In this post, I want to write about some of the new features and what I think of them.

15 Megapixels: Probably the feature many people are most excited about is the new sensor with 15 megapixels. Compared to the EOS 40D, this is an increase of about 50% which is pretty huge. The 15 MP give you are lot more flexibility when cropping.
When I first read about the 15 MP I was worried that this can only mean an increase in noise due to the much higher pixel density compared the the EOS 40D. But according to Canon, the 50D should actually be better than the EOS 40 at high ISO settings (between 1 and 1.5 stops).
There are no detailed reviews of the camera yet, but if this is true, then Canon has really made a huge step forward.

The new sensor will demand even better quality lenses due to the high pixel density.

ISO 12.800: The 50D supports ISO up to 3.200 in 1/3 step increments and also ISO 6.400 and 12.800. If the last two numbers are of any real value remains to be seen until the first tests are available. But I don’t think Canon would have included those options if the image quality was just awful.

AF up to f5.6: No change here compared to the EOS 40D. I was hoping that the EOS 50D would allow AF up to f8, at least with the central sensor. That would allow sport and nature photographers who own lenses like a 4/500 or 4/600 to use Canon’s 2x extender and still have AF. So far it seems that Canon will keep this feature to the EOS 1D cameras only.

Compact Flash Cards: Some people feared that Canon would abandon CF cards with the 50D and only support SD cards. But they stick to CF cards which is good for all people who already have spent a lot of money an CF cards.

New LCD with 920.000 pixels: This is a welcome increase and should allow better evaluation of the images after shooting. But this is, of course, no substitute for checking your files later on the computer.

Creative Auto:. Couldn’t car less. I only shoot in AV and M mode and image quality set to RAW. But this may be interesting to other people who like to give more control to the camera but still be able to change settings.

Direct Print Button: This is probably the most useless button on any EOS camera. It would be great if Canon would allow a CF-Function to change it to support Mirror Lock-Up. But after all I’ve read, this can still only be accessed via the Menu settings. I wonder why Canon does not fix this, even after many, many photographers have complained about this for many years.

EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6: This new zoom lens looks very interesting and the large zoom range will be of interest to many photographers. I think it’s sad that it’s an EF-S lens, which means it won’t work on the EOS 5D, EOS 1D Mark III and EOS 1Ds Mark III. Another thing that I don’t like about this lens is the fact that it does not have an USM motor for fast AF. Maybe it’s fast enough without it but Canon integrates USM in almost all it’s lenses (including the cheap ones). So I don’t understand why this new lens doesn’t have USM.

Conclusion:
I think the new Canon EOS 50D looks like a great camera. If the Camera is as good as Canon says, then I think it’s definitely worth upgrading if you still own a EOS 10D, 20D or 30D.
If you own a EOS 40D (like I do), it’s still a significant leap but I am not sure if an upgrade is always worth it. Right now, I have no plans to upgrade. I will definitely wait how the EOS 50D performs in the first tests and what else Canon will offer either for Photokina in September or after that event.

My EOS 40D is great and that doesn’t change a tiny little bit just because the 50D is out. If you are not sure if you should upgrade, maybe it’s wiser to spend the money on a good lens, some good photography books or a photography trip.

If I buy the 50D I won’t sell my 40D but will keep it as a backup and 2nd camera for those situations when I need two simultaneously.

Lightroom 2 has a very good system of easy to use keyboard shortcuts that can drastically improve your speed while working with Lightroom. John shows many of the shortcuts in the following two posts with video tutorials. I highly recommend watching them, especially if you are new to Lightroom:

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0 Shortcuts

Adobe Lightroom 2 Shortcuts - Ranking

Although Andy sometimes mentions specific technical settings (like the AF mode used), this is not a purely technical book that only tells you what lens you should by or that a full frame camera has better high ISO performance than a non full frame camera. For those interesting in the equipment used for all the shots, Andy lists details like camera, lens, ISO, f-stop, shutter speed, etc at the end of the book.

