"The impeded stream is the one that sings" (Wendell Berry), Eno River State Park, Durham, N.C. | Canon 5D Mark II and 135mm f/2L lens | Exposed 1.3 seconds @ f/32, ISO 100 (-2/3 EV)
For the past week I’ve been working with a Canon 135mm f/2L lens from Canon Professional Services. I’ll be publishing my thoughts on this lens soon, but until then, a bit of a “teaser” from last evening.
Coming up on land - a view from the Hatteras to Ocracoke, N.C. ferry | Canon 5D Mark II and Zeiss Distagon T* 35mm f/2 ZE lens | Exposed 1/8000 sec. @ f/2, ISO 200.
Together with Elizabeth’s family I spent a week in the Outer Banks of North Carolina in mid-August. While I had high hopes of making landscapes of the coastline and the Cape Hatteras Light Station, it didn’t quite work out. Combining a family vacation with photography is clearly an art that my parents somehow perfected, but I will have to learn to do myself.
That said, I was able to do a fair number of pictorials, particularly on the car ferry that took us from Hatteras to the island of Ocracoke. I had rented a Zeiss Distagon T* 35mm f/2 ZE (Canon-mount) lens for this trip, and while I didn’t use it as much as I had hoped, I did make enough to get a general impression of how the lens handles and renders its subjects on the sensor. What I was looking for in my photographs was the “Zeiss look,” defined by strong micro-contrast and subjects that want to pop out of the frame (read: three-dimensional). I’m not convinced that I found this look in every frame that I made with this lens, but it was there in several of them. Having experimented with the Canon 35mm f/1.4L a few months ago, I was curious how my experience would differ.
A family returns to their car - a view from the Hatteras to Ocracoke, N.C. ferry | Canon 5D Mark II and Zeiss Distagon T* 35mm f/2 ZE lens | Exposed 1/1250 sec. @ f/5.6, ISO 200.
I will say that the Zeiss lens is demonstrably sharper than the 35mm f/1.4L–the edges hold together better, and even the center is much sharper. I believe the online rumors that the 35mm f/1.4 is due for replacement and that Canon surely is working on a successor; after all, the 24mm was re-staged with a Mark II designation not that long ago, and with the increase in resolution from the cameras coming down the pike, the 35mm is going to demonstrate too well that it is an older lens design. That said, the “effect” that these lenses provide is similar–strong vignetting so that the subject of the photo really “pops” when shot wide-open.
While I am still in the process of going through my images from the trip, as well as evaluating two lenses from Canon (the 135mm f/2L and the 14mm f/2.8L II), I would tentatively say that I give the nod to the Zeiss lens over the Canon 35mm because while they do produce similar effects, the sharpness and control of chromatic aberration with the Zeiss is overwhelming to the eyes. But, the Canon lens has autofocus (the Zeiss being manual focus only) and is a full stop faster, so anyone trying to decide between the two should keep those details in mind.
More to come.
Black Tern in flight alongside Hwy. 49, Horicon National Wildlife Refuge, Mayville, Wis. | Canon 7D and 400mm f/4 DO IS lens | Exposed 1/1600 sec. @ f/4, ISO 400 (neutral EV)
Last weekend I was at Horicon National Wildlife Refuge and experienced some focus problems with my Canon 7D heretofore non-existent, or so I thought. Upon reviewing photographs from the 7D from the past several months, I noticed that none of them were actually as sharp as they could have been. I attributed the softness to the lack of acutance in the files, and while I continue to believe that is an inherent property of cramming 18 megapixels into an APS-C format sensor, there was a real problem in play.
I didn’t want to believe that it could be a question of the camera “back-focusing” (or front-focusing) because I’ve grown to distrust people’s claims that their camera, and not their own inabilities, are to blame for their out-of-focus photographs. I don’t remember these claims from the film days. Perhaps I was just oblivious to the complaints, but I tend to believe that the instant feedback of the digital camera is partly to blame for the knee-jerk reaction that anything wrong with the pictures must be camera, not operator, error.
I will not mince words: ever since the Canon 10D and the Nikon D70, there’s been a lot of bitching and moaning in online forums about back-focused images, and I did not believe them. At all. Until now.
Now, I will argue that there is definitely operator error to blame in most many cases of complaints about back-focusing. Last weekend I was convinced that I must have chosen the wrong focus point or didn’t have the AF locked by holding in the rear button–some prefer AF to only be activated by using the back button, I prefer AF to only be turned off if I hold in the back–and allowed AI Servo (Continuous AF for Nikonians) to screw up the focus. To confirm my assumption, the next day I took test photographs in the garden around my parents house in Racine, Wis. and was shocked to discover that none of them were sharp. Sure, the wind was to blame in a couple cases, but even when conditions were perfectly still the results were poor, so I rented a LensAlign from Lensrentals.com to investigate whether front or back-focus was to blame.
And what did I find after I unpacked and set up the LensAlign? The 7D and the 5D Mark II both back-focused with the 400mm DO IS lens. Well, there goes the neighborhood. And a lot of preconceived ideas, with it.
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Derelict sailboat, Pugh Marina, Racine, Wis. | Canon 5D Mark II and Lensbaby Composer | Exposed 1/80 sec. @ f/4, ISO 200 (-1 1/3 EV)
On Saturday evening my dad and I went down to Pugh Marina in hopes of catching a moonrise. But as we got to the lake, we saw a heavy haze on the horizon above Lake Michigan, and the hopes for a moonrise dimmed. However, I took advantage of the fleeting golden-hour light to walk into a normally gated area at the marina that used to be chock full of derelict boats. Evidently, the marina has been getting rid of them, because the gate was wide open (it actually has been for days–I just finally took the initiative to walk over to it) and only three remain. I’m 99% certain that if you dropped this boat into the lake it would just sink.
