[warrenjrphotography]

You don’t need L lenses to be a “professional”….don’t knew where you got that ideology from but there are even professional musicians that use crap gear that are inexpensive and professional photographers using Micro 4/3rds, Iphones, and Rebels that produce outstanding photos…….

I also never compared the Canon kit lenses to the L lenses I compared the 55-250 to the 85 1.8 (not an L lens) and to the other cheap prime lenses.

I’m sure that the image quality of the 70-200 2.8 is greater than the 55-250 but if someone took a great photo and said that it was taken with the 70-200L lens but it was really with the 55-250 most would not argue with the person and be able to tell the difference in clarity or bokeh.

Also this is to Nesgren. With a big aperture when shooting at say 200mm or 135mm F2.8 is not going to cut it for headshots if you want everything to be in focus so you’re probably already going to be stepping down to atleast F4-F5.6 anyways.

Also there are situations where I want to compress the scene and isolate my subject which is not possible with a shorter focal length so stepping back and zooming in compresses the background with my subject allowing me to further isolate my subject and a large zoom range allows me to get pretty much any perspective that I want.

I’d probably find the 70-200 lenses to be too limiting perspective wise as I’m a big fan of going past 200mm 35mm equiv.

If I had the money I’d have the 24-105L F4 IS, 70-200L 2.8 IS, 200-400L F4 IS with built in 1.4TC, 200L F2.0 IS , 85L 1.2, 50L 1.2, 135L F2, 16-35L F2.8, 2 1Dx’s but in reality who has that kind of money besides the few? lol

55-250 gets the job done just fine until I switch to FF in which case I will be using all L lenses.

Bottom line is that I don’t need a lens faster than F5.6 as I use off camera flash and shoot during the day or golden hour (no weddings or fast events where fast lenses would be useful) so I see no use in upgrading at this moment.

 

[warrenjrphotography]

Quote –

Maybe I’ve got a bad copy of the 55-250 but mine is so soft on the long end that I can see it even in the viewfinder and needs stopping down to about f8 before it gets acceptably sharp. Also my point was that the kit lens isn’t hot, especially if you use it as a fixed f5.6 compared to a fixed 2.8. At 2.8 you will let in four times the amount of light meaning you can use a quarter of the shutterspeed which is not to be sniffed at. It doesn’t help with IS if you have to go to 1/20s shutter speeds since your subject will have moved during the exposure. I would much rather take a tamron 17-50 than the two canon kit lenses together because if you have the option of 2.8 on the long end you can always stop down for more sharpness and contrast, neither of which are amazing on the kit lenses wide open. At f8 they are fine but wide open not so much. Then with the large aperture primes you have another two stops. I think you should probably point this out in the article as you’ve entirely left out the effect of having the ability to close down the aperture for better sharpness or leaving it wide open for better shutter speeds. The larger aperture will also make your flash photography easier since you can dial down the power on the flash and thus getting shorter recycle times. Fair enough on the ability to change the perspective but I’m not a fan of portraits at over 200mm since the perspective starts to get a bit funny.

Alexandra, for a sec I thought they had hired on that Cain guy /end Quote

1. I have found that the F5.6 aperture is just perfectly sharp throughout the zoom range and that it does not need to be stopped down for me at all.

2. At F2.8 you let in 4X as much light but you can also lose 4X  the length of focus and could have too narrow of a DOF where you can have focus in one eye and not the other or miss focus completely…..I have found that on the 55-250 even at F5.6 sometimes I like to stop down to F8-F11 depending on my zoom range and distance to my subject and the type of shot that I’m going for (headshots will naturally have a thinner DOF because you’re so zoomed in) and using an 85 1.8 for a good amount of time exclusively I can attest that even at 85mm on crop body anything lower than say around F4 on a  headshot will result in the whole subjects head not being in focus especially if they are facing you at an angle.

3. I use flash most of the time which freezes motion so I can drag the shutter all of the way down to 1/15 if necessary using good handle hold technique combined with IS and still get tack in sharp focus photos with no motion blur thanks to me using off camera flash.

4. I disagree with the kit lenses lacking contrast/sharpness. Again, I used the Tamron 17-50 exclusively for many months, the canon 85 1.8 exclusively for many months, and now the 55-250 for many months and the kit lens has better contrast/sharpness than the Tamron in my experience and there is no major difference in sharpness contrast between the 85 1.8 & 55-250  in regards to contrast & sharpness even with the 85 1.8 stopped down to say F4 or F5.6. This has been my experience and I have photos taken with all lenses.

