Camera Chat Your Questions Answered

Yes, it's Q&A time. I'm going to answer some of the questions in more detail that you've been asking me on my YouTube videos. So let's get straight into it. First question comes from Mike and he asked me, I shoot weddings and portraits. I'm using two Nikon D780s and I was looking at getting the EOS R. So this is the first one. Can you give me some advice on making this switch? The D780, I haven't used it, but it is a progression from the D750 and it's going to be better than the D750 is. I don't think you're going to get what you're looking for on the EOS R. I think the EOS R is a brilliant camera. It's just that I can't imagine what it's going to do for you that the D780 can't do. The only way that I can see you upgrading the existing camera gear that you have, if you want to go into the Canon system, for example, would be to go to the R6 Mark II, because I think anything less than that is probably just going to be a sideways step. I just can't see you getting anything more out of it. This is a question that pops up more often than you might think. Canon RP versus the Canon R. I just had a chat recently, actually just two days ago, I think, maybe even yesterday, with someone in the Twitter community or X or whatever it's called, Classic Cameras. I'll leave a link in the description. You can check that out if you're in this part of the video. You're pretty dedicated if you're still watching and you can go and check out that community. You can join it. We talk about cameras just in general. It was supposed to be for cameras that are over 10 years old, but it's just a camera chat channel basically on Twitter, but I started. Now, when it comes to the RP versus the R, my initial impression of it, and I've said in one of the videos, is go for the RP, because the R doesn't offer enough over the RP. The battery life's not great, but it's not horrendous either. The problem with the RP batteries is they don't hold their charge. It's not for me so much the length of time they last. Yeah, maybe it's only half the battery life of the EOS R, but you can, as long as the screens are turning off, you can actually shoot for a really long time. And I don't think that, yeah, the battery life's not great, but it's not as horrendous as people make out. The problem with the batteries is that, let's say you're going to go somewhere, and then you travel for a day and a half. When you get there, you'll have lost like maybe 20% of the charge in a battery, and you'll have to recharge them, and they keep just dropping. This is with Canon's own batteries, but I think they're called LP17 or something like that. They just discharge on their own, and that's really frustrating. So you have to do that, and then you'll have to sort of juggle and have a battery charging strategy to go with it. So the EOS R is better at that. The EOS R is a better camera overall, but at the time when I was looking at those in one of the videos I made, the price difference, I didn't think that the EOS R, which I've owned as well, I didn't think that the price difference was worth it because the EOS R was like twice the price of the RP. So effectively you could buy two RPs for the price of one EOS R, and there wasn't enough of a real world difference, and I preferred the colours on the RP slightly to the EOS R. I thought they were a little bit better, but the R has better dynamic range, it has better grip and ergonomics to a point, but if you add the, there's a grip extension, it's not a battery grip, it's just a little grip extension that Canon made. If you add that to the RP, it transforms the handling, and then it's really really comfortable and nice to hold. It's wonderfully ergonomic, it's a great experience on the RP if you add that grip, and the grip is expensive unless you buy it used. So I got it from MPB for like £20 or something for the grip, and for the difference that made on the RP, it was absolutely worth it, it was worth every penny. I advise you to get that if you go for the RP, but now that the EOS R is used, it's like the same price as a new RP, and the used prices aren't a big enough gap between them anymore, I now will push people towards the EOS R because you get the better viewfinder, better screen on the back, although the screen on the back of the RP is actually really good, despite its low pixel density, is that what you call it on a monitor? It's only a million dot screen, but it's way better than let's say a Sony million dot screen, like the Canon one looks like it's three times the resolution, it's so much better quality, the screens on the Canons compared to the Sony screens. So you can have resolutions of screens that will say something, and the other one says it's the same, but when you look at them there's a massive difference in quality. And so the EOS RP, the RP at this stage, when we look at value for money, the value for money proposition on an RP is not there anymore compared to the EOS R in mint condition used. I would just go for the EOS R at this stage now. So yeah, I think that it's the better camera, you're getting the better battery life, you're getting the bigger camera grip, better ergonomics, just better user experience probably all around at this stage. But if you used RP, I mean I have no problem, I like the RP, the RP is really nice, it just suffers a bit in dynamic range, so if you're using it for landscapes you're going to have to bracket your shots a fair bit. Let me put a landscape photography picture up from the Canon RP to you now. This is shot on the Canon RP, one single exposure, so it can do it, you know, it can absolutely do it. And if that's in your price range, if money's tight and you used RP, it's just like, that's