matthewboyle.net » Canon

Canon EOS 500D

Matthew — Sat, 30 May 2009 19:21:46 +0000

Well as some of you have no doubt noticed, I have taken the plunge and bought a 500D. Why have I bought a camera that I already said on this blog wouldn’t interest me? Primarily because I wanted a spare camera that would be a little smaller than my 40D and so would be suitable for carrying with me on walking or cycling trips. The 1000D was tempting, but lacked the 3″ screen and spot metering that I’ve become used to on the 40D. The 450D is a good price and has the 3″ screen and the spot metering but it has the same low resolution screen that the 40D has; the whole SLR world is clearly moving to the higher resolution screen and so wanted that now. The 500D has all the features I need and the large high res scren all in a good hillwalking sized package, so I went for it. Am I happy about the 15MP resolution, well no. I still think Canon should enlarge their APS-C sensor to match Nikon’s or keep the pixel count to 10 or 12MP. However, this is what they have on the market, and since I mainly use a travel camera in decent light, then the resolution might be nice with higher noise being less of a problem. I have taken a few low-light portraits at ISO 1600 (Previous one of Gillian for example) and it definitely gives a usable file but my first reaction is that it is a noisy file compared to my 40D at the same ISO. I always look forward to DP review covering a camera and when they get round to this one I’m sure they will give us the answer on this one. Amateur photographer said that the camera was noisy, but this wouldn’t be a problem up to prints of A3 or so; I guess I could live with that!

Handling is fine on the camera, most of what you want is quick to access, even exposure compensation is quite intuitive and since I have drifted into using “Aperture Priority” so much and using exposure compensation for fine adjustments that’s important to me. I used to have a 400D and so it feels just like that, very Canon, very straightforward. The only missing quick button for me is metering mode which is a menu item; at least you can put it on your “my menu” list which allows you to access your own favourite menu items really easily and quickly. So all is rosy for usability, but the right hand-grip is small. If like me you are used to a 40D or a 50D hand-grip, an you have big hands, then you will find it annoying. This is a travel and spare SLR for me however, so I am getting used to that grip and it’s far from a show-stopper. If you haven’t used a larger SLR, I doubt whether you’ll even notice this.

I have played a little with the movie mode, but truthfully I can’t see me getting into that stuff. It’s not all that easy to use, and I think you would have to use a tripod, as well as a separate sound recorder to mix the sound and video together later as the handling noise and the focus noise (even if manually focussed) are seriously obtrusive. It is fun to do video with awesome “depth of field” control unlike any camcorder, but don’t kid yourself into thinking you would use it casually, you won’t. Anyway, I’m a photographer, so I really don’t care.

So I have a nice little SLR with me at all times now, my work backpack even has a little compartment for it and it fits so much better than my beloved 40D, so I’ll enjoy that luxury, and I’ll keep you updated on my findings as I go along.

Canon 500D

Matthew — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 03:09:32 +0000

So practically the next day after my previous post about Canon’s questionable “pixels before sensitivity” strategy they anounced the EOS 500D. This puppy replaces the current 450D as the decent amateur camera in the Canon line-up. The 450 had 12 MP and had decent reviews, but none of them raved about it’s low noise performance, generally describing that aspect as “more than acceptable” or “decent” unlike the introductory model the 1000D which has gained good reviews about it’s noise performance at 1600 ISO. The key difference between these cameras is that the 450D has 12 MP while the 1000D has only 10 MP. There aren’t any reviews out yet, but the new 500D has 15 MP! The sensor is the same APS-C size (too small) that Canon stupidly persist with so what are the chances of people saying that its noise performance is outstanding in a market dominated by excellent Nikon noise figures? This is probably the same (or similar) sensor that they have put in the recent 50D which has underwhelmed the reviewers in terms of noise performance; my guess is that the noise performance will be similar, but probably not an iprovement on the 450D that it replaces. It might be that the headline MP rating will tempt people more than the Nikon reviews of the D90 which would be the obvious rival, but people buying DSLR’s are wiser than the “herd” who choose one compact over another because of its higher megapixel number, most will not be shooting for billboards, and will want flashless indoor photography unspoiled by noise or aggressive noise reduction. I don’t dislike the higher MP count per se, but only if it comes with improved noise as well. Since Canon won’t turn back its headline MP strategy, our only hope this side of Black Silicon maturing into a usable technology is a BIGGER SENSOR. Are you listening Canon? No, I thought not:-)

Oh, it has video too, that will help it to win market share, but It wouldn’t swing the choice for me.

