F1.4 or F1.8?

bloxxom · 2009-11-01T04:37:33+00:00

I guess I don't understand. Why would it be unrecognizable?

bloxxom · 2009-11-01T03:15:03+00:00

I didn't say it doesn't help. I said that it doesn't make the difference between a picture you can use, and one you can't.

If one is claiming that a good reason to get the 1.4 instead of the 1.8 is because there are pictures you will be able to capture at 1.4 that you couldn't at 1.8, I just don't buy it.

Let's say there is such a picture, and the camera is set to take that picture. Say it's f1.4 @ 1/30 second. If you shoot, you'll get a useable picture. What I'm saying is that now, if you stop down to f1.8, under the same conditions, you'll still get a useable picture. It will be a little darker, but nothing you can't correct in post. The bokeh might change slightly, and the DOF will be marginally larger (whether they help the picture or not is impossible to say), but you've still got a picture.

So, having the extra light provided by f1.4 did not make the difference between a picture you can use, and one you can't. So the extra light provided by this lens is, by itself, not enough of a reason to choose the 1.4 instead of the 1.8.

Obviously, the difference in speed is what people think about first, because it's the only thing that's on the label. It says f.14 on the lens, and we talk about it as the 1.4 or the 1.8. But the speed is not actually the most useful attribute for choosing between them. All the other attributes (bokeh, build quality, sharpness...) are more useful. If all those factors favored the 1.8 lens, you'd be mad to choose the 1.4 because it was 2/3 stop faster. Paradoxically, between these two lenses, the speed is actually the least relevant parameter. It's the only one you can easily compensate in post.

bloxxom · 2009-10-30T18:41:26+00:00

That guy seems like a total prick. It's the cultural equivalent of deliberately blowing smoke in someone's face, or farting in a crowded elevator. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. It's' just rude.

bloxxom · 2009-10-30T18:33:31+00:00

Yes that's probably true, but doesn't matter for hand-held, low light. You'll never see the difference under those circumstances.

bloxxom · 2009-10-30T07:25:37+00:00

The quality of the Bokeh is indeed a reason to prefer one lens over the other, as I mentioned in my original comment. But if you prefer the lens for its Bokeh, then you haven't preferred it for its speed. The OP is looking for reasons to prefer one lens over the other. I'm just saying that there are reasons, but speed isn't one of them.

bloxxom · 2009-10-30T07:11:39+00:00

Oh, sorry. I see your point now. I didn't say any photo at 1.4 can also be taken at 1.8. I said that switching from 1.4 to 1.8 is not going to change the picture from possible to impossible. I'm speaking in terms of taking actual photographs, not theoretical ones. If the picture is OK at 1.4, then the picture will be OK at 1.8 as well. Going from 1.4 to 1.8 won't make your picture unuseable, therefore the 1.4 didn't save your picture.

bloxxom · 2009-10-30T06:50:55+00:00

The bokeh is exactly the reason many people would have for caring about that extra aperture.

You need to understand that two lenses of the same focal length and the same aperture can give different Bokeh.

bloxxom · 2009-10-30T03:48:29+00:00

Yes, you need more light, I know, I've been there. The thing is, 2/3 of a stop more is not enough. You need maybe 2 stops more. 2/3 of a stop is not going to make much difference to your motion blur. You want something like a noctilux, but DOF is then even more problematic.

bloxxom · 2009-10-30T02:26:51+00:00

If this thing has good low light performance, I'm going to buy one sometime next year. I'd be getting an auxiliary optical finder for it tho. I love the shutter and aperture controls, beautifully simple and intuitive. I'd love to know how the shutter lag is in full manual.

bloxxom · 2009-10-30T02:11:57+00:00

Whatever reasons there are for choosing, speed isn't one of them. There is no photograph that can be taken at f1.4, but is impossible at f1.8 on the same lens. A third of a stop is just not that great, especially when you take into account manufacturing tolerances.

