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[OM] My New Year's Eve with a 5D MkII

Subject: [OM] My New Year's Eve with a 5D MkII
From: "Joel Wilcox" <jfwilcox@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2009 20:12:27 -0600
We enjoyed a wonderful New Year's Eve with the Honolulu relatives and
plentiful fireworks, which kept the kids heartily engaged from the end
of dinner until about 1 AM of the young new year.  The highlight of
this gathering for me every two years is being with a couple cousins
who are as interested in photography as I.  These two are both Canaan
("land of hulk and money") shooters, and I got a chance to spend some
quality moments with the 5D MkII.  Vern was showing me all the great
new features of this model -- Live View, the sensor cleaner, the cool
new shortcut menu on the LCD.  Neato stuff.  I mentioned how much I've
enjoyed these features through the years, HA!

Actually, the 5D has an awe-inspiring LCD -- huge and beautifully
clear.  Wonderful.  ISO 6400 very impressive indeed and whips the E-3
at 3200 by several strides.  HD movies -- right up my alley (OK, not
really).  In the dimly lit room in which we were looking over the
camera, I noted that it focused quickly and ably, though I didn't find
it noticeably faster than the E-3.  I didn't have the opportunity to
compare shots outside of the children playing with fireworks in the
dark,but I didn't notice any issues with the E-3 getting AF to lock on
in these circumstances.  I got plenty blurry photographs but mainly
from motion blur.

I like Live View on the Canaan, which works similarly to the E-3, at
least prior to taking the shot.  The E-3 recovers for the next shot a
little more slowly than the Canaan.  I didn't get a chance to see all
the subtleties of focus in Live View on the Canaan, but it has the
ability to enlarge a small area of the screen for refinement of focus.
 Vern said it's easiest just to focus manually in LV, which I would
tend to say is also true of the E-3, but I am getting more trustful of
AF in LV on the E-3 and use both AF and MF in about equal amounts.

The other shooter, Kev, uses a Rebel XT, but he's handled a huge
amount of equipment compared to me and is a photo-journalist.  He's
been on the Obama watch and would be considered a paparazzi if he were
freelance, but he works for a news network, so I guess he's a regular
joe. He mentioned that he was recently about to spring for a used
E-300 body with kit lenses that was absurdly cheap but missed it by
the time he'd made up his mind.  Once we'd both finished doodling with
the 5D, he began to check out my E-3.  Canaan guys seem so used to
that jog dial it is almost impossible to expose the handling smarts of
the E-3.  I can understand that.  I hadn't meant to make a big deal
about the wonders of IS, but as I was showing how close the DZ 14-54
and 50-200 can focus in the dimly lit living room to illustrate one of
the differences between mine of the kits lenses he had almost bought,
it became apparent very quickly to him how terrific the IS really is.
He got very excited and started torture testing it.  He focused on a
plaque on the wall across the room at 200mm and shutter speed of 1/30
and was actually deliberately moving the camera as he fired the
shutter.  His jaw dropped when he saw the capture during these
experiments.  (My thought was "He must be good if he thinks he might
be able to get too sharp capture a 1/30 with that focal length such
that he needs to move the camera deliberately!")

Like many a pro PJ, he shoots only jpg, so I took some time to show
him the things I like about RAW development with Lightroom.  I don't
know if I made any headway with that.  I think the RAW-jpg chasm is
harder to cross in some ways than the Canaan-Nikorn (or
Canaan-Everybody else) chasm.  In general, we were all impressed with
the 5D but were happy to leave with the ladies who accompanied us
there, so to speak.

Incidentally, the 5D MkII can shoot in RAW mode at half the MP.  Vern
said at one point, "Who really needs 24 MP RAW files?  12 do very
nicely."  No arguments from me!

Joel W.
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