Looking into full frame

[Noka]

Good Evening Everyone

I'm new to the Canon world and very excited to be apart of the Canon community.

I started out with a Nikon D90 and decided to upgrade to a full-frame camera.

I hope I don't come across as an obnoxious newbie, but I figured the best place to get answers was straight from the source!

I'm looking into purchasing a new camera, however I keep going back and fourth on save up and purchase the DM4 or save some money and purchase DM3 and put the extra coin towards glass, or should I consider another body?

I know I have a wide array of photo interest cause I really haven't locked down what I like to focus on.

I do know I not interested in
1. Portraits
2. Sports
3. Weddings

My photo interest include,

1. Travel my wife and I travel allot (the occasional street life, historical architecture and landscape)

2. Landscape/and possibly astro-photography

Any guidance on this dunce would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you all.

Noka!

[diverhank]

You can probably save money and get yourself a 6D instead.  It's every bit as good for what you want to do since fast focusing is what set the 5DIII and 5DIV apart from the 6D and you are not going to need that.

[Waddizzle]

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@diverhank wrote:

You can probably save money and get yourself a 6D instead.  It's every bit as good for what you want to do since fast focusing is what set the 5DIII and 5DIV apart from the 6D and you are not going to need that.

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Never heard that about the fast focusing before.  Never really gave it much thought.  I know the 5D bodies do have higher frame rates than 6D bodies, so I supposed that could be the reason.

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There is nothing wrong with either the 6D, or the newer 6D Mark II.  Critics are overly picky, IMHO.  The biggest complaint against them seems to be the lack of a second memory card slot.  None of the complaints are deal breakers for me, a photo enthusiast.  

I have shot with a 6D for three years now, and love it.  I have shot sports, wildlife, landscapes, and people equally well.  What I like most is shooting in low light and higher ISO, which the 6D is pretty good at doing.  I have never had, or even noticed, a problem with focusing speed, except for when I use a non-Canon super telephoto lens.  I recommend it.

I have been using a 6D Mark II for a couple of months, and have found it to AF even better than its’ predecessor.  The majority of the upgrades in the 6D2 are in AF system, which was upgraded from 11 to 45 AF points.  In addition, the body has 5-axis image stabilization, which is new feature for Canon DSLRs.

For your shooting habits, I would definitely recommend a 6D2 and a fast, wide angle lens.  An EF-24-70mm f/2.8 II USM zoom lens would be a good starter lens.  I have the EF 16-35mm f/2.8: II USM that seems to rarely leave my 6D.  I use it to shoot landscapes, cityscapes, and family gatherings, indoors and out.

[diverhank]

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@Waddizzle wrote:

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@diverhank wrote:

You can probably save money and get yourself a 6D instead.  It's every bit as good for what you want to do since fast focusing is what set the 5DIII and 5DIV apart from the 6D and you are not going to need that.

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Never heard that about the fast focusing before.  Never really gave it much thought.  I know the 5D bodies do have higher frame rates than 6D bodies, so I supposed that could be the reason.

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I'm thinking of the 65 point focus system which is faster, more accurate and more versatile than the 6D 11 point and the 6D2 45 point focus.

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[TCampbell]

I never heard that either (about fast focusing) and I own both cameras.  The 5D IV has a more advanced algorithm for focus tracking... so it's more likely to properly track a moving subject than a 5D III (but this assumes shooting action photography where focus tracking is a feature you'd use.)

[diverhank]

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@TCampbell wrote:

I never heard that either (about fast focusing) and I own both cameras.  The 5D IV has a more advanced algorithm for focus tracking... so it's more likely to properly track a moving subject than a 5D III (but this assumes shooting action photography where focus tracking is a feature you'd use.)

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That's what I mean by fast focusing.  Thanks for the clarification.

[TCampbell]

I have a 5D III & IV.  Both of these are very "technical" cameras... offering some very advanced capabilities for those that need them.  

The 5D IV has more dynamic range than the III (which is nice for landscape photography) and it's ability to shoot at high ISO with low noise is also a bit better than the III. 

Other than that, the bodies look and feel extremely similar.  The control layout is nearly identical (the IV has a couple of extra controls).  The IV also has a touch-screen LCD - the III isn't touch-sensitive.

The IV also has a built-in GPS and built-in WiFi.  I almost never use the WiFi.  I use the GPS all the time.  But I also have the GPS module for the 5D III (it slides into the hot-shoe).  It's great for travel because it geo-tags the location of every image you take.

