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Digital Camera News, Reviews and Tips

Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM Lens Reviews

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The Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM is an ultra-wide-angle zoom that offers a broader view, fast aperture, and closer focusing down to 11 in. (.28m). The first EF wide-angle zoom to combine three Aspherical elements and Canon’s UD glass, the lens remains compact while providing superior image quality across its range. Constructed to pro standards, it’s also highly resistant to dust and moisture. (Canon)

Reviews

The Digital Picture

At 16mm, the 16-35 L is very sharp in the center even wide open (f/2.8) and improves little when stopped down. The 16mm full-frame corners are soft wide open (with a flat target – because of field curvature) and improve noticeably at f/5.6. At 16mm with a close subject distance, strong barrel distortion is noticeable even on a FOVCF body.

Photozone

All-in-all it is a very good lens but if you don’t need the f/2.8 setting and that extra mm at the wide end you may as well save quite some bucks by preferring the EF 17-40mm f/4 USM L which performs basically just as good.

Luminous Landscape

If you are in the market for a new wide-angle lens, I definitely recommend spending the extra $250 and getting the new 16-35L. In terms of sharpness, contrast, and extra features, you will get your monies worth.

Ken Rockwell

This is your lens if you need the absolute widest zoom available from a top-drawer manufacturer for a full-frame camera.

WL Castleman

The greater widefield capabilities of the EF 16-35 L (108° diagonal field of view compared to 74° diagonal field of view for the 17-40L) make the relatively minor differences in corner sharpness and chromatic aberration a small price to pay for those seek the widest possible ultrawide zoom performance.

Fred Miranda Forum User Reviews

Overall I would rate this lens 9 out of 10. I got it back in November 2006 and after a year I can say that 16-35L Mark I is an excellent wide angle lens. I shoot with FF bodies and I guess this is pretty much the reason why I went for it. 16mm is quite wide on my 5D and 1Ds.

Photography Review User Reviews

this lens is an excellent choice for your line-up of quality lenses. i am slowly converting to an all L-series line-up, all f/2.8 lenses. i cannot stress enough how amazingly beautiful this lens is, as well as all of the other L series.

PBase Sample Images

Where to Buy

First off, consider going to your local camera store (and I don’t necessarily mean Wolf Camera at the mall). By going to your local camera store, you’re supporting your community and you just might build a lasting relationship with people you can rely on when you need some help or answers. If you’re buying online, I recommend sticking with Amazon, B&H Photo or Adorama. These three vendors are reliable, trustworthy and generally have the best (legitimate) prices. Additionally, purchasing your gear through these links helps support this site.

[tags]Canon, EF, 16-35mm, f/2.8L, USM, lens, review[/tags]

 

Canon EF 28-90mm f/4-5.6 II USM

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The Canon EF 28-90mm f/4-5.6 II USM lens is one of the former kit lenses of the Rebel series film SLRs.  The image quality is generally not regarded as all that great.  Additionally, the zoom range is ill-suited for the newer 1.6x crop-sensor DSLRs.  As an update from the prior non-USM version, it is a lightweight lens (only 6.7 oz./190g) and also has a revised exterior appearance, highlighted by a rubber zoom ring.

Reviews

The Digital Picture

The Canon EF 28-90mm f/4-5.6 II USM Lens is sharper at the wide end rapidly progressing to soft at 90mm. Wide open sharpness is not bad at 28mm, but the corners are soft until the lens is stopped down to f/8. The 28-90 II is very soft wide open over most of the balance of the focal length range.

Fred Miranda Forum User Reviews

I got this lense as a gift with my Elan 7 – my first SLR in 20 years. I shot a couple of dozen rolls with this lense and loved many of the pictures I got with it. It was only after getting my 10D and reading up on lenses that I realized this was a very cheap entry level zoom. After comparing it to a 50mm 1.4 and a few other L lenses I realized that pictures could be much better than lense was capable of capturing.