what you can afford, just go for it, just know that you're going to need an extra battery and you're going to have to have a charging cycle with it, like a pattern of like, right, I'm getting there, I need to charge before I do anything, that kind of thing. In my D700 review, someone says, did he say I don't have a D700 anymore? Question, question, question. Yeah, I don't have it anymore, I sold it whilst I was shooting weddings in order to get the D3S and it was worth the exchange. The D3S is, as an overall camera, that's the best camera I've ever had. Ergonomics, just outright performance, I can pick on a few things like the focus squares in the viewfinder, the focus squares are too big, they need to make them have smaller ones like Canon has because when you're doing a portrait on a wide aperture lens closer up, it just goes like this over the face, you can't sort of pinpoint the eye. That's probably about it, the D3S, that's my favourite camera body shape, the large Nikon cameras, battery life goes on forever, it's fast, responsive, spaced out ergonomics, so you've got like plenty of space for the buttons and things and that's why I sold the D700 was in order to fund that and then later I also got the D600 and D600 was a camera that I used extensively and I ran through four of them whilst the D3S survived so they're not as long lasting as the D3S but just to have something with a lighter camera body for weddings to go alongside the D3S and for those sort of higher resolution shots if I did kind of feel like I wanted it with a bit more dynamic range sometimes on group photos I'd use the D600 for that just to give you, you know what I mean, just to have more dynamic range and sometimes you get group photos outdoors in the summer where the lighting's a little bit hard and the D600 handled that better and that's why I moved on from the D700 and also dual card slots as well because you know that's actually another question that's in here was about the and that comes up some like not that frequently but what about the dual card slots actually on that same video someone said to me let's just roll into that as a sort of second question on the D700 how do you deal with the memory card slots and this is just for any camera that has a single card slot the CF cards the older large square things they were much less reliable than SD cards are still I've had two SD cards break on me like as as in die completely uh one was a Lexar and the other one was a SanDisk and it can happen um so dual card slots are really good for once in a lifetime event there is there was a really strong push when everyone was trying to like suck up to the manufacturers a few years ago when the first a lot of mirrorless cameras came out with one memory card slot everyone was like ah you don't need to like what was all that about right the reason people got two memory card slots was a reaction to memory card failure that was the way the manufacturers dealt with it because memory cards would fail remember let's look at let's say we look at Nikon or or Canon even they don't make the memory cards okay so when the memory cards fail they can't control the quality of memory cards the best way that they can respond to memory cards sometimes failing is to put a second memory card slot into a camera so that's what they did it's the best way that they can create redundancy because they can't control the quality of production of memory cards so that's why they did it now when mirrorless came out I don't know why they went straight to one slot I think it was because perhaps they wanted the card the cameras to be smaller I don't know or maybe they wanted it to be an upgrade feature for models down the line whatever reason they had for doing that they went to one yeah it's a problem and you have to really think about that if you're shooting weddings on a regular basis I personally wouldn't do it with one memory card slot and this comes down to again it's the same thing it's no good saying I've been shooting for 30 years and I've never had a memory card fail well I've been shooting for 13 years and I've had two fail so it's about who you're looking at and who you're talking to but if you look online and just google memory card failure you'll see that there are loads of people that have had memory card failures it's a bit like saying I've never been in a car crash what's the point of wearing a seat belt that's a you know the analogy that people use and I think it's a valid one it it it hasn't happened to you until it happens to you and when it happens to you you're going to know about it so you have to decide what your acceptable risk tolerances are but having had two cards fail on me in my time as a photographer I mean I've I take a lot of pictures so it happens sometimes so the card can fail you have to make up your own mind so that's one of the reasons I actually left the d700 as well was a little bit because of the single memory card slot that was part of it let's just say there was a little bit of a part of it how many lenses should an amateur photographer have as many as you need I say and or want especially if you're an amateur you could just do with um a mid-range mid-range zoom and be done but I don't know what you photograph so you should have as many lenses as you want that don't put you into financial difficulty in any sense whatsoever you should not buy lenses because you feel that owning more lenses makes you look more professional because no one cares and you shouldn't buy them to try and just impress people in general you should just buy what you think you need and what you're actually going to use and nothing more okay that's it for the Q&A hope you enjoyed it see you in the next video take care bye