Archives 2022

In my last post, I expressed the decisions that would lead up to my next camera. I did go and spend about an hour or more with a consultant (he was so much more than just a salesman) at Calagaz Photo in Mobile. If you live in this area and you have any camera questions or concerns, that’s the place to go. I had made a list of requirements in the new camera. My current interests are waterfalls, wildlife (land, air, water, animals, plants), landscapes, and very elementary astrophotography. I have become interested in exposure bracketing and focus stacking, having watched a series of videos where those techniques were used, but the T5 didn’t have those capabilities. I have also decided that I want to start a side business in real estate photography, and exposure bracketing will be a critical function for that. I wasn’t married to the Canon line, but I do have quite an investment in the lenses I have, and I’d be starting back with just a kit lens if I changed brands. I also knew that even within the Canon line, changing lens formats would require an adapter, and that’s not a deal-breaker, just another piece of equipment to buy.

The camera I brought home is the Canon R6, so yes, I stayed with the Canon line, but the lens format is different, so I did need the adapter. It’s also mirrorless. As it turns out, the article I read that led me to believe that mirrorless cameras don’t have a viewfinder was either really old (I didn’t think it was that old, but “old” in technology could be a couple of years) or the reviewer was comparing a pretty low-end “vlogger’s” camera. The R6 having a viewfinder made it the right choice for what I wanted.

The R6 has a full-frame, 20-megapixel sensor, compared with the ASP-C (cropped) 18-megapixels in the T-5. While that doesn’t sound like much, that’s a lot more pixels in every file. It’s almost 300 pixels more across and almost 200 more pixels vertically per image. I’ve wanted to be able to do some creative cropping in some of the shots where I just couldn’t stand in the right place to get the shot I wanted, and I ended up with a shot that just wasn’t as sharp as I wanted it to be. This sensor should help with that.

The R6 also has a couple of exposure improvements that will give my astrophotography a boost. The ISO level goes up to 102400. If you weren’t aware, that’s immensely sensitive to light. The T5 stopped at 6400, which is not a bad level, but again this will be beneficial in astrophotography. The shutter speed on the R6 can operate at 1/8000 second. When I tried it with ISO at about 400, the image showed nothing — there wasn’t enough time to record anything with the sensitivity set that low. However, this may be useful (well, maybe not that fast a speed) in shooting birds in flight.

Burst mode — Oh. My. Gosh! Burst mode is amazingly fast, because there is no mirror to manipulate. I believe I’ll be able to do some great panoramic shots and stitch them together using burst mode. I may also be able to finally get that shot I’ve always wanted of a pelican hitting the water. That’s my dream shot.

It’s a lot quieter than a camera with a mirror. A LOT QUIETER! It’s by no means silent, but the mechanical sound of the picture-capture process won’t be nearly as distracting as it has been before.

The display screen is the same size in both cameras, but there is a lot more information available to display on the R6’s screen to help me make a good set of choices for the shot. With the T5, I had to manually (push a button) switch from the display screen to viewfinder. The R6 makes the transition from display screen to viewfinder active when I raise the camera to my eye. The display on the R6 starts with the sensitive screen folder into the camera. As I fold it out, I can either leave it extended, in which case the transition to viewfinder doesn’t happen, or I can articulate it up or down so that I can hold the camera far over my head and still see what I’m shooting at or down to my ankles and see the subject. Or I can flip it 180-degrees and fold it back against the camera, which will allow that transition from screen to viewfinder. That’s just a cool feature!

It has wireless image transfer, to my computer or to an FTP site. I tried it. It was incredibly slow, and I wasn’t impressed. All the same, it’s good to know it’s there in case I ever need it. I think, though, that I have a setting I need to change. I took 46 shots and imported 92 images – 46 raw files and 46 jpegs. I know some people shoot in both modes at once, but I can’t say I see the value in it, when exporting from Lightroom or Photoshop as JPG is so easy.

At this point, having brought the camera home with me, I fully expect that my photographs are going to be really bad for a while, as I learn how to use it, but the learning curve should be less steep than it was moving from the Powershot to the T5. I just need to find some places where I can practice and learn those techniques I need to learn, but I’m really looking forward to it. So far what I have is 92 pictures of my living room from my couch, and they’re not even interesting enough to bother posting one.

But stay tuned!

It’s time to think about upgrading my camera, and I don’t know what I want. I can easily justify the upgrade, because there are things I want to be able to do that my current body isn’t capable of doing. In addition, the Canon I have is going to need some maintenance soon. There are a couple of functions that make it shut down or freeze up, and the problem is the mirror getting stuck or jammed, requiring me to take the battery out and restart it.

My current camera body is a Canon Eos Rebel T5, which was an entry-level DSLR. It takes the EF and EF-S lenses, and I have several that I have purchased. One consideration is those lenses; if the next camera can’t use those lenses natively, I’ll need some sort of adapter to make them fit. It is an APS-C format, which is a smaller sensor, and I think it’s actually going to serve me better than the other format, the full-frame format. Most of my photography requires a zoom anyway, and the crop factor of the APS-C format serves that well. I do a lot of wildlife photography, so I use my zoom lenses a lot.

