Working With Canon Camera Equipment
Billy Newman Podcast notes 2-8-2019
Produced by Billy Newman and Marina Hansen
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Produced by Billy Newman and Marina Hansen
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Website Billy Newman Photo https://billynewmanphoto.com/
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About https://billynewmanphoto.com/about/
136 WORKING WITH CANON CAMERA EQUIPMENT
Hello, and thank you very much for listening to this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast. I appreciate you guys tuning in. So today I wanted to talk a little bit about what I’ve done to transition over into Canon camera equipment. For the longest time I was shooting with Nikon cameras. And I’d always really liked doing that. But most of that was always kind of maybe constrained by budget for I think I started with a Nikon D 40. Back in 2007 is when I bought it, the camera probably came out earlier than that, I really enjoyed kind of picking up that was like an entry level DSLR at the time. And now it’s like really antiquated. I sold that off now years ago and kind of moved it over into other other camera equipment over time. But that’s what I got. While I was in college, it was a really good camera for me to learn on and kind of learn some of the fundamentals of working with a digital camera. And I had a lot of fun working with that made it like a ton of photographs with it, then pretty soon after that, I tried to switch over to something that was more of a professional body when I was trying to take some of the work that I was doing a little more seriously. And when I was trying to get hired as a photographer, to do really even just student projects at the time, I was trying to get a couple extra lenses. And I was trying to get a couple stronger features in the, in the camera body that I was using. So at the time, I think it was in like 2008 2009 actually, I think it was in 2009. I bought my first like professional body that Nikon D two H and at that time, that was already a pretty antiquated camera. I think in 2009, it probably came out in 2003, I think is what it was. So it’s already like a pretty big gap in time there there’s been at that time, especially in that decade, there’s just so much advancement in the way that sensors worked in the way that the scene or I wasn’t even a sea monster was like an elb caste is like an lb. ca St. Named sensor. I don’t even know what that is. But it was different than the CMR system that would be in a lot of cameras, I think that maybe we probably find now or you know, like the the sensor piece in the back and it wasn’t full frame either it was in even the professional line, it wasn’t full frame, it was still like that crop sensor that Nikon had. So it was good for for a long time. And I was really happy to use it and happy to kind of learn on that camera, they had a ton of features. And really I probably go back to that, that full professional body of Nikon, if if I was just a big any camera that I wanted to use, I think like a Nikon D five would be an amazing camera to work with. But at the time, what I was trying to do was get a job at a newspaper like the student newspaper when I was going to college and to try and get some jobs, or you know, trying to get get some activity to try and go and take different photographs in different locations. And that job was great. It was cool working for the student newspaper, because you get to go to different locations to try and make some interesting photo out of something that’s probably not very interesting. It’s normally like a person talking to a to a classroom with beige walls and low level ceiling light or something like that every once in a while you get to go to a football game or something like that, something that you don’t really have the opportunity to go to normally, that was really fun. That was interesting. And it provided me a lot of opportunities to do some some different work with different lenses work with, you know, different lighting and some sort of, you know, interesting and dynamic subject matter. But a lot of the time like I mentioned it was like I think I had a go photograph that they were removing pipes from a student building on some side of campus I hadn’t been to before. So it was it was the I was supposed to take a photograph of the absence of pipes didn’t really make a lot of sense. It wasn’t really a very interesting photo and there was no people or story around it. So it’s you know, it’s always something like that, or it seemed to be often something like that, that was just like had almost no subject to take a photograph. So it was a challenge in that way. But it was really fun when you got to do something cool. So that’s that’s why I bought that Nikon D to H and then to a company that I think I tried to save up some money in college that was hard for me to do. I tried to save up I think like $150 or something like that to buy the 50 millimeter one eight lens that was like I don’t know the version of nifty 50 that they have over on the Nikon side was great to use. And and that that kit there that the D to H and the 50 millimeter was what I used to take a bunch of photographs for the next many years is a great kit of a camera to have and it worked really well to take I think like a bunch of the cool landscape stuff that I did on the first couple trips they did were just both with that setup.
