I recently bought Canon R10 with 18-45 kit lens, the camera is good but the lens sucks, especially in indoor photography in normal house light as the min ap is F4.5.
I am thinking about getting new lens(es) with decent low light performance. I am interested in RF 35mm F1.8 but that is bit costly (around 37-38k new), I noticed that most pre-owned lens are EF mount so what would be better choice? Getting a costly RF 35mm F1.8 or getting EF-RF adapter (Canon original is 7-8k, viltrox etc 5-6k) and finding pre-owned EF series lenses.
Also, there are these TTArtisan and 7Artisan MF lenses available at around 7-8k (this one looks interesting - https://www.designinfo.in/p/ttartisan-35mm-f-1-4-lens-for-canon-ef-m-black ) Are these any good? How difficult it is to work with MF? Should I think about these or only look for AF options?
Edit:
The main use case for the lens(es) will be for indoor photography without additional lighting (home/room with limited lighting like light coming from windows during day time and LED ceiling lights at night time. Cannot setup additional lighting solutions.)
Quote from: bb_13 on January 23, 2025, 09:26:04 PMI recently bought Canon R10 with 18-45 kit lens, the camera is good but the lens sucks, especially in indoor photography in normal house light as the min ap is F4.5.
I am thinking about getting new lens(es) with decent low light performance. I am interested in RF 35mm F1.8 but that is bit costly (around 37-38k new), I noticed that most pre-owned lens are EF mount so what would be better choice? Getting a costly RF 35mm F1.8 or getting EF-RF adapter (Canon original is 7-8k, viltrox etc 5-6k) and finding pre-owned EF series lenses.
Also, there are these TTArtisan and 7Artisan MF lenses available at around 7-8k (this one looks interesting - https://www.designinfo.in/p/ttartisan-35mm-f-1-4-lens-for-canon-ef-m-black ) Are these any good? How difficult it is to work with MF? Should I think about these or only look for AF options?
The answers to your questions are "it depends".
Depends on the subject or genre of photography you intend to pursue.
You wrote 3 paragraphs on how you "feel" about a lens or camera but nothing about what your intended use case is. If you want genuine informed opinion on which way you should lean, tell us in some detail what you intend to use them for.
Quote from: DeepakS on January 23, 2025, 11:16:19 PMThe answers to your questions are "it depends".
Depends on the subject or genre of photography you intend to pursue.
You wrote 3 paragraphs on how you "feel" about a lens or camera but nothing about what your intended use case is. If you want genuine informed opinion on which way you should lean, tell us in some detail what you intend to use them for.
Thanks for pointing out about usage, as I mentioned mostly I am looking for day to day indoor photography like kids, family functions etc. (lighting may be tricky in these cases like light coming from windows, ceiling LED batons, lights etc.)
I will be also using the Camera on trips also but that part I am not worried about much as usually in those cases I have proper lighting and the images are good there.
No lens with provide great result indoors as much as using a bounce flash. Learn to use it and a 8000 rupees flash will outset the result of a 50 1.2
You've mentioned indoor kids and family function, I would rule out the MF lens for this. It would be fiddley using MF in these scenarios and would result in a lot of OOF / missed shots. Plus the R series has fantastic eye/subject AF tracking, why waste that.
A flash, as others have mentioned, would do you good indoors.
I personally use EF lens on my R camera and would recommend this, there are saving to be had here and they work darn well. They do add on a bit of weight and the setup gets larger with the adapter, etc.
Most of the EF lens are quality glass, and some L series lens can now be had at a fraction of the cost compared to their R counterparts.
If you use filters; a drop in filter adapter does wonders. This is one big reason I'll keep my EF lens.
Quote from: bb_13 on January 23, 2025, 11:46:08 PMQuote from: DeepakS on January 23, 2025, 11:16:19 PMThe answers to your questions are "it depends".
Depends on the subject or genre of photography you intend to pursue.
You wrote 3 paragraphs on how you "feel" about a lens or camera but nothing about what your intended use case is. If you want genuine informed opinion on which way you should lean, tell us in some detail what you intend to use them for.
Thanks for pointing out about usage, as I mentioned mostly I am looking for day to day indoor photography like kids, family functions etc. (lighting may be tricky in these cases like light coming from windows, ceiling LED batons, lights etc.)
I will be also using the Camera on trips also but that part I am not worried about much as usually in those cases I have proper lighting and the images are good there.
Everyday indoor lighting will give
any camera- lens combination a tough time. Incorrect direction of the light , inconsistent brightness and varying levels of colour temperature (florescent vs warm) will pose challenges. This why the flash /speedlight was invented. Along with flash you can use filters (on the flash) to adjust (normalize) the excessive yellow or blue look that comes with home/office indoor lighting. Filters are also used directly on lenses but those are mostly recommended for outdoor use.
Bounce flash with a flash modifier (like
Magmod (https://magnetmod.com/collections/modifiers)) is a good option if your walls are white or near white. But if your walls are coloured, it will throw (reflected) coloured light on the subjects, complicating matters. That's where the filters become useful. A blue filter counters a predominantly yellow light and a yellow filter counters a mostly blue light (Yellow and blue being opposite colours on a digital colour wheel). If your walls are pink or purple or green . . well, your level of difficulty goes up.
When considering the aperture of the lens, shallow DOF pictures from F1.8 lenses is what you will want for portraits of single persons. . say a child or an adult. But when you have more than one person in the frame you will want to increase your DOF to a higher F number - say F4 or even 5.6 else two out of three may not be in perfect focus. So it may be wise to identify what your
majority subject is likely to be - portraits or wider group pictures - or action shots around the house to determine if you really want to spend the extra money you will need to buy an F1.8 lens, or will an F4 do just as well. Buy a lens that serves the
majority of your usage and work around the lesser usage by posing or lighting.
