Are the days of the SLR numbered?

Posts from Scott Bourne  and Trey Ratcliff singing the  praises of these next-generation cameras coincided with the recent announcement of the Fuji X-Pro 1 system, and showed that the exciting action in the camera world at the moment is not happening with DSLRs.

Even Nikon’s release of the scary-good D4 hasn’t attracted that much attention (at least partly due to the scary-high price).

The Fuji system is carefully aimed at all the serious photogs who would love a Leica M9 but can’t or won’t pay the money for it (and the very spendy lenses). Fast primes mated to a small discrete body with a big sensor inside is the sort of stuff that gets our attention very quickly.

But with the Sony NEX series, the Olympus/Panasonic Micro 4/3rds environment, the NIkon 1 series and the new Fujis we’re now looking at 4 different standards. Steve Huff, who definitely know what he’s talking about, maintains that none of them are the perfect choice right now, and that sounds about right.

But even if, as Trey Ratcliff argues, the days of the SLR are numbered, it seems  to me that it’s still too early for a lot of us to jump ship from our SLRs. From where I sit, surrounded by some Canon gear and some Micro 4/3rds gear, these are the things that are making me pause:

No clear comprehensive upgrade path

With the SLRs, Canon, Nikon and to a lesser extent Sony, you can choose one system and know that in three-five years you’ll still likely be with that system. I started with Canon because I inherited an old film SLR and lens from my mother in law. The body went almost immediately when I bought my Rebel XT, and the lens not too long after that.  But six years, 3 bodies and eight lenses later, it’s still Canon in my bag.

Right now with the mirrorless options, there’s so much new stuff emerging so quickly that you can’t know what the next best step is, let alone what will happen in three years’ time. My micro 4/3rds Olympus EPL-2 and Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 is a great combination, but I’m not even sure I’d get a single new M4/3rds lens or body now. The lens choices are good, but the sensors in the Sonys and new Fuji look much better.

On the other hand, while the Sony bodies look good, the lenses are pretty big and there aren’t that many options. And no-one’s even shot the Fuji, so it’s too early to say (although there’s a lot of love for its daddy, the X100).

Lots of money for less absolute quality

What you like about a camera isn’t just its potential image quality. Some of your other priorities might trump IQ – size, focus speed, lens choices, ergonomics . . . but for the same money as you’d spend on any of these mirrorless systems, you could get some really good SLR gear, that would perform better in absolute terms under quite a few real-world situations (so long as you had the camera with you – which is of course one of the great appeals of the smaller systems).

Depending on what you shoot, 90% of it could potentially be covered by the mirrorless setup you choose, and there is the ineffable appeal of something small enough to slip into a (albeit pretty large) pocket. But to me, there are enough limitations of all the systems currently that I couldn’t sell my 5D II, (even if I didn’t shoot video with it).

Limited depth of field control

Given the physics of using smaller sensors than the full-frame SLRs, and the limited number of extremely fast lenses, there are a bunch of shots that you just couldn’t get with these mirrorless cameras that you can with SLRs. I borrowed both the Canon 35mm f/1.4 and the 85mm f/1.2  last year, and while I wasn’t completely sold on the 85mm, the 35mm f/1.4 just sang. And the creative options that both gave me, not even counting their low-light performance (which I’m charitably suggesting might be repeatable by some mirrorless in-camera ISO magic), is currently impossible for these mirrorless cameras to reproduce.

But since the Fujis and Sonys already have APS-C sized sensors, it’s quite possible we’ll see full-frame size sensors in the not too distant future, without the Leica price tag.

Where are Canon in all this?

I see they’ve released the G1 X, with a much larger sensor (which was always the Achilles heel of the G-series cameras before), which is good to see. But to stick a slow medium zoom on it makes it clear it’s not really for serious enthusiasts.

Maybe they’re afraid to cannibilize the sales of their DSLRs, but they’d be better to cannibilize those sales themselves, than see the money head off to Fuji or Sony. A small Canon mirrorless body with a big sensor and an EF-lens adapter would be a great thing to see – maybe the G1 X sensor (larger than a Micro 4/3rds) will be the basis of some interchangeable lens action in the future.

Pick your poison

I don’t want to sound like I’m dissing the mirrorless cameras (although I agree with Trey Ratcliff that ‘mirrorless’ isn’t a great name for them).  I just submitted a portfolio to get a place on a documentary photography workshop with Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Deanne Fitzmaurice, and realised that around half the images I submitted were shot with my EPL2.

My real point is that while the turbulence in the high-end digital market is exciting, it makes it hard to know where to spend your money next. I think there’ll be even more fragmentation for the next while, before things settle down.

Some people (mainly enthusiasts, I’m guessing) will take the money they would have spent on an SLR and some lenses, and put it into a mirrorless system that will be their only camera. There’ll get almost all the performance they would have got, and take more photos because their system is smaller and easier to lug around.

