Archive for December, 2008

I started out shooting with a Canon 10D.  It was a great learner camera, but there was always something that didn’t jive so well with me.  The pictures it delivered didn’t feel.. how do I say it.. honest?  There was that slightly plasticky, digital feel to the pictures that came off the 10D.  They lacked real subjective depth and tonality that gave pictures a feeling of soul.

Two years after I picked up the 10D,  Canon unveiled the 5D and advertised it as a ground-breaking DSLR in the sense that it finally made a full 35mm frame sensor affordable.  No more crop factors to deal with.  No more focal-length conversions.   The sensor in the 5D was the same size as a 35mm film frame, and you’d get the same results as film.

Being a fan of wide-angle lens, and hating how the crop factor on my 10D prevented me from enjoying the true wide angles, I scraped together some money and picked up a 5D for myself.  I reasoned to myself that I would finally be using my wide-angles as intended, and thats what the 5D was for. 

Little did I suspect that while that would eventually prove to be true, I would come to truly appreciate the 5D for its other qualities that were not immediately apparent to me at the start.  

It was only after a few months of shooting with the 5D that I began to discern that the images it delivered had far greater depth and subtlety than the 10D.  The colors, details and tones were just there.  Just crisper, and stronger.  The 10D images were just flat in comparison.  

Then there was the high ISO performance.  The 5D quickly established itself as the king of high ISO performance, capable of delivering stunning images even at ISO 1600 where many other DSLRs would start to fall apart.  

For three years, the 5D was the benchmark of comparison against all other new DSLRs.  Any newcomer to the DSLR market would inevitably find itself being compared to the 5D.  

And now three years after the 5D set the industry on its head, Canon released the 5D Mark II.  Canon chose to be faithful to the formula that made the 5D such an success.  But this time around, they increased the resolution from 12.7 megapixels to a dizzying 21.1 megapixels.  They also expanded it’s ISO range from 50-3200 to 50-25600.   And they didn’t stop there.  They threw in an movie mode where you could capture true 1080p HD video.  

I took the 5D Mark II out for a spin a few hours earlier when I went to meet up with friends at a bar. 

The below image shows a lot of noise, and loss of detail, but considering its an ISO12800 image, a full four-times faster than the original 5D could ever achieve, the quality is rather remarkable.  The image data showing it was shot at f/2.2 and 1/220sec in a darkly lit bar…

Canon 5D Mark II - 35L - f/2.2 - 1/220sec - ISO12800.

Here, an image shot at a more reasonable ISO800 shows how clean it is.  There is no indication of any type of noise at this level…

Canon 5D Mark II - 35L - f/2.5 - 1/30sec - ISO800

Another high ISO shot, but this time a ISO6400 converted to B&W shows how easily the noise cleans up.  

There is only a slight indication of banding visible on the upper-left part of the image.  With the earlier 5D, banding would have been visible from ISO1600 and ISO3200.

Canon 5D Mark II - 35L - f/1.6 - 1/800sec - ISO6400

And finally, a movie… this was done entirely with available light in a dimly lit bar.

A bunch of us headed out to Bishop for the Thanksgiving week.  I left Bishop in my rear-view mirror last May, a man with a broken foot.  This would be my first time back to this little town since then. I was understandably a bit anxious to climb there again, but yet also a bit scared of suffering another injury.

Thankfully it didn’t happen.  Everyone came out of there pretty much intact except for ripped up fingertips, but that’s pretty much normal.  

This was also the first time I’ve not taken my camera out while climbing.  I wanted to climb, not take pictures.  So all I have to share is non-climbing pictures.

Tailgating it in the “Pit” campground.  Mt. Tom and Basin Mountain lie beyond.

Nightfall in the cradle of the Sierra valley.  Ooooh! Pink marshmallows!

Go Obama!

Biggest burritos you’ll ever find anywhere can be found in this little mexican joint in Bishop.

A bit of arcade and bowling action before heading back to the campground.

On our last night, we had too much firewood and had to burn it all up in a hurry.

Other than a stupid rain day on Wednesday, it was a great week out in Bishop.  I didn’t get to finish up any projects, but I found comfort in the fact that I was able to climb nearly at the level I was climbing back in March, and that pretty much tells me that I’ll be ready to move on up to the next rung next time I’m out there.  I look foward to it!