The IV is higher resolution than the III... but I confess that most of my images are only displayed on computer monitors and the web ... I print... just not very often.  And the resolution of both cameras is far beyond the needs of any computer display (to dispaly an image on a web page I have to down-sample the resolution from both cameras anyway... so I don't know that the resolution buys me anything unless I'm pringing very large wall-art sized photos.)

I do astrophotography, but typically through a telescope.  When using a telescope, it's usually not a benefit to have a full-frame camera (I have a 60Da that I use for astrophotography) because telescopes usually can't maintain a "flat" field all the way to the corners of the frame (you'll see the stars starting to go soft in the edges and corners).  VERY expensive telescopes avoid this (buy a 17" PlaneWave telescope for only $23k and it'll give you a flat field for sensors up to 70mm across).  A friend in my astronomy club used to shoot APS-C size sensor cameras, swtiched to a cooled monochrome CCD camera (with color wheel... so you shoot seperate "red" , "green", "blue", and "luminance" channel images and then combine them in software to create a color image), then wanted to switch back to a DSLR for simplicity ... but wanted a "full frame" DSLR (he bought a 6D) and found his telescope couldn't provide a flat field out to the corners.

You can do astrophotography without a telescope... this typically calls for either an ordinary (but preferably very sturdy) tripod and a very wide-angle lens.  The purpose of "wide" angles is that the stars appear to drift more slowly in a wide angle lens so you can take longer exposures before the stars appear elongated.    For a "full frame" camera you divide 500 by the focal length of the lens to get your maximum exposure time in seconds.  If you cheat it longer... you'll start to notice the stars are not quite round pinpoints.

You can also pick up a "tracking" head.  This is a motorized head that mounts on camera tripod (preferably a very sturdy tripod).  The rotation axis is aligned to point to the celestial pole (you can point the camera anywhere... but the head is tilted over and aligned to Earth's celestial pole).  As Earth spins from west to east... the head rotates from east to west ... at exactly the same rate.  This cancels out the rotation of the Earth and allows for very long exposures of the sky without the stars moving and smearing.  But the catch is... if you include landscape in those shots then the land will be blurred.    Most of these heads have a special mode that runs the motor at 1/2 the Earth's rate of spin ... this splits the difference between blurring the stars vs. blurring the landscape and allows you to take shots that are twice as long as you could get away with on a stationary tripod.

The two most popular vendors for these tracking heads are Sky Watcher (they make a model called the "Star Adventurer") and iOptron (they make a tracker called the Sky Tracker Pro).  These are around $300 (give or take a bit) but you do want a sturdy tripod (so factor in the cost of a strong tripod if you do not already own one.)

Honestly, I think a 6D would be fine ... especially if you're trying to reduce the cost of the body to afford more lenses.  The lens selection is far more important than the body selection when it comes to your image results.

[Noka]

Thank you everyone for your valuable  insight and helpful guidance. 

You all gave me somthing to think about and hopefully I can make a great decision!

I will continue my research and keep saving my pennies. 

I will make sure to post what I end up nabbing!

Thanks again all!

[ebiggs1]

Hold on there a minute Noka.

All cameras are full frame.  You get exactly what you see in the view finder. Full frame.  What you are really asking is, "Do I want certain features from a camera?"

Any of the Rebels or the xxD series cameras or the fabulous 7D Mk II will do precisely what you want.  Plus they will do it for less money and that means, more glass is possible.  In some cases the 7D Mk II is sharper that some FF cameras.  Is that something you want?

There is a lot of hype, myth and down right lies about crop size cameras vs FF cameras.  Make sure you are not falling prey to that!  FF is not the end all that some profess.  You can wind up spending a lot more money and end up with a lot less.

7D Mk II vs the 6D ?  7D MK II all day long.  Even vs the 6D Mk II.

[Noka]

Good Afternoon

So I've been doing some research on the 6D2 and I have some questions. There are sime things that stand out that i really like, however i see the big complaint is the DR and the auto focus points seem to clumped in the center.

Also the DR has lots of issues at the lower end 100 iso but gets better once it goes beyond 320 iso things seem to get better.

I like the suggestions of the 6D2 over the 5D3 mostly due to the 6D2 being newer and having newer guts.

Should I be concerned about the DR complaints or is this driven by pixel nerds who are getting way more techical than I plan on doing, especially since this is my first FF body?

What ya think?

Thanks