Reflection

Reflection - Canon 7D & 18-55mm IS Kit Lens. click on picture to see larger.

Somehow after the Drobo fiasco, my spirit has been dampened a bit, and my desire to take pictures is not as enthusiastic as before.  I have been bring my camera to work, but haven't been out shooting at lunch time.  Could it be because I don't like the 7D as much as I thought I would?  I am quite disappointed with the low ISO image quality of the 7D.  Even at base ISO, noise in the shadow area makes me cringe. Why is Canon going backward now?  It was known as the image quality king for many years, and after Nikon has surpass it with the D700/D3/D3x, Canon is now playing the mega pixel game.  Sure it can claim to have highest number of pixels on the pro-sumer level of 18MP, but at what cost?  Give me image quality over pixel count any time!  I am, as with many others are, happy with 12MP of good quality pixels. 

I like everything about the 7D, except the image quality.  Why is there always something that ruins a near perfect camera?

End of ranting.

To Keep or Not to Keep

Enfield Bullet 300 - Canon 7D & EF 70-200mm f2.8 IS. Larger.

The Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS USM lens is one of Canon's most popular lenses, especially for pros.  It's relatively sharp, very fast for a zoom at this focal range, and has Image Stablization (IS).  The down side is that it's heavy and expensive. 

I have had this lens for almost four years, and use it less than a dozen times.  Many times I have thought of selling it for something I would use more often, but could never made up my mind at the end.  Even more, I had a crazy thought of selling it and buy the version II, which I probably would use with the same frequency.  I know it's time to have a good look at my lens line up and decide what to do.  The lenses I don't use often are 70-200mm f2.8 IS, 100-400mm f4-5.6 IS and 180mm f3.5 macro.  And, the least used lens is the 180mm macro.  It probably makes more sense to sell this lens and get the 100mm f2.8 IS macro instead.  I would probably use it more often.  But, every time I hold that lens in my hands, I couldn't bring myself to sell it.  It's so %@#$^ nice, both in built quality and optically.  For the few times I used it, the longer working distance really was an advantage. 


Another option is the manual focus lenses.  I simply have too many of them.  Duplicates and sometimes triplicates of the same lens.  Insane! Some of them I have already posted for sale locally, but haven't sold many yet.  They will eventually go to e-Bay.  The proceeds would go toward the 1Ds II body.  I have had enough headaches with the 5D and manual focus lens compatibility issues.  I don't recall having so many problems with my 1Ds, 1D/II/III bodies. Besides, I really miss that EC-L cross split screen.  I have kept it when I sold my 1D III, probably because I knew one day I would use it again.

So, in the next few weeks, I will slowly getting rid of some of the lenses.  Hopefully, they will fetch enough money for the 1Ds II body.