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Question of the Day: Will you be watching the FIFA World Cup Final?
would you rather buy...
- Thread starter lamzb
- Start date
Ok, I should have been more specific: I meant 35 mm f/1.8 or faster. I guess f/2.4 is not too bad, but the lens will have to be pretty amazing in all other respects (to compete with, say, the Nikkor 35 mm f/1.8 DX). Then again, the ~R3k price point is what I consider reasonable for someone starting out, so I'll reverse my earlier statement somewhat: You can get a Pentax 35 mm prime that is affordable.
Well, now, you cannot call your photography pursuits a "hobby" unless you spend lots of money on gear
Progenix Oj101
Dealer
No ways, that's like saying you don't need anything more than an entry level gaming PC unless you game professionally, or more than 100 KW unless you're a pro racing driver. Better gear most certainly CAN help you to take better pictures, it's up to each individual as to how much they're willing to spend.
/Off topic
On my one body it costs me R0.15 per click
How do you figure that? I suppose you're going by cost/rated lifespan - if it's a body with a shutter rated at 100,000 actuations it's a R15,000 camera, if it's rated at 200,000 actuations it's a R30,000 camera, etc. However, a replacement shutter is normally R1,500 to R5,000, so if it was a R15k camera rated at 100k acutations you're looking at R16.5k to R20k (8.3c to 10c per click) for 200,000, R18k to R25k for 300,000 (6c to 8.3c per click), R19.5k to R30k for 400,000 (4.9c to 7.5c per click), etc.
That may well be the case but by the time I've burnt through 500,000 actuations the camera itself is well on it's way to obsolescence and needs to be replaced. If you don't keep up with the Joneses they tend to steal your lunch.
Plus there's servicing, cleaning and then lenses...
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Progenix Oj101
Dealer
That may well be the case but by the time I've burnt through 500,000 actuations the camera itself is well on it's way to obsolescence and needs to be replaced. If you don't keep up with the Joneses they tend to steal your lunch.
Plus there's servicing, cleaning and then lenses...
Not really, the original 5D, the 40D, the 1D Mk II N, etc are still good enough for use today (the 5D and 40D being popular choices for pros doing stock photography) and they're all close to a decade old. Take a camera from TODAY and there's not a whole lot of room for improvement - it should easily last you a decade unless GAS (gear acquisition syndrome) kicks in.
No, they're really not - at least as far as sports photography goes. My 1Dmk3 barely makes the grade any longer - it simply doesn't have the low light capabilities or resolution the agencies I work for want which is a pity because that APS-H sensor was an ideal size for me. At this time for what I need it to do my prosumer 7D is a more capable camera than my 1Dmk3.
Yet every 2-3 years they still manage to make improvements.
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Progenix Oj101
Dealer
No, they're really not - at least as far as sports photography goes. My 1Dmk3 barely makes the grade any longer - it simply doesn't have the low light capabilities or resolution the agencies I work for want which is a pity because that APS-H sensor was an ideal size for me. At this time for what I need it to do my prosumer 7D is a more capable camera than my 1Dmk3.
Yet every 2-3 years they still manage to make improvements.
So how did sports photographers do their thing ten years ago? It wasn't using film (which has an even poorer quality, you can already see grain on ASA400 and by the time you get to ASA1600 it's very clearly defined)...
And if by improvements you mean changing the badge...
Yes, Canon and Nikon, I'm looking at the both of you
Unlike film, sensor technology improves all the time and since everyone was shooting film at the time the high ISO grain wasn't really a factor. While I could only comfortably push 2500 iso on my 1Dmk3 I can get usable images from my 1Dx at 25,000 iso. I get cleaner sharper images which means more work.
No, I mean more tangible improvements such as high ISO, higher frame rates, and most importantly quicker and more accurate AF.And if by improvements you mean changing the badge...
