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5D (original) vs. D90 for Landscape shooting
- Thread starter MooseMichael
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Guidenet
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For starters, not only is LiveView no reason to buy, it's so non-important in my opinion as to be negligible.
Now, full frame on the other hand, is a reason to buy, again in my oppinion. It's enough of a reason, I'd advise spending additional money to get, but the OP said that the used 5D was about the same price as a new D90. Well, all the better. Besides, Canon has some of the best Landscape lenses in the business. Nikon also has some good ones and they are all full frame glass.
Generally, I believe that with quality landscape, the larger the format the better. Also the ability to use the Scheimpflug effect for effective depth of field is often very important. That's why a lot of pro-level landscape photographers shoot large format. The OP might not be ready for this, but knowledge of it, if he/she is passionate about this genre of photography, might be important. The Scheimpflug principle can also be used with tilt lenses on the 5D or whatever.
The D90 is a good camera, no doubt, but it is a amateur enthusiast model slightly above entry level. It's also a crop camera. I advise this model for most people learning photography as the least camera they should start off with if they want to really learn the technical side, but it really isn't the best for a dedicated landscape photographer.
I don't personaly own what I consider to be a good digital landscape camera. I do own an old Toyo for this. I own a Nikon D700 and D300. If I owned a D3x, I'd consider it a good digital landscape camera with Nikon's newer 24 tilt lens.
The above is purely my opinion.
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Cheers, Craig
Equipment in Plan via Profile
Now, full frame on the other hand, is a reason to buy, again in my oppinion. It's enough of a reason, I'd advise spending additional money to get, but the OP said that the used 5D was about the same price as a new D90. Well, all the better. Besides, Canon has some of the best Landscape lenses in the business. Nikon also has some good ones and they are all full frame glass.
Generally, I believe that with quality landscape, the larger the format the better. Also the ability to use the Scheimpflug effect for effective depth of field is often very important. That's why a lot of pro-level landscape photographers shoot large format. The OP might not be ready for this, but knowledge of it, if he/she is passionate about this genre of photography, might be important. The Scheimpflug principle can also be used with tilt lenses on the 5D or whatever.
The D90 is a good camera, no doubt, but it is a amateur enthusiast model slightly above entry level. It's also a crop camera. I advise this model for most people learning photography as the least camera they should start off with if they want to really learn the technical side, but it really isn't the best for a dedicated landscape photographer.
I don't personaly own what I consider to be a good digital landscape camera. I do own an old Toyo for this. I own a Nikon D700 and D300. If I owned a D3x, I'd consider it a good digital landscape camera with Nikon's newer 24 tilt lens.
The above is purely my opinion.
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Cheers, Craig
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Guidenet
Forum Pro
You really might wish to get all the thoughts ready so you don't have to reply over and over to yourself as well as others.
Look, what's important in landscape photography? Mostly it's a wide angle genre though this isn't always so. Mostly it's on a tripod using small apertures, right? Mostly you want the foreground and background to be in focus, right?
So, your focus point is going to attempt to be at the hyperfocal distance. You can often turn the AF off and set that by hand based on your aperture. You might want to stop down with a DOF preview through the Optical Viewfinder. Liveview becomes pretty unimportant at this point, doesn't it? Getting the right composition is not so much a matter of a few meters here and there. It's usually a few hundred yards to miles.
I know great photographers that don't even look through the camera at all. They don't look at the ground glass. They stand to the side. Clyde Butcher comes to mind. He shoots at around 100 degrees field of view and doesn't need to. His depth of field is from his toes to the horizon. Now, I'm not saying that I do it that way, but I am saying that Liveview strikes me as extremely unimportant and a not so important tool for the dedicated Landscape photographer. Moreover when you're using the tiny little sensor/viewfinder on the D90 or like cameras, it can be even less important.
One thing you might want to understand is that many prolevel landscape people wouldn't be here at DPReivew. They might be at:
http://www.viewcamera.com/
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/digital-view.shtml
http://www.clydebutcher.com/
That all said, Liveview can be important. I even sometimes use it for convenience on landscape shots with a tripod. It's usually for when I'm waiting for light and standing back. I also sometimes use liveview in macro use or when I don't want to get my face into the dirt.
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Cheers, Craig
Equipment in Plan via Profile
At least LV has uses for others shooting landscape, if not you.
"Full-frame is better" is a very generic statement... full- frame may be better for certain applications, but again, what makes it better in the case of 5D vs D90, especially when for low ISO image quality you'd be hard pressed to tell them apart? APS-C sensors are at the point where they are excellent at low ISOs... What are you gaining from an image quality standpoint with 5d? Not much if anything...And for low light, D90 might be better (even though OP doesn't intend to shoot at high ISO) Saying full-frame is better is completely misleading when you probably can't tell the difference between these 2 cameras if you printed side by side.
