Post #423,515
4/30/18 6:09:51 PM
4/30/18 6:09:51 PM
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You only need two lenses for travel toggery.
A fast 35mm-ish prime for night and people shots (and just general "shoot what you see" walking around stuff), and a moderate zoom with some flexibility - my choice would be the canon 24-105mm.
In EF-S mount, this'd be something like the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 and the Tamron 18-200. Or just get the Canon 24-105mm, bearing in mind it'll actually be about 40-160mm. It's an incredible lens, in any event.
a 10-24 is too wide for casual use. An 18-400 is too long, too big and at max zoom you need a tripod (the inbuilt stabilisation just won't cut it) and you'll get a shitload of aberration and distortion anyway.
You can shoot all day on a single battery. You don't need the polarisers.
Plan B: buy used. 6D body (full frame, don't have to do sums on lens lengths :)) with a Canon 35mm or 50mm (the f/1.2 versions are both better and spendier than the f/1.8 versions) and the aforemention 24-105mm.
Used 6D = $600ish, 24-105 = $400ish, 35mm f/1.2 = $600ish. Spend the difference on a better hotel or something :)
But whatever you buy, do yourself a favour. Chuck the strap that comes with the camera into a drawer and forget it exists. Get a BlackRapid L7 instead. Your neck will thank you for it.
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Post #423,523
5/1/18 8:29:11 AM
5/1/18 8:29:11 AM
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Thanks for all the info.
I'm still looking around. I want to be able to take wide angle pictures like this: https://photos.app.goo.gl/6Frm1p6GMWEipMb26 (Exif says < 10 mm) and this: https://photos.app.goo.gl/J57UV9e1fNUKwpGI2And telephoto pictures like this: https://photos.app.goo.gl/5pViUMLtDaMNFeg2A (the Exif says that's 150.5 mm, but the camera says it's much longer - maybe it's a the crop scaling issue). and this: https://photos.app.goo.gl/3sw3occ3HgsczfR83I've had too many pictures turn out badly because of a washed out sky, so I need some sort of polarizer. A gradient might be better, but too often the subject doesn't have a good flat horizon, so that probably isn't the best for me. Maybe? I don't have time to learn Photoshop and the like - it needs to look decent out of the camera or with "I'm feeling lucky" tweaking in Picasa or similar. The Canon 6D2 looks pretty good in many respects, but too many complain about the low dynamic range below ISO 800 or so. The Nikon D750 has much better dynamic range, but is about 50% more for the body, and Tamron doesn't the magical all-in-one make lenses for it. And I haven't actually checked whether Tamron has FF lenses comparable to the all-in-one APS-C lenses. (sigh) Decisions decisions... Cheers, Scott.
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Post #423,524
5/1/18 8:59:51 AM
5/1/18 8:59:51 AM
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A polariser will not fix your exposure issues
Correctly exposing the scene will fix your exposure issues.
I use a simplified version of Ansel Adams' zone system.
Basically, I look at the scene and I guesstimate something that should be +0 exposure on the camera's light meter. Or I look at the sky and go "bright blue? That should be +2" and then I adjust the exposure to suit.
You can shoot wide-angle scenes like you want by stitching, and the results will be better - more pixels, less distortion. Just remember to shoot a sentinel image at each end of the pano (I take pictures of my feet) to help you find the pano images in Lightroom (or whatev).
Anyone whining about the 6D2's dynamic range below ISO800 is basically a pixel-peeping lunatic. Any modern camera has dynamic range that will more than suffice for a keen amateur. The Nikon has "much better" range - as in "much more stuff that you can't spot the difference in anyway". The whole dynamic range conversation only really applies to astrotogs and other long-exp specialists, and they're all nutters. For holiday pictures? 100% completely irrelevant, because every camera body you can buy is far more than good enough for you.
And it only really matters for side-by-side shooting anyway - you shoot what's in front of you with the camera you've got.
Spend less time fretting about gear and more time reading "Understanding Exposure" by Bryan Peterson. Take whatever gear you've got right now to its limits, understand what those limits are and why you need to go beyond them, and then go shopping. Because otherwise, you're just going to keep spending money and you're just going to keep blowing out your skies.
For example: I'm about to dump £500+ into a non-stabilised 200mm zoom for shooting landscape. No, I'm not crazy (or Crazy :D) - I have a specific thing I want to do (shoot foreshortened landscape scenes - panoramas can be stitched if required).
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Post #423,527
5/1/18 10:24:18 AM
5/1/18 10:24:18 AM
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We've talked about some of this before.
Mountains are problematic (for me) if the sky isn't just right. E.g. a polarizer would have certainly helped with this: https://photos.app.goo.gl/FaaLRHrQLD9riKyWAand this: https://photos.app.goo.gl/3AFrxnTxiUs5fbgR9Yeah, I know a good photographer can take great pictures with any camera - even a pinhole camera. ;-) And Google probably has better photos for places we're going than I'll be able to take. But I like taking pictures, and I want something that will work well for a while and not be an annoyance. And not cost a (relative) fortune. Yeah, the 6D2 is a great camera and the dynamic range issues aren't really an issue 99% of the time. This example from DPReview has extreme push of the shadows (look at the dog's face and the man's hand when zoomed) when better exposure at the beginning (probably) would have made all the difference. Or taking the picture a few minutes earlier. But at normal sizes, it still looks like a very nice photo. Real world impact
If you shoot JPEG, you'll never notice any of this, since the differences occur beyond the ~8.3EV or so that tend to be incorporated into a typical image. Similarly, at higher ISO settings, amplification overcomes the electronic noise, so you see the camera begin to out-perform the 80D and then close the gap with the D750, just as Bill's chart suggests.
However, it means if you're processing from Raw at low ISOs, you have much less flexibility in terms of what you can do with the file than we'd expect from a modern camera. Almost as soon as you start to push the image or pull detail out of the shadows, you risk hitting the camera's electronic noise floor and hence you won't see the advantage over the smaller sensor 80D that you might reasonably expect.
Adding to the problem is Canon's metering system, which tends to underexpose images when there's strong back-light. If the metering sensor were high resolution or advanced enough to detect faces, one might expect proper exposures for human subjects even in backlit shots; however, we've found the low resolution metering sensor in the 6D Mark II to be often incapable of detecting - and properly exposing for - faces. That means that backlit shots will be underexposed (unless you intervene), and you'll have limited ability to recover these underexposed shots because of the sensor's poor performance. (Emphasis added.) If one knows how it behaves, one can compensate.  Thanks. Cheers, Scott.
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Post #423,528
5/1/18 10:43:01 AM
5/1/18 10:43:01 AM
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Re: We've talked about some of this before.
There's nothing wrong with that first shot. It's exposed well, composed nicely; a very pleasing natural shot.
Why do you think a polariser would have helped the second one? You'd still have a featureless sky, but it'd be grey rather than white, and the foreground would be underexposed. It needs a soft graduated ND filter. Or shoot the whole thing 1 or 2 stops under, and push it back up in post. And the biggest problem is not the exposure, it's that the picture isn't even remotely straight.
And that DPReview picture is ridiculous. F/9 at 1/200th at ISO 100? You'd literally never shoot like that in real life - at the very least you'd have a speedlite to provide fill flash. Are you currently struggling with a lack of DR?
If you just want to buy more gear, buy more gear. But the thing that's going to improve your photographs isn't more gear, it's more knowledge and more practice about the fundamentals of tekkin' pickchars.
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