Some pros will stick solely with the big bodies because they’re too invested in the systems, don’t need the benefits the mirrorless cameras and/or shoot the kind of work that can only be done with full-on DSLRs – sports, wildlife, some portraiture.

Other folks (pros and wealthy amateurs) will run both sets of systems in parallel, choosing the right setup to leave the house with as the job or mood dictates that day.

I’m already in the third group, which is bad for my bank balance, but it’s exciting for the range of options now open to me and the rest of us. If only I could decide what my next step will be in the mirrorless arena.

Attentive readers (hi, Mum), will perhaps recall that around this time last year, I tried out a Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 IF EX DG HSM  as a replacement for my able but unloved Canon 24-105 f/4 L.

The copy of the Sigma I received front-focussed badly, and since I had only the Canon 5D at the time as my main camera, I couldn’t use any micro-adjustments (even if that would have worked).

Sigma offered to calibrate the lens with that body, but I declined, as I wanted to it work on all the cameras I might potentially have, not just one. The lens went back.

With some regret, I must say, as I liked the feel and size of it (especially compared to the larger Canon 24-70 f/2.8 aka ‘the brick’), and liked some of the images I shot with it.

A year later, and I still had the 24-105mm largely gathering dust on the shelf, but now I also had a 5D Mk II to complement the older 5D. B & H had a (temporarily) good price on the Sigma ($799 instead of the usual $899 in the US), so I took the plunge again. And as this review shows, I’m glad I did.

This copy out of the box just worked. Sharp and fast, with none of the front focussing issues of the other copy. So why did I get it, when I’m normally such a proponent of prime lenses?

Studio-type work

Given my two-camera approach for paid sessions on location (a 35mm f/2 on one camera and and 85mm f/1.8 on the other), I wasn’t thinking of using this much on regular shoots.

But I might try it in place of the 35mm f/2, so I can go wider still – there’s a big difference between 24mm and 35mm (much more obvious than, say, the difference between 70mm and 81mm).

I can also see other professional uses for the lens, mainly in studio-type shooting. The times I have used the 24-105mm professionally have been school class photos (where I was shooting at f/8 and on a tripod), and the indoor portrait sessions, where I used off-camera flash. In other words, work in a controlled environment where the flexibility of the zoom was more important than narrow depth of field, and the lens was in its sweet spot as far as sharpness was concerned.

Soon after the Sigma arrived, I volunteered my time (with fellow photographers Minesh Bacrania, Charles Kiyanda and Henrik Sandin) to work on Santa Fe’s Help Portrait – we shot portraits for the growers, farm workers and vendors at the Santa Fe Farmers Market. We shot hundreds and hundreds of frames using the 24-70 in a studio-type setup with backfrops and off-camera flashes and it did really well.

Low-light walkaround

To me, wider aperture offered by the Sigma at f/2.8 was the single biggest reason for replacing the 24-105mm f/4 – to create the most useful walkaround lens when I’m only using one body. Unless I’m under the sort of circumstances described above, I live under f/4, partly for the narrow depth of field and partly for manageable shutter speeds indoors.

On a full-frame camera, the Sigma vignettes a little wide at f/2.8, but that’s easily correctable if you don’t like it, but otherwise it’s sharp, contrasty and fast to focus. I’ve not tested it myself, but from reviews the vignetting understandably isn’t such an issue on smaller sensor cameras.

See the vignette against the white wall on the left? Canon 5D II w. Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 IF EX DG HSM at 55mm. f/2.8, 1/1000, ISO 800. Some levels and contrast adjustments - so the vignette wouldn't be so noticeable straight out of camera.

If I’m carrying one camera around, and want it to be more flexible than the Olympus EPL-2 and Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 duo that’s almost always with me, then the 5dII with the Sigma 24-70mm is now my go-to choice.

Early (very early) on Christmas morning, that was the setup I grabbed to photograph Miss F opening her presents. I still adhere to the idea that if you’ve got 2 cameras to hand, a wide prime and a tighter prime offer the best combination for ultimate quality. But when you’re bleary-eyed and only want to have one camera around your neck, then this fast zoom really shines.

I could get the wide establishing shots, and the capture-the-details tighter images without any bother, all while blurring the background and keeping the shutter speed fast without jacking up the ISO too much.

Downsides

• While it’s lighter and shorter than the Canon 24-70 and has a lens hood you can turn round on the lens and still put the camera down, it’s still pretty chunky. To me, its size and weight are an advantage compared to its competitors, but it’s a lot more substantial than most primes.
• It’s not weather-sealed like the Canon L lenses, and it takes crazy wide 82mm filters, which you probably won’t have to hand from your other lenses.
•  I got a good copy this time, but had a dodgy one before. For this much money, you’d like Sigma to get the quality control right, so there’s no messing. So I’d recommend buying it locally or from someone with good returns policy so you can check it out well.

Upsides

•  Great image quality – sharp, with good contrast
•  F/2.8 for good low light and narrow depth of field options
•  Cheaper than the Canon alternatives
• Built like a tank (except for the weather sealing). So it will take a beating, just don’t take it out in a downpour or sandstorm.