So I bought that I bought that Nikon D to h USD on eBay when I made that purchase of it. And I use that camera probably for the longest amount of time. Like I think I used that up until like around 2013 or so when I was kind of trying to shift away from it. And that’s when I was getting into more film photography stuff at that time I actually switched over to an even or just a different camera, a Nikon n 80 film camera because I was I was doing a ton To start with, with film and film roles at the time, and then I bought a Nikon f4 s another film body camera that was from like the 90s I think is when that one was manufactured I think it first came out in like 1988 that I probably mentioned a couple times. So I worked with this film bodies for a while then I tried to switch out and I bought an a Sony A seven R which was really interesting, I was really interested in what Sony was doing with mirrorless systems that they’re creating this the interchangeable lens cameras that are out. So I used I use a Sony camera at work to do a bunch of the production photography that I was doing. And then on top of that I bought the Sony A seven are to work with at home and work with on all the landscape stuff. And that was great. It was you know, it’s a 36 megapixel camera, which is you know, mind blowing and astonishing when you think in comparison to the 4.2 megapixels I was working with with the Nikon D two h so it was awesome to kind of get that expansion you know when working with digital systems. And I love doing that. But there’s some limitations to the a seven Arline like the original a seminar, I liked that camera and I probably shoot was something like that, again, it kind of reminded me more of like the Leica model of cameras, it seemed more like a rangefinder kind of camera, the way that was built the kind of small structure of it and the way that it was designed, it seemed like like it wasn’t quite a full DSLR replacement at the time. And I think that’s not what they were really aiming for by the design of it. And, you know, by the options, and by the mechanisms of the camera that in the way that it worked, it seemed like it was kind of supposed to sort of be cameras, sort of to the side of your professional camera, if you’re if you’re doing professional work like it was really difficult. We shot a couple of weddings with it, made some beautiful photographs with it had some great lenses that I’ve worked with. But there was a lot of things that was really lacking on I think I talked about that in earlier episodes of this podcast to where they’re they’re just be problems with the autofocus, where it was great for landscape stuff really slow, you know, stuff where you’d have your camera on your tripod, and you spend some time trying to set the shutter, trying to set up the focal length of the lens and having time to focus the image in a way that we know worked out. All right, all of those features really worked out really well. But if you wanted to go through and in a pretty short amount of time, hammer out a couple 100 frames that were all that, you know, you all want to be in focus or you don’t want to be, you know, pretty functional, raw images just had a harder time getting that sort of stuff done and the way that the buttons were laid out and the way that the menu was laid out, you didn’t really have the ability to kind of reach for and grab at those sort of professional unnecessary photography features quickly as quickly as you would want to. So I learned a lot by working with it is great to use, I probably want a camera like that again, and especially the the a seven or
two or the a seven, two and the a seven s and now the seven or three, all those and a nine Gosh, all those newer Sony line mirrorless cameras have a lot of interesting features. And they’ve also I think try to directly target some of those limitations that the first a seven a seven Arline had with them. So I think now there’s way more dynamic video features way more dynamic auto focusing systems in it that I think quite a bit better. Basically, there’s some seek problems, that’s what I had is that, you know, you’d got to focus the image. And then the autofocus point which is seek forever, wouldn’t grab onto this thing that you needed it to. And, and then when you take the photograph, you’d have a blackout light because it’s it’s a digital representation of the image in the viewfinder instead of a through the lens single lens reflex style view of it, you would lose sight of the photograph that you were taking. And then if you were trying to hammer a few frames all at once, it would just it would just stay black that whole time, you know, because it was about a second to process and then you try and take maybe two or three frames a second. So you just wouldn’t see anything the whole time that you were trying to get the image. And that’s where I was noticing that, that that kind of digital model wasn’t really what I wanted at the time now and the 89 I think there’s like a whole whole feature system that sort of eliminates that whole problem. And now there’s just like a blinking band that kind of pops in yellow so that you know that you’re