CANON 5D CLASSIC TIPS

Some tips for the 5D Classic. After having made some videos about the Canon 5D Classic, just reading some of the comments from people led me to think about making this video. There's a few things that I want to touch on because I see certain frustrations coming up whilst they're not necessarily always work around. It's just more about how to think about using this camera. Now, one of the things with the 5D Classic is this screen on the back isn't particularly good. So you can't tell much about your exposure. A lot of the white areas are too faded. They're too kind of light gray to be able to read in a very accurate way. And the same thing for the dark areas. So it can be a little bit tricky to read your exposure properly. This isn't a picture of anything in particular because I don't want the picture to distract you. But if you press the info button, you'll cycle through the different views. And this is the view that you want to focus on because it gives you your histogram. And you can see it's blinking highlights. So we know that this area is overexposed. So it's telling us that. And not only that, we can see it on the histogram. So we can tell what our exposure is doing here. But our histogram gives us the information that we need. The 5D Classic is a really good camera to get to know your histograms on. Because when you get good at reading your histograms, you kind of don't need to have the picture of you anymore to see, at least not in terms of exposure, what the exposure is doing. You should be able to get a good idea just from reading your histogram, whether your picture is too bright or too dark. I kind of wish it had a mode where it was just, here's a histogram and that's it. I'd be fine with that. So you can get good at reading your histograms by using this camera. This is my first tip for you is stop worrying about whether the screen on the back is accurate or not, because the histogram is accurate. So get used to learning to read that histogram. When people tell me I can't judge my exposure properly on the back of the camera, that tells me that you don't know how to read a histogram. So I know it's kind of boring to look at them. And it's not an interesting subject, reading histograms, but it is useful. It's something that a photographer should learn to do and know how to do, because then at a glance you can tell whether your exposure is right or not. My next point for you has to do with focusing, because people are getting like focus problems with certain lenses. And in particular, I've found and seen from people that third party lenses mostly don't have a very good time on the 5D Classic. You can't do micro focus adjustments. You can't make lens adjustments to say that this lens front focuses or back focuses, and then make adjustments accordingly. There is no feature for that. That is a limitation of the 5D Classic. But certain lenses from Canon just seem to work better than others do. And so I'm just gonna list a few that I have experience with that I know work well, and then mention a couple that I know that don't. And your experience might vary from this, but lenses that have worked well for me have been the 40 millimeter 2.8, the 50 millimeter 1.82, and the STM version of it, any of the 24 to 70 lenses, any of the 70 to 200 lenses. The 16 to 35 and the 17 to 40 have all been good. That's the 16 to 35 F4, and the Mark II version of the 2.8. And also the 135 millimeter F2. That's been my experience. Yours may vary, but those lenses have all worked well, which is a good number of lenses. Lenses that have been terrible for me have been the 50 1.2, the 85 1.2. I've had multiple versions. None of them have worked on it in any sort of accurate way, but I have seen people that have had luck with them. So it's not impossible. And my next point is also related to focusing, is don't trust the out-of-focus points. I'm seeing people that are used to modern cameras where you can focus into the top corners and so on, getting a 5D Classic as an extra camera, and then complaining that the out-of-focus points don't work, the edge ones. I understand that that's frustrating. Of course it's frustrating. You want them to work. They're just not very reliable. If you're going to use them, you need to take two or three shots and refocus with each one. The other thing you can do is focus and recompose using the center point, focus on something, and then shift the camera. What I'm seeing now from people, which sounds mad to me, because I only started photography in 2010, when focus and recompose was normal, there's a lot of people coming into photography now that don't know how to focus and recompose. They've just never heard of it. They're used to eye tracking, touch what you want to focus on, and the camera will track that. A lot of people that are coming into photography now that are not accustomed to the idea of what focus and recompose is. So if that's you, just accept that that's how these older cameras work. It is a bit slower and it can be a bit frustrating, but you can learn to work with it. And in the end, if you can't get