Photo Advice

[redders]

Hi Folks and especially Escher !
My Canon 450D has arrived ,I just have to learn how to use it in 4 weeks
It has 18 55 IS USM lens fitted ,I need to buy another lens
My first thoughts were to buy Canon 70 300 IS USM lens but I have been thinking perhaps of Canon 70 200 F4 L USM ,this will cost another 100 pounds . 300 or 200 will it matter
Escher The mountain closeups you have shown on here did you use the 70 200 on its own without any extension rings ? The 70 200 hasnt Image Stability is this absolutley necessary.? I assume you must have used a tripod on a lot of shots but some of them IE the Old Lady ,the Boys The animals and Bird Pics surely were hand held
Anybody Know where I will be able to recharge batteries on EBC presumably at Namche at Least
Te Canon 450D uses SD cards ,will ordinary SD card do or is it worth paying for SD extreme or Ultra
Escher did you shoot Raw files or Jpeg ,obviously this would effect memory size
More questions in the next 4 weeks !!
Cheers Mike

[Oli]

Hi Mike

Re lenses:
I'd suggest considering an 18-200 lens as a decent "all rounder". Swapping between an 18-55 & 70-200/300 lens could be a real pain, with lots of chances for getting dust inside the body and missed photo opportunities. It would also cover that 55-70 range which might be just where you want to take portraits.
The drawback with having one wide-long zoom is the aperture range, hence speed. If you have the budget to afford IS technology then that helps for the extra f-stop or two, but (as you will have seen) they are not cheap.
I invested in a Sigma 18-200 (without IS), and am rather pleased I did so.

Re consumables:
SD cards are relatively cheap - get a few 2Gb cards. Shooting RAW will eat up your storage quite rapidly and requires a lot more post-processing. Using RAW will be most helpful if you are unsure about exposure as it will allow you more scope to manipulate when you are processing your captures. You don't need to pay a premium for the faster cards.
Battery life for DSLRs is fairly good, but you'll want some spares. Get them from ebay as they are a LOT cheaper than the "official" branded batteries and work almost as well.

I'm sure Escher will have some advice for you, this is just my £0.02p.... and FWIW I have a Nikon D50.

-Oli

[Escher]

Hmmm the trouble with lenses...

So there are two systems:-

When convenience is paramount:- Wide range zooms such as the Sigma suggested by Oli to avoid having to swap lenses

Pro's: less chance of getting dust on the sensor, less overall weight than two or more lenses, on occasions might get a shot that someone swapping lenses might miss, more convenient, cheaper overall

Con's: image quality, (haven't really ever used super zooms so not sure if things like the end of the lens extending/rotating can be an issue)

When image quality is paramount:- Carry zooms which have a maximum zoom of 2 to 3 times offer the best image quality (17-40, 70-200, 24-70) to cover all the focal lengths that you need.

Pros: Better image quality. Individual lenses ar better suited to their specialist purpose. L series lenses hold their value for resale. L lenses are very robust and weather sealed. L lenses haver constant largest aperture (F4 or F2.8 in most cases) and often have non rotating ends so easier to use with polarising filters. When swapping lenses is not an issue (at home maybe) then you have the best solution

Cons: expensive, heavy, dust on the sensor (it was very dusty on the AC last month and I swapped lenses a lot and only got specks on the sensor right at the end of the trek which I was surprised about. I cleaned my 350D's sensor quite a bit and I am happy to do it on my 40D. For me the sensor cleaning system - though not perfect - is quite good). Sometimes miss that elusive shot as you are faffing swapping lenses - especially wildlife. Cumbersome to have 2 or 3 lenses handy when trekking.

I can't really comment on use of the super zooms as I have never owned one and I opted for image quality over convenience as the majority of the time I am not trekking (although I probably take more pictures in 1 month in Nepal than in the rest of the year at home).

Whilst trekking I carry a front mounted Lowepro camera bag so that my camera is handy at all times. Most of the time I had the camera slung around my neck and three lenses in the camera bag and would use it to swap lenses. It was a pain in the neck (literally - as carrying 4 kgs of gear on the front was uncomfortable at times), and I dropped my macro lens twice onto its end (thankfully it survived). But I am very happy with the image quality I managed to get by using the best lenses I could afford. If you are prepared to faff a little then you could get excellent results with a 17-55IS and 70-200.