taking a frame right then but it never really loses or goes blackout. But I was noticing that, you know, with that I was like, well, I really liked the stuff that I was doing with film, you know, it was just way more analog and where you could just kind of look right at what you were taking. And you could really focus in on the expression and the moment that you’re capturing in the photograph. And that way you could be more selective about the way that you were taking the photographs. So I wanted to kind of move back toward the DSLR system anyway, and I wanted sort of a, I guess like a more professional feature set where it was weather sealed, or where it was, you know, set up where you could hammer out a lot of frames on it for work all the time and you would just know that it would work all the time. Also also, in addition to Sony and cameras had some issues with the battery system that they used on those first couple models. It was pretty small or it And the camera was kind of power intensive, because everything was always running a screen either on the back of the screen for the viewfinder or, or pardon me for the screen or for the viewfinder itself that you’d look through with your eye. That was always like a screen that was running. So it would run through your battery pretty quickly. And it was kind of an anemic battery system. I think there’s a lot of views that sort of mentioned that same problem with it all the time that it was just sort of an issue that people would run into, especially people that were trying to work a professional job, you know, if you wanted to work with a camera for a whole day, you would just run into a lot of problems, and you’d have to have a lot of batteries to kind of run through it. And so I liked it. For a lot of stuff that I did, it worked really well. But But overall, it wasn’t really a camera system that I was able to use for for some of the jobs that I was being asked to do. And so that was kind of why well, if I need to make all this or else I’m gonna try and make some money doing photography, then I’m gonna have to switch over to something that I can kind of use more as a tool all the time. So I was looking around at different options, I really liked a lot of the Nikon stuff, but I also noticed I, I really liked the Nikon stuff, I’ll leave it at that, I just noticed that sometimes some of the accessory equipment outside of the body that you might buy a bit, some of the lenses are expensive, or they’re a little more expensive than maybe some of the commensurate lenses that might be available over in canon. And I remember back in college, someone was mentioning to me that they were going to switch from Nikon over to canon because canon was a bigger company. I don’t know if this is really a reason or not. It was interesting logic, though, to kind of think through at the time, but that canon was a larger company selling more lenses, making more cameras making more equipment. And so they had more resources, more staff, more designers, working on cameras, building cameras, and doing research and development to kind of bring that, that forward. And I think even maybe now that’s still perhaps true. Like if you if you look at some of the technologies in Nikon versus canon, like, we were just kind of to take a base idea of it, though I love Nikon stuff a lot. But if you were to take like the D five, I think that’s a 20 megapixel sensor. Whereas in if you were to look at the newer nine or barmy, canon five D Mark four, that’s I think, like 3136 I don’t know it’s out there in the 30 maybe I think it’s a 30 megapixel camera. And I think perhaps the five D Mark three is a 23 megapixel camera. So it was interesting, just kind of noticing a couple of those things. Now I understand that there’s benefits to the lower megapixel rating for some of the low light performance that you get a high SLS. And I think that’s maybe sometimes where Nikon
performs well. But then there’s also Sony who’s producing 42 megapixel cameras, and they’re doing incredible things in low light, but also even better stuff with a seven s which I think is the the version of the camera that’s specifically around some of the higher end video features. And I think it’s a 12 megapixel camera that does incredible stuff in low light, like almost like you know 100,000 so you can get really amazing low light images and low light video. So it’s interesting how how that that kind of sensor technology works. But all that being said, it’s just interesting that for a long time, even way back in history, like to the beginning of the digital SLR, I think canon was way ahead in what they’re producing, as far as their sensors go and what they’re able to produce, like megapixels, or in fidelity of an image I think they had they had a what what was the first one, I think Nikon did not have a full frame digital SLR and tell the Nikon d3 came out which was a fantastic camera. And I had that one also as a use camera that about later loved the d3. But it was interesting that they Yeah, like they didn’t have a full frame DSLR camera option until 2007 I think when that came out, whereas on the Canon side, I think the EOS one, D.
