Will Patterson wrote: Operator error. I know the Nikon's hate the cold, I remember a big thread about pro photog's shooting a green bay packers game and their Nikons kept quitting, but the 1D's never failed them the whole game where the Nikon would only last 15 minutes or so in the cold.
So you really think it was operator error, not any fault with the camera? All those canon 1D and now 5D2 owners were all idiots ( as you call them ) for shooting in the rain. They should have just stayed on board the ship and played cards while their Nikon counterparts went out and got great images.
Lets call a spade a spade here. The Canon weather sealing needs improvement. If Nikon can do it, why can't Canon?
chez wrote:
So you really think it was operator error, not any fault with the camera? All those canon 1D and now 5D2 owners were all idiots ( as you call them ) for shooting in the rain. They should have just stayed on board the ship and played cards while their Nikon counterparts went out and got great images.
Lets call a spade a spade here. The Canon weather sealing needs improvement. If Nikon can do it, why can't Canon?
I meant the 5D2 owners were idiots for shooting in the rain. It's not a camera meant to shoot in those conditions. And as for the nikon cameras out there - yea great, the nikon can withstand a drizzle of rain, I'd still much rather have the new 5d over the nikon. I really don't care at all about weather sealing with the 5d. When I had my 1D2 it was a bigger deal because I was shooting kids sports and some football with it, and if it claimed to have weather sealing then it BETTER have weather sealing, but not anymore with the 5d because of what I shoot. The 5d2 is said to have 'some' weather sealing, well, that is enough for me to know that I'll never want to be out in the rain with it.
Will Patterson wrote:
I meant the 5D2 owners were idiots for shooting in the rain. It's not a camera meant to shoot in those conditions. And as for the nikon cameras out there - yea great, the nikon can withstand a drizzle of rain, I'd still much rather have the new 5d over the nikon. I really don't care at all about weather sealing with the 5d. When I had my 1D2 it was a bigger deal because I was shooting kids sports and some football with it, and if it claimed to have weather sealing then it BETTER have weather sealing, but not anymore with the 5d because of what I shoot. The 5d2 is said to have 'some' weather sealing, well, that is enough for me to know that I'll never want to be out in the rain with it....Show more →
I don't think they're idiots- I mean- Canon did say it was weathersealed- almost as well as the EOS-1 series. Plus- most of those guys were using full raincovers- something you would bring if you were going on a boat trip to Antarctica anyway. I'd say, if raincovers are used, and stuff fails- something is wrong here. Either operator error, or some mechanical design issue. Many of us speculated that the little foam strips wouldn't do jack for the camera when the first prototypes came out....
I don't think they're idiots- I mean- Canon did say it was weathersealed- almost as well as the EOS-1 series.
Actually, the White Paper said:
As a result, the EOS 5D Mark II now has dust and water resistance that is almost equal to that of the EOS-1N—Canon’s top-of-the-line professional 35mm SLR for most of the 1990’s.
If it were "almost as good as" the current 1-series, they would have said so.
Hey, you know Chuck Westfall is easily available to ask about such things. Just go to his Tech Talk column on www.digitaljournalist.org and submit a question about it. I've done it twice and he's answered me within a couple of business days by return email.
chris78cpr wrote:
My opinion is even if 1000 5d2's had failed due to rain, i'd carry on using mine until it failed...
If it goes wrong, you get it fixed, until then you use it, take nice pictures and stop worrying what happened to other cameras.
Just shot my 1dIII and 5dII in rain for nine hours here in California, no protection, completely covered the camera in water. In fact, I had to use the live view because I couldn't keep my eye to the eyepiece with all the water on the glass of the eyepiece. Then took a dinner break, and shot night photos on a tripod in a sauna and outside the hottube in 35 -40 weather. little sprinkles also. I never dried them off or stored them in any different manor. No problems. I can't wait for my portrait shoot this morning, and then its home to upload video (who would have thought that I would be a videographer !! )
Oh yeah, I rode a bicycle for two miles in head on rain with both cameras around my neck, and my computer in a plastic bag in my backpack to get to my friends house to ride down to LA, and a hairy ass dog sitting on my camera the whole ride down !