My T5 has 18 megapixels, which has been okay, but there are two limitations it imposes. The first is when I want to crop the image to isolate some particular element. Doing so means that I’ll just have to be satisfied with a smaller image. I’d like to be able to crop an image and still have a full-size image of good quality. The other limitation is in the details it can capture. I’d like to do some astrophotography, and while I have been able to get some star shots, I won’t be able to get the details I want from as deep in space. I won’t need to step up all that much, but it does require better quality than I have now.

The other consideration is DSLR or mirrorless. Mirrorless cameras are reported to be lighter in weight and quieter to operate, and if I stay with the same manufacturer, I should be able to stay with the lens format I have, with an adapter. Since there is no mirror to move up and down, the focus and capture speed are faster. “Burst mode” is faster with mirrorless cameras, because the mirror doesn’t have to rise and fall with each shot.

I had almost talked myself into a mirrorless system, but now I think I’ve almost talked myself out of it. Mirrorless cameras don’t have an optical viewfinder. They rely solely on a digital screen. Because of that, the battery life is a bit shorter. Additionally, from my experience with my Canon Powershot, I know that sunny days make it hard to use that digital screen. I’ve gotten used to my viewfinder, and I don’t know how I would adapt to the screen again, and my outdoor photography happens a lot on bright sunny days.

Ultimately, it’s going to take a trip to a camera shop to talk with an expert. I’ll tell them how I use my camera right now and what I want from my next one. I have a feeling I’m going to be staying with DSLR, and I’ll probably be staying with APS-C, but what that ends up looking like I’ll just have to see.

I love caverns, and if there’s one within 70 miles of where we’re vacationing, we’ll find our way to it before we leave. Most of the caverns we’ve visited as a family have a similar story as to their formation, but with human habitation, each has its own unique history. Due to the capriciousness of Mother Nature, each cave will have features to call its own. While taking “decent” photos in caverns is fairly easy using a flash, taking really great photos in a cave is devilishly trickly. I’ll show you what I mean.

The image above is from a family vacation in 2008. This was my first digital camera, the one that got me hooked on photography. It was a Fujifilm FinePix A303; it still works and I still use it for nostalgic reasons. Not bad for its time, it did have a few program settings, but at the time I shot exclusively on Auto. RAW was not an option on this camera. The flash fired automatically because, well, we were in a cave. Digital cameras were early in this phase, especially on a consumer level. This image’s resolution is 960 x 1280, which really doesn’t look too bad here. The resolution is 72 ppi, or pixels per inch. I took this image at Ruby Falls in Chattanooga, TN, and we haven’t ever managed to get back there. Two cameras later, I’d like to make a return visit.

You see the vertical line in this image? I cannot account for it. It happens in some photos but not others, and it appears most often in low-light situations. This was Tuckaleechee caverns in Townsend, Tennessee. Additionally, with a better camera, a Canon Powershot, I tried to shoot this without a flash. I used a really high ISO, 1600, so that I wouldn’t have to slow the shutter down. That worked, I didn’t have any camera shake, but there’s lots of “noise”, little tiny grains of lighter pixels in the darker areas of the image. I could probably take care of the noise but I’d still have that line down the center, and if I feel like putting the time in, I could probably take care of that too. I anticipate an arduous task in that.

This was April of 2022, and it was taken with my current camera, a Canon EOS Rebel T5, using the original lens that came with the camera, 18-55 mm, f/0. I suppressed the flash so that it wouldn’t fire at all, I set the ISO to 400, the lens aperture at 4.3, and a shutter speed of 1/8 second. For reference, on a bright, sunny day shooting pictures of cars at a car show, the shutter speed was 1/1000 second. Even at 1/8 second, if I had moved at all, you’d have know it in the image. This image is nice and sharp. I leaned against the handrail, got the focus, inhaled, checked my focus, exhaled, pulled my elbows into my sides for support, inhaled again, and pressed the button. The result is that I got every detail of the rock, and you can see the depth of the formation. Look again at the first picture and notice how flat it looks, compared with the contours of this one. I was determined to only use the flash if it was absolutely necessary. There were a couple of places where I did need the flash to capture something that was otherwise not showing up, and I will freely admit that most of the shots I took in the cave were crap, because there wasn’t much to help me steady the camera and I wasn’t about to try to climb in and out of a cave with a tripod, not to mention how inconvenient that would have been for the other visitors. The shot below is another one that turned out surprisingly well.

The camera settings were nearly identical to the previous shot. If I had moved even enough to draw breath, this shot would have been worthless. In fact, the two preceding it were. Fortunately I was able to be the last person in the group, so it really didn’t matter if I took a couple of extra seconds to try again. There were some shots I just had to abandon, though, because the group was moving on.

Here are the things to remember about taking photos in caves if you really don’t want to use flash:

• It will be tempting to turn up the ISO, but remember the second picture; use as low a setting as you can get away with.
• A tripod is nice if you can get away with it, or even a monopod. If not, steady the camera on or against something. Pull your elbows in to your sides to help steady the camera.
• Longer shutter speeds will help produce the images you want, but you risk breathing and moving the camera. The secret to some of the shots that turned out well was recognizing that I could underexpose with a shorter shutter speed and expose just a touch more in Lightroom or Photoshop. The ones that turned out spectacularly well except for a bit of underexposure were worth that little bump, but actually, most didn’t need it. It is an option to keep in mind, though. If it gives you the chance to catch a shot that you just can’t get without moving, fix it in post. It’s okay, even Ansel Adams touched up his photos to tell the story he wanted to tell.