The one DS is that right? I think it was the one DS was the first
was the first full frame camera produced by canon. And that was way back and I think that was still like around eight megapixels or maybe 10 megapixels for the mark two and then they had some technology that was just far more advanced for the time 2000 to 2003 2004. Then what canon had going on is probably when Nikon it, you know what I mean? Right? So anyway, that fast forwards to to me in fall of 2018 I’m looking around for another camera purchase because I was going to be moving I was going to be taking a job where I was I was going to be working every day doing family portrait photography and a lot of like wedding photography stuff to where I needed to depend on the memory cards. system that would be in the camera where, like on the Sony side, like I had mentioned before, there were some limitations to it. And one of the other limitations was that it only accepted SD cards, which are right now I’m actually kind of learning are fine, you can use an SD card for just about anything, but I also liked the opportunity, or the option to have a compact flash card, or maybe it’s a USM USM USD, that’s $1 I’m not sure but the compact flash card system that that goes in, I always felt that was like a little bit more professional when you put that in. And I just wanted like more memory options. So with the I think the five D Mark three that I decided to pick up us that had the the compact flashlight, and it also had the SD card slot, and you had the ability to record to nadp video, and you had the ability to take photographs, you had the ability to do like high frame rate burst series for photographs. And it just seemed like it seemed like it was a great workhorse camera, the five D series and I think that’s what people have been talking about, even since like the five D Mark two when they announced the the HD video recording features on DSLRs. So I think that when even before that, you know, it was just it was one of the top top use cameras for wedding photographers and stuff. So for me, I was trying to find something that would be like a good workhorse camera, where I could always kind of count on it. And the battery system and the memory card and the lens arrangement that would be available to me that I could really just be hammering away on frames, and and then be bringing those in editing them and then kind of delivering them to clients in a pretty fast manner. So I thought that would be something that would help me out. And I think I was right, I think it was a good choice, though there are fantastic options with like the ACE seven, Mark three, or the a seven, three and the a seven or three. I think both of those have kind of solved a lot of those issues that I’ve been talking about where they’ve adjusted the battery system. And they’ve adjusted the just some of the blackout problems that I was talking about before. But But I was happy to switch over to the Canon side of it. I think also because that reason I was talking about to word Yeah, no blackout. And I really liked being able to use the through the lens viewfinder of the SLR as opposed to the digital SLR or just looking at it on the screen.
So all those reasons were kind of why I wanted to get back to the the DSLR system instead of the the interchangeable lens camera system. But it was great. So so back I think in September
I was looking around a lot I sold the a seminar off. And then I was trying to hunt around for options for me to get a well priced canon five D Mark three and then I also bought one from Marina. So she had a five D Mark three body and then we could kind of share lenses for two. So I wanted to get up and running. And I wanted to talk about like some of the lens stuff that I was interested in too. It’s interesting kind of switching over to Ken and now just kind of seeing you know what’s available and what’s available in the US market which for me and for someone that doesn’t want to spend a ton of stuff, getting a pretty high level professional level set of photography equipment, it’s interesting to kind of comb around through the US market and figure out good pieces to use. I think almost every camera system I’ve ever had has been something that I’ve made a purchase of off of the US marketplace in some manner. You know, I haven’t bought a new film camera that’s for sure. So it was interesting kind of tried to figure that out a little bit and I’ve always had really good luck with that. I hear some bad stories out there but really it seems like a lot of photographers take pretty good care of their their camera equipment in a way that at least seems really quite usable for me so what I ended up with it at some point and I save a ton of money doing it too and I don’t have to deal with the heavy depreciation because like by the time I I end up wanting to sell it it really hasn’t moved that much in the marketplace. A lot of the time you know it only ends up being like a few $100 to purchase that camera because when you sell it again, you get a lot of that money back and as opposed to well I’ll get into that story a second but but like when I made a purchase of it that camera was really quite new. And it had appreciated a lot and value from the new price the new sticker price from the in the store in the camera store price to what it was when I bought it used so so it was a fantastic deal to kind of pick it up and find like a good one out there. So so yeah back in. Was it back in September I was hunting around in Oregon trying to find a good five D Mark three body so I was trying to debate a little bit I was looking around on eBay for five D Mark threes that would be available. And I was looking around on kth and those are two locations that I kind of made purchases from before when I was making a purchase online. I like eBay and I sold a bunch of stuff on eBay. I sold my a seminar on eBay. I sold my d3 when I that made a purchase the d3 I think from K h and I sold that d3 on eBay And I made my money back, it was great, it worked pretty well. But when I was looking around, I didn’t really find the price point that I wanted for the five D Mark three line, I think those are all running around 18 or 1900 bucks. For the five D Mark three bodies are being sold, but I’m sure I don’t know, it seemed like the market was a little lower than that at the time. And then when I looked on kth, it was sort of the same story where once we were in bargain condition, you know, where they’d been pretty beaten up, or probably had been the, you know, someone’s wedding photography camera where it would really hammered out 100,000 or 200,000 frames already had a few seasons of weddings over the last couple of years, and the person was trying to offload that gear, and then, you know, upgrade to their their five year mark for their one dx or something like that. So I kind of wanted to stay away from those, in a way, I’m sure they would have been functioning cameras and the way that they had been reported. But there’s really no way to like get an observation of the camera and its function in your hand, while you have it to see that it’s really like is cleaner isn’t in good condition as you’d want it to be for something that you’re going to spend 18 $100 for when I was buying used cameras, it was sub $1,000 purchases. So it was like well, you know, it’s got a couple scuffs on it or something like that, but, but really, they were always quite nice in in their physical condition. So what I ended up deciding to do was instead of making a purchase on eBay, or on kth, what I decided to do was try and check out the the local marketplaces. So I went on Craigslist, to look at the classified listings that were there in the photo and video equipment for sale listing in my area. And I kind of scoured across Oregon to find you know, a couple good pieces. So I was trying to look in the Portland area, I was looking over in the bend area, I was looking in the Eugene area, and I was also looking up into like the Seattle and Tacoma area as well because I thought well, you know, if I need to, then I’ll drive up a little ways. And I might save hundreds of dollars trying to make a purchase for a nice camera system. So I thought that might be a good idea. And then in addition to Craigslist, I was also getting into the Facebook marketplace where I was selling a ton of mag, my stuff from a house when I was trying to set up this move over here to Maui.
