What does everyone shoot with?

Tailgunner · May 12, 2013

Barrett 50 BMG...go Big or Go home!

Oh, are we talking cameras? Nikon D3100 w/18-55mm VR & 55-200mm VR ED IF

whiskee · May 13, 2013

Canon 7D.

I stay the hell away from guns, they're absolutely unnecessary.

EIngerson · May 13, 2013

whiskee said:
Canon 7D.

I stay the hell away from guns, they're absolutely unnecessary.

Thats cool, its your choice.

cptkid · May 13, 2013

It's in my signature.

Mainly my D7000, but I do have a D3100 as a backup.

Then when i'm shooting film its my Canon FTb or Canon AE1, or Zenit EM (if i'm shooting long exposures, or landscape stuff)

Overread · May 13, 2013

NO more talk of guns.
Whilst this thread is somewhat back from the grave its a repeat question that oft comes around and is generally innocent and fun. That said guns have proven to be a hot topic for the site and as such lets keep gun discussions out of this thread least we get side-tracked.

ronlane · May 13, 2013

Okay Overread, no more talk of such things. So I'll just say this, It depends on what I'm trying to hit. :lol:

DarkShadow · May 13, 2013

Overread said:
NO more talk of guns.
Whilst this thread is somewhat back from the grave its a repeat question that oft comes around and is generally innocent and fun. That said guns have proven to be a hot topic for the site and as such lets keep gun discussions out of this thread least we get side-tracked.

Oky doky,roger that.

Scarlet Siren · May 13, 2013

Nikon D600 mostly, I have the D5100 body kicking around. 35 1.4, 50 1.4 and 85 1.4. I'm hoping to buy the 70-200 2.8 by the end of the year

Greiver · May 13, 2013

Nikon D3100 with kit 18-55mm lens and 50mm AF-S NIKKOR FX lens.

TCampbell · May 13, 2013

I thought about listing my camera gear in my signature... on astronomy forums I do list my astronomy equipment in my signature. But that's because on an astronomy forum there aren't just two brands of telescopes... there is so much variety that if you want to ask someone a question, it's NICE to be able to find someone else who has the same equipment you have so you can ask them.

On a photography forum, most people are shooting Canon or Nikon and a smaller percentage shoot "everything else". So it's less difficult to find someone who uses the same gear with which to connect and ask questions. So I almost feel like listing the equipment is... a kind of boast. It just never seemed cool to do that to me. It's not important if everyone (or anyone) use the same gear I use and I've seen too many people get wrapped around the axle on the brand of the camera (when they should be getting wrapped around the axle on technique). I could see wanting to discuss a specific need and then identify the gear that can satisfy those needs -- I just can't see arguing for a brand purely for the sake of the brand. So I don't.

I DO list my primary bodies in my profile page. I don't list everything. I don't list any lenses. I don't list that I also have a point & shoot (there are places you can take a point & shoot but cannot take a DSLR.) I don't list my film bodies (because I don't actively shoot with those bodies anymore.)

So here it is:

I mainly shoot with a Canon 5D III. I also still have my 5D II body (I had planned to sell it, but then thought it might be nice to have a 2nd body I can use or flip between so I don't have to change lenses if the occasion calls for it.)

I have a 60Da, but that's a special-purpose camera... it's modified (by Canon) specifically for use in astrophotography and is not suitable for use as a normal camera for anything else (not unless you like photos with a LOT of red in them. Yes... you can white-balance it out if you don't like it.) It's very significant for astrophotography and if you're interested in why it makes a significant difference, just ask.

I have seven different lenses that I use:

24-70 f/2.8, 70-200 f/2.8 IS zooms;
14 f/2.8, 100 f/2.8 Macro IS, 135 f/2, 300 f/2.8 primes;
and the TS-E 24mm f/3.5 tilt-shift.

The 24-70 lives on the camera most of the time but sometimes I'll shoot with the 70-200. I use the other lenses as the needs arise -- but I had a specific motivation to buy each of them, so they all get used.

I have several speedlites (and at least one of them is almost always with me wherever I go shooting.) I see a lot of photos where I want to nudge people into using their flash. I think people try it, don't get good results, fear it, and then label it as bad and claim "natural light is better". Shooting with flash is not unlike shooting with your camera on Manual exposure mode. If you don't bother to learn even the basics then you're going to get bad results. But it turns out there are just a *few* things you need to learn and then you get good results and discover that it wasn't nearly as hard as you thought.

weepete · May 13, 2013

Ok, I'll bite. Why are you shooting astrophotography at the red end of the spectum Tim?

Personally I shoot with whatever I have, by choice and a great deal of luck that's normally a Canon 7D. I have four lenses atm, a 50mm f1.8, a 28-105 f3.5-4.5 and a 75-300 f4-5.6. Oh and a broken 15-55 kit lens that is broken and only manualy focuses now (yeh I'm aware of the irony but just now I'm skint so needs must!). If I've not got that I have an old Sony cybershot which I love and take on my rougher trips and the camera on my HTC One X.

TCampbell · May 13, 2013

weepete said:
Ok, I'll bite. Why are you shooting astrophotography at the red end of the spectum Tim?

Ok, here's the deal...

90% of all "normal" matter in the universe is hydrogen atoms. Light can't be emitted at just any wavelength. Each atom can absorb or emit light only at specific wavelengths. For hydrogen atoms, they follow the Ballmer series (see: Balmer series - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ) which is primarily just 4 emission/absorption lines (we only care about emission for imaging) but the most dominant is the hydrogen alpha line.

A normal camera starts clipping reds well before 600nm, but the H-alpha line is at 656nm. That makes a normal camera not particularly sensitive to Ha.

With a modified camera, the filter is either removed or a better filter is used (in the case of the 60Da it's the latter) and the camera is about three times more sensitive to Ha ... and since that's MOST of the universe (well... "normal" light-emitting matter anyway) that means the camera takes an image in about 1/3rd the time of a regular camera.

I was a bit skeptical at first. But one day I was over at a friend's house and he showed me an image that was *just* taken using a 60Da. I put my 5D II (I didn't have the 5D III yet) onto HIS scope and took the image of the very same object the following night. With an equal exposure time I could barely see the galaxy. I doubled the exposure... I could see more, but not much more. I tripled it... and finally I was starting to see the object but it *still* wasn't as good as his 60Da image. That made a believer out of me.

I still have to contend with the fact that a the Bayer Mask used in color cameras also desensitizes the camera. A more serious astrophotography camera would be monochrome only... and cooled.

One of these days I'll buy an SBIG (Santa Barbara Instruments Group).

I had my eye on one of these: https://www.sbig.com/products/cameras/stxl/stxl-11002/
But one of my serious imaging friends is nudging me toward one of these: https://www.sbig.com/products/cameras/stx/stx-16803/

When you image in monochrome you take multiple exposures through filters (usually a robotic filter wheel), image at specific wavelengths, and then use software to assign each B&W image (taken at a specific frequency) to a color channel and create a color image. These high-end imaging camera have astonishing performance. The reason my friend is nudging me toward the more expensive camera is due to the "well depth" of the sensor. The "well depth" can be thought of as the number of photons that a single photo-site on the sensor can collect before that photo-site is completely saturated and can only report the pixel as being completely "white" (blown out). Basically "well depth" is an indicator of dynamic range.

One of those cameras is on my list of "one of these days.... " daydreams.

For now... I use the 60Da.