Photography Review User Reviews

Nice lens despite of the very cheap look. Sharpness and distortion are ok for the price tag, after all it’s an under $100 3x zoom range lens. Focusing is not lightning fast but ok for amateur use.

PhotoSig User Reviews

As a general purpose lense it is fine. I am a travel photographer and tend to take this lense on the road because of its light weight, near silent and extremely fast auto focus system.

SLR Gear User Reviews

This lens usually comes as part of a kit (along with an entry level film SLR). It’s lightweight, which pretty much sums up the good stuff I can say about it. Oh, plus at least this version come with USM.

Where to Buy

First off, consider going to your local camera store. By going to your local camera store, you’re supporting your community and you just might build a lasting relationship with people you can rely on when you need some help or answers. If you’re buying online, I recommend sticking with Amazon, B&H Photo or Adorama. These three vendors are reliable, trustworthy and generally have the best (legitimate) prices.

[tags]Canon, EF, 28-90mm, f/4-5.6, II, USM, lens, review[/tags]

Canon 10D Reviews

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The Canon EOS 10D is a discontinued 6.3-megapixel semi-professional digital SLR camera, initially announced on February 27, 2003 at a price point of $1,999 without lens ($1,599 street price). As of early 2007, factory refurbished units are about $600. The 10D replaced the Canon EOS D60, which is also a 6.3-megapixel digital SLR camera. Additionally, the 10D does not accept EF-S lenses.

Reviews

Steve’s Digicams

The 10D’s images are excellent, the resolution is the same as the D60 but there’s less noise and artifacts visible. Even the higher ISO 400 and 800 shots are noticeably “cleaner” and I was surprised to see very useable ISO 1600 images.

DPReview.com

I have no concerns in stating that as things stand (at the time of writing this review) the EOS-10D is the absolute best in class, with the best image quality, lowest high sensitivity noise, superb build quality and excellent price (not to mention the huge choice of lenses).

Digital Camera Resource Page

The Canon EOS-10D is the best deal out there for a digital SLR camera.

Luminous Landscape

There are two new features found in the 10D that don’t even exist in the 1D and 1Ds. The first is an automatic orientation sensor that tells the camera if a shot has been taken vertically or horizontally and then tags the image so that it shows up with the correct orientation on screen. The second is a feature which I’ve been asking Canon for for a couple of years; a mode which automatically switches from single shot focus to focus tracking if the subject starts moving. Hooray!

Cnet

Though not without its quirks, the 10D is a great candidate for a first digital SLR.

Digital Outback Photo

Canon has now with the 10D (excellent price/feature/quality ratio), 1D (the action champion) and 1Ds (defining digital state of the art) a very strong offering of digital SLRs. We hope that this will keep Nikon and Fuji busy to follow up.

Imaging Resource

The EOS-10D will immediately dispel any longing for the D60 though, as it’s a genuinely more capable camera in almost every respect. While the image sensor still has the same ~6 megapixel resolution, the numerous upgrades in nearly all other aspects of the cameras operation (most notably in the AF performance) really makes the 10D a whole new camera.

Mac Dev Center

When Canon started shipping the EOS 10D in March 2003, digital photography took a turn for the better. From the first grip of the magnesium body, this SLR feels right at home. Better yet, it shoots like a real camera.