Nikon has the better landscape lenses..it's been this way for a while... Canon lenses OP would have to buy for 5d are also full-frame and more expensive. I'm sure 16-35 Canon L is a good lens (although from all the complaints you would think it's not amazing) but it's not as good as 14-24 or maybe even 16-35 f4 VR .
Moreover you can get crop lenses for landscape which are cheaper than FF. The Tokina 11-16 2.8 is a really good lens.
If you are printing huge huge posters, large format is prob better...But again you can't compare large format to the small difference between D90 and 5D.
That's a really blanket statement again...what is so much more advanced about 5D ... The D90 has the basics necessary and more (yes, Live View that 5D doesn't have).. It's not the camera, it's the photographer.
And? For low ISO, what does it matter? D90 doesn't have less dynamic range or detail than 5D at those settings, so what if it's a crop camera?
Um, you sound rather elitist. It's not as if D90 limits you from learning the technical side in a way 5D won't, so in what way is it not the best...
And D3x is nothing compared to medium format... so using this logic it's not really the best landscape camera either!
With, DOF preview viewfinder gets dark...Did you even read the blog link I posted? Again, the main point of LV is it helps achive focus accuracy in a way MF via viewfinder can't for landscapes
Oh OK. So because someone doesn't even look through the camera to compose, maybe now we don't need a VF either... Wow. Maybe we don't need a camera at all, maybe we can just compose in our heads. Seriously?
So I guess those people who posted they use LV are noobs now or what? If you looked around Luminous Landscape by the way, you would find that posers there use LV for landscape too.
By the way, D90 has small features that make it a more "advanced" camera than 5D... spot metering can be connected to AF point (yes, it's a small feature but very useful)... all Nikon cameras have this feature, whereas with 5d only centre point can be used for spot metering
Exposure compensation is -5.0 EV +5.0 EV (-2.0 EV +2.0 EV on 5d)
Guidenet
Forum Pro
Look, I'm not going to argue anymore. Anytime someone starts that line by line type posting, I'm out of there. It makes no sense. And, when I have to not only read line by line posts but also extra comments because someone can't gather it all in one post and it gets seriously out of whack.
Almost everything you say points to the fact that you're not understanding and that's ok. What in the world led you to think I'm talking high ISO performance? Where did that even begin to enter the subject? You see my point? Now we're getting so off topic as to be non-understandable unless you're leading me to believe that you think that high ISO performance is the primary reason for a larger format. If that is true, we seriously are not communicating because I didn't bring up ISO performance. Most shoot landscape at base ISO.
You also mentioned a bunch of wide lenses. We were talking dedicated landscape glass and you suddenly are throwing in DX zooms made by Tokina and such. Again, we're not connecting, so I'm throwing in the towel.
Just out of curiosity, what camera do you own?
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Cheers, Craig
Equipment in Plan via Profile
Almost everything you say points to the fact that you're not understanding and that's ok. What in the world led you to think I'm talking high ISO performance? Where did that even begin to enter the subject? You see my point? Now we're getting so off topic as to be non-understandable unless you're leading me to believe that you think that high ISO performance is the primary reason for a larger format. If that is true, we seriously are not communicating because I didn't bring up ISO performance. Most shoot landscape at base ISO.
You also mentioned a bunch of wide lenses. We were talking dedicated landscape glass and you suddenly are throwing in DX zooms made by Tokina and such. Again, we're not connecting, so I'm throwing in the towel.
Just out of curiosity, what camera do you own?
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Cheers, Craig
Equipment in Plan via Profile
Why... I'm so sorry I didn't post it in one post for you. I post my thoughts as they come, okay? And responding line-by0line makes sense to separate the points from each other?
You don't have to argue... you could at least provide with some explanation for your opinion. Instead you just post"FF is better" and run away saying you won't argue
Where did I say you were talking about high ISO performance? I said FF has advantages for certain things like high ISO performance. In fact, I asked you to explain what makes the 5d a better low ISO camera.
Here is what I said:
"Full-frame is better" is a very generic statement... full- frame may be better for certain applications, but again, what makes it better in the case of 5D vs D90, especially when for low ISO image quality you'd be hard pressed to tell them apart?
I'm not sure how you read my post, but most of it is about LOW ISO performance, not high ISO performance? Again, I asked you what advantages for low ISO were offered by 5D over D90.
Huh? I mentioned DX lenses, because that's what would be used on the D90 for wideangle shooting... I said it would be cheaper to buy wide angle for DX than for full-frame ... hence my example was the Tokina. For a full-frame lens like this you'd have to fork out a lot more money.
And that matters why?
rsn48
Veteran Member
1. More ability to crop without critical degradation of the image.
2. Ability to enlarge the image to a greater degree over a cropped sensor image.
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An excellent lens lasts a lifetime, an excellent DSLR, not so long.
2. Ability to enlarge the image to a greater degree over a cropped sensor image.
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An excellent lens lasts a lifetime, an excellent DSLR, not so long.
Not sure why would that be the case? There is no significant resolution difference between 5d and D90?
