A few tips about batteries:

• Always carry a spare for your camera (and everything else).
• LiIon batteries do not mind being charged without first being discharged, so charge them every time they go down – every day if you like.
• Once a month, exchange the spare with the camera battery, and top up if needed.
• For flashes, use NiMH batteries. These recharge more quickly between flashes. Plus, they save you money.
• And these do like to be occasionally discharged before charging again. You can get a “conditioning charger” for this (Lacrosse or Maha).
• These also discharge quickly by themselves, so top up before a shoot!

Do all this, and you are ready to live without battery hassles.

The Canon 5D Mk 3 has been announced, and many of you are pre-ordering (just like I pre-ordered a 1Dx). Google it: the details are all over the web.

Yes, nice, and I note that in particular the focus system has received a major update.

But let me caution you, and point to an opportunity.

The 5D MkII is very good also – yes, older focus system, true, but since we usually just use one focus spot, and we seldom shoot at f/1.2, that is not an issue. The camera is not the picture – the lens determines the picture quality much more than the camera, and the photographer does so even more.

So instead of putting down $3,500 for a camera, how about instead buying a good used (or even new, discounted!) 5D MkII? These will be available in droves as everyone upgrades.

So unless you truly need the new camera, I advise it might be wise to save your money and use the difference to buy a fast “L”-lens, and some pro training. Better pictures will result.

A student asks:

My name is Pauline – I have taken a couple of courses with you. I have the Canon 5D and we had talked about a perchase I sould make of a 50mm lens — when I  talked with a salesperson, they said because the 5D is a full frame camera that I would need the 85mm so that I would not get distortion.  Due to the fact the an L series 85mm lens was more than the 50mm L – I  resisted the purchase. Can you please help me – I took the portrait course in Waterloo and the instructor said portraits are done with zoom lenses wich I know you can, but I had never heard that before – he didn’t recomend a 50mm at all.

Headshots are best done with a lens that is, say, 75mm long or more. As it happens, the 50mm lens works like a 80mm lens on crop bodies – not on yours. So the salesperson is right that for headshots, 85 would be great.

On yours, a 50 is a “nifty fifty” – a general purpose or, when used for portraits, half/body shot lens.

However! A 50mm lens is a very affordable fast lens – fast meaning large aperture (low f-number, 1.8 or 1.4), and that is a very great benefit. Get one and use it as a half- or full body shot lens or for general purpose you when you want to shoot in available light or want blurred backgrounds.

I have a full frame camera too and yet I also have a 50. I do not use it for headshots, but I use it for many many other things.

So yes – get one. No it will not be the only lens you own – no lens, alas, every will be! But it will be a lovely lens that will change your photography.

POST EDIT: “Portraits are done with zoom lenses”? I would not agree with that. Some are; some are not. Available light portraits in particular, see tomorrow’s post, are almost always taken with fast prime lenses.

Why do expensive lenses cost so much? I was asked this several times in today’s courses.

It’s simple. Expensive lenses are worth it – because they:

• Have better quality, clearer optical glass, for better resolving power and sharpness and less aberration.
• Were designed better, with elements added for less distortion.
• Are mechanically better. For instance, cheaper zoom lenses will drop when you lower them; costlier lenses do not display this annoying behaviour. And mounts are metal, materials are better.
• Have more features, like IS/VR.
• Above all, are faster – i.e. they have lower “F-numbers”, meaning more of that optical glass.

That’s why it is worth buying better lenses. Better lenses are always worth it since they, unlike the camera, always contribute to the quality of your photo.

A consumer lens is a 3.5-5.6 zoom, while a pro lens is an f/2.8 zoom or a prime that goes down as low as f/1.2, or more usually f/1.4. Today’s advice: it’s very much worth investing in these!

Michael's lenses

Not all at once – add a few primes, a fast telephoto zoom, and a wide, in any order you like. The lens is more important than the camera!

Fellow blogger Trey Ratcliff has stirred up a hornet’s nest by saying (and I paraphrase) that “the end of the DSLR is coming.. compact cameras are the future“.

A controversy – yummy! So to guide my readers though it, I thought I would add my view on that today.

Yes, a DSLR is big. Like my 1D Mk4:

Weighs a ton. It is also heavy, expensive, and noisy (remember the classic concert I recently shot part with the  silent Fuji X100)? So those are drawbacks. They are expensive, another drawback. And above all, a DSLR has a flipping mirror – a mechanism dating back to the 1930s, that seems rather primitive today.

So it stands to reason that the flipping mirror mechanism will eventually be replaced by something new.  And there are great compact mirrorless cameras like my X100. And these new cameras are light, small, and have big sensors, meaning SLR-like quality.  That far, I go along with Trey. Here’s my Fuji X100:

But I go along with Trey only that far, and not an inch farther.

First of all – let’s parse what people mean when they say “DSLR”. They often just mean “complicated big heavy cameras”.

Well, these are definitely not about to go away. For many reasons.

• Big is often better! A bit of bulk adds stability. It adds space for multiple memory cards, big screens, big battery, heavy camera-mounted speedlites, big lenses, and many buttons.
• Bulk also adds credibility: at a wedding, people who do not know photography think “bigger is better”, and since I charge commercial prices, a shorthand way to indicate why I am worth those prices is good. If I shoot with a Rebel, let alone a compact, people might think I am Uncle Fred.
• The ability to write to two memory cards at once is paramount for any pro shoot I do. I cannot afford to lose images during a shoot, ever: that’s why people pay me.
• “Lots of buttons” is sometimes seen as a drawback – but it is of course the opposite. I have all my common controls available under a simple button.  On these new “compact cameras”, you need to use the camera’s menus, on-screen controls, or other inconvenient and slow ways to access the same control. Not good enough for pro shoots!

So big heavy cameras are here to stay. That takes a lot of wind out of the sails of those who say the DSLR is dead.

Whether large or small, SLRs have advantages:

• No, or very little, power is taken by the viewfinder.
• The focus system on an SLR, with its built-in dedicated focus sensors, still outperforms a mirrorless camera.
• An SLR gives you the ability to use an amazing range of lenses.  These will not likely be available soon for small compact cameras (and even if they are, imagine putting a 70-200 f/2.8 lens on a tiny camera).

But is the flipping mirror mechanism dead? There, I can go along – it will no doubt eventually disappear. The clear trend in technology is for moving parts to be replaced by electronics and other non-moving solutions, so this needs no Einstein.

So I suppose my view on this is the following:

1. The mirror will eventually go away, but is not yet dead. It is still overall the best way to do it. After all, mirrorless camera have drawbacks too – like their constant use of power, the lack of dedicated focus sensors, the need to keep the sensor powered up, and the ease of letting dust in. Translucent mirror cameras share some of these drawbacks as well. I think we are looking at 5 years or more until we see a real shift away from flipping mirror cameras.
2. Large (if you will, “professional”) cameras will definitely not go away.

There you have it. Feel confident buying a DLSR for now; only buy a compact camera if its advantages outweigh its drawbacks.

Quick note about turning your camera on and off.

Don’t, not all the itme. Just let it time out and go to sleep.. It uses almost no power that way. And you don’t wear out the switch. Touch the shutter briefly to eke up th camera when you need it.

But note: the camera will briefly turn on when you hit the shutter and some other switches.

And – and this took me time to figure out – when you move many lenses. The lens, when jarred, can talk to the camera, which will wake up!

Finally: it’s good practice to turn off and on when switching lenses. If only because the dust shaker will operate just when dust is likely to get in.