Photography Blog: A Backup Crop Sensor Kit

Friday, January 15, 2016

A Backup Crop Sensor Kit

I've been trying to sell my last remaining EOS 7D on both Craigslist and eBay but, with one exception, no one was interested in coming up with a fair price. The one exception was, unfortunately, after I decided to hang on the the 7D as a back up and bad weather, sketchy situation option to my 5D Mark III.

The one decent offer arrived after I had picked up an inexpensive lens to use with the 7D. Without the 7D the lens would be useless and I'd have wasted $140. The lens in question is an EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM lens which has the field of view of a 27-136mm lens in full frame terms. With $400 the best offer for the 7D and a $140 lens, I've got a useable alternative to the $3,000 combination of 5D Mark III and L lenses.

I'm going to include my 50mm f/1.8 STM lens with this kit as a low light, portrait option with the 7D body. I may or may not eventually pick up a 24mm pancake lens to complete the kit.

This morning was dark, cloudy and cold but I wanted to test the lens out after I picked it up at the Post Office. The subject is the now drained canal between locks E3 and E4 in Waterford.

These are 3 file HDR images with +/- 1 1/2 EV bracketing. HDR adds lots of noise to the image and accentuates chromatic aberration in lenses. The single files are quite decent once corrected in DPP software they just don't have the range of exposure and color to get a nice finished product.