Conclusion

I like this copy of the Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 IF EX DG HSM . To the point where the Canon 24-105mm went off to eBay, and if you offered me the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM in its place, I don’t think I’d take it. Just make sure you get a good one.

This time, I look at the pros and cons of mirrorless cameras. The article begins:

Up until recently, there were two main paths you could take when choosing a digital camera. As we know, point and shoots offer affordability, small size and convenience, but the trade-offs are limited manual options and constrained image quality.

You can read the rest of the analysis over at Digital Photography School.

To update my last post on the subject, my experience with the Olympus PEN E-PL2 micro 4/3rds camera is going well. Perhaps the first thing to note is that I always have it in my bag, which is one of the main objectives.

I’ve taken it with me on a lunchtime dog walk, and have got into the habit of sticking it in jacket pockets when heading out the door without a bag. The excellent Panasonic LUMIX G 20mm f/1.7 lens is small enough that it makes the whole thing pocketable.

One things that was limiting my enjoyment, however, was the lack of a viewfinder.

For me, shooting using the LCD wasn’t working for several reasons:

• shaky arms: If you’re trying to get things composed precisely, then having the camera out at arm’s length makes it hard to make subtle adjustments. With the camera jammed into your face, that fine control is easier.
• bad eyes: The screen’s pretty good even in bright sun, but when you’re looking at it from a distance, then most things in your field of view aren’t the screen, making it harder to see all the details you’d get with a viewfinder
• missing focus: I tend to use the center focus point, and then recompose the image when I’ve got focus. I do this on all my cameras, partly out of habit, but mainly because I don’t trust the camera to know what I want to focus on, and I’m quicker with focus-and-recompose than I would be trying to select a particular focus point. This is much harder to do on an LCD screen
• force of habit: I’ve been looking through viewfinders for a long time. I like it in there.

The obvious solution was the the Olympus VF-2 electronic viewfinder, but at $230 or so, it isn’t cheap, and it does add to the bulk of the camera. So, is it worth it?

It definitely adds a decided lump to the top of the camera.

Like watching a movie

It’s an electronic viewfinder so what you see is exactly what the lens is seeing (as with an SLR) but it achieves this not by using mirrors but by containing a small screen inside the eyepiece. Genius.

In some ways it’s actually better than the optical viewfinder on a DSLR. Firstly, it more accurately shows depth of field without having to use a depth of field preview buttons (which I find never work that well anyway). Secondly, if you’ve chosen any of the Art Modes on the camera (I’m fond of the grainy black and white), the viewfinder image shows you what you’re actually going to get. So the black and white image shows as black and white.

And for extra fun, the eyepiece tilts upwards for composing in awkward situations (or pretending you’re a submarine commander with a periscope).

Sturdy enough

Other reviewers have reported that since the viewfinder doesn’t actually lock (it just slides into the socket above the screen and into the flash hotshoe) it can be knocked off when you’re carrying the camera around.

It certainly could be a more solid connection (the newer but lower-spec Olympus VF-3 has a locking mechanism), but I’ve not had a problem with it yet.

Recommended, with a but

Even though it does make the camera a little bit more chunky, I like the viewfinder a lot, to the point where I haven’t taken it off the camera since it arrived.

For me, it increases the chances that I’ll get the shot I’m after, and makes the process of shooting it more enjoyable.

It’s worth noting though, that by the time you’ve bought the camera (my EPL2 was reduced because the EP3 and EPL3 had just been released), a fast prime and the viewfinder, you’re up near Fujifilm X100 territory.

The Fuji has a 35mm equivalent f/2 lens, a viewfinder that can switch between being optical and electronic, and looks like it came from the set of Mad Men. The PENs are smaller and more flexible (with the option of using interchangeable lenses, including mounts for some legacy option), but the Fuji’s sensor is larger, and it’s getting a lot of love.

I’m happy with my choice, but if you think you’re going to want the viewfinder for sure, then you might want to consider the Fuji or the Sony NEXs as well, before making your decision.

So I’m now the proud owner of an Olympus E-PL2 – one of the well-regarded Olympus EP PEN series. My experience lugging the big lad around Legoland was a step too far.

Despite only being released in January, the E-PL2 (which I’ll just call the EPL2 from now on to save on hyphens) is now on the virtual scrap-heap, having been superseded by the new E-P3. Which is why I got such a good price on it – with the kit lens I got it for $500 (from Amazon), while the E-P3 with the same lens is $900 (if you can find it at the moment).

(Technically, the E-P3 replaces the older E-P3, but the EPL2 was released in between these two, and so while it was supposed to be the less-impressive kid brother of the EP series cameras, it performs better than the (at the time) more expensive EP-2. You can get the EP-2 for around $500 too, which is nominally a bigger saving, but the EPL2 is a better camera, so I think that’s the one to get between the two old versions).