As title of the book says, the book is about art. Good photography is art and so are Andy’s shot. But just describing them as good does not do the pictures justice. They are beyond good and I can’t remember any other book in what I’ve seen so many amazing wildlife shots.
Andy’s shots of gorillas, big cats like leopards and lions and his many great bird shots are simply stunning. The book contains the best shot of a Golden Eagle I’ve ever seen seen in a book. Andy’s shots of albatrosses are amazing, especially the one of the displaying Wandering Albatrosses on South Georgia.
Often Andy does not just show the animal, but also it’s habitat. In the case of the just mentioned shot of the Wandering Albatross, you can see dark clouds and a mountain in the background. The weather looks very harsh and perfectly shows in what tough conditions the albatrosses live.

Beside the stunning pictures, I really like the text that Andy has written. He is a very skilled writer and a great story teller.
The text describes his evolution as a wildlife photographer, how his style changed and what he prefers when designing a wildlife shot. He writes a lot about the importance of good light, especially what he calls “Red5″. These are the 5 minutes of really warm and red light after dawn and right before dusk.

In his images, Andy often breaks the rules of composition that are so often told in beginners books. Those rules are important, but great photographers know when to break them.

Beside the light he calls Red5, Andy also writes about shooting at home, how he likes to capture the relationship between predators and prey or how he likes to give his pictures a certain atmosphere that makes them special.

For many shots, Andy tells how he made them. He describes how he spend countless hours in a hide for several days to wait for a Golden Eagle or how he risked his life to get an unusual shot of a lion.

Andy cares more about being out in the wild and spending time with animals than about technical details of cameras or lenses. Sure, he uses good equipment, but unlike other photographers who think that having an awesome camera is more important than knowing your subject, Andy understands that his equipment is just a necessary tool to get his shot.

I myself am interested in good equipment and I am glad that I own the equipment I’ve always wanted. But when I am out and pressing the shutter button 10 meters away from a European Hare in Austria or 5 meters from an Arctic Tern in northern Germany, it doesn’t matter which camera I have. It’s the excitement of being close to an wild animal and capturing the moment.

Andy also cares deeply about the conservation of our ever more endangered wildlife and often encourages the reader to think about it.

Concepts of Nature has been the most inspirational book for me in a long time. The images are so good that I will take this book out of the shelf much more often than most other books I own.
This book makes me want to try even harder to constantly improve my skills and I think this is the best thing one can say about a photography book.

If you are interested in wildlife photography, then this book is a must read!

Buy from amazon:

Let’s say you own a Nikon D60 and a 4/300 mm lens and you are mostly interested in bird photography. You might be tempted to think that if you buy a Nikon D300 (which is much better than a D60) and a 4/500 mm lens you will automatically get better shots.

Success in photography, in that example in bird photography is influenced by many things, for example your knowledge of light and composition, how much you know about your subjects and it’s biology (very important in wildlife photography), your experience and how much time you devote to your hobby or profession.
If you have a Nikon D300 and a 4/500 mm lens and know nothing about birds and only go out shooting once a month you surely will not get as many good bird shots as a guy that owns a D60 and a 4/300 mm lens but knows a lot about birds, spends all his free time out in nature trying to get the best shots and has years of experience.
If you want to be good at photography, nothing comes easy. It’s hard and dedicated work that leads to success. That’s way more important than equipment.

That said, equipment does matter. Let’s take the example from above and let’s assume that the guy with the D60 and the 4/300 has saved some money and finally bought himself a D300 and a 4/500 mm lens. He devotes as much time to his passion as before, now with better equipment. The 500 mm lens will allow him to get more frame filling shots of birds. The much better autofocus of the D300 and the 8 frames per second will help him get more sharp flight shots. The D300 has full weather sealing, which allows him to get more shots during bad weather (which often can reward you with unusual and great images).

A hard working photographer who knows everything about his subject and has many years of experience will use the best equipment he can afford. This combined with all his knowledge will give him the best results.
There is a reason why, for example, most successful bird photographers own either a 4/500 mm or 4/600 mm lens and a good camera.

