Green Tee Readings

Gizmodo just posted a brief hands-on of Canon’s newest Rebel model, the T1i (is that Apple’s version of a terminator?) and other than a general gadget lust, I kind of want it. Why would I want it when I have the previous generation Rebel, you ask? Good question. The answer is the ISO capabilities it looks like the new Rebel has. My current dSLR body goes up to ISO1600, but that is really only good for black and white images where grain is both accepted and expected; it’s arty in B&W where in color it’s just distracting. Color shots are only really worthwhile, to me, up to ISO400

The new Rebel looks, from Gizmodo’s gallery at least, like it goes up to 3200 with semi decent color fidelity, and I bet the ISO12800 shots look nice in black and white. For those with terminology and who are also playing the home game, that’s three whole stops I’d be getting out of the new body. For those without photography geek terminology but want to play along at home, it means I can shoot with 1/8th as much light or 8 times faster a shutter speed (assuming I’ve done my math right: one stop is equal to doubling of light. a shot at 1/50th a second at f/4 can be shot at 1/100th a second at f/2.8, although you get a reduced depth of field on the second image. So three stops worth is being able to shoot at f/8 what you’d normally shoot at f/2.8. Ridiculous (again, assuming I haven’t f’ed up my math, which considering the empty bottle of wine next to my bed, is ENTIRELY POSSIBLE)).

At concerts, the place I most often face very low light, getting those extra stops would be invaluable. The most recent concert I shot I mostly shot in black and white (see above re: values of grain) at ISO1600. There are a couple shots that I really love, and one of them might be the picture I’ve taken that I’m most proud of (it’ll probably be up on flickr later today), but it’d have been nice to shoot at something other than f/2.8, or get some faster shutter speeds when the lead guitarist was jumping all over the place playing a solo during “Sidedish Friend.”

Getting a 5D mark II would be awesome for full frame action, but I’m more interested in it because it shoots high ISO with very little noise. All this HD video capability is nice, I guess, but video has never been anything I’m really interested in capturing. I’m all about the image, lifted from context, frozen in time, preserved. The juxtaposition of fleeting moment and long term storage intrigues me, and getting the most of any image in any light possible is what I want out of a camera.

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