Why are camera bodies relatively more expensive to rent than lenses?

Question

Considering that the lenses often cost significantly more than the body, why does it cost more to rent a body than the lens?

For instance, a local rental place in Toronto has the Nikon D7000 body for rent for $105/day, and the body costs just over $1000.

The same place rents the Nikon AF-S 70-200mm F2.8G VRII lens for only $40/day, but the lens costs well over $2000.

I think renting the lens has value, but renting a body seems expensive.

Answer

All speculation:

Bodies go out of date more quickly, so the store will be renting it out for a shorter time period. In order to get an equal return on investment they charge more per rental.

Lenses are more reliable (less likely to break) assuming that the renter handles each with care.

And perhaps there is more demand for renting lenses.

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How many actuations are “too many actuations”?

Question

When looking at used camera bodies, a question that comes up a lot, is "how many shutter actuations, or clicks, does it have?"

What I am wondering is, how many is too many. In other words, is there a reference for knowing when a sensor is more likely to go? How should I judge a camera body with 20000 vs 5000? Is that a significant difference, or is that not even relevant.

Obviously this might something that is dependent on model, so if there is some information based on model that would be even more interesting.

One of the guys at Canon Tech Support said that this is completely irrelevant for the Rebel series cameras, but he is obviously slightly biased. :)

Thanks!

Answer

A great resource for looking at camera bodies and shutter life is the Camera Shutter Life Expectancy Database. For those that have DSLR's, spread the word and submit your #'s!

Different camera bodies have different MTBF ratings. Some more important factors are how the person cared for their camera and the typical environment. Regular dust cleaning, for example, helps a lot.

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What is the correct way of shooting a panoramic shot?

Question

I just bought a tripod and I'm starting to learn photography. I own a Canon T2i (kit lens) and I'm interesting in taking panoramic shots.

What are the pro tips for doing this?

I'm trying to set my camera with narrow aperture and sometimes a slower speed.

I'm missing some contrast and color in both pics.

Here are two examples:

http://fav.me/d4e8qi9

http://fav.me/d4d3qpz

Answer

The key to shooting images for a panorama is to get as much consistency as you can. Since you have a DSLR, this blog post should help you or read my panorama tutorial.

It is OK if everything is not perfect but the more you do the better the chances of your software being able to stitch resulting images. At the very least you should keep the focal-length (zoom), focus and aperture constant.

The most PRO tip would be to use a specialized panoramic head. They cost a good amount of money but ensure consistency between viewpoint which makes things much easier to stitch.

EDIT:

Panoramic heads come in two types. Either flexible which you can adjust (actually, you have to) to almost any combination of camera and lens, for example the Manfrotto 303 or WTVR Spherical Pro. Or as fixed heads designed for a single combination of camera and lens which are available for common combinations, for example the 360Precision Absolute MK2.

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When shooting in mRAW or sRAW, how does the camera generate smaller files?

Question

Most mid- and high-end DLSRs offer two or three sizes for RAW capture. When the camera is generating the medium or small sized RAW files, how does it make them smaller? Does it capture less information onto the sensor? Does it capture the full amount of information and then apply some sort of in-camera compression? Does it do something else that I'm not describing?

Answer

Douglas Kerr gives a masterful and largely non-mathematical summary at The Canon sRaw and mRaw Output Formats . The situation is complicated and not perfectly understood, but much has been deduced by reverse engineering. Evidently sRaw is a 2 x 2 aggregation but with some chrominance subsampling; mRaw is likely a bona fide resampling (involving local interpolation), with heavier chrominance subsampling. One might indeed characterize each as a form of "in-camera compression" performed in a sophisticated way to optimize the appearance of detail to the human eye for a given output file size.

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Which Canon lenses combination to get for landscape photography?

Question

The story never gets old, I was given a Canon 500D camera with EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 and later a Tamron AF 28-300mm F3.5-6.3 XR Di LD Aspherical (IF) Macro Canon. As they say "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth" be happy you got it. This is a good start-up. At least I have fun and enjoy to use it. However, slowly I'm seeing some of the limitations - "not wide enough, soft on the end, slow on focus" and I'm looking in long term investment in lenses that will be "beneficial" to my landscape photography. I came up with two sets of "combos" of lenses that I think would complement each other for given set:

• Set one

  1. Canon EF 17-40 mm f/4.0 L USM
  2. Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0 L IS USM

• Set two

  1. Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L USM
  2. Canon EF 70-200mm F/2.8 L IS II USM

Personally I'm inclined towards second set that has wider aperture, they do closer mirror my current set despite pricier tag attached to them. So feel free to bite me if you think I'm going in wrong direction

PS: No need to point out that with either buy I will lose some 100/200 - 300mm focal length, but I'm covered at that end as I got myself Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM that I use for wildlife.