Where to Buy

First off, consider going to your local camera store (and I don’t necessarily mean Wolf Camera at the mall). By going to your local camera store, you’re supporting your community and you just might build a lasting relationship with people you can rely on when you need some help or answers. If you’re buying online, I recommend sticking with Amazon, B&H Photo or Adorama. These three vendors are reliable, trustworthy and generally have the best (legitimate) prices. Additionally, purchasing your camera through these links helps support this site. You can still find some used a refurbished 10D bodies popping up on these sites.
[tags]canon, eos, 10d, reviews, price, availability, order[/tags]

Cellblock – A New Tool for Photographers

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Cellblock is a cool new tool that makes adding a slideshow to your site about as simple as can be (note the handy slideshow in the right sidebar now – click in the bottom right corner of it to go to full screen or just click here). Now, you can login to your cellblock account and upload a few photos (3MB limit). Better yet, you can email your photos to a particular email address that you set up for your individual cellblocks. What’s more is that you can shoot those images that you can’t wait to show everyone directly from your cell phone / camera phone to your cellblock and instantly publish them to the rest of the world! Pretty darn cool if you ask me! It embeds into your site just like a YouTube or MySpace video.

Want to give a try on Photography Bay? Just send your image (your image) to photographybay@cellblock.com. No need to stick anything in the subject line. Just attach an image and shoot it to me. I’m still learning my way around this thing and am having trouble with portrait-oriented photos at the moment. If you figure out the problem before I do, then pass it along. In the mean time, stick with horizontals.

Control freak? Don’t worry, you can opt not to publish photos until you’ve had a chance to review them, which I do (so no funny stuff). Thanks to the Trademark Blog for turning me on to this!

UPDATE: Regarding my problem with portrait-oriented (vertical) photos – One of the development guys at Cellblock posted a comment stating that this issue is being addressed and will be fixed soon.

We will be exposing a rotate function over the next couple of weeks that will take care of portrait/landscape issues.

Stay up to date on the Cellblog (the Cheat Sheet is worth a read anyway) or I’ll keep you updated when groovy stuff happens.

You? A Famous Photographer?

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It doesn’t take much these days to gain notoriety with your photographs.  More than anything (especially in the “breaking news” world), it’s being in the right place at the right time.  Chances are that if you read a blog like this one you’ve probably got a digital camera of some form on you for most of the day.  Check out the Washington Post’s recent article, Regular Folks, Shooting History.  The power of the Internet has changed photography forever.  It continues to evolve and makes it all the more possible for even the most amateur point and shooters to become famous photographers.

Canon 1Ds Mark II Reviews

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The Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II is a top model in the Canon EOS DSLR line, with a full-frame 16.7 MP CMOS sensor. A professional grade camera body, the EOS 1Ds Mark II is large, ruggedly built, and is dust/weather-resistant. The Mark II is the successor to the 11.4 MP Canon EOS 1Ds and has been replaced by the 21.1 MP Canon 1Ds Mark III.


Reviews

DPReview

Performance is another area which impresses, of course we all expect a professional digital SLR (especially one with this price tag) to operate quickly and be instantly responsive to our every request. But when you consider that this camera wasn’t designed for the fast-shooting sports market it’s equally amazing to use it and realize that in many ways it is just as capable at continuous shooting as it is at delivering superb resolution. Four sixteen megapixel frames per second for 41 frames without stopping is something mighty.

Luminous Landscape

In the end, the 1Ds Mark II stands alone, (for the moment at least), as the camera with the combination of highest image quality and fastest handling available. There are faster cameras and there are higher resolution digital solutions (various 22 Megapixel backs, and soon the Mamiya ZD 22 MP camera). But for the money, the size, the versatility, and the performance, the Canon 1Ds Mark II is currently king of the hill.

Digital Outback Photo

Very clean files up to ISO 400. Even ISO 800 looks excellent and ISO 1600 is very useable too. This seconds the findings we had with some real world nature shots in Sedona that behaved very well at ISO 400. This excellent ISO behavior is more important to us than even the extra resolution.

The Digital Picture

Is the Canon EOS 1D Mark II for professionals only? Definitely not. Having excellent quality in-focus images appeals to a large number of non-professional enthusiasts as well. Keep in mind – all of us are capable of taking bad pictures with the best camera available. The Canon EOS 1D Mark II has the ability take your photography to a very high quality level.