So I was looking around at that I was saying well maybe I can check out and see if there’s camera equipment that are also listed there too. And that actually worked out really well I was pretty impressed with it. So for the camera bodies are found to canon five the mark three bodies, one of them I found over I’m banned for $1,000 flat, which is incredible deal, I think I think I got that brand on that one. It it had been used I think for for just like a single project that that someone had I think they did they have a business or they’re paid to do it. So they made a purchase of a five day Mark three. And then they shot like a series of web instruction like instructional videos for YouTube for a company that had purchased it. And then they hadn’t used that equipment in a while since then. So they were going to sell that camera off and get some of their money back. So I got the camera for $1,000 even which was fantastic. It really barely even had like rub marks on it on the base of it. You know, like when you look at the camera body physically, the rubber was in fantastic shape. And the baseplate like where the tripod would go, I think was the only area where there’s a little bit of a scuff, but it was fantastic. It was really cool that that it worked out so well for me. So I made a purchase of that camera for 1000. Then I was looking around and I found another one up in the Portland area that a real estate agent had bought to take photographs of their property and then I think they’d found out that they didn’t really want a five D Mark three but they wanted a Sony camera. And so they made a purchase of a Sony camera just a few months after that. And then to make up the cost of that purchase, they wanted to sell off the Canon five D Mark three that they had. And so I saw and I got the box to which was interesting, I got the box for the five D Mark three had the receipt from the camera store that they bought it for it was you know 20 $600 when they bought it maybe 12 months ago or 11 months ago, and I looked at the shutter count of it. There’s maybe 1900 pictures have been taken on the camera body when I made a purchase of it so it was really almost like a brand new camera. I think I was put 1000 frames on it a day at the job that I had. So yeah, it was I I’ve already broken it in quite a bit more than it had been when I made a purchase of it. So it was really cool getting such a new camera for such a low price. So saving a few $1,000 trying to put it put the these, this package of equipment together was excellent and I was really happy to do that. And that was one thing I noticed about the the Canon US market is there’s just and this is sort of back to that thing. It’s a bigger company and they’re selling more cameras out there. So it was cool that there’s just so much used gear out in the market where as opposed to you know, if I was looking for a D 100 on the Nikon side or or a D four or something like that, it would be pretty hard to find those bodies. I guess in that condition or you know, in that way, and then for that price it seemed like and same same goes for like a Canon one dx, that I was trying to find that on the US market, those were really held by professionals or sports photographers. And those bodies were really be and still very expensive when I was looking around for them. But it seemed like there’s so many people that were interested in doing wedding photography or doing photography as a hobby that they would kind of lean into the higher price range, and pick up a five D Mark three, and then find out why maybe I don’t want it or maybe I want to switch over to a five D Mark for now. And so they were ditching those and offloading those for way lower prices. So it was excellent time to kind of come in, pick those cameras up, and and kind of start getting set up. But the other thing I noticed is that Okay, so now we have the five D bodies. Now we’re going to need lenses to work on these. So what I was looking for was the US as well, what was it the 24 to 70 f two, eight lenses that were for, like the professional full frame cameras. And I was fortunate to find those again, on the Facebook marketplace, I think I found one in the Eugene area. And I got to USM 124 to 70 which was a great price. And then I also found a USM to 24 to 70 that had been used more, I definitely could tell that it had been used more this even though it was a newer version lens, that it definitely had, I think some more wear on it. And that’s that’s probably the lens that though still works great, still has great optical clarity, but it’s probably the one that seems the most tired when I’m using it sometimes. So it’s interesting sometimes, but but I’m sure I probably put a ton of work on it to just kind of racking it back and forth trying to get all these different photographs that I was trying to shoot. So I don’t know, I lenses don’t last forever, and they’re mechanical pieces. But but these are really well built, you know, these, these professional hourglass systems are really sturdy and well built. And I was really impressed with how they were working. So I had a great time using it. And I didn’t really seem to run into any problems while I was trying to produce, produce photographs with it.
