I’ve recently taken a leap that surprised even me. For the last four years, since January 2006, I’ve been exclusively a Nikon man. My Nikon D50 has served me very well, with absolutely no issues whatsoever. It was my first ‘true’ digital SLR (well my first with interchangeable lenses anyway, I previously had an Olympus E10), and has been a fantastic piece of kit. However, recently, I had the chance to upgrade. A desire to move to a more professional setup, coupled with a kind trade offer I couldn’t refuse, meant that the decision to move over to the ‘other side’ was kind of made for me.
I switched my Nikon D50, with it’s wonderful memories, and many hours of cracking phototaking, for a Canon 5D.
Now… there a a fair few things to think about when making the move between one manufacturer and another. These can be boiled down to a few main points…
- Personal Preference. This plays an extremely large part in the decision. Some people have an unassailable loyalty to one particular manufacturer, and are completely convinced that anything else is second fiddle. Luckily, I’ve never really been obsessively tied to one manufacturer or another. I started, back in the day, on a Praktica BX20 (here), then moved onto a Canon EOS 100 (also known as the Elan – here). This was followed by a move to Fujifilm, with my first Digital camera being a Fujifilm Finepix 2300 (here), which was used in tandem with the EOS 100. I then moved gradually up the Digicam ladder, via the Olympus Camedia C3000 (here), then the fantastic Olympus E-10 (here), followed finally by the Nikon D50 (here). Recently, I’d added a trusty Fujifilm S2 Pro (here) to my entourage, which, despite its age, is a fantastic (if bulky) Nikon-lens-compatible workhorse. As you can see, I’ve kind of jumped around the manufacturers in my time, and to be honest, just try to make the most of what I have. Overall, it’s a tie between the D50 and the S2 Pro for my favourite camera, but an honourable mention must be given to the Olympus E-10 (which I still have!), for having one of the best pieces of glass I’ve ever seen on a non-interchangable lensed camera.
- Investment in Kit. Financially, this is often going to be people’s biggest consideration when making a manufacturer change. As is well known, a good camera is rendered much less so by having poor glass fixed to the front. The cost of lenses is not inconsiderable, and over the past few years, I had built up a small collection of lenses that I used with the Nikon. Top of the list was my wonderful Sigma 10-20mm (here). This lens has become my favourite over the last few years, and it was definitely one I’d miss. It was given as part of the trade-in, so I’m now ultra-wide-angleless for the first time in three years. I also had a Nikon Speedlite SB-600 (here), which, again, went with the trade. This adds up to a fair bit of kit. The thing to remember is that, barring adapters (which generally only allow you to use the lenses in manual modes anyway), one manufacturer’s lenses are incompatible with the mounts on other manufacturer’s cameras. Therefore, it means that you have to basically start again. That can be expensive…
- Availability of Kit and Acessories. Some kit just simply isn’t available for other brands, so the little handy bits that you have for your current camera may just not be available for the other brand. This is becoming less of an issue these days, but it’s still something to think about.
Luckily, I still have the S2 pro, so the limited selection of Nikon lenses I still have will still find some use.
So… what does the new kit bag look like? The answer – quality, not quantity! Click for links to product pages / reviews…
Along with the accessories that came with the camera (a wired remote release and the obligatory charger), along with my dome diffuser and off-camera flash cord, that’s pretty much it.
The Camera
I’m going to talk about the camera here, and, for the uninitiated, explain a bit about what some of the features mean in a practical sense.
The camera itself is a 12.8 Megapixel, full frame DSLR. Full frame, in this case, refers to the size of the CMOS sensor, which is the size of a full 35mm frame in film terms. What is the upshot of this? Basically, it means two main things :-
Cropping (or lack of it) – Most DSLRs have a crop factor of 1.6. This is due to the size of the sensor being smaller (15 x 22.5mm) than full-frame (24x36mm). The smaller sensor results in only the central portion of the lens’s projected image being recorded. The result of this is that a 20mm lens is the equivalent of a 30mm lens in “35mm terms”. This makes wide-angle lenses ‘true’ wideangle – i.e. a 24mm lens is actually a 24mm lens, and not a 36mm lens. The other side of this is that a telephoto lens on a full frame DSLR does not give you the same magnification that it does on a cropped sensor. Swings and roundabouts eh?