It lacks some of the things the new camera has – notably the touchscreen that lets you point to focus, faster autofocus all around, higher max ISO, and better movie capabilities – but interestingly DxO tests actually give the EPL2 better image quality results than its successors. Its results aren’t too far off the Canon Rebel XT body I bought as my first digital SLR five years ago. Impressive how far we’ve come technologically in a few short years.

I’d take an E-P3 if someone gave me, but the price difference between the two made the EPL2 an easy choice, especially as I was planning on using the camera as a more casual, walk around device than my main shooter.

And for that it does really well. It’s small, but not tiny – you can’t stick it in a trouser pocket (especially with the kit 14-42mm lens (which comes out at 28 – 84mm equivalent). but it’s certainly lighter and more manageable than my workhorse 5D Mark II with any lens attached.

What’s this Micro 4/3rds format anyway?

Jointly developed by Olympus and Panasonic (the lenses each make for the format are interchangeable across the manufacturers), the aim of this format is to put a pretty good-sized sensor into a smaller body, with smaller but interchangeable lenses.

These cameras work well for people moving up from point and shoots, looking for more quality and more control (although there are the usual Scene modes and auto-everything as options). But they also work for more experienced photographers like me, who don’t want to lug a chunky DLSR around all the time but can be demanding about performance.

A lot of the size reduction over DSLRs comes from not having a mirror system to project the image you’re intending to take into a viewfinder. Instead you either use the LCD screen (as most point and shoots do), or an electronic viewfinder which actually contains a small screen that displays what the lens is seeing. (For that reason these type of cameras are sometimes described using the clunky acronym EVIL – for Electronic Viewfinder, Interchangeable Lens).

The $1200 Fujifilm X100 has recently got a ton of attention for doing most of this, and by all accounts it’s nice to use and delivers good quality (and looks gorgeous), but if you don’t like the 35mm equivalent focal length, then you’re out of luck (making it EV, but not EVIL, I guess) as it only comes with one lens.

But the Micro 4/3rds format offers a good range of interchangeable lenses that work with all the M4/3rds cameras. There are wide primes, long zooms and even adaptors for a range of old-school legacy lenses from Voigtlander, Leica, Olympus and other brands – most of them you’ll have to focus manually.

As well as the kit lens, I got the well-regarded Panasonic LUMIX 20mm f/1.7 to create a more portable low-light monster. Especially with the in-camera stabilization, I’ve got sharp shots of (still) subjects hand-held at 1/4 second, which is insane, and something my 5D II can’t match with most my lenses.

It was really pretty dark at this point, but the Oly and the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 kept on trucking without having to jack up the ISO too much.

Look, no viewfinder

Some other micro-4/3rds cameras sport viewfinders, but for the PEN series they’re an optional (and expensive extra). But the electronic viewfinder actually shows you what your image will be like (black and white, for example if you’ve selected that art mode, or with the correct depth of field if you’re shooting wide open).

Forget the size, look at the sensor size

The solid image quality is largely down to the size of the sensor. At 13 x 17.3mm it’s not too far from the APS-C size in most consumer and prosumer DSLRs at 14.9 x 22.3mm – for comparison, the Canon G-series high-end point and shoots have sensors that measure 5.6 x 7.5mm – less than a fifth of the area.

Other smaller cameras have 12MP, but that file size is derived from the smaller sensors, compromising image quality, especially at higher ISOs.

Using it in real life

All this information might explain why it’s a good choice on paper, but what’s it like actually using the EPL2?

After nearly a week of shooting with it, mainly at relaxed social occasions rather than going out specifically to shoot, I can say I really like it, and I’m pleasantly surprised at the image quality.

This camera works brilliantly for casual situations like this, where photography isn’t your main objective but you’d like to have a good enough camera with you just in case. It’s small, light and unobtrusive. Especially if you compose using the LCD, it looks pretty much the same as a whole bunch of consumer point and shoots, so doesn’t attract the same sort of attention as a 5D Mark II with an L-series zoom on it. And you can drop another lens in your pocket and be ready for anything.

I mainly shoot in Aperture Priority, and I’ve customized the controls so I can adjust aperture, ISO, exposure compensation, focus point and face detection all very easily. I normally shoot with a single centre focus point (a throwback to my days using the Canon 5D, where only the centre point is reliable). This means I normally focus and then recompose, and I’m fine with that.

But with the accurate face detection enabled, that’s often faster, and so it’s nice to have that option when I’m photography my daughter, for example. It also allows you to shoot with the camera well away from your eyes and still be pretty confident you’ll get the focus you want. There’s very little shutter lag, and a usable but not super speedy burst mode.

Getting the focus right in this shot with my camera above my head would be tricky without the good face recognition feature in the E-PL2

Composing and shooting via the LCD gives me a bit less confidence I’m getting the shot I want, after so long using a viewfinder. But when I review the shots, it seems I’ve got what I was looking for most of the time.

Wolf in sheep’s clothing

When I was taking some shots of the great band (Felix y Los Gatos) playing on the Plaza during the week, it seemed like I was just another local or tourist with a point and shoot, which was fine. But with the fast Panasonic prime attached, I was getting a nice narrow depth of field, and some reasonable shutter speeds even as it got dark.