But I found Yeah, I found one of them, one of the lenses in the Eugene area, and then I found another one up in Portland. So I drove up to pick that lens up and then add you know, add to five D Mark threes and 224 to 70 f two eight lenses to throw on there to do a bunch of the family portrait stuff and a bunch of the kind of lifestyle images that I was trying to do. So it was a great starting setup for me to kind of get and then move out from and so I had been working with that for a couple months. And I’ve been trying to kind of expand from that since then. And so the stuff that I’m looking for now well, so I started looking into like some things for like real estate photography. And one of the things that’s always required for that stuff is is like a really wide angle lens. So when I was looking around with the company that I was working with, they were looking for images between 17 millimeters full frame, and 20 millimeters on a full frame camera. And so I went ahead and I purchased the the 17 to 40 millimeter f four lens, it was actually really quite inexpensive. I mean, you know, again, coming from like the Nikon, so when I thought like wow, that’s gonna be more than $1,000 to pick up to pick up a lens for it was really a low price, I think it was about $520 to buy a new 17 to 40 millimeter lens that was like that, yeah, the f4 that I was talking about. So I picked that one up to do some of the real estate photography and that amortize pretty quickly getting to use that for real estate jobs, it kind of paid for itself just in a couple jobs along without the cameras themselves and the 24 to 70 sort of paid for themselves by hammering out a bunch of family portrait sessions with them. So both of those things kind of worked out pretty well. But in addition to that, what I’m looking for is like the 50 millimeter f one four lens, I was looking at that too. And I’m looking at those new because and this is sort of i’m saying is it’s just it seems like Canon lens prices are sort of dropping down a bit. Maybe there’s newer lenses and I know there’s you know, the there’s way higher end lenses but but the the 50 millimeter f one for kind of lower end lens perhaps is I think 299 which is really super cheap. I guess that’s what I paid for 35 millimeter dx lens on my on my old camera system, you know, on the Nikon stuff so so I was I think what was it like that? The 28 millimeter f two lens I had for my Sony camera that was like 450 bucks when I buy it used right? So it was awesome to find to find like that 50 millimeter f one four for 299. And then in addition to that, for other portrait stuff, if I wanted to do it, I could pick up an 85 millimeter f one eight For 299 also, and I was like, wow, these are way more reasonable price ranges than than what I thought. So it just really for for not that much, you could probably put together a full range of prime lenses that I would want to use. And I could put together a full range of zoom lenses that I wanted to use that were all kind of higher end glass, that that would be great for, you know, professional stuff, or the lifestyle stuff or the, you know, whatever kind of photography stuff I wanted to expand into. And then on top of that, I was looking at the though I would love an F to a, I was looking at the zoom lenses, and one thing I’ve kind of learned from this job that I was working with is, is really, when you’re working with compression, and like when you’re working like with with zoom, and you’re using the compression of the lens past, you know, 70 millimeters like into the 18 millimeter or 100 millimeter or out to 200 f two, a is a real soft and a lot of time, especially if you’re taking pictures of a couple people together, and you’re not trying to just rack right into to focus in on an eye. And even when you’re taking a picture a portrait of someone, you really have to kind of crank it up to f4 f5 to get a depth of field that’s thick enough to get their, their nose, their eyes, in their ear in focus and the way that you’d need to. And it seems like well, you know, like, love super shallow depth of field, but it seems like you want to get the person in focus, so you got to get a few parts of them and focus. Remember taking self portraits, you know, like I hold the camera out in front of me with the with the Canon 50 millimeter, one eight, I tried to take a picture of Marina and I somewhere and I remember Marina would be just just on the plane in front of me, you know, because we’re trying to stand right next to each other. And maybe I would be in focus. But then Marina, just one or two inches in front of my nose would be completely out of focus, it would look just like a super blurry kind of washed area, because the depth of field was so shallow. That’s where I was trying to, you know, kind of finally learning like, Oh, yeah, okay,
so maybe f1 eight isn’t absolutely what you have to have for every photograph that you take, or f1 for or whatever it might be.
