So, Wednesday morning I woke up with a bad case of "I'm sick and tired of waiting for the successor to the 5D (a digital SLR camera) to come out, and I want a new lens for my trip damn it!". Kind of out of the blue. I leave for France on July 5 and until Tuesday before bed I was ready to depart with the equipment I currently have. When I woke up the next day, that was all different. [GEEK ALERT: To those of you who aren't photography geeks, the rest of this post may get incomprehensible and/or very, very dull.] So, yesterday, I went to the camera shop and picked myself up the Canon 5D and the Canon 70-200 mm f4.0 L IS lens. Now, it's absolutely guaranteed that the successor to the 5D will be announced at the Photokina show in September. But I can live with that. The price of the 5D has been dropping since it first came out. Also, Canon is currently having a pretty great rebate program, so I'll be getting back a $600 rebate for the camera+lens combo. When the new 5D finally does come out, the body alone will probably cost as much as what I paid for the camera and lens. So, I think I can deal.
I tested the camera and lens in dim light and, dang it's an impressive combo. Both photos were taken handheld without flash to test the Image Stabilization feature. The first photo (above) was taken at 800 ISO and the noise is hardly noticeable. The miraculous part is that I handheld this shot using a shutter speed of 1/8 second with a focal length of 200mm. Conventional wisdom states that I should have used 1/200 second to ensure a sharp image. The second image was taken at 1600 ISO (more noise, but manageable) and at a 1/4 second (!). The incredible detail also indicates to me that the living room is due for a dusting. That IS (Image Stabilization) is wicked awesome. There was much agonizing over this decision on Wednesday, and now there is much rejoicing. Huzzah!
Postscript: While running some errands in Old Montreal today, I had a chance to do a few more test shots.
And one that I couldn't resist processing just "a tad" more:
2 comments:
i love your pictures so much...i wish i had a million dollars to buy all of them.
jealous jealous jealous jealous...
but LOVE it!!! That handheld stabilization is impressive. I just "stumbled" on your work through my digiscrapping & a post about your wonderful Etsy shop :)
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