the photos you want, it's more likely it's you than the gear. So instead of looking at that negatively, take that as a learning experience because it will make you a better photographer. It's something I always say about this camera, the 5D Classic, is that if you learn to work with it and you get good at using it, you will become a better all-around photographer. And my next point relates to the noise that comes, the digital noise that comes into the images with the 5D. I get messages about people saying it's no good after ISO 400, some say 200, some say 800. I see a lot of people saying 400. And my message to you is just use the ISO range of the camera. Stop worrying about whether a picture is noisy or not. The only time for me where noise becomes a problem is actually often on more modern cameras where manufacturers are applying artificial noise reduction to files. I'd rather have a noisy but sharp high ISO picture than a smudgy one, which looks like there isn't any noise in it, but in fact, the details have become smudged. That's what you really want to look out for. If it's grainy, but sharp, it's good. Because the noise that comes into the picture will actually help smooth out some of the transitions that can become muddied in higher ISO pictures. So it can work for your benefit and you can learn to like those shots. We are starting to become conditioned that high ISO shots must be noise free. When in fact, if we go back and look over the decades of really great photography, no one was questioning the picture because of the noise that was in the picture. In fact, a lot of people choose to add it artificially into their pictures because it helps with the structure, tonal gradations, and perceived sharpness. I will do a video on this at some point, but if you add noise, even digital noise you're adding in post-production, it smooths out transitions because you're adding to the picture and you get smoother transitions. Pictures can have more of a 3D look and they can look sharper. Get away from the idea that grain or noise makes a picture soft. It doesn't, it makes it sharper. It's noise reduction that makes a picture soft. And a lot of cameras that have really good high ISO performance are smudging the pictures at higher ISOs. Now I know there's a lot of sensors coming out on newer cameras that aren't doing that, that are performing better than that. But my point in regards to the 5D Classic is just embrace it, it's okay. And my next tip is more of a generalized point. And that is to learn to work with what you have rather than thinking, oh, this is wrong with it and that's wrong with it. We do far too much of that. Certain things about certain cameras can be deal breakers for people. I get that and I fully accept it. I will also tell you that this camera can photograph almost anything that anyone could want to photograph. It might not be the best at it in all examples. And then sometimes it may be not very well suited for certain things. In my photography career, where I've shot professionally in different genres, there's not been really anything much that I couldn't do on a 5D Classic. It might be easier on modern cameras. Take pictures and become a better photographer. Learn your gear, buy other gear, but keep a camera like a 5D Classic to keep it grounded and keep things more real and not so technology focused and technology centric. In the end, you are the photographer, the camera's just your gear. And I'm not going to go down the road fully of saying the gear doesn't matter because I think the gear does matter. I think that this is a particularly good camera with a really, really nice sensor surrounded by a lot of older out-of-date technology. And I don't care because I'm the photographer and I can get the job done. Getting hold of the batteries that the 5D Classic uses. It's not particularly difficult, but they can be quite expensive or they can be rubbish. But there's a brand that I use, which I'm not sponsored by or in any way I paid for it myself, which is this one. It's called Harnal. It's a German brand and their batteries are chipped, which means that they're not likely to overload the camera or anything prevents all of that from happening. I'll show you how I charge these as well. What I use is a small charging plate like this, which the battery just slides onto. I connect it to a USB power bank like this because I can take this on trips that go for three days or so. And the charger can just plug in via the USB and then just switch it on the little switch and that'll start charging as you can see. But that's a nice small way to have the rechargeability of batteries. But I also like this because I can charge my phone off it as well and anything else. I use it to charge a head torch as well. You can get larger ones, but this is okay for most uses, I think for most people. I'll put links in the description for this for Amazon. They will be affiliate links, but this is what I use. I'm recommending it to you because it's what I do. If you want to see more about the 5D Classic, then you might want to check out this video right here.