Answer

I'm going to focus on the focal length range here, not the IQ, aperture, or AF-speed aspects, or anything else for that matter.

Set one gives you 17-105, while set two gives you 24-200. Those are very different, both on the wide end (41%) and on the long end (48%). I'd suggest reading What software can show my most frequently used focal length? to see which might be better for you.

Two more suggestions for landscape photography:

• Wider is better. In which case you probably want to look into an ultrawide lens, like the Tamron 10-24.

• If you're printing big, taking many pictures with a longer lens then combining them when you post-process your photos may be your best bet (see Which tools are good for creating panoramas/stitching multiple photos?).

I'd also like to point out that you don't necessarily need to have a "set" of lenses that complement each other. For example, I have a big gap in my lenses, from 55-100mm, because I rarely take pictures in those focal lengths. Also, since you already have 18-400mm covered, you might get more value by looking at lenses outside that range, so that your new lenses allow you to take pictures that you can't take now.

Some general advice which may or may not be applicable to you: I think it's best to take a lot of photos (at least 1,000). After you do that, if you analyze your favorite photos you'll have a very good idea of how your equipment is limiting you and you'll be better able to zero in on which lenses will most help you. Once you've done that, you will be the best judge of what lenses are best for you.

Finally, to try to actually answer your question: I wouldn't take either of those sets. The wider one isn't wide enough (for the pictures that I like to take), and the longer one isn't long enough (for the pictures that I like to take). I'd pick up that 10-24, along with the prime or zoom lens which best fits your own requirements for focal length range, IQ, maximum aperture, and price range.

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How could I prevent involuntary resize of pictures by Flickr?

Question

I have a borderline question again, but it's a real problem for me.

I have noticed that the original sizes (1000px) of my older pictures on Flickr are no longer available and the biggest size is now 640px. The downsized versions of the pictures are also oversharpened.

I don't have pro account.

Is this a normal practice? Does it depend on the amount views or anything else? I couldn't find any information from their help pages nor Terms and Conditions. What should I do to avoid it?

Answer

Flickr changed their behavior regarding originals for non-Pro users a few months ago. Before, if your original upload was smaller than 1280 px on the wide side, they would not generate a large (1024 px) version and show the unedited original as the large version instead. Now, they don't do that anymore.

See this thread on the Help Forum for reference.

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What is the technical term for the time taken to see the final image on an IP security camera's screen?

Question

What is the technical term for the time taken to see the final image on an IP camera's screen?

Is it dependent on some parameter which I can look for?

Actually this website has listed various parameters, but I can't make out whether above is listed out there or not?

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps7307/prod_models_comparison.html#~hd_cameras

Answer

The word you are looking for is Latency.

Latency is a measure of time delay experienced in a system, the precise definition of which depends on the system and the time being measured. Latencies may have different meaning in different contexts.
[...]
Satellite transmission
This is best illustrated when a newsreader in a studio talks to a reporter half way around the world. The signal travels from the newsreader via communication satellite situated in geosynchronous orbit to the reporter and then goes all the way back to geosynchronous orbit and then to the studio, resulting in a journey of over one hundred thousand kilometers . This time lag is easily noticeable. Even though the signal travels at the speed of light, it still requires about half a second to travel that distance (not including the much smaller latencies inside the communications equipment).

Lag is also an acceptable substitute, though it is considerably more informal.

Lag is a common word meaning to fail to keep up or to fall behind. In real-time applications, the term is used when the application fails to respond in a timely fashion to inputs.
[...]
The term lag is often also used as a synonym for communication latency. This can be misleading because there can be other causes for the symptom.

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It's worth noting that the video latency of IP cameras is not entirely due to the camera itself. Depending on the intervening network, network latency can actually produce the majority of the delay in the signal.

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