If you are currently not satisfied with your equipment and can’t afford something better, think about all the other areas you can improve your photography like improving your knowledge about your subjects, learning about the usage of light or studying the work of other photographers.

If you can afford better equipment and you are sure (after reading what I just wrote) that it will indeed improve your changes to get better shots, than it might be time to buy it.

After I got my EOS 40D and my EF 4/500L IS from Canon my bird photography improved compared to the shots I took before with my old EOS 10D and my 100-400mm lens. The 4/500L (+ 1.4x extender) allowes me to get the bird much bigger in the frame. The images were sharper and the AF of the 40D together with the fast 4/500 was much better than what I had with the 10D and the 100-400. The 6.5 frames per second of the 40D also helped me to get more good action shots than the only 3 frames per second of the 10D.
But if I hadn’t spent time out shooting, learned about my subjects or always tried to learn more about bird photography, my pictures wouldn’t have improved much.

It’s both, the photographer and the equipment that matter.

EOS 40D, EF 2.8/100 Macro, tripod, fill flash -2 stops with Speedlite 580EX II

It’s not my best close-up but I like it. If I had stayed at home because of the rain, I would have missed that shot (and several others).

Photographing during the rain is not without problems. I don’t mind if I get wet. I just have to pick proper clothes. But it’s more important to protect the camera and lenses from the rain.
Some rain drops probably won’t damage your camera. My Canon EOS 40D gets wet from time to time without any problems so far. But I don’t leave it out for hours in heavy rain. I always try to protect it. Many lenses from Canon and Nikon are weather sealed, but not all, especially not the cheaper ones. Check the manual of your lens. And most cameras (expect the professional bodies) are not fully weather sealed, either.
The most important thing is to keep the front lens dry. A drop of water won’t ruin your lens, but you will see the drop on your image and that will be ruined (or you will spend some time in Photoshop).

NEVER let water inside your camera when changing the lens. DSLRs are full of electronic stuff. If you get water into them, it might seriously damage the camera.

When I shoot in the rain, I always take an umbrella with me. I hold it over the camera when changing lenses or CF cards or when I am adding an extender. Some people take plastic bags with them and change lenses in there. Pick a method that suits your needs. The only important thing is to keep your camera dry inside.

You can also mount an umbrella on your tripod to protect your gear from the rain. There are several solutions available. See here for an example. Be very careful during wind when mounting an umbrella on your tripod. The wind might knock down the tripod and umbrella and your lens and camera can be ruined.

For some lenses and cameras, there are special water proof covers available, like those here in the Naturescapes.Net store.

Rain offers many possibilities for good photographs. You can include the rain in the image. This works especially when it’s very heavy rain or you can see raindrops falling on water.
Or you could find an animal that’s totally wet because of the rain (works very good with mammals when the fur gets wet).

In the case of the moth above, the rain let the temperatures fall so low that it was to cold for it to fly. So it rested on the flower where I could photograph it easily. During sunny weather, that would have been much more difficult.

You see, with a little preparation, there is no reason why you should stay inside during a little rain the next time you want to go shooting.

Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS USM

This is the official name of my 500mm telephoto lens. The name contains a lot of terms that may sound strange at first. So lets break it down into small pieces and explain everything in detail (including some terms that do not occur in the description of the lens above):

Canon: Well, that’s pretty obvious. It’s the manufacturers name.

EF: EF means “electro-focus” and means that this is an autofocus lens. With a few exceptions (see below), all Canon lenses for EOS cameras contain the “EF” term.

500mm: The focal length.

f4: The largest possible f-stop.

L: L means “luxury”. This is Canon’s way of saying that this is a professional and especially good lens. L lenses contain the best glass, are normally weather proof and are built much more robust than other lenses. That does not mean that non L lenses are always bad. For example, the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM is not a L lens but is still a very good and very sharp lens. I use that lens very often.

IS: IS indicates image stabilization. Many of the new Canon lenses introduced during the last 10 years feature this technology. With IS you can hand hold a lens at longer shutter speeds and still get sharp pictures than without it. IS also works well on a tripod with most IS lenses.

