It fits perfectly to have a post about my Canon 5D experience after my article from yesterday don’t you think? :D Anyways. Every wednesday evening I have open photography classes in a near by high school and this time I brought the Canon 5D Mark 2 with me – much because it’s still dark at this time of the year and indoor light isn’t perfect for any of my current Sigmas. So I went coupled with a 24-70mm and my Elinchrom Quadra. (Quadra is only used when I say so, or you see it).
OBS. None of these images will hurt your eyes. I promise! :D
And we’re not the only ones on school at this late hour. ISO 3200 on photos above, below is ISO2500. Pretty impressive if you consider the really really bad light in that room. All images in this post are available in it’s full size, some cropped some not. All images has been developed using the latest version of Capture One.
What I really enjoyed was how well the Canon 24-70mm 2.8L lens worked. Focus was ok even in bad light – it failed from time to time but only in situations where I would understand. :)
Above is a shot taken with the 50mm 1.8 lens at 1.8 and ISO2000. (second image is a crop of the first one). Lens itself has a very cheap feel to it, made of cheap plastic and cost very little but its optical performance is nothing but cheap! So I took it for a ride into the rainy outdoors and created a nice little setup using my Quadra and an umbrella.
Canon 50mm 1.8 @ 2.5. The girl above is a heavy metal drummer. She’s really good too but it’s really hard to imagine her banging those drums when you talk to her. :)
It’s sooo easy to blow those highlights (see sky?!), I have a feeling that I got at least two stops more on any of my Sigmas. Also, so many colors has been lost, and most of these shots has been developed using more or less zero color noise reduction in order to get as far as possible away from that nutella look that we all hate so much.. (don’t we?!) – but, even with color noise reduction set at zero, lots of colors has been lost. Her zipper has this strong yellowish metallic color on one side, but lost on the other. I tried hard to make it visible but it just wouldn’t. (the raw file itself DO contain some yellow information in the zipper but developer just wasn’t able to pull it through). The three layered Sigma would show everything, especially at this low ISO. (320)
But the 50mm 1.8 is really nice!
Above shot of me has been taken by Nils.
How about trying the Quadra indoor?
It’s always tricky to have such enormous difference between colors in a shot, and that makes it difficult to process. ISO640. I’m thinking about getting myself some gel’s or something and experiment with temperatures.
Now, over to really low ISO, 3200 to 25600. They don’t look really good in color so most of them has been processed as black and white. Some lit only by the flash on mobile phones. :)
Above is ISO25600, the rest has mostly been shot using ISO5000.
Above is a ISO3200 shot and as light my students helped me with their mobile phones! :D Jaij.
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with the bayers you definitely need to shoot differently. with the d700 I prefer to shoot rather underexposed instead of overexposed on the sigmas. Blown is often really blown, also the roll off to blown areas is not so nice. so I would try to avoid that at all times. The Nikon is btw more forgiving as the dark areas have more info than the Canons. there it is harder to lift the shadows, banding occurs pretty easily.
Hi Carl,
Did you compare Capture One to LR3 beta2 on those high ISO 5D2 shots?
I wouldn’t mind about blown out parts in such style-shots. ;) Especially when you have these (you have very often, don’t you) nice and high-contrast youth on your photos.
You could ask: would a perfectly done photo suit to these scenes?
I think this world is the world of the canon-cams: hefty contrasts.
pedro
BTW: nice and very expressive shots.
Hi Carl and Bob, Concerning blown out highlights and harsh roll-offs I recommend developing the shots with Capture One’s ‘linear response’ curve in the base characteristics.
According to Phase One this curve transmits the sensor’s data ‘as is’ whereas the ‘standard contrast’ one applies some filtering to the data upfront resulting in a ‘out of the box’ contrasty image. However I think that C1′s settings are a little bit harsh on the highlights, the skin etc, maybe it’s due to the fact that the software has been written for digital backs which have better dynamic range.
When linear response is applied the images will turn out quite flat so you’ll need to apply some manual adjustment to the contrast settings, however I found that when comparing two images brought up to similar contrast levels, one with the standard contrast, the other one with the linear contrast the latter preserves more detail in the sensitive zones (highlight and skin tones) and makes a overall more robust file to work with.
hello carl
did you try to turn the hughlight prioraty to on .
did you try to downsample the images to 2640*1760.
thank you
Marc, I will look into your advice. :)
And Uri, I will have to do that, I’m sure they will look great! Different from Sigma and still great. It’s like using a different film. A Canon film.
hello carl
i have sended you an email please try to find the time to help me
i think that you will like to have more sigma users.
the canon have a Sraw 2 witch is 5mp image that make sharpness and noise much better. there are only a few user in israel that use sigma cam that why i am trying to get as much info as i can.
i am trying to decide if to replace my 5dmk2 and my L lenses”70-200 F4 IS , 24-105L and the 1.4 extender” with the sd15 to come.
if i could use my lenses with the sd14 or sd15 i will bought one.
thank you
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Hi Carl,
I am just a beginner digital photographer. One of my friend using sigma sent me your blog and the stuffs you share here is really impressive, thank you.
Currently , in using 5DM2 with the 24-70 you used in some of the pictures you’ve taken in this post. After seeing all the pics/post in this blog I am struggling weather I should switch to Sigma stream when the SD1 is out. I can probably afford one system at a time as i think on Sigma i can have a larger variety since most of the Sigma lens are much cheaper than Canon.
Could you give me some advises on this? Thank you.
You mentioned that the SD15 would have captured some color information in one of the photos above that the 5dmkii didn’t. Would you have noticed the difference between say ISO 200 shots taken with both the 5d and sd15? How big a difference? I tried a Canon 60d, and marvelous camera that it is, it doesn’t have the punch of my Dp2s. If the 5dmkii is as good, or close enough, to the sd15, then I’d rather have the high ISO and good used market for lenses, etc. The million dollar question, how superior, if at all, is the SD15 to the 5dMkii. I understand this is a subjective question but would appreciate your taking a shot at it!
I blogged a bit about this here: http://maxotics.blogspot.com/2012/01/sigma-dp2s-vs-canon-50d-and-sigma-50mm.html