It’s perfect for street photography (not that I do much), especially if you set it to zone focus manually (i.e set a aperture than creates a wide depth of field so you know that, say, everything from 4 to 15 feet is in focus). The bright LCD and dazzling small blue power light on the top might give you away though, so perhaps a black Sharpie and the electronic viewfinder’s a good combinations for situations when you want to be particularly stealthy.

How I learned to stop worrying and love JPGs

To keep everything simple and relaxed, I’m trying out shooting JPGs, so I’m not tempted to do any processing on images that are taken more for fun than business.

The camera supports RAW and there’s even some RAW + JPG options that I could use, but the appeal of just shooting and being done is pretty strong for me. I’ll let you know if I stick with this plan, but the Oly JPGs come out pretty well.

Conclusion

I’m really enjoying the little Oly, and while I’m sure the new E-P3 and forthcoming E-PL3 offer better performance (especially focussing), If you’re looking for a good deal the E-PL2 is worth looking at. The money you save over the new versions could be put towards the view-finder or a nice prime like the Panasonic 20mm that I got, or the apparently very nice (but pricey) Olympus M. Zuiko 12mm f/2.0.

Finally, I’d like to thank (and point you to) two resources that were really valuable while I was trying to figure out which smaller camera to get. Kirk Tuck, a photographer in Austin, Texas has a great blog that often covers Micro 4/3rds cameras, and Steve Huff is also well-informed and interesting on Leicas, Olympuses (Olympi?) and other non-DLSR stuff. Both well worth following if you’re interested in this area of photography.

When you’re a kid there are some things you lust after with a passion beyond all reason. Like a Millennium Falcon to go with your Star Wars figures. The longer you peruse the catalogue, or hear your friends talk about it, the more you’re convinced that this thing is the best thing in the world, and having it it will make you happier than anything.

And then you get it. And it’s pretty good, and you can see why everyone likes it. But your life goes on pretty much unchanged – even with the new bauble given pride of place in your room, you still have to tidy up that room, and go to school, and get soaked at the bus stop on the way home. A bit of a let-down, then.

As photographers, we’re always told that we need to hold on to our child-like sense of play, our joy in being in the moment. Which is great, but I think that also means we sometimes keep that child-like irrational longing for an object. And when we get it, life goes on pretty much unchanged.

Canon L-series lenses attract a lot of that longing, and for me it’s the L primes that I’ve figuratively and actually ogled in shop windows. I’ve got a 24-105mm f/4 L, used to have the 17-40mm f/4 L and the 70-200mm f/4L and while I appreciate those L zooms, the compromises inherent in making zooms seemed to limit my enthusiasm for them. They’re fine, good even, but I’m not going to put a poster of any of them on my wall.

But the primes are a different breed altogether. Partly because I love primes of all stripes, but also because if you’re going to make a great lens, shouldn’t it be as uncompromising as possible – really excellent at doing just one thing? And what could be more madly committed than the Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II (that’s an Amazon affiliate link, if you think you’re man enough). That’s f/1.2, just to repeat it. It costs over $2000 and looks like a magic black grapefruit (with a little red line around the end).

Thanks to borrowlenses.com the 85mm arrived on my doorstep in time for this year’s Santa Fe International Folk Art Market, where I was due to be taking photographs of the amazing artists and their work.

85mm is my favorite portrait length, and it was with great joy that I unscrewed the lens’ back cap to put it on to my 5D II. Holy scratching, Batman! The rear element is so close to the mount that it seems impossible to attach it to the camera without gouging the glass. Luckily for me (and borrowlenses.com) I got it on OK, but if you’re cack-handed or have to swap lenses in a hurry, you’ll constantly be worried about dinging your beauty.

Once in place it’s heavy, but because it’s so short it doesn’t seem unwieldy, and on a chunky body like the 5D II, it lends the whole thing a nice balance. The weight is noticeable, but I found it much more manageable than the 24-70mm f/2.8.

Steady as she goes

Every review says it so you shouldn’t be surprised, but the first thing you notice in real use is that the 85mm f/1.2 focuses slowly. It’s smooth, but stately, like a luxury liner changing direction. It gets there in the end (more or less – see below) but if you’re shooting fast-moving things, then flat out, this lens isn’t for you. Manually focusing isn’t any faster, by the way.

Use the narrow depth of focus for good, not ill.

Missed shots

At the Market, as with all portrait-style shooting, I make a point of getting at least two shots of each artist in each composition I wanted. This is normally to cover for blinking or weird micro-expressions from the subjects. In this case, it ended up being crucial in ensuring that at least one was in focus.

It was very strange. The artists weren’t moving, the light was good, I was using the center focus point only, and I’d wait until the camera told me it had focused. But more times than with any other lens, one of my series would be out of focus. It wasn’t always the first one, either.