5. I have not seen any noticeably distortions that would adversely effect my portraits from using longer focal lengths over 200mm.

I might even go ahead and make an article comparing the perspective effects of the 55-250 at different focal lengths to show that the effects are minor and really related into how compressed your backdrop becomes or not becomes (depends on focal length) and how there are not major difference in facial figure or bodily figure at longer focal lengths after a certain focal length.

With that said I had a headshot session 3 days ago with an African American women as you can see on my website and in the original photos you can see the tiniest details in her skin, perfect reflections of the main light source and reflector in her eye, I could zoom in well over 100% and it still looked tack sharp (as sharp and sharper than some of the photos that I have taken with the 85 1.8 closed down) and it had excellent contrast & color.

With a little bit of PP work (cleaning blemishes, raising saturation, selective color enhancing, boosting vibrance (all of this takes about a minute in light room) I could tell people that I took the photos with a $2,000 Canon 70-200 2.8 IS II USM and they would believe me.

However primes do have their spots in the world I just wish that they all had IS. The 50 1.4 is an excellent lens from what I’ve seen but it does not have IS and for me that is a deal breaker as I can not drag the shutter as low as my kit lenses without the backdrop blurring out.

The Canon 200mm F2 IS & Canon 35 F2 IS do look attractive though as they have the major benefit of a fast aperture & IS so you can drag the shutter really really low with the 35F2 while shooting portraits as long as as you have a main light to freeze your subject.

All the best.

 

 

[warrenjrphotography]

fotopoopie is the prime example of somehow that is only good at sitting on their lazyboy and talking trash on the internet.

He actually went on my website and tried to post spam on it as well saying that I have no idea about what I’m talking about and how my photos are trash…..I feel bad for the guy as I know for a fact that people that talk trash like that have personal issues and some people take those comments to heart (not me, I could care less if someone likes my photos or not I shoot photography because I enjoy it and love art).

I appreciate everyone’s comments on my photos, I’m still learning as I’ve only been photographing for a year and I believe you can always keep learning but I seemed to have pick up photography fast and enjoy learning/photoshoots.

Also for someone that likes to talk trash he seems to be fast to come to conclusions as if he read one of my most recent posts (if not my most recent) I mentioned that the lighting workshop is now free to all of those that attend as I like sharing my knowledge to other people and would like to meet other like minded photographers and network with them/become friends with them.

I also understand that my photographs might not be amazing (there are tons of photographers out there that are tons better than me) but even the best photos still have flaws in them and photography like all arts, is objective as there is no clean cut no wrong (for the most part at least).

It’s easy to sit back on a chair and talk trash on someones photos or articles as anyone can do that. I like those that actually go out and take photos/learn and have nice things to say as the last thing we need is more negativity.

 

 

Someone asked why I choose the 55-250 and the other kit lens over the 85 1.8 or 50 1.4 and it’s quite simple.

The reason why I love the 55-250 so much is because:

1. It’s extremely cheap for how good of a lens it is.

2. It produces a beautiful circular bokeh.

3. It is capable of narrow DOF.

4. It has a very wide focal range (80mm to 400mm 35mm equiv. I believe)

5. Since it has a wide focal range I am able to get whatever perspective that I want whereas with the prime lenses I was limited on the perspective, I can easily isolate my subject and get beautiful bokeh and despite what some might say, it is an extremely sharp lens.

6. Finally, it has 4 stop IS enabling me to use shutter speeds as low as 1/60 at the equivalent of 400mm on 35mm hand held which is quite amazing…..

However if I had the money I’d get the Canon 100-400L F4-5.6 IS USM + 5DmkII in a heart beat but for the money the kit lenses do the job just fine for me at the moment and I feel as through they are not holding me back. I just treat them as straight F5.6 lenses.  I prefer longer focal ranges and F5.6 is a nice starting point DOF wise on both lenses.

Someone also asked why I recommended the Yongnuo 560II and not the 560III.

The reason for that is because I have no experience with the 560III and can not comment on it’s quality as Yongnuo has a history of releasing a new flash and making revisions of it due to the first releases having problems with them not to mention even though the 560III has a built in transceiver, if the built in transceiver ever had a problem with it you would be screwed as the flash would work but not the transceiver whereas if you have separate transceivers and a transceiver goes on you, you can just switch another one on it and be good to go.

I will however, be picking up a 560III in the future though as the total cost of one is about $10 less than if you buy the transceiver separate not to mention I like the idea of having a transceiver built into the flash (as long as it does not fail).

All the best guys.

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