Recently after some careful consideration I pulled the trigger on getting a Canon RP and went with the 24-105 STM lens. I’ve had a few Canon cameras at this point, so jumped right in with little instruction.
To the right is the first picture I took of my cat. It’s been a tradition with new cameras. She’s getting a little more comfortable in front of the lens. Even though the look on her face is “Great pictures…ugh”
I am very happy with the results so far. I was surprised to see this was taken at f/7.1 1/20th Sec. at an ISO 12800. I wasn’t even trying to hold the camera steady.
The second picture I attempted manual settings at f/8 1/60th Sec. ISO 40000. The image at full size is pretty noisy, but I think this still came out with good results.
I could use photoshop to soften the noise, but it also reduces the texture in her fur. This is the sixth picture and now she’s trying to ignore what’s going on.
I was pretty tired by the time the battery charged, so I decided to get some rest and hit the road this morning. I figured just hiking with the setting on Auto would be fine. One of the things photographers struggle with in Arizona is the intensity of the sunlight. It’s tough to use the LCD or viewfinder to make sure the subject is in focus. I didn’t play with auto-focus other than have Eye-detection on. I think this may have added some difficulty. Also Auto Focus is locked to face detection in Auto shooting mode. Still it did produce sharp images, which I was relying on.
I added a cropped close up of the Saguaro fruit and needles. This was taken at 105mm at about 50ft from the Saguaro arm. (Without doing the math) Below is a closer shot on a low hanging arm with budding flowers. Kinda cool to see this perspective as most saguaros you would need a tall ladder to see what’s going on.
The conversion to jpeg reduces the quality of these dry Saguaro ribs, but this is like a macro shot at 95mm standing about 2-3 feet away. I really didn’t do this photo justice in auto mode with an aperture of f/7.1. Lesson learned!
Below is a landscape image I struggled with using other cameras and lenses. In general whenever I would get home and zoom in the sky and ridgeline would have chromatic aberration, a purple line dividing the two. The green brush and trees below are crisp in comparison to past photos.
Below are a few shots where I was struggling with the focus. The depth of field bothers me a little, but still think these came out pretty good after all. I appreciate this little guy hanging around while I intruded on it’s lunch break.
I experimented with some depth of field after getting home and working on this post. I read some instructions earlier about focus bracketing and didn’t bother to look it up again. The RP has a feature that works with Canon software to bracket shots with different depths of field and combining them into one image. This is going to be a separate project for another day.
Next up was testing night photography out. Again who needs instructions?!!?1… It was fun I first started out like I did back on my old Canon T6 trying to find a bright start to focus on automatically. I didn’t realize I had left continuous focus on and that was a bit frustrating. Finally after thumbing through the menu I had the focus completely in manual. I discovered the greatest feature so far with the Canon RP, a focus meter! It still took a few shots to dial into infinity.
It’s still pretty early in the Northern Hemisphere Milky Way season, so I made sure I could get a few pictures with some stars in focus. My final settings were single shots at f/4 at 8 secs. with an ISO of 5000 at 24mm . No bracketing. Very very happy with the results and know there still some play with the settings.