The only thing I can think is that something happened while I recomposed after I’d focused – I normally do it all the time with complete confidence. But not with this lens. Maybe I’m doing something wrong and there’s a simple solution, but if you don’t have confidence that you’re going to get what you expect, then you’re in for a torrid time on shoots that matter.

Narrow depth of field

If a lens offers f/1.2, you’re going to want to use it. But the irony is that for the classic headshot – the bread and butter of the 85mm focal length, f/1.2 offers way too narrow a depth of field for most practical uses.

My nifty iPhone depth of field app tells me that at 5 feet (about the right distance to fill the frame with the head and bit of shoulder) and a full-frame camera, the depth of field at f/1.2 is 0.07ft (near limit 4.96 ft, far limit 5.04 ft). How much is 0.07ft? 0.84 inches, or 2.1 centimeters. In other words, if the eye is in focus then the end of the nose will be blurred. If the subject turns their head slightly and you get the closer eye in focus, then the further eye will be out of focus.

Just to put your mind at rest, I wasn’t shooting at f/1.2 at the Market. But I could see how when the subject was further away so you had a workable depth of field (say, a depth of field of 8 inches at 15 ft), f/1.2 could get you shots you just couldn’t get with any other lens, especially in the pitch black.

So the impossibly narrow potential depth of field isn’t a criticism, just a caveat that you need to be careful with all that power.

On the Other Hand

So let’s recap – it’s heavy, it looks like you could wreck it if you’re not careful, it focuses slowly, still doesn’t focus accurately, and the crazy narrow depth of field is unusable a lot of the time. Maybe I should have just stuck to ogling it in shop windows (like the Millennium Falcon). Except that it helped me produce some great images.

When the heavens aligned, the pictures sung. Everything that I’d been trying to show in the picture was there, more pronounced and more attractive than I expected. From small details, like catchlights in eyes, to broad strokes like the amazing contrast and rich colors. Not forgetting the dreamy creamy bokeh.

It’s not often I peak at the LCD on the back of the camera and utter an audible ‘Woh.’ (never, in fact), but this lens got me like that a few times.

Some of the differences between this and my sturdy 85mm f/1.8 (lighter, faster and more accurate focusing, around 20% of the price) you could make up in processing. But not all of it.

Would I buy it?

If someone gave me $2000 and told me I had to spend it on camera gear (don’t tell me you’ve don’t think about that situation), the truth is I probably wouldn’t buy it. For me, the f/1.8 is more practical and reliable (and I already own it). The fantastic shots I got with the 1.2 that I couldn’t get with the 1.8 to me would be made up for by the shots the 1.2 missed with its weird focus that the 1.8 would nail every time. But I shoot a lot of fast-moving children and need bang-on focus.

With my $2000 I’d probably get the 35mm f/1.4 L (which I’m guessing is more obviously superior in more ways to the 35mm f/2 that I’m currently using), and most of the 135mm f/2 L. Although come to think of it, I’d actually be more likely to get the Fuji X100 and most of the 135mm f/2.

But that doesn’t mean I’m sad I rented the 85mm, or that I can’t appreciate it’s great strong points. If you’re going to make a crazy money prime lens, then I love the way it comes with impractical quirks. It’s capable of fantastic images, but it’s not an easy thing to use, and it has some annoying habits.

Much like a Ferrari (so I’m told) – it does one thing (driving in an exhilarating fashion) better than almost anything else in the world. But you can’t park it, the dashboard controls are unusable, you can’t see out of the back and the ride’s so stiff you’ll feel like you got beaten up if you drive it for a couple of hours.

But that one thing it does well, well that’s the effin’ ineffable, isn’t it? Just like with the 85mm f/1.2.

]]> http://www.clearingthevision.com/2011/07/the-canon-85mm-f1-2-l-reviewed-ferrari-or-millennium-falcon/feed/ 2 http://www.clearingthevision.com/2011/01/lens-review-canon-24-70mm-f2-8-l-vs-sigma-24-70mm-f2-8-if-ex-dg-hsm/ http://www.clearingthevision.com/2011/01/lens-review-canon-24-70mm-f2-8-l-vs-sigma-24-70mm-f2-8-if-ex-dg-hsm/#comments Tue, 18 Jan 2011 23:06:10 +0000 David http://www.clearingthevision.com/?p=1037

UPDATE Jan 2012: I reviewed a different copy of the Sigma 24-70mm over here, and liked it much more. For balance, you should probably read that review too.

I’m a big fan of prime lenses, and my ideal set up might be something like 2 Canon EOS 5D Mark IIs each paired with one of the following: 35mm f/1.4L, 50mm f/1.2 L, 85mm f/1.2 L or 135mm f/2 L, depending on circumstances. Shooting with 2 cameras would give me wider and close-up options without changing lenses while keeping the speed and quality I like about primes. But since that’s a $10,000 ideal world I’ve just described, I’ve also been looking for a replacement for my Canon 24-105mm f/4L lens that would allow me some flexibility in framing while doing portrait sessions.

