Quadra

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.

Download the original output from Final Cut – 1280×720 – less compressed than youtube version and more smooth in playback.

So how do I like the 5D Mark II compared to what I’m used too? Well, first of all – it’s a great tool! It’s easy to work with even if I’m missing some buttons – as a movie camera it’s great! After a day or two you feel that you have it all under more or less control and you can start to relax. It’s such a nice feeling to be able to go up to ISO6400 (or even higher) and still feel OK – and in really bad light too!

But, as a still camera even in good light I don’t like the output as much. I can’t get “that” from it – and I’m not that impressed with the 21mp resolution. Strange feeling zooming in to these large files and feel like like there should be more. Never feel perfectly satisfied. Oh well. The burden we three layer lovers have to bare.

But when light is bad, and ISO goes up then it leaves my Sigmas in the dust – you can take brilliant shots in ISO3200 (didn’t try much higher, only with video) and I always felt secure without extra light or the need of a flash. So would I like to own one myself? For sure! I can easily imagine myself doing weddings filming and taking pictures at the same time. At least try. :) Especially inside church where I today feel a bit bound by Sigmas bad light performance. But why is Canons shutter so loud?? aaaaa