Took this on my way home last night at 9pm and it's still a little hard to come to terms with the 5D Mk2's low light performance. It's pretty noisy in the background, but not as much as I'm used to at ISO 1600 on my 450D, never mind ISO 3200... 1/40th sec, F7.1 at ISO 3200. 5D MkII, EF 28-70 F2.8L (that's not a typo, it's the older version of the 24-70 F2.8L)
The 5D Mk II's low light performance is just bonkers - that's a great shot, presumably hand-held? Imagine what you could with a tripod!
Gotta admit I'm loving the D700 for low light too Taken with D700 and 135mm f2.8 AI-S manual focus prime at f2.8, Iso 5000, 1/100th. Having faster glass also helps; Taken with D700, 85mm f1.8 AF-D at f1.8 and Iso 1600, 1/400th (didn't really need that high a shutter speed, iso, or aperture, but was using that before hand so meh). Noise? What noise? No noise reduction here btw. Obviously you could say, how are you gonna see noise at this res, well you can see it in the big ben pic heh. Ok, I'll shut up now
They're nice shots and the lack of noise is excellent. Nikon's NR is generally considered to be better than Canon's but, for me, the 5D Mark II is a big step up from the 450D on this front. I'm still playing around with NR and I'm still using the default setting (which has been said to be 'too harsh' in many reviews) and I opted for a higher aperture to get as much of the tower in focus as possible. F2.8 produces too much bokeh for the type of shot I was taking.
Don't forget half the amount of mp means that you won't see as much noise there either. I think you meant too thin a depth of field, not bokeh. THIS is bokeh; Definition: a Japanese term for the subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of a photographic image Example: The bokeh, or quality of the blurred image in the photograph, was described and discussed. At the sort of distance you were at, and at the size you are actually viewing the image, you wouldn't have been able to see the difference between aperture f2.8 and aperture f32 as far as depth of field is concerned.
Greg, those are some great, great shots - especially speaking as someone who already has the 85mm f1.8d and who wants a D700s - what's your Flickr address?
My bad, I used the wrong terminology - it's been a long day, but that's not really an excuse for such a basic oversight! I'll have to experiment a bit more with my architectural photography, as I've not done a lot of it frankly - I'm used to photographing landscapes (from a tripod) with relatively small apertures (F11 and above). Thanks for the tip though, I'll have to do some experimenting and take a few more shots at varying apertures next time I get chance to take some photos of buildings.
My university life in a nutshell. Not a particularly photographically talented or interesting shot, but I've taken this to be the severely non-elitist corner of the A&P section.
Another one from the vintage car rally, and to be honest, another one I'm not 100% happy with. I feel like there's a really interesting photo in here, but that I just didn't manage to get it. Maybe more DOF? Not sure, ideas welcome!
Next time focus on the closest focal point of the car. All the stuff in the background is stuff I could have gone without seeing. Perhaps go for a lower angle and try some abstract/detail shots of the car/s.
I do have some abstracts of the car, and I was pretty happy with them - what I wanted was to get the contrast between this bulbous, shiny muscle car, sitting in a field in Lancashire... I think focussing is probably where I could make the picture make a difference; maybe if I'd used a faster f-stop, to more strongly plant the car in the foreground.