Tag Archives: II

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Redwood Forest, Morning

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Redwood Forest, Morning. Muir Woods National Monument, California. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell.

Redwood Forest, Morning. Muir Woods National Monument, California. February 28, 2009. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Filtered morning light in the redwood forest at Muir Woods National Monument, California.

I got up early on Saturday morning, February 28 and was on the well before dawn – through San Francisco, across the Golden Gate Bridge, and on to Muir Woods. The park wasn’t open when arrived – though one can still get it – and it appeared that I was the second visitor to arrive. The sky was overcast, with occasional breaks that allowed the sun to filter through the redwoods at times – all of which amounts to pretty much ideal light for photographing the forest at Muir Woods.

This photograph is not in the public domain. It may not be used on websites, blogs, or in any other media without explicit advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

keywords: muir, woods, national, monument, park, redwood, tree, forest, trunk, bark, green, foliage, grove, morning, light, vertical, san francisco, bay, area, nature, landscape, scenic, travel, stock, marin, golden gate

Commentary, Equipment, Tests

Canon EOS 5D II: Early Observations on Image Quality

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I posted earlier today about increasing availability of the Canon EOS 5D II at places like B&H, so I thought it might be useful to begin posting on some of my experiences with the camera during the couple of weeks (and perhaps a thousand frames) that I’ve had it. Here is a copy of something I posted elsewhere earlier this week, in response to a post concerning image quality from this camera:

I’ve shot with cropped sensor bodies extensively in the past. I have shot with a full-frame 5D for the past two years. I recently began shooting with a 5DII and have done a thousand or so frames with it.

I cannot see image quality problems in my images, even in those that stress the ability of the camera in ways that should produce them if they are there: shooting wide dynamic range scenes, using high ISOs (up to 1600), inspecting at large on-screen magnifications, and making careful prints.

My photos have very low noise all the way through the shadows to pure black, even in some photographs where I’ve pushed the shadows either during RAW conversion and/or via the shadow/highlight tool in post. I’m seeing very highly detailed images with smooth tonal transitions. As far as I’ve seen the 5D II has a rather substantial dynamic range – as reported in a number of tests – and it is at least as great as that of the 5D.

Let me repost a couple of 100% magnification crops that I posted elsewhere from the 5DII.

The first was shot at ISO 100 at, IIRC, f/16 using a 35mm prime with the camera on tripod. The crop is a 100% magnification section from the very far lower right corner of the shot. The dark areas were pushed slightly, too, so if there were noise anywhere it would certainly appear here – but I don’t see it even at this resolution, which would be equivalent to a print width of five or six FEET wide. Seems like pretty good resolution to me! (It also speaks well for the EF 35mm f/2 lens.)

The second example is pretty much a noise “torture test” – it is a very dark section of a much larger image. (Again a 100% crop). It was shot using a 100-400mm zoom handheld at ISO 400 in cloudy conditions. There is some noise in the shot, but that is entirely normal – and this noise would be completely invisible even in a very large print. (The pattern on the lighter fabric near the left side of the frame is that of the fabric itself.)

My observations from 100% on-screen pixel peeping are confirmed by the more important test of printing.

(If my post has helped you with a purchase decision, making your purchase from B&H through this link will help support the blog. Thanks!

Commentary

Resisting Temptation: Canon 5D2

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I shoot with a Canon 5D. It is a really fine camera for my purposes, and after a couple of years of fairly substantial usage it is still working quite well.

Canon recently introduced the 5D2, which appears to be a very fine upgrade to the 5D line in pretty much every important way that we could expect in a camera sold at this price point: 21 MP sensor, a high quality video mode, dust reduction features, bigger and better monitor, and so on.

I’ll almost certainly get one… in due time. I resolved to not be an early adopter of the new camera, for several reasons. Early adopters typically pay list price of more for their cameras. To the extent that some glitches are not always discovered in pre-release testing, it is not uncommon for the first production run to have a few “issues.” And, most important, my current camera works really, really well. The 5D2 could, indeed, be “better” in some ways, but not so much better that I must rush out and replace it immediately.

But now that the 5D2 seems to be reaching the retailers in larger numbers, I’m starting to see interesting deals. For example I saw a couple for $2700 that included immediate availability and free shipping. I saw another legitimate price that was even lower. There have been a couple of deals on the 5D2 bundled with the EF 24-105mm f/4 L. (Those won’t appeal to me since I already own that lens.)

Note to self: Be strong, Dan. :-)

If  you are ready to buy your 5D2, you can purchase this product from B&H Photo via this link and help support this web site – thanks!

Equipment, Tests

Using Prints to Test Four Canon DSLRs

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Miles Hecker has posted interesting test results in his Canon EOS big guns image quality shootout:

As some of you know, I am a landscape photographer. I migrated to full frame digital SLR’s from medium format film. I used to shoot 6×4.5, 6×7 and 6×9 film with the end product being prints of 20″x30″ and larger. As such, I chose to investigate only one area of the 5Dmk2 in this exercise, overall image quality or IQ for short. For this test, I decided to construct a still life with a wide range of color, lots of detail and very controlled lighting to obtain what for me are valid results.The test would produce 100% crops for pixel peeping. The final analysis of IQ however would be made using real life obsevers and detailed sections of 16″x24″ and 20″x30″ photographic prints.

What I like about his test methodology is that it eliminates the very difficult issue of normalizing on-screen tests of cameras with different sensor sizes and photosite densities but doing something that I have felt would make the most sense, comparing large prints from the different test cameras. In this case he tested the Canon EOS 1DsM3, 5D2, 5D, and 50D. 

I won’t spoil the fun by telling you the results here, but let’s just say I’m not at all surprised at the results.