The 70-200 F4L is an absolute cracker of a lens and much better than the 70-300. It is widely reputed as the best "budget" L-series lens Canon make. The image quality is top notch throughout it's range and it is sharp as a tack. I took most of those portraits with it and viewed at 100% straight out of the camera they were pin sharp with no extra sharpening required. You will be astounded at the results it can produce. 95% of the pictures I took were handheld (only night or low light shots were taken on the tripod), the bird/animal/portrait pictures were taken hand held with the 70-200 but were all in good light or high ISO. There were times when I couldn't get a fast enough shutter speed to handhold, IS would have been very handy. I would buy the IS version now if I hadn't already bought a 70-200 (got it before the IS version came out). It is worth the extra expense IMO. Before going to Nepal I did a load of test shooting at different shutter speeds and focal lengths to work out what was the lowest shutter speeds I could use and still get sharp pictures. The rule of thumb (it is very general though) is 1/focal length. e.g. if the focal length is 50 then aim for 1/50 as the minimum shutter speed (factor in the crop sensor size of 1.6 to make this more accurate). So for me at 70mm I try for >1/100, at 200mm >1/250 for sharp results. Everyone is different though so find out for yourself.

F4 minimum aperture is useful. The bokeh is better and f5.6 can sometimes not be enough for decent blurring of the background. F2.8 would of course be even better but F2.8 lenses are very expensive.

I had a 1.4 teleconverter with me but didn't use it. All those shots you mention were with the 70-200 only and mostly handheld.

Getting the most from your camera:-

If I don't want to have a shallow depth of field for portraits and other subjects and the light is sufficient I generally aim to have an aperture of f8-f11. This hits the sweet spot of most lenses and the camera and produces the best results in most circumstances making most of the image nicely sharp. So for general shooting and landscapes this is what I use. Diffraction can mean the sharpness degrades when using smaller apertures I have found, even when you want a very large depth of field.

I use evaluative metering 99% of the time and move the focus point to where I want it in the frame for all pictures or use the centre point, focus and recompose. I don't have it so all the focus points are enabled, this can be inaccurate with autofocus.

In low light get used to changing the ISO. You can get really quite good results at 800ISO plus, even at 1600ISO with noise reduction applied in something like Lightroom or Photoshop.

Switch off live view mode whilst trekking. I kept switching mine on by mistake and it absolutely scoffs battery power. Also the 3" screen uses quite a bit of power so minimise the reviewing of photos. I looked at mine a lot and halved the number of shots I could get on one charge.

I shoot everything in RAW. In Nepal I took about 2800 pictures and used 30GB of memory cards. The 450D's RAW files may be even bigger (12mp sensor) so if shooting in RAW you will need a lot of storage space. RAW is worth it though, the adjustments you can make are invaluable and many pictures can be rescued.

Learn to review the exposure histogram to check your exposure. Aim to get the histogram so that your picture is not overexposed (graph bunched up to the right) or underexposed (graph bunched up to the left). Somewhere in the middle is good.

If you are shooting in RAW (and only if) use the technique "expose to the right" (lots of explanations on the web) - basically get the exposure so that the histogram data is as far over to the right as possible without blowing out the highlights. This might make the picture look a little overexposed but the exposure can be brought down in post processing. This is because the majority of the data the sensor can record is in the upper tonal range (i.e half the pixels are used for just a quarter of the highest tonal range - therefore more data is recorded which leads to higher quality less noisy pictures).

I use Sandisk extreme III CF cards mostly 2 and 4gb. They are tried and tested and very reliable. I think the (slight) extra expense is worth it. However my video camera uses SDHC cards and I bought some of the play cards from Play.com. They seem to be made by toshiba and are very cheap and I haven't had any problems with them, but I have only had them for a few months.

You could try someone like 123fstop on ebay who will sell you Canon stuff as cheap as I have been able to get it in the UK (bought 2 lenses from him), Kerso also comes recommended but I have not bought from him.

So my opinion is :-

18-55 IS
70-200 F4L IS
Remote shutter release
Mini tripod
Loads of SD/SDHC cards
3 x batteries

That should have you set. The fantastic image quality of the 70-200 is what swings it for me versus the lack of faff with a super zoom. It will mean that you will want to replace the 18-55 pretty soon to get something as good! 24-70 F2.8L anyone?

[redders]

Hi Oli and Escher
Thanks for the lengthy and informative replies !! it will take me a day or two to digest all the info ,there is some great advice in there ,I m sure I m not the only trekker who will benefit .I will probably get the 70 200 L lens as I have seen the outstanding results Escher has achieved with it .Those pictures you posted on here have cost me a lot of money !!! but I m going to enjoy being in Nepal with some great gear
Will get back with some more questions if I can think of any
Thanks again
Mike
ps I might have to pay top price for the batteries as they are a fairly new type Canon LP E5,unless you know better !