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Canon 5D Mark IV Lens Options

Alright, so let's talk a little bit about the lens options available for this camera. So Canon makes two primary lens lineups, the EF lenses and the EFS lenses, and let's talk about the differences between them. The EF lenses are pretty obvious, they say EF, they have a red dot. The EFS is indicated with a white square, see that's very different, colors and shapes, very important. So the EF lenses are designed for their full frame cameras, that's kind of the line that they had from film days, and it produces an image circle that's large enough to completely cover the area of the full frame sensor in this camera. The EFS lenses were designed when they came out with an APS-C sized sensor, it's a smaller size image circle, specifically designed for the smaller size sensor in those cameras, and they're well matched. Where things get interesting is when you start switching lenses. Now you cannot physically mount an EFS lens onto the 5D Mark IV, it won't fit. If you did somehow modify it and...

jury-rig it and take out some parts, you could probably get it to mount on there, but it's not gonna produce an image area that covers the full sensor area, and you would get a bunch of vignetting. You can take EF lenses for this camera, and you can mount them on all of the APS-C cameras, and things are gonna work perfectly fine. Now, you are cropping in and you're only seeing a portion of the area in the middle of the frame, a 1.6 crop of it, but it's gonna work perfectly fine. And so if you're upgrading to this from one of the crop frame cameras, like an 80D, or one of the Rebel series, and you have an EFS lens, that lens is not going to work on this camera. You're gonna need the full frame lenses, but if you wanna use these lenses on anything else, they will work perfectly fine. So, in summary again, we have the EF lenses for the full frame, we have the EF-S for the crop frame, and there is a third category, and that is a relatively new series of lenses, called the EF-M lenses with a white circle, and these are designed for Canon's mirrorless cameras, which is a relatively small collection at this date and time with them. But those will not work on this camera in any way, shape, or form, there's no adapters, you don't even wanna try to adapt them. You can take an EF lens, put it on a Canon adapter, or a variety of other adapters, and put it onto one of the mirrorless cameras. And so the EF lenses are the most versatile of them. These other EF-M ones are highly specialized. Alright, so you'll see the red indicator, zoom rings on the zoom lenses, focusing rings on pretty much all the cameras, you'll have an auto focus/manual switch on all the lenses except for the tilt shift lenses. Most all the lenses will have filter threads as an option, it'll be labeled right on the front, if you wanna put a protective, or a polarizing, or other type of filter on there. Most lenses will have the option of a lens hood, and lens hoods are not meant to be shared between most lenses, they're very particular with which lens they are on. They are specifically designed, and so be aware of which lens hood is for which lens, and be aware that the L lenses, the ones with the red stripes, generally will all come with lens hoods as part of the package. They are not supplied with most, if not all, of the other lenses. And so if you buy a non-L lens, that's an extra accessory and Canon will getcha good on those. The nicer lenses have the little distance scale and the focusing mark so that you can see right on the top of the lens if that lens is focusing and where it is focused to. We're not gonna get into all the details on the nomenclature of the lenses, but if they are really proud about a particular feature that a Canon has, it gets a letter and a badge on the lens. And so these are some of the features and things that are unique about particular lenses that they're gonna put on there. So some lens information here. So this is sometimes known as the holy trinity, this is the three major zoom lenses with a 2.8 aperture. My guess is that 90% of the people who own this camera will own at least one of these lenses. There'll be some people who own all three. This is just, these are very, very versatile lenses, they're extremely well built, they're very sharp, I can't recommend 'em high enough, it depends on what your needs are, but pretty much everyone is gonna end up with one of these if they are getting into serious photography with a serious camera like this. And so, they come with the highest recommendations. I wanna bring to light the f/4 series, which I think is fantastic. Obviously we have a few more choices, a few more extreme examples, like an 11-24, and a 200-400, and these are in most all cases, just as sharp as the other lenses, but they are smaller, they are lighter weight, and they are less money, but they are nevertheless still L lenses with extremely good glass in 'em. And so, all of these I think are some very, very good choices, and I'm a big fan. I own three of 'em here! And so, I like, I do a lot of travel photography and landscape photography, so size and weight can be important to me, and that's why I like these. And when you have a camera like this, it's really nice to get a fast prime lens. And so, Canon has a bunch of 'em, here are a few of my favorite. These are really good when you know you have a particular job and you want a special tool to fit that job. And so, zoom lenses are great when you're not 100% certain exactly what your shot's gonna be, but when you know what your shot's gonna be, some of these are just fantastic lenses. And so if you have the opportunity to rent or own one of these, it just does match up really well on this camera. Now I could go on and on all day about lenses, strike that, I could go on for two days, strike that, I already did go on for two days about lenses, and so if you wanna know about lenses, I have what I hope is the most in-depth lens class you will find anywhere. And so, this is, I dunno, it's like 12 hours of material on lenses, and we go through all the different Canon lenses, and you'll learn everything you need to know, not only just about lenses, but about Canon lenses in particular. And so, if you really wanna master that aspect of photography, the lens class is a great way to go, and it's, I mean, as a personal favorite, I have like 60 classes here at CreativeLive, this is one of my very favorite, 'cause I like geeking out, and I like getting into the technical