5D - No DEP or A-DEP mode, Why?

[astefot]

Only if you have to focus through the camera and then read the DOF
scale. With wide lenses it's pretty easy to look at scene, say "I
need 5 ft -- 10 ft", and dial it in without ever looking through
the finder. Great for street shooting--limited (or even zero) time
with the camera at eye level makes you a lot less obtrusive.

Yes and no - there are people that work like this, but a lot of people don't. "Within DoF" doesn't mean sharp, especially not if important image elements are rather close to the DoF limits and therefore visible less sharp than other objects. Today's AF cameras are so good, I always prefer to focus on the main objects in the picture (visual "entry points" for the viewer) insted of setting DoF the way you do. If I can't focus on the main objects directly (like for example in street photography), I prefer foscusing on a substitute at a similar distance before recomposing and taking the shot.

But there are many focusing approaches out there, all of them have their advantages and disadvanatges.

DEP is also useless if you need a different print size--and thus
COC--than the "standard". With a good DOF scale you can just shoot
a stop or two down from the indicated stop. Doing this with DEP
would require a lot of juggling. There's no reason they couldn't
make this easy--a personal function or something--but they haven't.

With DEP, you can factor in custom COC by metering a larger DoF than you actually need, no problem.

 

[PicOne]

While your explanation is the most intelligent yet posted, I'll
pick a bit if I might.

Thanks!

Then you'd also have to program the DEP modes differently
for 1.6, 1.3 and FF bodies... it would be a mess.

To this I say so what? Any camera has only one X-factor. Given the
huge amount of firmware in every DC, having 3 sets for the 3 -
X-factors seems pretty trivial to me.

True, no reason they couldn't be different by sensor size. Although perhaps a little confusion on photographer's part who use different sensor-size bodies at the same time (20D and a 5D) for say a wedding..

All in all, I think it better anyway to get photographers to learn this stuff by trial and error so that they can enter a shooting situation and based on prior experience be able to somewhat accurately ballpark and shoot the correct Av for a given circumstance. Some things I think are better to learn by trial than to be fed to you. Similar to the eventual gained knowledge of how much EC to dial in for given lighting situations off of a single metered subject, vs. going the thru the hoops of the mulit-spot metering modes where you take readings from 4-5 areas and let the camera figure out what works...

In any case, thanks for your insights.
Hermit

--
Lost in the Colorado Mountains!!!

 

[Branta]

I seem to be coming to this thread only about ten years too late ;-)

But even at this late date I'd like to say that as lovers of "landscape shots with foreground interest", my wife and I used DEP mode nearly all the time on our EOS10 and EOS100 cameras (back in the days of film).

Then our first EOS-D had the ghastly A-DEP instead. It's probably true to say we'd still be Canon users if "good old" DEP mode had been there.

The job of providing this functionality was never beyond the microprocessors in use even very early in the digital era.

Of course it could be improved - e.g. by allowing the CofC to be specified somewhere in the menu system. Maybe that's the way it works on a top Canon these days, I wouldn't know, they lost our business.