Canon losing their way

Matthew — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:24:25 +0000

I noticed in this weeks photographic news that Nikon are selling well in the UK and the current recession is not affecting them; sales of the D90 and D700 DSLR’s are described by Nikon as “outstanding”. This doesn’t surprise me. If I was advising anyone who was buying into digital SLR’s at present which brand to go for, it would be Nikon. They have a good range of cameras and class leading noise performance in more than a few of their models. The only camera Canon have which is generating real excitement is the 5D which at present is sitting above £2000 in the UK. I have mentioned before now that the camera below that in the range, the 50D, hasn’t generated any real excitement, and costs around £800-£900. Nikon’s D700 is around £1600 for a full frame sensor. If I was a Nikon user, I might want a full frame D700 so much that I would find some way to buy it. I want a Canon 5D, but there is no-way without my camera earning me moneythat I’m going to pay £2000+.

In my view, Canon are losing the marketing war very badly for the following reasons:

1. The gamble they are taking in positioning the 5D and 50D as higher resolution cameras than the competition at 15 and 21 megapixels means that the competition gets better magazine reviews for high ISO performance. Since almost no-one prints pictures at poster sizes, the reviews probably have the right priorities. These reviews influence the market hugely! The 50D gets lukewarm reviews, the Nikon D300 gets great reviews at 12 Mp and better high ISO noise performance; the 5D has pretty good reviews, but the D700 at 12 Mp gets stellar reviews for high ISO performance. They made a mistake, the market clearly values slight resolution increases with large high ISO noise performance increases and that’s what Nikon has given the market.

2. The sensor that we call APS-C in the Canon 100D through to the 50D is a little smaller than the Nikon; that’s why the lens multiplication factor is 1.6 for Canon and 1.5 for the Nikon. This means that the Nikon has a 370mm squared area and the Canon has 329 mm squared. The Canon pixels have 11% less area if the pixel count is the same. If the technology is similar, then Canon can’t compete on noise performance due to smaller pixels. Why don’t they make slightly larger APS-C sensors?

It occurs to me that Canon have an interesting sensor in the previous professional 1D mk2. It has a 1.25 crop factor, and amazing noise performance with 10 Mp (APS-H). Why don’t Canon put a camera together for amateurs looking to move up from the 40D using that sensor, upgraded to 12 Mp or 15Mp like the 50D if they must; that could be camera to undercut the D700 for price that could come close for noise performance. They can’t compete with a smaller sensor and higher resolution.

WAKE UP Canon!

Lightroom File Corruption

Matthew — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:55:18 +0000

I wonder if anyone else out there has experienced the same corruption problems that I have had in my lightroom setup with DNG files. I have been using lightroom version 1 and now version 2 for about a year and a half. I have had 2 DSLR’s during this time, a canon 400D and now the 40D. At some point I decided to select the option that converts your canon Raw file to their own proprietery .dng (digital negative) file on import because I was persuaded that it was a robust and futureproof version of Raw. I even did this with my “100portraits” files which as you can imagine were very precious to me. Around the time of the 1.4 update (from memory) I suddenly noticed that my files in the library of lightroom over a period of a few days suddenly showed corruption on the previews. Importing the files into a fresh machine with lightroom or photoshop elements still showed the same corruption artefacts; they seem to be at file level. Disaster! This has affected at least a few hundred of my files, and generally when a folder is affected at all, most of the files will be corrupted.

On the help area of the Adobe forums card reading or writing errors were mentioned, but my files were in the system and working for a few months before this appeared. I had routinely produced prints for people from my portrait project, and burned CD’s of the jpeg exports; I find it hard to imagine that this was an importing issue. Thankfully with my portrait project I exported all the .dng files to jpeg in their unprocessed state so I have something, even if it won’t give me the processing latitude I would like.

You might be saying now, “why didn’t you backup”? Fool that I am, I did back up to a Netgear network attached drive using automated file synchronisation. Overnight it synchronised all the newly corrupted files overwriting the older uncorrupted ones. Please learn from me on this one, synchronising backups just synchronises faults as well, so configure backup wisely!

Anyway, I now refuse to convert to .dng keeping the original Canon Raw in preference. My corruptions only happened to .dng’s for some reason.

Has anyone out there had the same problem. Has anyone found any repair utilities. Have Adobe got a repair tool I wonder?

Anyway, some samples:

Note: Sample pictures are .dng conversions from Canon 400D and 40D