USM: USM means “ultrasonic motor” and indicates a very fast and silent autofocus motor. Canon has integrated USM technology in most of it’s L lenses and also many others.

Macro: This indicates that the lens is a special macro lens, especially designed for working at close distances, often reaching a magnification ratio up to 1:1. This lenses also work as a normal lens and focus to infinity (except the Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro Photo which only works for magnification ratios between 1:1 and 5:1).

EF-S: These are lenses designed only for EOS cameras with an APS-sized sensor like the EOS 40D or EOS 450D. They are not intended to work with full frame cameras like the EOS 1Ds Mark III.

MP-E: This is used only for one lens, the already mentioned Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro Photo which is a special macro lens designed for extreme close-up work between a magnification ratio of 1:1 and 5:1. If you want to shoot portraits of insects, this is your lens. Nikon and other companies currently don’t offer something similar. It’s not an L lens but the image quality is of the highest standard nonetheless.

TS-E: Those lenses are called tilt-and-shift lenses. They are very popular among architecture photographers. Some photographers also use it for landscape work. They don’t have EF in there name as they don’t support autofocus.

DO: DO means “diffractive optics”. Those lenses are smaller and more compact than non DO lenses. Currently Canon offers only two DO lenses, including the EF 400mm f/4 DO IS USM. This lens is very small for a f4/400mm lens but also quite expensive. Currently it does not seem like Canon will introduce many more DO lenses, but in the future this may change. It would be great to hava a 4/500 or 4/600 with 30% less weight than the current models.

Zoom lenses are often described like this:

Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM

This means that it’s an 70-200mm lens with a fixed maximum aperture of f4 over the whole focal length range.

Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM

This means that the lens has a variable maximum aperture from f4.5 at 100mm to f5.6 at 400mm.

Now you should have an idea how to read a Canon lens description. The terms are not always written in the same order. So you may also find “EF 4/500L IS” or something similar.

In a good forum, you will get feedback on what is good about your shot and what you can improve. And by looking at the work of others and carefully analyzing their shots, you will learn a lot about how good images are made.

Beside image critique, many forums also feature discussions about cameras, lenses, field techniques, Photoshop and more.

Here is a list of some great forums where you can show your shots and see how others do it. The websites mentioned provide more than just a forum. Often you will also find great articles and other useful resources there, sometimes including stores where you can buy a lot of useful items for nature photography like blinds or tripod heads.

Naturescapes.Net
My favorite forum. The quality of the images shown there is very high and many of the top nature photographers can be found there. I’ve learned a lot at Naturescapes.Net.

BirdPhotographers.Net
Another great forum with many famous bird and nature photographers. Despite the name, it’s not only focused on birds but all aspects of nature photography.

Nature Photographers Online Magazine
A great website with many interesting articles and a very good forum.

Juza Nature Photography
A great website with many useful articles about nature photography and a very helpful forum. Currently there are less people at the Juza forum than at Naturescapes.Net or Birdphotographers.Net but the number of members is constantly growing.

Rules for participating in a forum

Be sure to read the rules that apply to all members before posting something at the forum. Often the size of the image is restricted (it doesn’t make sense to post a full resolution 21 megapixel file).

The most important rule is to always be friendly. When you criticize another picture, always do it in a friendly way but still telling the other photographer what he or she could improve the next time.

If you show your pictures and someone tells you how you can improve it, be thankful and not upset. After all, you want to learn something.

Keep in mind that some shots don’t work for all people. You may show a picture that you really like and all your friends like but the other nature photographers don’t consider very good. Accept that. Photography is also a form of art. And art is always perceived differently by different people.

If you changed something in the image with Photoshop (beside sharpening) be sure to tell the other members of the forum.
Also show the basic information about how you took it: Location, camera, lens, f-stop, shutter-speed, ISO, exposure compensation, if you used a hide (blind), etc.
Those information is often very interesting to other photographers and will also help them give you advice.

If you aren’t already a member of one of the forums above, I strongly recommend to join one or more of them. You won’t regret it.

