

Also, when doing black and white, is it best to use preset in the camera for that or convert color in Lightroom to black and white?

Regarding focus mode, should I leave the camera in default afs/aff mode where half pressing shutter buttom focuses the image?

[sterling_archer]

Guys, what mode of spot metering you use?

[CaptainChardonnay]

Perhaps when you are just learning and taking a lot of shots you know you will be deleting, you can use JPEG to be able to manage the files faster. If you shoot in JPEG and with the camera setting to black in white, the files you transfer onto your computer will be in black and white.

With RAW your camera will capture the imagine as is in colour so if you set your viewfinder/screen to black and white you wont be losing the colour, you will still see the colour in post production. With this method, you change the image to black and white in post production. Again though, the files will be a lot bigger but they will capture a lot more data also.

RAW is your camera capture the image as is and leaving it will all that data so you can change it in post production. JPEG is your camera changing things with the image inside your camera (say turning the photo in to black and white) and really cutting down on the data so that you have a smaller more manageable file size.

This guy has a good video on why to use black and white.

For focus, I do a technique called focus recompose because I like to shoot people. I set the focus point in the middle of the screen, point my camera at the persons eye and then recompose the frame to take the shot. A better way to do this is to set it in your camera so that the focus button and the shutter button are 2 different buttons so that you don't always need to recompose unless you change your point of focus. Because my focus button and my shutter button are 2 different buttons, I can leave my camera on continuous focus. If my subject is still I just need to click the focus button once then take the shot with the shutter button. If my subject starts to move, I can hold down the focus button while taking photos at the same time.

I think I leave my camera on centre weight metering most of the time. I'll check my camera and let you know after my workout!

[sterling_archer]

I selected RAW + JPEG format and played with some macro shooting. It has a button on the side of lens which allows selection of AF macro mode. Regarding metering, it has "multiple", "center" and "spot". Should I check "center"? Btw, what is the difference between shutter types and which you prefer?