Cameras

[Sebastian Cobb]

I don't think either of my canon's (i've got an older 300d) 'stop down' until you actually take a shot. I'm sure they both have a button to preview that though.

[touchingcloth]

Yeah, there's usually a bottom on the bottom of the lens mount which triggers it.

It sounds like back button focusing might not be available on the 300D without Magic Lantern. It's native on the 5D II onwards, by the sound of it.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I think the 300d might have magic lantern, I bought it used and it has some firmware hack that'll let it take >1600 iso, which is pointless because it makes the photo's look like they're made out of sand.

I saw there was a video on youtube on how to do it on the 5d classic, but didn't bother to check if that's actually an original 5d or something else.

[touchingcloth]

And now that I think of it, it's really not like a half shutter press at all. I was talking drunken shite.

The back button controls the focus and the focus alone. A half press in that mode locks exposure but doesn't affect focus. This means you can use a half press to meter off mid-gray or whatever, and then recompose and use the back button to focus on your subject but keeping the metering from your half press.

[greenman]

A long lens is good for landscapes thanks to compressing depth as well, so you can do things like have the moon appear large alongside your subject.

I think manual focussing on a DSLR is nearly impossible on a crop body, as even if you swapped the focus screen for one designed for manual focus I don't think digital bodies with TTL focus work with the old style ones which do that split focus ring thing where the image halves line up when things are in focus, which means you're left trying to check for sharpness in a tiny, dim viewfinder. Easier on FF, but for a glasses-wearer like me I don't think I'd ever get on well with manually checking for sharpness.

What's your current Canon body? I have a 60D and ISO 1600 is my cutoff with that one, so we probably have the same sensor if not body (it's the 7D mkI and something like 650D's sensor). The 90D looks pretty pricey, and if better high ISO performance is a concern then it might be worth looking second hand. My Fuji is a 2014 model and is very usable up to 6400 (and supports 12,800 and 25,600, but I don't touch them), so you could look for a similar vintage canon and check out the ISO performance on a site like DPReview, as crop bodies more than a couple of years old start losing value very quickly. The fixed lens on my Fuji is f/2, though, so depending on whether you would primarily be using your Sigma ISO 6400 shooting handheld might not buy you too much.

There's basically a big difference between offering higher ISO's and offering better noise performance, by the same token a lot of the claimed improvements in recent years are only for in camera Jpegs as in camera processing has improved. Really I wouldn't expect all that much improvement in noise over the last 6 years, the technology is already working close to its limits. It will probably tale some kind of fundamental shift in sensor design to really see all that much charge now besides increased resolution.

As far as landscapes go I would say tele lenses probably make shooting "easier" since you can pick out individual elements more and backgrounds are going to be very narrow so cutting out undesired elements will be easier. Personally though I think in the UK especially shooting wideangle is ultimately more rewarding though, especially as one of the main strengths here is how changeable and interesting the sky is.

[Endicott]

I think I more or less agree about landscapes. With a tele lens you need even more careful composition if you are to avoid a flat image. But it's good to keep your ideas and options fresh.

Back button focus is quite a personal thing, I've found. It depends on your camera ergonomics and your own workflow. Personally, since I discovered it a couple of years ago, it's now a 'must have' feature on a camera.

[greenman]

Shooting wide-angle with landscapes tends to mean more complex compositions, having to weigh up multiple elements rather than a single dominant element.

Something like this(shot at 20mm on a FF camera) having to position the bushes, the hillside and the sky took lots of moving around shooting from different points and waiting for clouds shift.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I find with landscapes that I naturally "zoom in" on the subject in my mind - ignoring the vast areas in my peripheral vision. I very rarely bother taking landscape snaps on my phone, because I look at the screen and the subject, which seemed so prominent to my eyes, is suddenly rendered as a minuscule dot.

[Cloud]

I ought to get into it again.  5D mk II lying around that I never use because the excellent cameras in modern phones made me too lazy.

[Sebastian Cobb]

This looks interesting, along with making decent, but cheaper lenses, Sigma seem to be making unconventional image sensors.
https://twitter.com/atomicthumbs/status/1320076285163393024

[touchingcloth]

This looks interesting, along with making decent, but cheaper lenses, Sigma seem to be making unconventional image sensors.
https://twitter.com/atomicthumbs/status/1320076285163393024

The Foveon sensors have been around for quite a while now. I've always fancied a go on one as they're supposed to have nice colours, and the lack of Bayer filters makes them have a higher apparent resolution than Bayer sensors with a higher megapixel count. It's a funny aspect of the magapixel wars really, as a "single" pixel on a Foveon sensor is actually a stack of RGB sensor layers, whereas on a Bayer sensor there are multiple photosites side-by-side which form a single pixel in the image, and I think some manufacturers will count the red, green and blue photosites as part of the megapixel count, whereas the Foveon sensors call the whole stack a single pixel.

[Sebastian Cobb]

After watching a cold war spy thriller I kind of want a Minox camera now. Pointless, expensive and I'm not even sure you can still get the film catridges (it's 8x11mm), and if you can, it'll be eyewateringly expensive and old stock.

[touchingcloth]

Which film? I saw one of those recently in something I can't remember, and I similarly lusted after one, for similarly pointless reasons.

