Show everyone the latest shots which make you feel dead chuffed with your camera choice
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David Kilpatrick wrote:... so the EOS 5D MkII got an hour's walk [...] need to correct very strong, sharply defined CA on the 24-105mm [...], followed by generally dull colour and an odd feeling that the images are not quite as sharp as they should be.
As far as I know, the Canon EF 24-105 mm 1:4 IS lens does not have a very good reputation among Canon shooters. Those who really depend on a superb standard zoom mostly prefer the EF 24-70 mm 1:2.8. And that's not due to faster speed but better sharpness.
I really enjoyed Paul's frosty sceneries. No such cold at this moment in our part of the world so my chances of shooting any may be in the middle of December...(just maybe) Very inspirational that's what they are!
David got some nice scenes too, especially with the integration of some landmark architecture enriches the quality of a frosty scene and lends the mystic appeal of the life that once was lived on this land.
But I'm curious about the noise quality in the blue skies of David's shots taken with Canon; they look rather unnatural/weird when viewed at 100%. Is this how the specks should look or am I being picky?
Thanks for sharing, they are incredible scenery photos!
David Kilpatrick wrote:If the weather is moving north you will - we look like having freezing fog again tonight, hopefully sun in the morning. I took the Alpha 900 + 28-105mm out this afternoon at 3 o clock after seeing the pink tinge on distant trees, then discovered that the sun actually had set as far as anything at ground level was concerned in Kelso! But I got this (forgot to use SSS, but it was fine):
David
I am impressed by the sharpness of that (especially with SSS off). I have compared it to some of my ISO 400 shots at 40mm F/8 in poor light taken with my Tamron 28-75/2.8 and it looks sharper, I need to recheck my lens micro-AF adjust on the 28-75, as I suspect I am still front focussing even at +3 adjust.
That property by the Tweed looks idyllic, though would it be in danger of flooding I wonder?
Paul, lovely shots, I mean to congratulate you earlier, for your dedication in getting out early and capturing those cold mornings.
I attached a section of the 100% original frame. There are some 'streaming' colour lines and some patterns where the sky gets to be a darker blue. I would expect these streaming effects not to be there and probably see a more randomly dispersed speck pattern. It becomes more visibly noticible/trackable at 200% and above if wshed to be viewed closely.
I'm not so sure of them being from compression personally. But here's what I did: I downloaded the original from David's gallery to my computer and opened it at 100% and above for further examination...
Naturally, I have no idea what causes them. They're either clustred or in streaming form which can be noticed in full-blown sizes.
Downloaded this photo as well and opened it at 100%. First I must say that I'm not trying to compare the two cameras' products. I'm more in the mind of trying to understand the reasons affecting the end-product.
This photo from the A900 definitely doesn't bear any patterns that catch the eye immediately but sort of has a random colour speckle dispersion; No patterns or streamlines but transitions instead. I like what I see in this photo better but the sky colours are different in the each photo, so I don't know if this had any influence on the end-products at all.
Because of the size of these large pix I am compressing them to Level 8, High, not maximum. It will preserve most of the pic 'as was' but artefacts may get exaggerated. The dark blue polarized Canon sky is a bit of an extreme as well - that sort of density of blue will rarely be entirely smooth. I can only say that on opening and processing a series of the Canon files, there's no doubt that the noise levels are much lower than the A900, which I think was already known. All I am doing is confirming that the 5D MkII does indeed have minimal noise, and the A900 is pretty noisy for what it is.
Despite that I would not be in a hurry to swap the A900 for a 5D MkII. I am trying to find out whether there is any way to set rear curtain sync with a studio flash/PC cord connection. It looks as if you can't set ANY flash parameters unless a Canon Speedlite is fitted to the camera. You can't even preset your flash options with no flash fitted, the menu just tells you no flash is attached and you can not set these options! Also, the camera is almost impossible to use for someone with my eyesight correction (very good eyesight, but needing minus 1-1,5 dioptres per eye, and poor accommodation closer than 30cm).
I forgot to mention the A900 evening pix were shot with ski gloves on (Minolta Dimage X ski gloves!). These are not just gloves, they are thick padded gloves with a hard inner palm/finger lining. I had absolutely no problem using the A900 including ISO, +/-, WB corrections while wearing these gloves. I can not even manage to turn the Canon on while wearing them, let alone use the buttons and wheels - in fact, it's quite hard to operate the shutter button.
It must be adventures on daily basis when trying out new camera equipment for you. I'm not too keen on the Canon but I definitely expect the Sony Noise Deparment to step in and do some revisions to the firmware to brighten the days of the A900 buyer.
Hi again Sonolta,
Very cute nut-cracking buddies there. Sigma working nicely for you again!
The reason I never mentioned those horizontal bands running across your crops is becouse they are not visible to me in the original photo that you asked me to download and examine. I re-examined and they still are not there except maybe some random pattern of colour transition.
Since I don't have any A900 shot quite similar to these, I won't try to compare but now that I've processed more of the Canon shots I am seeing some serious lens unsharpness where I do not expect to (like the bottom half of the first shot here). Since this unsharpness varies, I honestly think it's due to the IS moving elements. It looks as if the lens is sometimes suffering from bad decentering, sometimes OK. The image does swim around a LOT even at 24mm - recompose a shot by a fraction, and the moment the camera is moved, the image jumps so you can't tell what you are re-composing. Also, the very smooth JPEG sky has this strange neutral density 'dirt' all over it (which ACR cRAW conversions do not, but they are actually quite noisy - my early judgment was based mainly on viewing the JPEGs first).
This is a difficult call. I warned Canon that the 24-105mm had a poor reputation. Last night shooting it seemed as good as I should expect but these landscapes just are not looking anything like as sharp as the A900 with a 15 y o Minolta 28-105, and it looks as if the culprit is the lens.
Here is what is causing the problem in the sky of the house shot - a perfectly normally exposed (not underexposed) ISO 200 image with no sharpening applied. This was exported to 16-bit sRGB, by far the smoothest option, with no adjustments at all to add any noise, and here is what the red channel looks like in the sky area:
This is the root of Sony's historic difficulty with Alpha sky blue noise levels. The banding and artefacts which Don has spotted (best seen on a reasonably calibrated monitor) are added later by JPEG compression affecting the blue channel. The red channel is a chaotic mess, and this is what I'd expect to see in an ISO 1600 image or higher, not an ISO 200 'native sensitivity' shot! It is almost so bad that it can't be corrected without loss of detail.
I still like Davids shots of the Abbey and poppies (despite the 'blue' issues), the pigeon nets look really weird on the full size pbase image. I like the composition of the trees and town with the hoar frost (although as stated the Canon lens doesn't look up to much on the large image).
Don's squirrels are also really good (even though they are greys - our native reds are fighting a losing battle with them across the UK)
Now that looks cold, and very beautiful (although with a location like that I think even a disposable point and shoot would give you a nice pic), any idea of the location?
Very inspirational that's what they are!