So I was kind of finding that part outward, okay, well, I’m gonna have to rack this out to like f5 or f8. Anyway, to get a sharp photograph of the thing that I’m trying to get an image of. So I have kind of rounded out that I’m going to be fine for a lot of the landscape photography that I’m interested in doing, I’m going to be fine kind of jumping into lenses that are around that f4 line. So I was looking at the the USM 72 200 f4 lens that they have. And so I think it’s, I think that the two eight, the f2 eight lens that 70 to 200 is like around 1500 bucks. But the the f4 is about 600 bucks, I think it’s like 599 to pick up a 70 to 200 USM. lens. Now it doesn’t have the image stabilization on Nikon, they call it vibration reduction. Is that right, but it doesn’t have the image stabilization. And I think it is probably lacking some of the some other additional features, because I know there’s two versions after that, that escalate in price quite a bit. But if you’re looking for that older one, it’s still available on Amazon for 599, which is a great price. If you want to get a 70 to 200. I think that was really cool. And there’s a lot of things you could do with it. Again, like I was saying with the compression, if you’re going out to 225 millimeters and you’re shooting it f4 that’s going to give you a really nice bokeh in the background. And you’re going to get the person in focus if you need to, if you’re shooting a portrait, and if you’re shooting some kind of landscape or wildlife scene, you’re going to be able to do a lot with that too. You’re just gonna have a lot of flexibility in what you’re able to do. I love fast lenses, I’d really like to always push for you to wait or have 1.2 or something like that. But But I’m loving the fact that there’s an opportunity for me to get a whole range of focal lengths as I’m trying to transition over into new gear for a much, much lower price than what I was expecting. So I think that’s pretty cool. I’ve been pretty happy with this transition over into canon equipment so far. And it’s been it’s been interesting you know, the thing that I’m I’m also interested in as I’ve spoken about before on this podcast is I have an affinity for taking photographs on film. And I want to get back into that in a way because right now I don’t really have a film camera with me I still have the Nikon and ad floating around. Though I’m short a lens or you know that’s what I’m saying is like I’ve kind of made it an investment now into this whole range of focal lengths that have and really quite nice pieces of glass over on the Canon side now. And so I’d like an opportunity to be able to take those photographs on film with that range of glass that I now have available to me so what I’m looking at trying to do is is trying to pick up one of these older now but one of these older but one of the last runs of film cameras that canon had put out. And so I was looking around and trying to do some research for that. When I talked to you guys before about it. In the podcast, I was mentioning that I picked up a Nikon F for a camera that was the full manual camera or, you know, like a no, I don’t actually, it wasn’t for me anyway, I think it was autofocus that I had had like a whole color matrix, it was one of the first cameras have that color matrix, auto system in it where you could, you could kind of like set it up. But nav has a lot of those same features to what I’m trying to do to get to the point is, I’m looking at the EOS line of film cameras that canon had produced in the 1990s. And in the 2000s. And there’s a lot of opportunities there where you can really pick up a very nice camera body that you know, shoot film, and that would kind of accompany the five D Mark three, and all the Canon lenses that I have now. So I was looking at the EOS one n, which I think is the camera that can come out in 1994, it really looks quite a bit like a five D body shape where it’s it’s not like that. It was it’s not the oversize body it but it looks just kinda like that camera SLR body style. And as a bunch of the features on the back, I think as that roller wheel that canon users have come accustomed to it probably was one of the first cameras to introduce that big roller wheel to control your F stop, and then the other roller on the front to control your aperture. So it was kind of it’s interesting how it’s laid out. But but it feels it looks almost the same way. So I’m looking around at those those came out in 1994. And then in the year 2000, they had come out with the EOS one DC one n before, what was it? I think I wrote it down over here. I can’t remember what it was. There was the one and maybe the one. Ah, doesn’t sound right.
