18mp Sensor and its usage

[lightwave]

@Henry - what metering do you use on ur D700 when ur using it with a "new" lens?

Henry has lenses that Meter and AF on the D700? :O  

[Brendon]

^^ I believe that he has a Sigma 18-200mm lens or something.

And btw all his lenses meter perfectly well with his D700.

Only the D90 and below bodies can't meter with old lenses.

The D200, D300, D7000, D300s, D700, D3s, D3x etc can all meter perfectly with old lenses.

[Hankosaurus]

That's right, Brendon.

Actually, I do have that one lens that AF's on the D700. It is a Sigma 28~200 D(G) AF IF optic which was gifted to me when a friend upgraded to some serious Nikkor glass. My bride likes it, as it allows her to use the P mode and take pictures without knowing flip about photography.

As you said, all my old glass meters with no difficulty on the D700. And manual focusing goes pretty well too, albeit not quite as well as on an F or F2.

[lightwave]

Ah My bad. And for a moment I was surprised at text that I never wrote till I realised Henry edited my post to write his reply.   `-_-

[Brendon]

Only the gift lens was 28~200.

Ah, my memory is failing me at my old age.

[toofan]

I guess the actual culprit will be the kit lens of Canon for sure. They are optically not that good.

[kumarrishi]

MR kummarrishi

.................. And always use spot metering .

A little bit of negative exposure compensation do help in canon cameras (my personal experience). JPG is not a good template to judge sharpness, colour etc as its fixed by cameras algorithms. Use RAW.

Sorry i meant underexposing or negative exposure compensation according to me is also required in many canon cameras...corroborating your point not deviating from it.

Spot metering works well when people know exactly what they are doing and for many people it may miss the target.

regards

never knew -ve exposure compensation and  underexposing 1/3 rd are two diff things  , wow u told such an unique suggestion, o another unique one seems to be shoot RAW , I never mentioned dat in my suggestion rt ? 

[lightwave]

I guess the actual culprit will be the kit lens of Canon for sure. They are optically not that good.

Yry them Vimal. You will be surprised.

[Prabir]

I guess the actual culprit will be the kit lens of Canon for sure. They are optically not that good.

Try them Vimal. You will be surprised.

Agree with Doc (LW). Stopped down, Canon kit lens also produces good results. One has to get used to it and identify the sweet spot. And Vimal, the quality of kit lens for Canon and Nikon donot differ. I have seen it with Riju's Nikon D90.

Arindam, there is one more issue with high resolution sensors, that is of noise. My personal experience with Canon 50D says so. I checked up with dpreview and it is suggested that for low light situations or when there is a doubt, shooting at reduced resolution yields better results. I tried this with RAW (full res.) as well as sRAW1 (reduced res. about 12MP). At poor light conditions, sRAW1 gave marginally better results. I donot take very large prints and hence this suits me. However, 5DM2 does not have this problems I heard, not tested myself though.

[naturecloseups]

A word about spot metering: People who "always use spot metering" 1) without having ever calibrated their meter against middletone targets using a known accurate meter and/or 2) without knowing whether their meter targets 13% grey or 18% grey or something else -- are quite possibly living in a dream.

Spot-metering is one area where outdated slide-film shooting notions still linger in spite of not being anywhere near 100% applicable. Especially when shooting raw, the best metering strategy for digital is to expose as far towards the right as possible without blowing out the highlights -- this gives the maximum raw-exposure processing headroom and least shadow noise. To that end -- instead of fiddling with your (likely uncalibrated and inaccurate) in-camera spot meter, it is probably much easier to take a quick shot, check histogram and adjust accordingly. A camera capable of showing live histogram overlay is a great help.

As for sharpness -- there is little point in talking about sharpness of a camera+lens combination without having shot test targets in a controlled environment off a steady tripod (or using flash) at various apertures.

[Prabir]

NC, agree with you 100%.

[Hankosaurus]

Ah My bad. And for a moment I was surprised at text that I never wrote till I realised Henry edited my post to write his reply.   `-_-

Uh Oh.  I'm very sorry, Doc!

I guess I hit edit instead of quote! My bad. I was as surprised as you when I realized what I had done.

 

[ArindomRC]

I guess the actual culprit will be the kit lens of Canon for sure. They are optically not that good.

Aarrgh... I will post a sample in this weekend for defending my kitlens....

[lightwave]

No problems. The flipside of being a mod.

Agreed with NC. Spot metering is powerful when used correctly.

[Hankosaurus]

No problems. The flipside of being a mod.

Agreed with NC. Spot metering is powerful when used correctly.

Yes, I agree with NC's thoughts too, Doc. I am reminded of Ram's splendid treatise on in-camera metering, and how he uses spot metering for determining exposure for his macros. If one knows his meter, he can get there.

What amazes me is those photographers of the past who "knew their light," and who shot routinely without a meter at all.