and understanding why lenses do certain things, and really learning how to get the most out of 'em. And that's what I dive into in that class. So, something to check out. So folks, that brings us to an end of our tour, we have toured the entire outside of the camera, and this would be a good time to check in to see if there's a few questions that we might be able to address. Well, it's a series of questions from Ellie Fever, as well as some other folks, who may be considering getting the Mark IV, maybe versus the Mark III, they might have, they're wondering if they're mainly doing video, is this the camera for them? Are you gonna talk a little bit about who this camera is for? Well, I don't do reviews, and there's a lot of people doing reviews that are available out there, that are comparing this against that. And one of the common questions that comes up is, is it worth the upgrade? That is a flawed question. It is a bad question to ask, especially without any other information. 'Cause if all you say is, John I have a Mark III, is it worth the upgrade? I don't know what you're doing with your camera. I don't know what your finances are. Did you just win the lottery and win $500 Million? It's absolutely worth it, because it's a little bit better, and you have all the money in the world to spend on this. And so, it has a lot to do with personal finances, and exactly how you use your camera. Unquestionably, this is a better camera than the Mark III, no doubt about it. Does it make a difference for your photography? Well you gotta look at, well what areas is it better? Okay, it focuses better in the movie mode and live view focusing. Do you care about that? Well it's always nice to have, but does it have an impact on your photography? It's 30 Megapixels, not 21 or 22. Does that make a difference? Are you enlarging your images? Do you really need that? How much difference is there to you when doing that? It's a better camera, I've used the Mark III for about three years, I've upgraded to this, I can afford it, it's nice, I appreciate some of the changes on it. I know we have someone in class who has a question about the 5DS R, and I currently own the 5DS R, and that's got 50 Megapixels, and that's what it's got. And what a lot of people didn't know when the 5DS R came out is that it had a lot of new features that people didn't care, could give it credit for. All they said is, they were just blindsided by 50 Megapixels. 50, 50, 50, 50! And when I went through the camera, I'm like, no there's like 20 other new features in the camera, and a lot of the features that are in this are in the 5DS R. There's a few things that this still has newer than that, and so it really comes down, do you need 50 Megapixels? And if you don't, then absolutely, you wanna go with this, 'cause this has, I'm not gonna go through all of 'em, but there's a number of features that this has a little bit better, just you know one for instance, is that higher resolution screen. When you wanna get up there and really check the image quality with a loop, as I do from time to time, it's got a better image quality on there. But a lot of these features are in the 5DS R. It's a better camera, I think in retrospect, we'll look back in 10 years and say, 5D Mark III, 5D Mark IV, was there a difference? They were like the same camera. As you look back in time, right now it seems huge, when this gets introduced, and you go check it out online and they go here's what we got new, we got this, and we got this, and we got this, and we got this, and you're like, it really depends on how you work with your photography. And so, it's an impossible question to answer other than, educate yourself on what the key differences are, and be honest about it, is that important in your type of photography? And then you gotta look at your bank balance. (laughs) But I do street photography, so I need to grab quick pictures, and sometimes I like to crop a lot. Okay. But I've also been told that the 5DS R is somewhat hard to hand hold, and I don't know if that's true or not. Well, it's hard to get sharp pictures out of it hand held. It's the same size and weight, so you can hold it just as easy, it's getting the sharp photos out of it because of that extra resolution, everything needs to be either a little faster on the shutter speeds, and you can dial that in, whether it's manually, or having the camera choose it, you can have it choose faster shutter speeds. This is a bit of a judgment call on my case, but 50 Megapixels seems a little excessive for street photography, but you may be making very large enlargements with it. I have found that 50 Megapixels is too much for my street photography, so when I took the 5DS R to Cuba, I've done some tours to Cuba, I thought it was a little bit much, and I dialed the 5DS R back down to 28 Megapixels. And so, one of the first things I did before I bought the 5DS R is I said, can I shoot this at 28 Megapixels and get good results, which is the medium sized RAW, and it was notably better than the 5D Mark III at its medium resolution. So for standard type things, where I don't need massive resolution, I have a 28 Megapixel 5DS R, which is basically the same as this, and then I throw the 5DS R into turbo mode, into 50 Megapixels when and where I need it, because 50 Megapixels is just, it's more than I really need to deal with. And so that's how I've kind of personally dealt with that. But yeah, you do, you're starting to examine things on another level, and just speaking to the future of photography, 100 Megapixels, 200 Megapixels, great, we're gonna need faster computers, and bigger hard drives, that's fine, but we're also gonna need new, sharper lenses. And so you have to be a little bit more careful about the lenses you mount on a 5DS R. And so you've noticed over the last 10 years, Canon's been introducing Mark II, and now Mark III versions of lenses, we're on the 16-35 Mark III, they're needing to improve partly to keep up with the competition, but to keep up with the quality of their own sensors. I personally, I predicted the 5DS R well before it came out, because I saw Canon coming out with all of their key lenses, better and better quality, I'm like, my theory was was that Canon, the sensor team came in and said, we've got a 50 Megapixel sensor, and the lens team said, we're not ready for it. We need to get better quality lenses in the hands of these photographers, because if you put a garbage lens in front of a great sensor, you're gonna get garbage. And so you gotta have the whole system matched up.