In my last post about the Lensbaby I was hesitant to recommend it. I will say that, after using the Lensbaby Composer some more, it does have a learning curve and I think the hardest thing to know is when to use which aperture with this lens. This is especially true as you have to manually insert and remove the aperture “blades” (washers), and since it’s a rental I don’t want to risk carrying them around and losing them! What I am slowly discovering is that I like this lens with a little more depth of field than it has wide open or even at “f/2.8.” The image above was captured at f/4, and I think I may try f/5.6 in my next experiment. Food for thought.
I am currently in the process of properly calibrating the focus on my Canon lenses using the LensAlign system I rented after some recent frustrations with back-focusing while using the Canon 7D and 400mm DO IS lens. At the same time, I am also experimenting with a Lensbaby Composer that I rented to round out the order. It offers the complete opposite of what I am seeking for my other lenses: fuzziness. In fact, its effect is akin to a zoom blur, only far more consistent in its results than zooming a telephoto lens while dragging the shutter could ever be!
Mom walking out the front door, Racine, Wis. | Canon 5D Mark II and Lensbaby Composer | Exposed 1/320 sec. @ f/2.8, ISO 1600 (-2/3 EV)
One of the first things I noticed when using this lens is that its color rendition on my 5D Mark II left something to be desired. I was prepared for and expected to have fun with the highly-selective focus / blurry nature of the Lensbaby, but I did not want wonky color to be a part of the experience. As I wrote earlier this year, the X-Rite Colorchecker Passport can be an incredibly useful tool when a camera and lens combination is not yielding the kind of color that you expect. Have two bodies and want similar color? Profile both of them in the same lighting condition.
More after the jump!
Flying over Memphis | Panasonic G1 and Olympus 9-18mm f/4-5.6 ED lens; exposed 1/640 sec. @ f/8, ISO 100.
Oh, to have a wide-angle lens for the G1! Thanks to Olympus and to David Rees, the department chair of the photojournalism sequence at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, I have a 9-18mm f/4-5.6 ED lens for my Micro Four-Thirds format for testing.
This lens is the only alternative to Panasonic’s 7-14mm f/4 wide-angle zoom, which is, unfortunately, ridiculously expensive. Not that the Olympus zoom is inexpensive. I’ll have more thoughts as the summer progresses.
American Robin, Peace Park, Columbia, Mo. | Canon 7D and 300mm f/4L lens; exposed 1/200 sec. @ f/4, ISO 1600
I have owned the Canon EOS 7D for a few months now; I purchased one in November 2009. One of the concerns I had with the 7D, at least initially, was that the files simply did not seem sharp “enough” at higher ISO’s because of the noise degrading the image quality. And I do believe that, in the case of basketball arenas and other dark situations where, frankly, “exposing to the right” to get a good histogram (and a good exposure) means cranking up the ISO to 4000, the quality certainly does go down. However, that’s true even of the oft-touted Nikon D3. And I don’t necessarily give the camera its fairest chance in those situations, because I prefer to use f/4 telephotos. Why? They’re smaller, they’re lighter, and they cost less. They cost less now, and they will cost me less in the future because I won’t need an artificial shoulder or knees like some of my colleagues when we all grow older.
This past Saturday, I found myself crawling around Peace Park with the 7D and the 300 in order to make this series of a Robin spitting out a berry. One of the things that pleased me greatly was that, as the light got dimmer and I resorted to higher ISO’s, the detail was held solidly from my ISO 1600 frames. How well? Below is a 100% crop of the head and bill detail:
100% Pixel Detail. No noise reduction or sharpening applied.
Note that this is before processing the image with any noise reduction plugins, such as Noiseware or Noise Ninja. Neither has this sample been sharpened! Not bad. Not bad at all…
For outdoors use, the 7D should prove to be a very capable camera indeed.
Missouri women's basketball forward Jessra Johnson, left, fails to prevent Oklahoma's center, Abi Olajuwon, from making a two point shot on Wednesday, 20 Jan. 2010 at Mizzou Arena in Columbia, Mo. Olajuwon wears the same number as her father, Hakeem "The Dream" Olajuwon, from his college career. The Tigers lost 61-62 to the Sooners. | Canon 1D IIn and 50mm f/1.4 lens; exposed 1/1250 sec. @ f/1.4, ISO 800. | Color corrected with X-Rite Color-checker Passport.
Last Wednesday I found myself sitting on the court at Mizzou Arena in Columbia, Mo. with two different camera bodies and three different lenses. So, what’s the problem? The 7D and the 1D Mark IIn see colors differently. Add to the equation that the glass in a lens affects the color rendered in the final photograph. For newspaper photography, usually captured in JPEG instead of RAW, this is just something you would normally “live with.”
Maybe you’d just take two identical bodies and figure no one will notice the difference once its printed on Charmin, any ways. But online, the differences can be stark. Take, for instance, this Columbia Missourian slideshow where I was using my 7D and a 1D Mark III on loan from CPS, but my colleague Chris Dunn was using an older D2Xs body at the football game between MU and Kansas State. This is an extreme example, but it is amusing to watch Kansas State’s jerseys suddenly jump from purple to blue depending on which camera was used. Hint: Nikon didn’t figure out what purple “looked” like until the D3 and D300 came out.
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