Progenix Oj101
Dealer
How often do you need to shoot at ISO 25600 for sport? How did they do it ten years ago? Sport was being photographed ten years ago (and prior to that, but let's go with the technology that was available ten years ago), and it would've been at or below the usable ISO available at the time (400 to 1600, maybe a bit higher at a push). My point is if they managed at a lower ISO back then, why do you NEED a higher ISO for the same thing today? Furthermore, cameras have advanced to such an extent that it's getting harder to tell whether a picture was taken with an entry level consumer (D3300), mid range prosumer (D5300), or pro level (D4) without pixel-by-pixel examination or viewing a 100 % crop. Where do we go from here? The improvements in quality are getting smaller and smaller, and with larger and larger periods of time between them. This is why I say a decent camera body today should last you longer than the rated lifespan of the shutter (a good ten years).
The Nikon D4s and Canon 700D (two examples that spring to mind) disagree with you, they're hardly upgrades from the previous generation (D4 and 650D).
Happens more often than I would like. 12800 is a regular occurrence though. Those stadiums might look bright on TV but a) they crank up the lights for TV and b) They aint that bright even with the tv crews there. That's at top stadiums - we have to shoot in places a lot worse than that.
How did they do it? They didn't of course. But I can.
Techniques also change when you can shoot fast in low light. When I started I had to shoot most nighttime matches head on because the shutter speeds were too slow for crisp lateral movement. Instead of shooting 1/800th at f/2.8 with iso 3200 I can shoot 1/1600 at f/4 because at iso 12800 the images are clean.I NEED high ISO because the next guy has it. The better your images the more you work.
The camera will last but the technology just doesn't put you on a level playing field with everyone else.
I can't comment on the consumer series canon but on paper the D4s has a number of improvements. Better image processor, higher fps rate, bigger buffer, improved AF…
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I think the Nikon D3300 is the closest to re-badging that Nikon ever came in DX (but at least they upgraded the processor), and we won't mention the D610/D600
But Canon's 700D vs 650D is almost as bad as the graphics processing unit re-badging that Nvidia and AMD like to commit.
Progenix Oj101
Dealer
Happens more often than I would like. 12800 is a regular occurrence though. Those stadiums might look bright on TV but a) they crank up the lights for TV and b) They aint that bright even with the tv crews there. That's at top stadiums - we have to shoot in places a lot worse than that.
How did they do it? They didn't of course. But I can.
I NEED high ISO because the next guy has it. The better your images the more you work.
You're missing my point. They've been photographing sports for a long, long time, often using nothing more than ASA400 film, and they've managed. What has changed that you now need such a high ISO to do the same thing now? I get your point that you CAN do things differently now, but if the old way worked fine why does it need to change?
Looking at the spec comparison, I can't see anything that would be reason to upgrade from the D4 to the D4s. If I were in the market for a pro FF DSLR and the D4s cost more I wouldn't see any real reason to spend the extra cash when it can rather go towards glass. Again, look at how progression has slowed compared to what it was a decade ago, I bet that a modern camera will survive while being relevant for much longer than the still-relevant-for-most 5D, 40D, 1D Mark II N, etc.
Now a question that goes way off topic but something that sprung to mind. How do those ultra high FPS slow motion cameras work? How do they capture enough light when they're shooting at 20,000+ FPS, which equates to a MAXIMUM shutter speed of 1/20,000? Do they just use a really high ISO?
You don't think any of the photographer of old (iow film photographers) would have given their left nut to not only have been able to shoot at the ISOs we do now but to be able to switch ISOs at will? We have the capability so why not make the most of it. The expectations of those we're working for is also higher than before.
I know a few guys at the local newspaper who would disagree. They recently switched back from new tech to old (Nikon D3s to Canon 1Dmk3) and are really missing the high ISO capabilities of their old gear. The guys covering sports are battling big time. Ironically they have great glass.