The bride can be happy knowing that you took your second/spare body....?
I don't understand the point you are trying to make? Yes if your primary camera breaks then that is a big problem but anyone shooting a wedding professionally would have a second back up body that could be used in this event?
I still stand by my point that the only way a camera is going to stop working is if it is used in the first place. If you ask any of the people on the Antarctica trip if they would have rather not taken the 5d2 than taken it i have a good feeling most and more likely all of them will agree that they are glad they took it despite it breaking.
I don't know if i'm looking at it from a more professional viewpoint than a hobbyist viewpoint but a camera while a nice expensive toy to play with is still a tool for a job...? Surely a tool is used until it breaks, wears out, goes wrong, becomes un economical to use or just gets superseeded by something better?
The 5D has it's faults, like most cameras do, like most products do. it just occurs to me that a lot of you are taking an opportunity to trash talk canon.
chris78cpr wrote:
The bride can be happy knowing that you took your second/spare body....?
I don't understand the point you are trying to make?
My point is that with the failure rates encountered in the article, there is a significant risk that the bride will be very UNhappy unless you take a third, or possibly even a fourth body. You suggest you're professional in expecting gear to fail, but in my view it's not professional to shoot a wedding with a 1% chance of total equipment failure. That means taking at least four (!) 5D2's at the attrition rate encountered in the article.
Someone at the LL forum wrote that it's condensation that kills the camera... so putting the cam in a sealed bag to heat up seems have solved the problem. Not sure if weather sealing woudl be answer to this or if the problems are due to how the electronics are designed in the camera. Weather seal is not equal to air tight
Fine pitch circuit boards and/or components placed at places which suffers the most from condensation i.e. design flaws
brainiac wrote:
My point is that with the failure rates encountered in the article, there is a significant risk that the bride will be very UNhappy unless you take a third, or possibly even a fourth body. You suggest you're professional in expecting gear to fail, but in my view it's not professional to shoot a wedding with a 1% chance of total equipment failure. That means taking four (!) 5D2's at the attrition rate encountered in the article.
I understand what your saying and yes based on the statistics from that trip the failure rate was high, but this is still no real cause for concern and certainly no reason to need to take 3/4 bodies to a wedding shoot.
If you take the sample from this forum about how many people have bought 5D2's and then ask how many of them have failed in some way i very much doubt that you will be getting a 25% failure rate.
It is unlucky that all those cameras failed in the antarctic. It is a coincidence that they all failed on the same trip.
Thinking professionally i do not "expect" gear to fail but i know that it "might" fail so i make sure i can cover myself. If two cameras fail during a wedding then that is incredible bad luck. But that is a risk you take when shooting a wedding and being a photographer.
This entire subject just comes down to being realistic and sensible. Know your equipments limits and work within them and you should have no problems the majority of the time. But sometimes things go wrong. That's life.
chris78cpr wrote:
I understand what your saying and yes based on the statistics from that trip the failure rate was high, but this is still no real cause for concern and certainly no reason to need to take 3/4 bodies to a wedding shoot.
If you take the sample from this forum about how many people have bought 5D2's and then ask how many of them have failed in some way i very much doubt that you will be getting a 25% failure rate.
It is unlucky that all those cameras failed in the antarctic. It is a coincidence that they all failed on the same trip.
Thinking professionally i do not "expect" gear to fail but i know that it "might" fail so i make sure i can cover myself. If two cameras fail during a wedding then that is incredible bad luck. But that is a risk you take when shooting a wedding and being a photographer.
This entire subject just comes down to being realistic and sensible. Know your equipments limits and work within them and you should have no problems the majority of the time. But sometimes things go wrong. That's life.
Speaking of the 450D, that camera had a brief dip in sea water when my tripod gave way due to a sudden rise in the tide. Except for sand that messed up the front control dial, the rest of the camera worked with no problems. Guess it's better sealed than the 5D2.
Personally I think that any camera should be able to take a light drizzle or heavy mist at least, what good is it if all you can do is shoot indoors or in California?
Anyway, given the well-known state of things I'd not go on that trip with anything other than 1D/1Ds cameras, that would be the right tools for the environment.
Oh, and the boat crew shoots Nikon.