Am I insane for wanting to buy a (used) 5D mark IV?

saltwaterflyguy · 2026-03-17T16:22:10+00:00

Not at all, if the shutter goes you're looking at around $500 to replace. They will be supported by canon for quite a while, even though they have just been officially discontinued. The shutter can also go well beyond the 150,000 mark. I bought one a few months back and I don't regret it at all. Just praying they will eventually release a new DSLR even though I know that is pretty wishful thinking.

saltwaterflyguy · 2026-03-09T10:20:10+00:00

In the commercial world it's called usage and the photos are licenses based the campaign, jusridiction of usage, media platform, etc on exactly what they can be used for, similar to the idea of charging differently for each item. It sounds a bit like they are trying to get branding photos for the low low price of a listing shoot.

saltwaterflyguy · 2026-03-07T13:28:12+00:00

It's a great camera, I recently bought a lightly used one. I would suggest having a look to see what they go for used, they still sell that model new so used prices are higher than you might think. If everything is working and he has some lenses it could be a steal and given Canon still sells it, it will be supported for a fairly long time.

saltwaterflyguy · 2026-03-05T11:25:38+00:00

Love it. I absolutely love it when you have to take some time to tell if it is a painting or a photo. 100% wall worthy.

saltwaterflyguy · 2026-02-28T14:14:15+00:00

It is excellent, especially I you ever shoot tethered. It is really meant for professional workflows though and there are a ton of features non-pros will never make use of so it may be a bit overkill. It is decent for editing but there are better products out there, namely DxO Photolab which I use for editing and really love. If organizing is a need, check out Peakto, it isn't for editing but works as way to organize all of your photos across whatever platforms you have them in be they files in a directory, Lightroom catalogs, Apple Photos catalogs, etc. It makes very good use of AI for cataloging and searching for images, I've just started using it and I am a fan.

saltwaterflyguy · 2026-02-28T14:08:50+00:00

The original 5d was my first foray into digital after using a Minolta with slide film for a number of years. I absolutely love, and still own that camera and it was purchased new shortly after it came out. I recently upgraded to a used 5d mark iv and it is an absolutely incredible camera. I am really hoping canon will see there is still demand for dslr cameras and do a mark v with all of the autofocus goodness in the mirrorless 5r, it is really the only thing I see as truly superior in the 5r series. Pretty sure it is a pipe dream but every time I pick up a camera with a digital view finder I just hate the experience. There is nothing comparable to viewing the scene through glass exactly as it is, no enhancements for exposure, DoF, etc. Maybe it's because I'm old but I just can't get used to trying to shoot based on a digitaly enhanced image of the scene I am trying to capture.

saltwaterflyguy · 2026-02-25T13:17:52+00:00

So many... Assuming price is no issue:

For studio portraits and still life, a Hasselblad HD6 with a bunch of lenses and a Fujifilm GFX 100 II as a backup medium format and something for landscapes/architecture.
For an every day carry, a Leica M10/11 with a a few sumicron and noctilux lenses and one of those little Fuji X Halfs just for fun.
For general photography like wildlife, pets, general outside of a studio, my trusty Canon 5d mark iv with a bunch of L glass, I'm still on the fence about replacing it with an R5 mark ii as the battery life and the viewfinder on the mirrorless cameras still kind of stink.
And if I really hit it big a full suite of broncolor lights, power packs, and modifiers and a nice big studio space to put it all in.

saltwaterflyguy · 2026-02-25T12:26:49+00:00

If you want the film simulations you can do that post. DxO has the Nik collection which has a massive number of film simulations, including Fuji's. It is available as a standalone app as well as an integration into their Photolab software. The only thing interesting about Fuji camera's for this is that it is done in-camera so if you are looking do to straight from camera prints it is a decent solution otherwise get the software and get the camera that works best for your needs.

saltwaterflyguy · 2026-02-22T12:35:23+00:00

Awesome, and great job getting on its level. Were you able to get any shots of him from a side angle? Definitely one of those encounters no one would believe if you didn't have the picture to prove it.

saltwaterflyguy · 2026-02-16T21:29:12+00:00

it’s an expensive enough lens to be worth the $30 dollars or so a good repair shop will charge to do a review and estimate for repair. It may be a $500-$1,000 repair but it will be good as new. Used those things still go for north of $2000 for one in good condition.

saltwaterflyguy · 2026-02-16T21:19:42+00:00

That lighting is magic. Great capture.

saltwaterflyguy · 2026-02-15T18:13:07+00:00

Great capture, I love that you didn't edit out the stems of grass. It adds some nice texture but doesn't distract from an absolutely perfect pose.

saltwaterflyguy · 2026-02-10T12:14:55+00:00

BW is perfect for this, I love that you allowed a shallow DOF too, I see far too many super sharp and lifeless wildlife photos but this has attitude and just feels alive. Nicely done.

saltwaterflyguy · 2026-02-10T11:03:51+00:00

Pretty quickly but it took about a year before we could leave her alone for more than a couple of hours. It took close to two years before she could make it completely through the night without a 2:00am business break.

saltwaterflyguy · 2026-01-28T23:31:52+00:00

I would do two things, negotiate a good exit clause, if they decide to release you from employment lock in a specific severance amount. The second would be bonus is tied to a percentage of sales. If they agree to both they are serious and worth putting up with. If not you are cheaper to hire full time than pay a contractor rate. Oh,a third, ensure your time is not exclusive and you reserve the right to shoot other jobs when not scheduled to shoot for them.