[greenman]

The Foveon sensors have been around for quite a while now. I've always fancied a go on one as they're supposed to have nice colours, and the lack of Bayer filters makes them have a higher apparent resolution than Bayer sensors with a higher megapixel count. It's a funny aspect of the magapixel wars really, as a "single" pixel on a Foveon sensor is actually a stack of RGB sensor layers, whereas on a Bayer sensor there are multiple photosites side-by-side which form a single pixel in the image, and I think some manufacturers will count the red, green and blue photosites as part of the megapixel count, whereas the Foveon sensors call the whole stack a single pixel.

With normal sensors your basically using interpolation so the colours for each pixel will be worked out by comparing it to those around them.

I actually just sold off my Sigma DP1 Merrill as prices were a bit above(£400 rather than £330) what I paid for it new, I suspect its in demand because it had a "pure" Foveon sensor with full colour readout on every pixel were as Sigma have diluted the design a bit more recently. I can see why they did though as performance wise the Merrill sensor really was limited to ISO 400 and below for decent performance, at that level it did definitely punch above its weight and gave results not too different(although certainly had its own look) to my full frame D800. The general handling was just not good enough for it to get much use either, burnt though batteries fast, about a 10 sec delay before you could view a picture, and clunky handling generally.

I am considered maybe getting a Rioch GR III as a replacement, I'd guess wouldn't be quite as good image quality wise at base ISO but it is sposed to have a very good lens with stabilisation and it would be genuinely pocketable and a lot more useble.

After watching a cold war spy thriller I kind of want a Minox camera now. Pointless, expensive and I'm not even sure you can still get the film catridges (it's 8x11mm), and if you can, it'll be eyewateringly expensive and old stock.

I think some people make the film via slicing 35mm in half and reloading old cartridges, that's probably what you see for sale.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Which film? I saw one of those recently in something I can't remember, and I similarly lusted after one, for similarly pointless reasons.

TV - Deutschland '89.

Looking on Google, it even came with an 18 inch measuring chain to help frame and focus for photographing letter-sized documents.

[Endicott]

Lazenby uses one in OHMSS.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Technology Connections explains how old timey light metering worked.

https://youtu.be/r_uBHmAhnfo

[studpuppet]

After watching a cold war spy thriller I kind of want a Minox camera now. Pointless, expensive and I'm not even sure you can still get the film catridges (it's 8x11mm), and if you can, it'll be eyewateringly expensive and old stock.

They're wonderful little jewels - especially if you have one of the earlier. smaller cameras without any light meters (the inventor made the form from a wooden block and used to carry it around in his pocket, shaving bits off until he was satisfied with the shape). Unfortunately those cameras are also less useable as the film is clamped to the lens when taking a photo and you get lots of scratches. The later models are more useable but also more automated (the C and the LX/TLX have CdS meters and the EC is fully automatic). I have models A, C, LX and EC, and I'd go to the LX as the best compromise between size and usability.
Until about ten years ago you could still buy film relatively inexpensively, but these days it's very much a DIY labour of love - you can still buy film in cartridges but because someone else has slit the film from 35mm and loaded it, it's VERY expensive (36 exposures currently £30). MS Hobbies has a pretty good overview and walkthrough of how to use Minoxes successfully currently:

https://mshobbies.co.uk/overview-1

https://mshobbies.co.uk/typical-users

So, most users now have their own film slitters, proprietary developing tanks (or dedicated developing reels), and a Minox-specific enlarger also helps (I have the last two). Once you're set up they're a lot of fun, as are most subminiature cameras. I bought a Rollei 16 for £20 recently just because it's so beautifully made (with a really nice Sonnar lens), and I'm toying with the idea of making it my camera to use for DIY processing. Annoyingly, the cassettes it uses are super-hard to find, but because the film transport uses the film's sprocket holes to advance, you can load a strip of loose film, take twenty shots and then unload later in the darkroom.

[studpuppet]

TV - Deutschland '89.

Looking on Google, it even came with an 18 inch measuring chain to help frame and focus for photographing letter-sized documents.

The chains are a thing of genius. They have little brass bumps on them that correspond to the closer distances on the focusing dial. You just need to make sure that an unscrupulous seller hasn't put a metric chain on an imperial camera or vice versa.

http://www.submin.com/8x11/collection/minox/accessories/chains.htm

[Sebastian Cobb]

Yeah I saw some cheaper subminatures when I was being nosy. Looks like there's some nice Minolta's going about.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Does anyone else do it in the RAW? ... Photography, I mean.

I've got my (Canon) camera set up just the way I like, for the saturation and everything. When I import the snaps to my PC, though, all that data seems to go walkabout. Adoe Camera Raw automatically opens them as a completely flat, ungraded image, which means I have to faff about recreating my preferred colour settings. Once the first snap is done, I can copy and paste the adjustments in Bridge, but is there a way of automatically using the settings from the camera?

[Endicott]

Not sure about Canon specifically, but as a generalisation I thought those settings you mention are for the jpg only. The RAW file is never changed by them, and they are used to create the jpg in camera, from the RAW file.

Can't you set your preferences up as a preset in Adobe?

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I know the information is still there, because the thumbnails in Explorer still look like I want them to. I was wondering if there was some way to toggle it on or off.

Can't you set your preferences up as a preset in Adobe?

Having just checked, it would seem so. I'll have a tinker with that.

[greenman]

Generally I'd expect things like saturation and contrast to be "standard" with a RAW file but something like colour temperature you have to display at some level at first and the RAW will typically use the setting that was in camera, just gives you the ability to change it.

The big problem with colour temp though IMHO is that in more challenging shots its not a universal value, the temp in different parts of the image might well vary. Quite often in processing I'm having to add filters to shift colour temp in different parts of the image, make areas in shadow cooler for example or those in the light warmer.