What would it have been? Let’s look here are the one v that’s I think the one I’m looking for? Yeah, the one V is that the film camera that canon produced in the year 2000. And probably up through like 2006, or 2007, or 2008, there’s probably even new versions of that body that are still around if there’s those hardcore film users out there. So I’m looking around at some of those on the US market, I think they’re like three, four, maybe 500 bucks, if it’s kind of on the higher end of expense, but, but I’m looking at some of those. And it seems like it’d be kind of an interesting purchase to pick one of those up, then it could be shooting, you know, film images, like I have had an interest in doing with a professional body that kind of matched a lot of the same layout and workflow that that the five D Mark three that I’m using as. So I’m pretty interested in that. And then I can use all this L class that I’ve been making a purchase of two, so I have the super wide angle, or I don’t know is it super wide, I think it’s just a wide angle zoom for that 17 to 40 millimeter f4, I’ve got the 24 to 72 a, I would have the 70 to 200 USM f4. And then I would have a couple prime lenses on top of that. So it’s like a pretty full collection of glass that I could use to make a whole bunch of different types of art, or you know, like different different photographs, different pieces that I’d be interested in trying to produce. And you know, like a lot of the film stuff I was I was building like all the stuff that was on that film book that I put together that was almost all done with a Nikon 50 millimeter f1 a. And maybe like a couple manual focus lenses that I should not have been using actually kind of knowing better now, the optics of those were always kind of pretty lousy. Now I understand so much more about what good class does to change the quality of the image, like when you’re getting those kind of foggy images or hazy or dim images. I’m really seeing what how that really like cheap, cheap lenses, that’s the thing that really affected my photography for the longest time for the first five years or so it was really just me trying to combat how difficult it was to shoot with the cheapest 18 to 55 millimeter, three point f 3.5 to F 5.6 lens that they had it was just all plastic, the bracket on the back was all plastic. And I think like even the lens elements themselves built into it were plastic, then you can kind of see it we just never would really get Chris would never be super sharp. And it was just kind of this plastic warping that would cause that. I picked up a couple other lenses over time to like I had this Tamron lens that that was used that I’m sure had been dropped a few times, but it just never would come in sharp. It would always be like out of focus, even though you know it acted like it was focusing. It would always just come out soft. And so now I understand like oh, that’s what they mean when they say this is a soft lens. So I don’t know just things that you learn over time, but But I’m really happy to be working with kind of the setup that I have right now. And I’m sure I’ll kind of change some stuff out over time, too. I think I still, though it’s been really interesting kind of moving system to system to system, you know, from Nikon to Sony. And then over to canon, I’ve kind of learned a whole bunch of different button layouts of how to use a carrier, how that the camera works, and all the different features and stuff that are associated with it, though, as, as I think about it, I was probably always and maybe I’m still the most comfortable with the layout and the system, and the ergonomics of the Nikon camera system. I’ve really always liked that a lot. But I’ve definitely gotten very used to it after shooting a ton of these 10 of these portraits and family sessions and wedding sessions, it’s kind of become way more natural for me to kind of put this in manual, I got to roll this over here, I got to change my my ISO to this. So I kind of I know how to like hammer out these little maneuvers now that are those muscle memory pieces that are really maybe one of the hardest things to learn when you’re changing your gear system from say one brand to the next brand of Canon camera manufacturer. So all that’s been kind of interesting. And it’s been my, my journey into the Canon camera world. So have you guys had a nice time listening to me go on about some different lenses and different Canon camera opportunities that are out there. But I was impressed. Yeah, check out your US market. If you’re interested in trying to pick some stuff up. There’s, there’s really some inexpensive items out there where you can get pretty quality images. I mean, you know, if you’re, if you’re a student, or you’re just starting out, or you’re trying to get into photography, there’s really a lot of opportunity to pick up some interesting canon equipment for pretty low prices. If you’re checking out your US market. And if you’re higher end and you’re trying to get into stuff. new stuff is great that the five D Mark for that I’ve gotten to use a bit. It’s fantastic. It’s really cool.
I don’t think it’s going to change my photography. So I’m not going to try and upgrade it from a five D Mark three right now. But there’s a lot of things that does. There’s also a lot of things that are super interesting about that one dx that you know, like that’s a big one. It looks like the sports photographers camera. It’s the one that’s got that big battery pack base to it. Or it’s you can you can roll it to the portrait mode, and then you got that second shutter button there. Looks like you put a battery grip on your camera, but it’s built into it right. So it’s all cool stuff. But for right now, I think I’m super happy with it. Until until you know, a year from now six months from now
that’ll be the switchover again, I gotta like it. That’d be fun right? Now, thanks a lot for listening. I appreciate it. You guys have a good one. We’ll check in again soon.