I took some new gear on my recent Death Valley trip, including my Canon 5D and my Induro C313 tripod. Here are some reflections on this equipment after using it extensively for the first time:

Induro C313 Tripod – Last month I wrote about my quest for a new tripod to augment the smaller and lighter tripod I already own for backpacking and hiking. I had looked at the excellent Gitzo tripods and was probably headed toward purchasing one of those when I read Michael Reichmann’s review of the Induro C413, which was largely very positive. (He noted two issues, neither of which concerns me.) I was able to get my hands on several models at Keeble and Schuchat Photography in Palo Alto and was impressed with the quality of the tripods. Despite some concerns about buying a product with almost no track record, I finally picked up the C313 model.

THe C313 has large diameter three-section carbon fiber legs. With the legs fully extended, the center column all the way down, and with my Acratech ballhead attached, the camera is a few inches too tall for me to look through the viewfinder. This is about right since on uneven ground with some of the legs shortened the camera can still be at eye level. The legs have a welcome anti-rotation feature which makes setup a bit easier. The legs can be adjusted to three different angles to further accommodate uneven ground or to position the camera lower.

The good news is that there isn’t a lot to say about my experience with the tripod – it pretty much just worked effectively as expected. While not cheap it does cost a bit less than an equivalent Gitzo, and it seems to be to do the job just as well. Overall, I’m very pleased with the tripod.

Canon 5D – I acquired a used 5D about a month before this trip, so I have had some opportunities to use the camera and learn about its features and capabilities. Much of what I experienced on this trip confirmed what I have learned about it:

• My lenses are capable of producing noticeably sharper images on this camera than on the 8MP 1.6x crop sensor DSLR. This is partly due to the somewhat higher number of photo-sites on this 12MP camera, but I think it is also because the photosites are larger.
• The angle of view of a particular focal length is considerably wider on full frame. This was not a surprise. However, my 17-40 becomes a truly wide angle zoom on this camera – it was a “normal” wide to slight telephoto on the previous body. The 24-105 now seems to go equally far into the wide and telephoto ranges. I especially enjoyed working with the new wide angle capabilities of my 17-40.
• Vignetting (darkening of the image corners) and corner softness are more apparent, especially with the 17-40mm lens, but with the 24-105mm as well. Shooting landscapes with wide expanses of sky at f/4 with either of these lenses leaves noticeable vignetting. Fortunately, for several reasons this turns out to be a fairly minor issue. I rarely do these sorts of shots wide open, and the issue largely goes away by f/8 – with the exception of some corner softness issues on the 17-40mm lens, but read on…
• I can now use significantly smaller apertures. I would rarely shoot with smaller apertures than about f/8 on the crop sensor camera – at smaller apertures the increase in DOF was cancelled by the decrease in sharpness caused by didiffraction. However, I discovered before the trip that there was virtually no discernible decrease in sharpness at f/11 or even f/16 with the same lenses on the full frame 5D. I also found out that the corner issues, particularly on the 17-40mm lens, were essentially eliminated at the smaller apertures. Consequently I made great use of f/11 and f/16 on this lens and got great depth of field and sharpness that I could not have achieved with my previous camera.
• Dust is an issue. I haven’t had the camera long enough to know if it is something about the 5D, shooting at smaller apertures, or just the fact that I was in one of the dustiest places in the world – oh, and I drove nearly 100 miles on dirt and gravel roads. However, I have some dust in every shot I took. Fortunately, cloning the dust spots out in Photoshop is not a big deal – and probably still a lot less trouble than retouching film would be!

One final observation. I kept my Canon 350D/XT body when I got the 5D. Being much smaller and lighter than the 5D it could be useful in situations where I don’t want to be saddled with bulky/heavy equipment, the crop sensor body gives me more “reach” with my longer lenses, and it could serve as a back up camera. I brought the camera along on the Death Valley trip.

My opinion of the 350D has not changed. I continue to maintain that this little camera is capable of making excellent images and that its small size and weight are advantages in many circumstances. I believe that it may well be one of those cameras that eventually comes to be regarded as something of a “classic.”

However… I didn’t even remove the 350D from the bag once on this trip. I’m rethinking its place in my equipment bag. While I might still use it on rare occasions, I don’t think that I’ll be inclined to forego the use of the 5D as often as I thought I might. I’m beginning to think about selling it…

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A type of question is frequently posted at photography discussion forums that goes something like this:

Help me decide. I’m going back and forth between the IS and non-IS versions of Canon’s f/2.8 or f/4 70-200mm zoom lenses, but I want to get the best optical quality. Which one should I choose?

Wrong question.

Too often the writer is trying to categorize really fine lenses into categories of “not good enough” and “best,” and on the basis of the wrong criteria in any case. Let me pursue this Canon lens example a bit. (You can probably substitute examples from the manufacturer of your gear.)

It turns out that all four of these lenses are optically excellent and can produce images of the equally high quality. They also share the same excellent build quality. Trying to decide between them on the basis of quality is hopeless. Any differences there might be – with the emphasis on might – are almost certainly much smaller than those based on normal sample variation.

And “quality” is really not the basis for distinguishing among them anyway. If you look beyond the issue of optical quality, there are other factors that likely are significantly different – though here what is “better” for one photographer may be “less good” for another. The significant variables among these lenses include maximum aperture, whether or not they have image stabilization, size, weight, cost, and how these factors make a particular lens more or less suitable for an individual photographer.

The best lens for someone requiring a zoom in this focal length range for handheld shooting of active subjects in low light would likely be the f/2.8 IS model. On the other hand, this could be a very poor choice for a landscape photographer who often carries the gear on the trail in a backpack and usually shoots relatively static subjects from a tripod. This photographer might be better served by the f/4 non-IS version.

The bottom line is that the significant differences between high-end lenses like these are not so much in their “quality” as they are in the “qualities” that they provide and their usefulness for ones particular approach to photography.

(One reason I’m writing this is so that I can point a link here rather than re-writing the message every time I want to reply to this question in one of those forums. :-)
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Carl Weese at The Online Photographer just posted a piece on the Pentax 70mm f/2.4 DA lens that reminds me why a) I really want companies other than just Canon and Nikon to thrive and flourish in the DSLR market, b) equipment doesn’t have to look the way we expect it to look to be good, and c) Pentax is still a cool company.

Worth a read.
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