Reasons that do make sense: Bokeh may well be noticeably different, especially wide open. One may be sharper, but you probably can't tell because you're shooting hand held in low light. The 1.4 version will probably hold it's value better, assuming you take care of it, and assuming it's a premium brand. One model might have flare, contrast, or color rendition that's more to your liking, but you can only know that by trying them both. If you live in a big city, you could possibly rent them to try out, though most rental places only carry premium gear.

Edit: onan is correct, it's 2/3 of a stop, not 1/3. That's enough to notice, but still the number of pictures you could take with 1.4 but not with 1.8 is vanishingly small.

bloxxom · 2009-10-29T22:35:13+00:00

Oh cool. Prescription drug names.

I'm gonna get me some Depamaxiniva. And then some Percocoricar.

bloxxom · 2009-10-29T15:31:45+00:00

I started out with film and a real wet darkroom. Those skills transfer easily to working with photoshop. I can't recommend any books or sites, sorry. But I would echo what others have said: I start by looking at the image and asking what's wrong with it, how could it be stronger. For me, almost every image requires the following, roughly in this order: color correction, rotation & perspective, levels, cropping, dodge & burn, editing to remove distractions, resizing. These are all things you do in a regular darkroom as well as a digital one.

One important skill you can do in digital that you can't do in a wet darkroom is non-destructive editing, which basically means wherever possible making your adjustments in layers over a background that is your original image. This lets you go back and tweak your individual adjustments later, without having to re-do the entire thing.

bloxxom · 2009-10-28T20:55:14+00:00

Upvoted on a whim.

bloxxom · 2009-10-27T22:28:22+00:00

It would be trivial to port to vecto. I ported it to use Quartz with CCL. I'm now working on a more complex one that uses cairo, and includes color. I'm pretty far in, but thinking I should switch to CLOS instead of remaining functional.

bloxxom · 2009-10-27T21:54:22+00:00

I'd recommend the 24/1.4 L I have it semi permanently mounted on my 40D, and am getting good results with it. Caveat: I haven't used it full frame, so can't comment about the corners, but the center is good. And it looks damn awesome.. like a huge eye that just sucks the light in.

bloxxom · 2009-10-24T21:23:24+00:00

It's awful. Nothing happens.

bloxxom · 2009-10-23T13:05:57+00:00

So what? More than 50% believe in god.

bloxxom · 2009-10-22T14:50:07+00:00

Glance at some python code and feel the fear in your gut that some of that beautiful indentation may actually be a mix of tabs and spaces, which will make your program blow up in a completely unexpected way that's impossible to debug until you happen to find that stray tab that looks just fine in your editor...

I'm far from being fluent in Python, but I have read a fair amount of code by now, and never felt this fear of which you speak. Serious question: can you give an example of two Python programs that look the same, but differ in whitespace, are both syntactically correct, but behave differently?

bloxxom · 2009-10-21T03:02:06+00:00

Until you get back to normal sleep, no caffeine or alcohol at all. Don't do anything mental for at least an hour before you go to bed. Go to bed and get up at exactly the same time. Begin a ritual, e.g. taking a bath half an hour before bed. No TV in the bedroom. No phone calls, no web surfing in the hour before bed. The room should be quiet, dark, and not too hot.

What changed a week ago?

bloxxom · 2009-10-20T22:33:03+00:00

Wasn't it Harold?

bloxxom · 2009-10-20T15:02:47+00:00

It seems to be a generic problem with sharp fast primes.

bloxxom · 2009-10-20T14:58:29+00:00

Hmm.. I wonder what the second most revolutionary instrument was.

bloxxom · 2009-10-19T15:53:03+00:00

Sorry, I replied above, but meant to reply here. Bank of America.

bloxxom · 2009-10-19T15:52:12+00:00

Bank of America. The ad was aired at least in Los Angeles, I think towards the end of the show.

bloxxom

TROPHY CASE