The 24-105mm f/4L is a great walk around lens, but I don’t make any money walking around, and it’s not a very good portrait lens. I live in the area between f/1.4 and f/3.2 – partly to freeze movement during indoor shoots, but mainly for the bokeh (the background blur).

All the image stabilisation in the world won’t help when a three year-old is running at you along a dark corridor, especially if you want to blur out the distracting pictures on the wall behind him. So the 24-105mm is off to eBay (drop me a line if you might be interested in buying it).

I’ve had the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM on loan from borrowlenses.com for a 3-week test, and I also got my hands on the Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 IF EX DG HSM for a comparison.

A few points before we start on the details. I was doing a subjective comparison, not a scientific one. I didn’t go looking for pincushion or barrel distortion, or measuring center and edge sharpness at different apertures and focal lengths. So don’t shout at me because there are no MTF charts.

Instead I shot real life things in the real life way I actually would.

The Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 – the heavy good news

First up, it’s huge. Heavy and unwieldy with a lens hood that looks like a bucket (and which you can’t turn round and then put the camera down anywhere). For some people this won’t be a problem, because they’ve got stronger hands and wrists than me, or they never ever shoot one-handed, or they want to bang in nails with their equipment.

But for me it’s an issue because I don’t want my gear to look super intimidating to children, I do shoot one-handed sometimes (with the camera away from my face so I can keep the interaction with the kid), and because my arm ached when I used it a lot.

But it’s also really good – definitely sharp enough for me at f.2.8, contrasty and with lovely colors. Auto-focus seemed acceptable even on my ageing 5D which is not very speedy.

The laws of physics mean that you get much more background blur at the 70mm end than the 24mm end (for the same aperture and distance from subject), so bear that in mind when setting up your shot.

The Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 – the lighter bad news

I really wanted to like the Sigma 24-70 f/2.8 for a number of reasons. One of them was the price – at $900 it’s $400 or so less than the Canon. Another was the size and weight – it’s by no means svelte, but it’s decidedly lighter and shorter than the Canon – aka’ the brick’. It definitely makes for a more comfortable shooting experience, and it’s a bit less daunting to be on the other end of (although the 82mm filter diameter is as large as I’ve seen, and means filters are expensive).

I’d heard good things about it, and I also liked the idea of not automatically going for the red-lined L lens without looking around at other options.

Which is all fine, but sadly the copy I got front-focused horribly. I’d read that this problem had afflicted some people, and it shows how much I’d come to depend on Canon reliabilty that I didn’t really think it would happen to me. I’ve probably shot with nearly a dozen different lenses (including one Sigma, the estimable 10-20mm for crop sensor bodies) and not had a single problem.

But it was when I was taking photos of Christmas tree decorations I saw how dispiriting a problem this is. You focus, you shoot and then the images look nothing like what you thought you got. Here’s an example grab from Aperture (which has a fancy overlay showing where the focus was) –  the focus point is market with the bold square. As you can see, where the camera actually focused was in front of that.

It seemed to do better when the subject was further away from the camera, and some of the shots it produced were very very sharp (see the individual hairs on our cat’s ridiculous white and pink nose below), but if you can’t trust the lens to focus where you want it too (especially when you’re using a deliberately narrow depth of field), then it’s not any good to you.

100% grab with no sharpening of a very white cat nose.

I’d read that sending the lens to Sigma to calibration often helped, and I actually called them to see about sending it in. But the uninterested guy on the phone told me I should send my camera too, and that because of where I lived, it was actually going to a repair shop in Arizona, not to Sigma USA itself. They also wanted me to tell them by how many inches I wanted it adjusted.

I had a few problems with this scenario. The first is that if I spend $900 on a lens, I’d like it to work out of the box. The second is that I’m not sending my main camera body anywhere if I can help it, and the third is I think it’s a reasonable expectation that I can use any of my lenses on any of the bodies I might have now and in the future – I don’t want it tied to one body. A further point is that asking me by how many inches I want it adjusted is a completely ridiculous question – it was clear that the distance the lens front-focused (or was accurate) depended on how far away the subject was from me. A single adjustment might cause more harm than good.

All this shook my confidence in Sigma’s ability to make a good lens in the first place, and in their ability to fix a defective lens. If calibrating is required, shouldn’t the QC in the factory have spotted this in the first place? So I returned it to Amazon for a refund (great returns policy, by the way).

The upshot

So the copy of the Canon 24-70mm I got was definitely way better than the copy of the Sigma 24-70mm I got. Would Sigma have been able to fix the lens? Quite possibly, but I’ll never know, because I didn’t chance it. And I know other people have nothing but good things to say about their copy, so I can’t dismiss the whole idea of it.

But I still don’t completely love the Canon, partly because of its substantial bulk. There are rumours of a new version of the 24-70mm being in the works (possibly to be announced at or before the WPPI convention next month), so the prudent thing right now seems to be to wait and see.

Part of my underlying problem is the feeling of compromise I always get with shooting with a zoom. Sure it’s convenient, but that’s all it’s got going for it.