Steve’s Digicams

The Mark II is an excellent value for the pro who needs its increased resolution and improved performance, and to the extent that the Mark II enables them to earn more income, they will buy it. But to the rest of us mere mortals, justifying an $8000 camera plus the necessary upgrades in computer and memory resources is a big stretch, one not many enthusiasts and semi-pro’s will make.

Where to Buy

First off, consider going to your local camera store (and I don’t necessarily mean Wolf Camera at the mall). By going to your local camera store, you’re supporting your community and you just might build a lasting relationship with people you can rely on when you need some help or answers. If you’re buying online, I recommend sticking with Amazon, B&H Photo or Adorama. These three vendors are reliable, trustworthy and generally have the best (legitimate) prices. Additionally, purchasing your camera through these links helps support this site.

The Canon 40D Cometh

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The Canon 40D

Looks like someone let the cat out of the bag a little early. So, when should we expect the 40D and what are the features?

First, this is speculation, however, it’s a somewhat educated guess based on recent developments in the Canon EOS DSLR product line.

Expect the release of the Canon 40D to correspond with the official announcement at the PMA this year, March 8-11 in Las Vegas, NV. Almost every product cycle and release announcement corresponds with either PMA or Photokina (in the fall every 2 years). That said, I think most folks would now consider it a fact that the 40D will be announced/released shortly before or during the PMA show in March. However, I’d expect you’ll be able to actually put your hands on one near the end of March or beginning of April.

Now the fun part – what’s it made of? [Read more…]

Nikon D2H Reviews and Resources

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The Nikon D2H is 4.1 MP DX format professional DSLR, which was introduced in July 2003. Nikon refined and replaced the D2H with the D2Hs in 2005, adding new features developed with the flagship D2X Digital SLR. See a comparison of features improvements and changes between the D2H and D2Hs at DP Review.


Reviews

Thom Hogan

Acuity is good, color is excellent, and noise performance is at least as good as previous Nikons, if not better. With the right settings and discipline, this camera performs more like a 5mp or higher camera.

DP Review

The Nikon D2H is one of a very few cameras which feels almost perfectly ‘sorted’. By this I mean it’s very difficult to use the camera and find faults, almost any faults, which will affect the camera’s purpose in life, which is to be a very fast, flexible, robust and reliable photographic tool.

Lonestar Digital

Underpowered? Not necessarily …. the 4.1 megapixel sensor actually could be considered to be a strong point because of its smaller, easier to manage image file sizes. Practically speaking, the smaller file sizes are faster & easier to work with.

Ken Rockwell

In some ways the D2h is a huge improvement over the professional standard D1H camera. Advantages are much, much better battery performance and a much bigger LCD screen. A big disadvantage of the D2H is the lack of an electronic shutter which drops the flash sync speed.

Rob Galbraith

Image quality generally matches or exceeds the D1X and D1H Saturation is up, detail is up, noise across the range of ISOs looks to be slightly worse while skin tones seem to be both up and down, depending on the subject and illumination.

Steve’s Digicams

The D2H was nearly transparent as I used it; it did not demand my attention or make me wait, and allowed me to concentrate my efforts on capturing images, not operating a camera.

Moose Peterson

Clocking my camera, it seems to be delivering about 8.61FPS shooting above 1/250. That’s pretty darn cool. Coupled with the ability to shoot RAW + JPEG, it’s a great system.

Imaging Resource

I’ve said before and will say again that the D2H is easily the most enjoyable camera to shoot with that I’ve yet handled, with a fluid, fast, and easy to use user interface that intrudes minimally on the shooting experience. Overall, a powerful photographic tool, not to mention a thoroughly enjoyable one.