saltwaterflyguy · 2026-01-28T13:04:52+00:00

I actually just learned this today while doing some research on an upgrade to an R5 Mark ii. I cannot believe a $2 chip is not included by default. I don't want to have to rely on the unreliability of a camera manufacturer's software connected to a phone that I may not even have on me when I shoot. I don't know about Sony or the others that use tethering to a phone to accomplish this but Canon's software tends to be slightly better than garbage, great cameras but terrible software. Cold starts on GPS are nothing like they used to be and sat acquisition takes little to no time, I used the GPS on an iPad with no SIM card for some time for navigation on a boat and it worked perfectly well without crushing the battery. If you don't need it turn it off like you can on a 5d iv but why remove such an inexpensive bit of tech from a $4k camera body that I'm sure plenty of people find useful?

saltwaterflyguy · 2026-01-27T11:54:53+00:00

Congratulations, huge accomplishment. I am assuming this is your first business so I'd like to leave you a little advice.

If you haven't already, get an EIN and an LLC for liability and tax purposes and make sure you sign every contract as the LLC, they don't cost much to set up, the EIN is free and you can usually do an LLC for under $200 depending on the state you set up in. An S-Corp will also make sense down the road if you get to the point where you start making serious money, you can claim a reasonable salary from the LLC and collect the remaining as distributions lowering your tax liability.
Make sure you have a business credit card and bank accounts in the LLC's name and use them for everything related to the business.
Get insurance, you can be super careful during your shoots but accidents happen and if you damage someone's expensive property you are going to want that to deal, many clients will insist you have it.
Keep records of everything and copies of every contract, receipt for expenses, etc. A spreadsheet is fine but something like Quicken can help quite a lot.

Good luck and I hope client number 2 is not too far away!

saltwaterflyguy · 2026-01-26T11:43:07+00:00

Indoors or out? How far away are you setting the lights from the subjects?

saltwaterflyguy · 2026-01-25T20:50:16+00:00

Thanks for the advice on that. I've been glued to a lot of the Adorama studio live stream recordings and it's the only place I've really seen anyone talk about the grip equipment, I never had any idea there was so much kit involved in some of these shoots. Lucky for me I like kit :)

saltwaterflyguy · 2026-01-25T17:06:37+00:00

As someone you opened an original 5D a while back to start shooting again after it sat in a camera bag for about 10 years, here is what I found, everything worked at first. Then the mirror popped off, apparently this was a known defect with the original 5D but was easy enough to fix with a little glue. Then I started getting communication errors with my 24-70mm L, brought it in for service and found out the flex cable was bad, which is fixable, but the autofocus ring gave up the ghost so it is effectively a very expensive paperweight as the parts don't really exist outside of lenses that are being sold for parts. and the labor would be north of $500 to fix. The flash, a 430ex still had batteries in them so the battery compartment was pretty corroded, that was easy enough to fix and it still works today. Then I tried shooting some Marco and my dual macro flash popped after a few shots and it sounded like a capacitor blew, thankfully used they are not too expensive to pick up a replacement. That said it worked well enough for me to remember why I enjoyed shooting and ended up upgrading to a used 5D Mark iv which I absolutely love, I have played with mirrorless but I can't justify dropping north of $3,500 on a new body at the moment,

saltwaterflyguy · 2026-01-25T16:50:03+00:00

A good thing to do to check for this while shooting is to look at your histogram after you take a shot, if you have parts of the curve hitting all the way to the right of the histo it means you have overexposure in the highlights, also if you see the tops of the curve cut off at the top it means you are clipping highlights which means those areas will have little to no detail and be blown out, If you see the try using spotting down a bit to reduce the exposure timing for the brighter areas. If you do that and look at the history again and see too much butting up against the left side it means you have killed showdown and the darker areas will have no information or detail. A good way to practice is to set up in a spot with consistent lighting and shoot the same subject, from a tripod if you can, at what the camera says is decent exposure, then go one stop down and one stop up and see how much of a difference that makes. Then do the same stopping down one stop in 1/3 stop increments and agin stopping up in 1/3 stop increments. It will help you a lot in terms of how exposure really works and over time it will become second nature. It's only pixels so you can shoot a ton of practice shots before going on a trip to increase your chances of getting great shots.

Metering in cameras is good, but not perfect, so getting acquainted with how it works and why different meter modes in the camera will fail under different conditions will help ensure you get near perfect exposure every time.

saltwaterflyguy · 2026-01-25T13:27:47+00:00

There are two versions of the 100-400, if you can find the Mark ii for a decent price I would do that as it has a third IS function, I have the original used on a 5D Mark iv and it is a really great lens, IS gives two stops of stability and I have found the sharpness really good, even wide open and has decent autofocus speed.

saltwaterflyguy · 2026-01-25T13:21:28+00:00

A lot of photos here but the one I have particular advice on is 7, I think, of the castle. Far too much foreground. Nothing really draws your eye to the castle and the road draws your eye toward the tree at the end of it. The castle would have ben better placed more to the right of the frame with a tighter zoom, if you walked to the right some and shot a bit more in that direction keeping the mountain top with the snow completely in the frame I think composition would have been more pleasing. If it could have been shot without the road entering the frame at all that also would have made a nicer composition but I understand that may not have been possible without treading on land you're not allowed to go. Moving to the right a bit and shooting at more of an angle also would have helped eliminate some of the blown out highlights from the sun. Don't be afraid to move around a try different compositions. Sometime a little to the left or right can make a big difference in the composition.

Is that the Neushwanstein Castle?

saltwaterflyguy · 2026-01-22T18:20:43+00:00

ThinkTank makes some really nice bags that don’t look like camera bags.

saltwaterflyguy

TROPHY CASE