After a couple of days of radio silence, another post. Today my new 24-70 f/2.8 L arrived. Tested it today, a grat lens…

Some shots

My camera accessories collection has expanded enormously since I started, in the beginning my Lowepro Minimag AW (shoulder bag) was enough for me, but after buying another bigger dSLR and getting more lenses, a strobe and some small stuff the bag became to small for my gear. So I started looking for a different bag, and because I ride a lot on my bike with my gear I thought a nice backpack would come in handy.

Well, it didn’t, I can be clear about that. I’ve never used backpacks for my gear before this one, and well, it didn’t work out to well. And that might just be because I want to access my gear instantly. Other people who don’t need such instant gear access might and already own a backpack might be interested into this bag. The Naneu Pro Urban Gear U120 is a cheap bag, that comes about 110 euro (which is about 140 dollar and 75 british pound), and has a lot of space. The bag is rugged thick bag with lots and lots of padding, and a nifty feature. The bag actually consists out of two bags, the outer bag and the inner one. If you remove the inner bag, which holds the gear, you can use the back as an ordinary backpack. But, this is a very stif and sturdy bag, the padding is so thick that it always stays the same size The inner bag features several compartments, just like normal padded camera bags, you can insert your camera (EOS D60/5D/30D/350D/Nikon D80 but not 1 series ) with a telelens attached into the middle part, and has all kinds of smaller sizeable compartments around the middle compartment. The D60 viewfinder slightly pops out of the bag, but it will fit. 1 series cameras like the 1D MkII or Nikon D2x will not fit, the bag will not close then.
The inner padding is soft but sturdy, and will absolutely protect your gear, I think it would survive quite a lot, I didn’t test it, but you can’t feel your camera through the padding. But, and I think this is a price issue, it doesn’t really feature any weather protection, like the AW series of Lowepro. 110 euro for such a bag isn’t much, and weather protection just doesn’t fit into the price.

Looks

Well, the bag is ugly, damned ugly. My second reason to go back to the store, and get a different bag. First I found out that backpacks slow down my workflow, and as a second reason, the bag is obviously a camera bag, thick, padded, like a fat beetle on your back. Walking through big cities in dark alleys with this bag is not really advisable, it just draws every bodies attention. So, I went back to the shop, and got a different one, the Domke F-2 black, totally different choice, but a lot more satisfying than the Naneu Pro Urban Gear U120.

Pictures

Sometimes people ask you these things related to the gear you have. After buying a 5D people started asking me, is it a great upgrade, should I do it? Well, I’ll shortly explain the full frame part first. Digital camera’s have a light sensitive sensor, but making these things costs quite a lot. So companies like Canon and Sony decided that they made smaller versions. Smaller being cheaper this also made dSLRs a lot cheaper. For instance the 300D, was a rather affordable dSLR. But most dSLRs and all digital compact cameras still have a smaller sensor than 35 mm film or full frame sensors. They are about 1.5 times or 1.6 times smaller, some are even 2 times smaller (Canon and Sigma)..

Most people see this as something that just multiplies your focal length. And especialy the people who like to use tele lenses are happy with cropped sensors. This gives them longer lenses for free. But I am not really intrested into tele lenses, I do not even own a real tele lens (well, I do, but it is total crap, only collects dust). And those people are more intrested into the sub 100 mm zone. Crop also ment that you have less shallow depth of field, because a 17 mm lens became a 28 mm lens, with the same long depth of field of the original 17 mm lens. And if you want to use an ultra wide angle lens, you need to buy a 12 mm or 10 mm lens with even a longer depth of field. So, UWA on crop sensors mostly means a less shallow depth of field. And that is a pitty, because with a short depth of field you can isolate objects, and because of the wide angle you can still add context to a picture..

But, about 1.5 years ago Canon launched the EOS 5D, an affordable full frame camera. Thank god, although my bankaccount has a different opinion. The camera has a 12.8 megapixel full frame sensor, with a lesser pixel density than the average crop cam. Which results into a very low noise level on higher iso’s, and ofcourse to this full frame. Pretty cool yeah. Finally full frame became sort of affordable (2600 euro still ment selling your kidnies in Pakistan). So, is it worth all the money?

Well, yes, it is. Why? First the image quality. The 5D delivers very clean pictures, straight out of the box. There is no digital SLR (although the Canon 1D mkIII might beat the 5D) that delivers pictures with such a low noise and great rendering. Personaly I think the images look more film like. The colours and contrast are great compared to earlier Canon cameras. So, it indeed is a great camera, right? Well, yes. But there are some things you might want to look into. Actually two things. Vignetting and sharpness in the corners. The corner sharpness is not really a big deal to me. Mostly it means you have to pay a little more attention to sharpening. But the vignetting is a more severe problem. I like vignetting, you can isolate subjects, and it looks vintage. But sometimes the vignetting is so severe (especially with cheaper lenses) that it is hard to correct. And I like to have full control when I am post processing my work..

So, if you have to choose between full frame or crop and you don’t really really need full frame or are a tele shooter, buy a 30D with a 10-22 lens or a Tokina 12-24. Great stuff, but if you like primes, film like soft colours, low noise and wide angle, buy a 5D or 1ds.