Both 5d and d90 will enlarge to 16X20, but beyond that not so much.... again how does the 5d have an advantage here?
rsn48
Veteran Member
Take two image sensors, one larger than the other, logically given the megapixels to support what I am saying, you can crop without problems from the larger sensor than the smaller one.
A full frame sensor is roughly 40% larger than a cropped sensor (I own the 5D mk2 and the Xsi). If I take a pic of something and crop away 40% of it from a full frame image, I'm left with an image size the same as a Canon cropped sensor. So blow up that image to 13 by 19 inches, and the full frame image cropped to the same size as a 1.6 image size, will be the same as the cropped sensor image.
Now take a Canon 1.6 sensor and crop 40% away and you have a much smaller image to blow up to lets say 13 by 19 inches.
Cropping affects image quality. The reason I moved from the original Digital Rebel (300D) to the Xsi was that I could crop better with the higher megapixels and better software in camera, but sensor size also is a player in the equation.
Easiest way to look at it, take a P&S image using a sensor that is about the size of your little finger nail, and you don't have much to crop away without the image being seriously affected. Sensor size matters.
Same can be said about medium format digital, crop their image and you still might have something larger than a 35mm (full frame) image to work with in terms of enlarging.
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An excellent lens lasts a lifetime, an excellent DSLR, not so long.
A full frame sensor is roughly 40% larger than a cropped sensor (I own the 5D mk2 and the Xsi). If I take a pic of something and crop away 40% of it from a full frame image, I'm left with an image size the same as a Canon cropped sensor. So blow up that image to 13 by 19 inches, and the full frame image cropped to the same size as a 1.6 image size, will be the same as the cropped sensor image.
Now take a Canon 1.6 sensor and crop 40% away and you have a much smaller image to blow up to lets say 13 by 19 inches.
Cropping affects image quality. The reason I moved from the original Digital Rebel (300D) to the Xsi was that I could crop better with the higher megapixels and better software in camera, but sensor size also is a player in the equation.
Easiest way to look at it, take a P&S image using a sensor that is about the size of your little finger nail, and you don't have much to crop away without the image being seriously affected. Sensor size matters.
Same can be said about medium format digital, crop their image and you still might have something larger than a 35mm (full frame) image to work with in terms of enlarging.
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An excellent lens lasts a lifetime, an excellent DSLR, not so long.
Are you comparing XSi and 5d2? IT's not exactly a fair comparison because 5d2's resolution gives it a huge advantage?
Yes, more megapixels... If you had a 5d rather than 5d mk II, this wouldn't be the case anymore. the main reason you can crop so much with 5d2 and have all the detail is the resolution But D90 and 5d are both the same...
You are comparing P&S and DSLR to APS-C vs FF. P&S is years away from DSLR because the senors are tiny in comparison. At low ISO, APSC and FF are not years apart, in fact they are very close... Yes, FF has a bigger sensor, but the crop sensor IQ at low ISO is getting to a point, where you can't really see a big difference.
Again, the cropping advantage has to do with resolution... I don't see what it has to do with sensor size. Sensor size affects IQ but not how much you can crop? Yes, MF will have even better quality than a DSLR for low ISO, but again, the difference between FF and APS-C is not as big. Just go and check out images from say Imaging Resource from D90 and D700 at ISO 100. Print them out and try to tell the difference in a blind test.
compared to a not-so great APS-C sensor, you will end w/ better quality from FF, so yes, in a sense, sensor size (or rather quality), but the point I'm trying to make is that the latest APS-C cameras give IQ that at low ISO is not very different. The Xsi and 5d2 isn't really a fair comparison
Guidenet
Forum Pro
N/t
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Cheers, Craig
Equipment in Plan via Profile
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Cheers, Craig
Equipment in Plan via Profile
You are a terrible forum member. You seem to argue with everyone! Can you show me one post of yours where you were cordial and non-argumentative? Nothing you say is very important to the OP of any of the threads you post in. You wait until somebody other than you says something and then you attack them. You should stop doing this. If you can't, then seek help!
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Charlie Davis
Nikon 5700, Sony R1, Nikon D50, Nikon D300
HomePage: http://www.1derful.info
"If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."
-Samuel Adams, 1776
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Charlie Davis
Nikon 5700, Sony R1, Nikon D50, Nikon D300
HomePage: http://www.1derful.info
"If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."
-Samuel Adams, 1776
There have been responses by several posters that logically address all the arguments you pose. You chose to ignore them. There isn’t much point in any more logical argument with someone who persists in contradictory argument (or as you so aptly put it ‘argumentation’).
Brian A
Coming from you that means a lot.
Really? You mean nothing you deem to be important?
I don't attack anyone... I take issue when someone posts misinformation or makes pretentious claims like "landscape photographers don't care about X". Frankly, what I post is none of your business... if you don't like it, you don't have to read it.
No, there haven't. I still haven't heard a proper explanation of where 5d is better than D90 for landscape at low ISO apart from "full frame is better",
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