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True, but Nikon has maintained this update cycle for a long time now. Major pro gear releases every 4 years, with an update in between, which is why they call it the D4s, not the D5. So the intent is not for D4 owners to upgrade to the D4s, but rather that their flagship is at least current to within a 2 year cycle.
Short answer: they use a lot of extra lighting.
A modern sensor (say, the Sony sensors used in the Nikon D800) has very low read noise (usually around 2-3 photoelectrons). The other sources of sensor noise, namely pixel response non-uniformity (PRNU) and photon shot noise dominate. Of these, photon shot noise is a physical property of light, i.e., you will only receive a finite number of photons per unit area per unit time for a given amount of incident light. The photon shot noise magnitude is directly proportional to the square root of the number of photons (Poisson distribution), so the signal-to-noise ration (SNR) can be calculated directly as P/sqrt(P).
When you bump up the ISO, you are effectively taking a small signal level (few photoelectrons) and amplifying it to the desired range. To pick some arbitrary examples, let us say you are capturing 500 photoelectrons at a given photosite on your sensor, for some given exposure setting.
Your read noise is still 3e, and your photon shot noise is about 22e, giving you a total (simplified) SNR of 500/(3+22) = 20. If you crank up the ISO, your SNR will remain at roughly 20, no matter what you do (keeping exposure fixed, of course).
Increasing the amount of available light so that you now capture 5000 photoelectrons increases your SNR to 5000/(3 + 71) = 68.
To summarise, the real obstacle here is the physics (finite number of photons, and the inherent uncertainty (=noise) in their arrival times), not really the technology. You can increase the quantum efficiency of your sensor (number of photoelectrons liberated for each incident photon), but we are already at above 50% efficiency, so I do not anticipate many surprises there. You can go wide-band, e.g., rather than capturing colour (by selectively filtering out some of the available photons), you can capture a panchromatic (e.g., grayscale) image, allowing you to use more of the available photons (which will increase your SNR).
Or you can simply use a LOT of extra lighting
Progenix Oj101
Dealer
I understand how ISO works, my question is how do the cameras capture enough light? I've looked at some of them now, and they seem to have a maximum ISO of 400 yet they're usable in plain daylight. Judging from the large depth of field, they're not using massive apertures. If I (could) shoot at 1/20,000 f/8 ISO 400 I'd get a black frame.
Progenix Oj101
Dealer
Well yes and no, it's a lot but not enough.
If we use Sunny 16 as a baseline, an extra two stops on the ISO to get to ISO 400 and an extra two stops on the aperture to get to f/8 gives a total of four stops more light and therefore a shutter speed of 1/1600 - a far cry from 1/20,000. Even if the aperture is a further two stops bigger (f/4) it's still needing a shutter speed of 1/3200 - about six times more light than it's getting. If I reverse the math, the aperture would have to be around f/2.2 at 1/20,000 / ISO 400, but the large-ish depth of field would imply that it's a fair bit smaller than that. I've just done the math in my head and if I shot 1/20,000 f/8 ISO 400 I'd be almost four stops underexposed. This is why I'm confused.
Look at a show like the Discovery Channel's Time warp - they didn't always shoot at speeds of 20000 fps an above of a second but when they did it was in black and white and extremely well lit. They actually shot at speeds as low as 500 fps. I'm not sure why f/8 would be an optimal aperture - especially when you take into account that the sensors used on these highspeed cameras are typically much smaller than your average dslr.
When using the sun as the primary light source you can always use something as simple as a reflector to increase the amount of available light.
Hey, no offence meant! I was just trying to give a clear example of why they cannot rely on super-high ISO (because of the physical limitations). The fact that they max out at ISO 400 seems to support this.
One might think that you could exploit the inverse square law to increase the photon density by moving closer to the subject, but that affects your subject magnification proportionally (i.e., using a wider angle lens and moving in closer), keeping the photon density constant.
So I maintain that they must be adding more light (hot lamps, or reflectors as Bwana suggested).