30D or 5D?

Thanks Morgon,

1) you must be the worst compulsive buyer I have heard of
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Yep. Guilty :D


how on earth did you manage to get so many girls to your studio?
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I could say it was my smile an promises of fame but nope, just good old fasioned money. Most of the ladies are students.

by the looks of things he imports them in bulk from HK
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What and risk paying VAT :p . Nope i just let them import themselves and then advertise in the various university job boards. The first advert I posted generated 60 odd replies. The odd reply is still coming in and that was from the advert in November. At one point I did shoots with 5 ladies on a weekend (individually of course :cool: ).

Ok so back on track..........

great to see how your work improves and its superb that you have chosen to document your voyage.
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Thanks. I found it hard to find information about portrait photography and especially about hiring models in the UK so though someone may benefit from me documenting what I find.

One thing I would like to ask is how do you set white balance in the studio? in many of your shots the colour temperature was very different (under what I assume is the same lighting rig).
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The lighting is more or less the same but the lenses are not. The issue I have is that using the 80mm f1.8 wide open lets in too much light for the space I have available to work in. The shots therefore can seem a little bright especially compaired to the shots with the 28-135mm lens. I now use a two stop ND filter on the 85mm but a three stop would be better. The other issue is that as I am editing on a Dell 24" LCD monitor I can only tone down the brightness so much and usually the images still look a little brighter than if they were displayed on a colour balances CRT. I would not change the monitor though as the room it has freed up is much needed.

Colour balancing is there for done via Adobe's camera raw plugin which supports the 5D or by sight and as you can see from some of the older shots there were some wild variations. Hopefully it is not so noticeable now. Also of note is that the majority of shots from the thread are the raw shots out fo the camera with maybe a little sharpening and resizing. Most therefore have not had any serious post production work on them. i must get round to putting a few more up that have been worked on a bit more. There is a version of the pic in my sig that has been worked on in the thread.

Regarding the 5D, how do you find the 24-105 at the wide end and at wide aperatures? I use my 24-70 quite a bit at F2.8. I am worried about the light fall off at the corners. Would it be pssible for you to email me a pic that shows vignetting at the corners, just so I can try to use cs2 to solve the issue in the raw import. my email is
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I will see what I can find or do a test for you tonight. The pic below has a pretty obvious case in the top corners but I cannot remember the lens or settings.

bd735eb0.jpg


I also have the 85 f1.8, which i love. I do find it a little bit long on the 20d so I imagine that on the 5d its a very useful focal length.
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I used to love the 85mm but I am sticking to the L series now for most of my stuff as the 85mm just seems pretty soft to the point of seeming hazy compaired. The ND filter may have something to do with it and again I will try a comparison tonight on the same scene witht he different lenses.


In your opinion would you say that the viewfinder size increase makes a big diffrence to your photography?
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It has made it easier. As you could see from some of the earlier shots an arm would just be outside the shot or the very top of the head would be just outsie. This was because I had to estimate the edge of the picture as the viewfinder on the 350D didn't show me everything and I like to use the most of the space in the shot if I can. I just have to remember to look all around the viewfinder now which is not really a bad thing.

Oh and thinking about it the shot in my sig was taken with the L series at 105mm fully open. It has been resized in the thread but not edited in the first posting and only slightly tidyed up in the second.

Regards
RB
 
ok great. If you could possibly email me samples of a 85mm shot wide open as well as a 24mm shot wide open that would be great.

I'm a bit confused with your problems with the 85 lettting in too much light...I'm assuming this is due to the flash sync of 1/250 for your external flashes and you want a shallow dof - ie even at iso100 there is too much light entering the scene?

Can you not rigger your flashes remotely or use manual mode?

regarding white balance, I use this piece of kit:

WBC3-ComboOnStands600.jpg


its called a whibal and if you shoot raw it is a god send. check out rawworkflow.com.

I would also reccomend if you are not doing so already to ensure that you calibrate your monitor regularly.

thanks again
 
I'm a bit confused with your problems with the 85 lettting in too much light...I'm assuming this is due to the flash sync of 1/250 for your external flashes and you want a shallow dof - ie even at iso100 there is too much light entering the scene?

Can you not rigger your flashes remotely or use manual mode?
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I always shoot manual :D . The distance from subject to studio flash is roughly 6ft max and even with the flash units (2 of them) set at 1/4 power they are too strong for the room size (they are both bouncing via umbrella's).

I also always shoot on iso100 apart from the few shots I took outside last weekend :) .

The flash units are triggered with a pc sync cable.

I'll have a look at the wb cards as it really is something I should be using ;) .

Thanks
RB
 
i've found that it really improves on skin tones. Ideally its for non flash but if your lighting is an even colour temperature you should be fine. ie dont mix flash and tungsten.
 
thanks for the samples RB. Couldnt help but notice that the 85 seemed to be very soft indeed. Shame as that is my sharpest lens and I was hoping for great things with it combined on the 5D.

I think what I will do is take my gear (lenses) into a camera store, have a play and see how they perform.

My main aim is to 'loose' a lens...basiaclly I'm hoping that the 24-70 on the 5D is usable and wide enough at 24mm to ditch the 10-22 and APS option.

I will keep you all informed...
 
I was looking at the 85mm 1.2 L but had been put off by the slow focusing and very old design. I am glad that Canon have now anounced a Mk2 version with USM and a few other improvements but am just not sure about the £1,200 -> £1,500 suggested price when it goes on sale.

Although the 85mm F1.8 is quite soft I would imagine it would be good for the dreamy kind of protraits and may keep it for that purpose. I have not tried the 50mm f1.4 prime as I dont have much use for it indoors so cannot comment on how soft it may be.

Regards
RB
 
RimBlock said:
I was looking at the 85mm 1.2 L but had been put off by the slow focusing and very old design. I am glad that Canon have now anounced a Mk2 version with USM and a few other improvements but am just not sure about the £1,200 -> £1,500 suggested price when it goes on sale.
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The MKI 85mm 1.2L was also around £1.2k
 
best deal so far i've seen on the 5d:

Body £1800
1GB Card £94

Buy the body & card & get 10% off = £180 Saving
Then add £200 Canon cashback.

Total price = 1894 -380 = £1514

and thats from the hightstreet...thats cheaper than HK!!!
 
Must admit the cashback prompted me to buy a couple of weeks ago. I did have some issues with the camera - this one is the second replacement. The first cam had a dirty viewfinder with sensor crud and the replacement subsequently died. This one has some slight sensor dust but I can live with it. I had to make a 'home-made' wide angle filter holder - basically a Cokin P filter holder but with the front two filter guides sawn off so the edges don't intrude into the 17-40 lens wide open.
 
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