Depending on whether you want tightly cropped closeups, or prefer your wideangle wider, then the full-frame could be good or bad. However, there is one thing that full frame does need, and that’s good lenses. Lenses tend to be best towards the centre of the image, and lower quality lenses show this effect more than more expensive lenses. With the smaller size of a cropped sensor, the lower-quality edges of a lens’s image are cropped out, and this has the effect of keeping the image sharper from edge to edge. With full-frame, the whole of the glass is used, which, if you have lower-quality lenses, exposes the flaws around the edges. These usually show up in the way of blurring and chromatic aberration. Lens manufacturers have actually taken advantage of cropped sensors to produce cheaper lenses that only work on cropped sensors due to having smaller lens elements. Obviously this means that if you try to use them on a full-frame sensor, you will get, at best, bad vingetting, and at worst, and actual circular image.
Noise (or lack of it) – Unlike the fixed rating of film, the sensitivity of a sensor can be varied more easily. For direct comparison, the same ratings are used on sensors as on films. This ISO scale describes the sensitivity of the sensor, and can generally be raised on most digital cameras from around 50 or 100, to 3200 or higher. Every time you double the ISO, you make the sensor twice as sensitive (or one stop). The downside to this is that, as you increase the sensitivity, the individual pixels also become more sensitive to electrical ‘crosstalk’ from adjacent pixels. This results in ‘noise’ in the image, producing a more grainy image. This renders the higher ISO modes on most cropped-sensor DSLRs more or less useless for most purposes. The advantage a full-frame sensor has is that the pixels on it are not as closely packed, lowering this crosstalk and hence lowering the noise. You can ‘dial up’ the ISO on a full-frame sensor to 1600 or 3200 with very little grain. In the real world, this means a few stops difference in exposure. E.g., if you used ISO 200, and had camera shake due to a long exposure of 1/15th sec, then if you raised sensitivity to ISO 3200, this would change the exposure to 1/200th second (4 stops difference), making hand-holding a reality. You can do this with minimal noise being added to the image.
The Lens
The lens is a Canon EF 24-105mm f4L IS USM. Breaking this down, the EF stands for ‘Electro Focus’, with the AF system being controlled by a motor built into the lens, and has been Canon’s standard lens type since 1987. the 24-105mm is, obviously, the focal length range of the zoom. The f4 refers to the widest aperture, which in the case of this lens, is f4 throughout the zoom range (most zoom lenses have a smaller ‘Wide Open’ aperture, and so are slower, at their telephoto lens).
The ‘L’ is one of the telling parts of the name, as (according to Canon), it stands for ‘Luxury’. The ‘L’ range of lenses is Canon’s flagship lens range, offering very high optical quality. They are the lenses you often see at sporting events, with the red band around the front element. The larger lenses in the range are white-bodied to keep them cooler in the sun. The build quality on the L lenses is absolutely fantastic, as is the sharpness and contrast. Even though I’ve now only got a single lens (currently), I’m glad to know it’s a fantastic quality one!
The IS part of the name refers to ‘Image Stabilization’. This is the system, imilar to Nikon’s VR (Vibration Reduction) system, which uses gyros inside the lens to detect the slight movement of your hands that can cause camera shake, and counteract it by moving the elements in the lens. This results in you being able to handhold shots for much longer exposure times. The blurb specifies three stops more, but I’ve handheld at down to 1/4 sec using this system. Of course, this doensn’t stop motion blur, but it’s a massive help in low light for more static subjects, and allows you to stop down for sharpness in more normal light.
Finally, USM stands for Ultrasonic Motor, a near-silent focussing motor technology used by Canon in its lenses.
Phew!
Impressions
I’ve been just getting used to this Camera for the past few weeks. So far, it’s all good! Initially, getting used to using a Canon instead of my trusty Nikon has been strange. Everything, more or less, is in a slightly different place, or works in a slightly different way. It’s all there, but overall, the feel is very different… Everything is nice and smooth, and quiet, as you’d expect with a professional-grade camera of this type.
Virtually everything I’ll be posting from now on photo-wise is likely to be taken with this camera, so the posting of lots of sample shots is a little redundant (out-of-context test shots should be confined to Lab tests in my opinion!). Also, it’s easy to search on Flickr for photos taken using the same camera.
So – here goes…!