Good Camera Shop?

[Resident 2B]

Originally Posted by brk-lnt

It's a nice lens, but heavy. I'd recommend a tripod or monopod with it unless you're a REALLY good hand-holder or use a body brace. It would be a pretty big step up from the 70-300 lens you have now (is that the one with the green-ring on it?).

My go-to lens for 90% of the time is the 24-105L. I think that everyone who shoots Canon relies on that lens I also had the 24-70L but sold it due to lack of use.

My main kit is:
16-35L
24-105L
100-400L

The 70-200L/IS lens is also a great outdoor lens. I had the 70-200L non-IS, but sold it, have not replaced it yet because I haven't had time for serious photography in a while.

I also need to upgrade my 5D to the MkIII...

No doubt in my mind the Canon L series lenses are the best way to go. I would buy a good L series used lens before I would buy a regular Canon lens. The glass is so important.

I bought my 5D MKII on the price drop before the 5D MKIII was released. Great camera body, but the MKIII is the way to go fir the 'artsy' stuff. I like the 60D for nature and sports photography as you get good detail but a bump in focal length. Loons and eagles on and around the lake is an environment where the 60D is great.

With the L series longer lens, you need support. They are heavy and the support should be under the lens, not on the camera body. The carbon graphite mono-pods work great.

R2B

[SteveA]

Originally Posted by Resident 2B

No doubt in my mind the Canon L series lenses are the best way to go. I would buy a good L series used lens before I would buy a regular Canon lens. The glass is so important.

I bought my 5D MKII on the price drop before the 5D MKIII was released. Great camera body, but the MKIII is the way to go fir the 'artsy' stuff. I like the 60D for nature and sports photography as you get good detail but a bump in focal length. Loons and eagles on and around the lake is an environment where the 60D is great.

With the L series longer lens, you need support. They are heavy and the support should be under the lens, not on the camera body. The carbon graphite mono-pods work great.

R2B

I look all the time for used L's.. hard to find.

[brk-lnt]

Originally Posted by SteveA

I look all the time for used L's.. hard to find.

Really? I see them fairly regularly on the NH and MA craigslist listings.

You can also save a couple of dollars (maybe $50 on a $1100 lens) buying the non-US lenses. Same lens/glass, just not marked for US warranty.

[SteveA]

Originally Posted by brk-lnt

Really? I see them fairly regularly on the NH and MA craigslist listings.

You can also save a couple of dollars (maybe $50 on a $1100 lens) buying the non-US lenses. Same lens/glass, just not marked for US warranty.

LOL.. I just checked Craigs list.. you right. Guess my "looking for" skills need a little sharpening.

My lens are all EF - besides the kit I've added
EF70-300 f4-5.6 and the EF 50 F/1.4 USM

My body is the T3 will L Series even work with that body?

[ishoot308]

Steve;

According to Canon, your T3 will work with all Canon EF (electro focus) lens. An L (luxury ) series lens is an EF lens and has that designation in the description. You should be good to go!

You would be wise to double check my info before buying however as I am still very much in the learning mode!

Dan

[brk-lnt]

Originally Posted by SteveA

LOL.. I just checked Craigs list.. you right. Guess my "looking for" skills need a little sharpening.

My lens are all EF - besides the kit I've added
EF70-300 f4-5.6 and the EF 50 F/1.4 USM

My body is the T3 will L Series even work with that body?

Yes, the EF bayonet mount is standard across all modern Canon bodies, film or digital.

FYI, the thing that essentially makes a lens an "L" designation is the quality of the internal optics, not the mount or interface. Canon used to have a prior mounting system in the 70's or 80's, I forget the designation, it like F or something. Anyways, you could have conceptually had F-L lenses and EF-L lenses, they would not be cross compatible, but being designated as "L" in either series would indicate the higher-end lens.

There are many factors that make up a good quality lens. Would you *should* generally notice from better lenses would be:
-Constant aperture across the focal length, and usually a low number (f/4 or better). Aperture is a function of focal length, not an absolute aperture opening size, for a given aperture opening (say like an 8mm diameter), that would be f/4 at 100mm, but f/5.6 at 200mm (note, I'm totally making these numbers up because I don't feel like looking up for doing the math So, the ability to maintain f/4 over a 100-400mm range for example takes more engineering complexity inside the lens to both have an opening that wide, and scale it with the lens zoom.

-Better sharpness at the edges of the lens. It's relatively easy to make the center of the lens elements crisp, but maintaining the same sharpness uniformly throughout the entire field of view takes more precision and time in the lens glas grinding process. The result of course is that your images appear sharp throughout, and with less visible aberrations at the edges.

-Less chromatic distortions at the edges. Lenses shape and funnel light, we've all seen the Pink Floyd logo of the light beam going through the color splitter, a similar effect happens with camera lenses. Better quality glass, coatings, polishing and groupings reduce this effect so that you don't have color distortions near the edges of the lens.

An interesting side effect of cameras that use APS-C sized sensors (pretty much any Canon that is not a 1 or 5 series, and all but 1 or 2 Nikons), is that the sensor is smaller than a standard 35mm sized sensor, so it's not "seeing" the light coming from the edges of the lens, it's using more of the center of the glass, which tends to be the best area in terms of overall sharpness/etc.

This is also why you hear about a "1.6x" zoom on these camera bodies. If you mount a 50mm lens on your 40D (or whatever camera body), your sensor is seeing less area than that same lens on my 5D body, because the 5D has a larger sensor. This has the apparent effect of a "zoom", because if we both print out the images we take with a 50mm lens on an 8x10" print for example, your print would show an image of approximately the inner 2/3'ds of what my camera would show, or in a manner of speaking, your print at 50mm would look like an image I took with an 80mm lens. None of this part really matters, I just mention it because it seems to be confusing to a lot of people...

Hope that's helpful

[PaugusBayFireFighter]

I have a friend that asked me to sell some items on eBay for him. I am a very experienced eBay seller but some items are harder to sell because buyers like to touch or test drive older, classic items. In these cases I will attempt to sell to a local by putting an ad on craigslist and actually meeting the person, but in this case I'm selling something I know nothing about, other than it's a great old camera. Wondering if someone knows a local collector or buyer/seller that would be interested in this camera. It's a Nikon F2AS Black Paint with every bell and whistle including batteries, all original manuals, tripod, accessories, etc. My friend treats his possessions like children so I can say, without doubt, it's as close to mint as a camera this age can be.
Thanks in advance for any advice. He's not looking to break the bank, but I don't want him to get beat up like he would at a pawn shop. A reputable camera person would inspect this package and agree it's worthy of a fair deal.

[Resident 2B]

Originally Posted by SteveA

I look all the time for used L's.. hard to find.

Try this place.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search...646+4291570227

Good selection of higher end used photo gear. It will get to the lakes region in a few days.


R2B