The Canon EF 50mm f1.4 and Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 are my bread and butter lenses – almost all the shots I take for clients are with these, and even though they’re not L-class, I seldom feel like I’m short-changing myself or the image with them.

I’d thought that the flexibility of the zoom would be liberating, but instead it feels like I’m getting pretty good versions of shots that I couldn’t get with the primes, but no fantastic images. Maybe I’d rather miss some OK shots to get more great shots.

If you’re a newspaper shooter (any of those left?) or you shoot weddings, then getting a pretty good version of a shot is often all you can do, given the rapidly changing circumstances. It’s a little like that shooting kids’ portraits, but things are often a bit more under your control. So you’ve got the chance to get the great shot that the prime will give you.

Which of course, brings me back to the ideal world setup with matching 5D IIs and a quiver of L prime lenses. Where’s that lottery ticket, again?

Tomorrow starts a week of shoots at Tumbledown Gymnastics Studio, and in preparation for shooting in pretty dodgy light, I ordered a little something from nice folks at borrowlenses.com – the Canon 135mm f/2 L lens.

To check it out, I accompanied my long-suffering daughter on her exploration of the arroyo beside our house, and grabbed some images.

This is far from a full review, but I really like it. It’s pretty small (at least on a 5D) and unintimidating (although the hood is a chunky addition), which helps in certain situations.

It seems to focus quickly (even on the slightly sluggish 5D), it’s very sharp (as you’d expect from an L prime), and it delivers some nice creamy bokeh. Both these test images were shot at f/2.5, and I love the way the backgrounds disappear as the long focal length, 8-blade construction and nearly wide-open aperture all combine.

So it’s off to the gym tomorrow with it (together with my 50mm f/1.4 and 85mm f/1.8). I’ll post some shots from the gymnastics shoots during the week.

Like many an impatient Aperture user, I recently took the Lightroom 3 Beta for a spin. What follows is an informal review of my experience of Lightroom 3 Beta as a long-time Aperture user, and Apple Certified Pro in Aperture.

I mainly looked at the adjustment settings rather than the organizing or exporting options.

I hadn’t looked closely at Lightroom 2, so many of the things I liked about Adobe’s product were probably there in the earlier version too.

My overall view is that Lightroom includes some very valuable adjustment features that Aperture 2 gets nowhere near. The rumoured arrival of Aperture X (the rebranded Aperture 3) means I’m not making any snap decisions, but the revised Aperture needs at least to match Lightroom’s strengths to stay competitive.

Baked-in local adjustments

Aperture 2 has a plug-in architecture that saves out a tiff of the image you’re working on, and then lets you make adjustments to that. This is the only way to make adjustments to certain areas of an image (aside from the patching tools).

But these are pretty blunt tools for local adjustments, and they also depend on destructive editing – you have to create a new version of the file to use them. Since one of the main benefits of Aperture (and Lightroom) is that your adjustments (and multiple versions of different files) don’t create a bunch of new files, this is a big drawback.

Lightroom’s local adjustments are more subtle (the iris enhance feature is simple and effective, the spot patching more intuitive), and crucially, they’re non-destructive. You’re working in the regular file, and can go back and forth with edits, and go in whatever order you like. In Aperture, you have to dodge and burn last, or you’ll be adjusting on the tiffs, rather than the (preferable) RAW version.

Lightroom’s gradient adjust feature is also a powerful feature that Aperture can’t match. The default use would be to darken the sky while leaving the foreground untouched, but it needn’t be set vertically, so you could it use for some funky sideways effects to lead the eye to one side of the frame or the other.

Preset joy

In Aperture you can only save and apply presets in particular bricks – so you can apply preset Exposure settings using the Exposure brick, or preset Enhance settings from the Exposure brick. But there’s no simple way to apply a whole range of preset settings in one click (you could Lift and Stamp from an existing photo, but that’s a bit of a kludge).

Lightroom includes default presets that work across its range of adjustments with one click – very handy for getting close to what you’re after quickly, before fine-tuning images individually.

You can also save your own presets (or download others). Aperture also supports these type of options, but again only brick-by-brick.

Distracting interface

It’s not all fun and games though. Compared to Aperture, Lightoom’s UI seems a little cluttered and distracting. The white balance picker is big and clunky, the gruesome red eye reduction rollover effect is unnecessary, and the crop icons again too big and graphically prominent.

Do you really need a large-ish picture of a spirit level to accompany the angle adjust control, especially when there’s a big ‘Angle’ label right beside it?

While I’m sure with time I’d start to see past these, but it definitely feels like Aperture is more understated and controlled in its UI – which is exactly what you want when you should be concentrating on your images.

Conclusion

When it comes to adjustment controls, Lightroom Beta 3 clearly has the edge over Aperture 2. That said, if Aperture X includes image-wide presets, local adjustments and gradient filters, I’d stay with it in a heartbeat.

Fingers crossed, then, for Aperture X.