Where to Buy

First off, consider going to your local camera store (and I don’t necessarily mean Wolf Camera at the mall). By going to your local camera store, you’re supporting your community and you just might build a lasting relationship with people you can rely on when you need some help or answers. If you’re buying online, I recommend sticking with Amazon, B&H Photo or Adorama. Frequently, you can find used or refurbished models on these sites. These three vendors are reliable, trustworthy and generally have the best (legitimate) prices. Additionally, purchasing your camera through these links helps support this site.
[tags]nikon, d2h, review, dslr, test, digital camera[/tags]

Nikon D2X Reviews and Resources

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The Nikon D2X is the predecessor to the Nikon D2Xs, both of which are 12.2 MP professional DSLRs. The technical specifications can be found here on Nikon’s website. The Nikon D3 was introduced in August 2007 and offers several upgrades.


Reviews

DP Review

The D2X is a camera which grew on me the more I used it, its instant response and solid build instill a level of confidence unavailable in lesser cameras. You know that every time you press the shutter release the camera will respond instantly and you’ll get the shot. As a photographic tool it’s as close to perfection as I could imagine, there’s really very little else you could want from a camera.

Thom Hogan

Frankly, the D2x is more camera than many amateurs can handle–they simply don’t have the shot discipline (or the lenses) to get all the bits of resolution of which the camera is capable (pardon the pun). Pros shooting for large formats may find a deeper discussion of resolution slightly useful, but when I have to get out a magnifying glass to examine differences printed at 13×19″ on my Epson 2200, I think that we’re beyond the point where 90% of the market will find that discussion useful. For the pros: you’ll need Nikon’s best lenses to fully achieve what the D2x is capable of capturing, and, yes, we really are in the realm of better-than-35mm resolution.

Ken Rockwell

What makes the D2X special is its fantastic high speed, instant response, brutally fast autofocus, superb usability and construction so solid you can use it for self-defense.

Steve’s Digicams

The Nikon D2X is a bit of an enigma. With both full-frame and High Speed Crop modes, it is versatile like no other camera, equally at home in a studio or a sports arena. It is feature rich, offering the exposure controls and Custom Settings demanded by professionals. Its 12.4 megapixels of resolution, while lagging the 16.7-megapixels of Canon’s 1Ds Mark II, set a new standard for Nikon and will be well-received by those with large investments in Nikon glass.

Let’s Go Digital

The Nikon D2X is definitely one of the best D-SLRs available these days. Especially looking at its price the D2X offers a heck of a lot and therefore it’s not a surprise seeing the D2X regularly in the field. It’s a special professional reflex!

Lonestar Digital

A CMOS sensor uses less electric power than a CCD sensor. This has a couple of major benefits. First, longer battery life. Second, less static buildup, which means less dirt & dust attracted to the sensor’s cover glass surface. Many experienced D2X users report that they seldom or never need to clean their camera’s sensor.

Imaging Resource

Throughout my testing, the Nikon D2X delivered excellent color, hue-accurate, and with appropriate saturation.

Nikonians

If your present camera does what you need it to do then you may not need a Nikon D2X. There is no need for a D3 in my future. It will take many years and many venues to test all of the D2X’s benefits and features. This one does what I need it to do, now. The future is here for me, and it is … the Nikon D2X.

Digital Outback Photo

The cameras overall feel is quite powerful and ”tank” like which I prefer, The high speed crop mode is a one button push and a turn of the command dial, Sports guys are gonna love this as a 300 lens becomes a 600 lens and is clearly defined in the viewfinder with a highlighted grid. Also Very cool! The monitor is huge and extremely good, just remove the monitor protector and get those Hoodman stick-ons, they are great.

Where to Buy

First off, consider going to your local camera store (and I don’t necessarily mean Wolf Camera at the mall). By going to your local camera store, you’re supporting your community and you just might build a lasting relationship with people you can rely on when you need some help or answers. If you’re buying online, I recommend sticking with Amazon, B&H Photo or Adorama. These three vendors are reliable, trustworthy and generally have the best (legitimate) prices. Additionally, purchasing your camera through these links helps support this site.
[tags]nikon, d2x, review, dslr, test, digital camera[/tags]