If you are still wondering what f-stops, shutter speed or the “Sunny f16 Rule” are all about, then read Bob’s article. It’s very interesting and easy to read.

1. Interchangeable lenses

For most people this is the main advantage of a DSLR. With a Point & Shoot camera, you are stuck with the lens that is built into the camera. But with a DSLR you can change the lens and use the best for your current situation (of course only if you own such a lens, have rented one or a friend let you use his).
All DSLR manufactures offer a wide variety of lenses including wide-angle, macro or telephoto lenses. Canon and Nikon are the largest companies and offer the widest range of lenses. For example, Canon offers more than 60 lenses which range from ultra-wide angle zooms like the EF-S 10-22 to large super telephoto lenses like the EF 5.6/800L IS.
Beside the lenses from Canon itself, you can also use third party lenses from Sigma, Tamron or Tokina which are all available for Canon DSLRs (and of course also for Nikon and often also for the DSLRs of other manufactures).
Beside the flexibility to change lenses, the lenses for DSLRs are also of better quality than the lenses in most Point & Shoot cameras. Hight quality lenses like the Nikon 2.8/14-24 or the Canon 2.8/300 are way ahead of the lenses you will find in non DSLR cameras.

2. Better sensors

DSLRs have larger sensors than almost all Point & Shoot cameras. That is also true for sensors with a crop factor. The sensors in those cameras are still much larger than in non DSLR cameras.
Larger sensors mean better image quality and less noise. That’s why full frame cameras like the Nikon D3 or the Canon EOS 5D deliver amazing results at high ISO settings like ISO 1.600 or even higher. Those values are either not available on Point & Shoot cameras or if they are, they are not usable.

3. Full control

Although some Point & Shoot allow you to set many parameters including exposure compensation, they normally don’t offer all the features of a DSLRs, definitely not the possibilities of a pro DSLR like the Canon EOS 1D Mark III.
All DSLRs allow you to set the exposure in manual mode which is often necessary despite all the claims of the camera manufactures about how good their metering systems are. Beside manual exposure, DSLRs also let you configure other things like White-Balance or which AF mode you want to use.
Only with a DSLR do you have full creative control!

4. You keep the control over depth-of-field

Due to the very small sensors (and therefore large crop factors) of most Point & Shoot, they use lenses with a very small focal length, often below 10mm. This results in a very large depth-of-field which is often not what you want.
When shooting portraits, for example, you often want a calm background. Where you would use something like 15mm with a Point & Shoot camera, you would use something between 50mm and 150mm with a DSLR. The longer focal length makes it much easier to get a calm out-of-focus background because of the smaller depth-of-field and angle of view.
Portrait photography with Point & Shoot cameras is not fun at all as you just can’t get small depth-of-field.
The small depth-of-field is why many portrait photographers prefer full frame DSLRs over those with a crop factor.

5. DSLRs are faster

With a Point & Shoot camera, you often wait quite some times (sometimes several seconds) until the camera finally makes the image after you have pressed the shutter button. A DSLR works much faster and has only a very short shutter lag. That means, when you press the shutter button, the camera takes the image (almost) immediately.
Beside this, DSLRs normally allow you to shoot much more frames per seconds than a Point & Shoot camera. This is due to the more powerful processors and software in DSLRs. Professional DSLRs allow you to take up to 8 and more frames per second.
Even midrange cameras like the EOS 40D can shoot more than 5 frames per second.

To be honest, a DSLR also has some disadvantages like the normally higher price, dust on the sensor (although this has gotten much better with the recent cameras with self-cleaning sensors) or just being larger and heavier. A small Point & Shoot camera will easily fit into the pocket of your jacket.

But for me, the advantages of DSLRs are much more important than the disadvantages just mentioned.

If you are serious about photography and want full creative control, you need a DSLR!

If you want to spend around 8.000 dollars for a new camera or if you just want 21 MP, then read the review of the 1Ds Mark III to see if it is worth spending so much money.

For myself, I would love to have one but the price is just too high and for most of my work, the 10 MP of the EOS 40D are more than enough.