Coming to the part about EF versus RF lens on a RF body think about the following logic.
All the three major camera manufacturers (Sony/Canon/Nikon) now almost exclusively produce only mirrorless equipment. The converters such as the EF to RF were made for existing customers to continue using their previously purchased - already in use - lenses with the new camera bodies - to ease them into the mirrorless world without too big a financial hit, all at once. The expectation is that after some use of a new mirrorless body, the next lens they purchase will be a ML one while continuing to use older lenses they previously had. It is true that EF lenses are cheaper than RF lenses and will continue to drop in price. However, your first purchase of a camera or lens will not be your last - you will upgrade. At that time you will get better resale value from an RF lens than an EF lens.
One more thing - I made a mention above, about action shots around the house. For that you will need a
faster focusing lens (not to be confused with the generally used term
fast lens which usually refers to low F number lenses like F2, F1.8 or F1.4, not their focusing speed) which will quickly lock on to your subject(s) like children or pets running about or even people dancing at a function.
RF lens are generally faster at acquiring & locking focus than EF lenses, across the board. I hope this clarifies your purchase options, somewhat.
Get a stabilised EF-S lens and use it with the official Canon mount adapter. A flash would be very helpful for indoor photography, but direct flashes look awful. As others have suggested, you can use a light modifier or bounce flashes off the ceiling (doesn't work with black ceilings in restaurants and coloured ceilings can cause a colour cast).
You can also buy a cheap manual flash and learn to use it through trial and error instead of buying a costlier TTL flash.
Thanks guys for your valuable inputs, I would definitely try to learn about flash photography, never tried TBH. I tired with inbuilt pop-up flash but it looks very harsh, similar to flash photography on smartphone, I think I would probably need external flash. What would be some entry level options compatible with Canon R10? I looked up some options on Amazon but most low budget flashes mention compatible with multiple cameras (Nikon, Canon, Fuji etc. for e.g. this one from Godox (https://www.amazon.in/TT520ii-Speedlite-Recycle-Compatible-Olympus/dp/B081S2N2Z2))
Do these flash works fully compatible with Canon R10 or there is some catch?
Also, for fast moving subjects like kids, flash photography will work where I need to take couple of photos in burst mode to get a perfect shot?
Quote from: Nishit Dave on January 24, 2025, 12:49:11 PMGet a stabilised EF-S lens and use it with the official Canon mount adapter. A flash would be very helpful for indoor photography, but direct flashes look awful. As others have suggested, you can use a light modifier or bounce flashes off the ceiling (doesn't work with black ceilings in restaurants and coloured ceilings can cause a colour cast).
You can also buy a cheap manual flash and learn to use it through trial and error instead of buying a costlier TTL flash.
Official Canon adapter is 7-8k I saw one guy selling no-brand adapter for 4k, that would be good option or I should opt for branded only?
Quote from: bb_13 on January 24, 2025, 11:09:37 PMAlso, for fast moving subjects like kids, flash photography will work where I need to take couple of photos in burst mode to get a perfect shot?
It depends.
For most budget flashes, if you set your flash to manual mode in low power and the batteries are fresh, you may get 2/3 shots in a burst before the flash switches off to recycle. Practically that means that in a burst of 5 shots, the first 2 may be lit by flash and the balance 3, not. Generally speaking, you
cannot reliably depend upon a cheap flash to support burst mode.
Quote from: DeepakS on January 25, 2025, 12:41:29 PMIt depends. For most budget flashes, if you set your flash to manual mode in low power and the batteries are fresh, you may get 2/3 shots in a burst before the flash switches off to recycle. Practically that means that in a burst of 5 shots, the first 2 may be lit by flash and the balance 3, not. Generally speaking, you cannot reliably depend upon a cheap flash to support burst mode.
Manual mode as in? The flash will sync with camera right or I am misunderstanding something here, won't the external flash will work similar to on-camera pop-up flash?
Manual mode means you decide the power output of the flash (and the zoom setting if it has the feature). It does not do TTL exposure adjustment in this mode.
This mode works well in macro photography, especially if one is photographing a skittish insect that might fly off with the pre-flash that's required for TTL. Manual gives you accurate control on flash power.
https://fstoppers.com/gear/dont-be-afraid-use-ttl-flash-use-it-correct-way-best-results-618710
Camera flashes have several modes, most of which control exactly when it pops off - earlier or later in the exposure giving the picture a very specific effect. These effects are not the glitzy glam sort but meant to exert control on the look of the image.
In all modes including manual, the flash will sync with the shutter release. Most of the modes take some input from the camera - the ambient light detected, shutter speed etc before giving the flash the signal to pop. All have some degree of automation. Of them "manual mode" allows most control by the user re the amount of power (read brightness) & spread, of the flash.
External flashes work much better than on-camera pop up flashes. Which is why pop-up flashes exist only on cheaper entry/intermediate level camera bodies. You will not see them on higher end camera bodies.
A word of advice: if you are really interested in learning about flash, get online and find resources that teach you the whole thing systematically. Here, before you learn the basics, answers from different responders, will only confuse you.
Quote from: bb_13 on January 24, 2025, 11:14:45 PMOfficial Canon adapter is 7-8k I saw one guy selling no-brand adapter for 4k, that would be good option or I should opt for branded only?
I would recommend a branded one for peace of mind, and if you are planning to use the adapter for a long time.
Quote from: DeepakS on January 27, 2025, 07:02:44 AMA word of advice: if you are really interested in learning about flash, get online and find resources that teach you the whole thing systematically. Here, before you learn the basics, answers from different responders, will only confuse you.
Can you please suggest any YT video series or any website, resources etc if you have any.
Just search One light Zack Arias.