The Quiet Picture

Last day with the 5D MkII that I was supposed to use for wideangle photography. Ironic then that most of the time I was zooming the 24-105mm lens at full tilt and of course found it short, so if I would ever get a full frame camera I would probably need to invest in a 70-200mm lens while I’m at it. And a new computer – my workstation had considerable trouble dealing with the 5D files which are twice the size of the 40D raws!

It was a sunny day but I’m definitely having trouble of making use of the evening light. I’ve never been quite as into sunset light as I know that I should be as a photographer, but shooting at sunset is not nearly as easy as setting up your tripod and waiting for the light to happen. You have to choose your subjects with great care, scout ahead and then double check in the evening. It’s the shadows – the thing you thought would be nicely lit is suddenly shaded in the evening. And shadow is something we have plenty of around here. In small scale, it’s the forest. In large scale, it’s the hills. What it means that you don’t ever really get to see the actual sunset, the time when the sun “officially” sets. It will be gone behind the nearest hill long before it has actually set. There are no grand views here and even if you do find a good viewpoint, there is so much logging that the landscape is guaranteed to be ruined in every direction.

Or then I just haven’t learned how to handle the evening light. I’m fairly sure that it’s exactly the same problem with sunrise light – it’s just that I rarely bother to wake up early enough to check it!

When I lived in Ljusdal, I used make long trips by car in search of nice places to photograph. When I moved to Loos, the car got some rest and I found many good spots within walking distance. And a lot of more great locations are just a few kilometres further so there’s not a lot of driving required anyway.

But today I felt like doing a road trip again. I had found one interesting location when studying the map and I decided to make a big de-tour getting there. Loos is in the north-eastern corner of Finnmark, and there’s a lot of interesting nature in Finnmark. History as well, but I’m more interested in the landscape, even if I’m a Finn and get an occasional kick out of seeing the Swedish spellings of the old Finnish names! My company on this trip was a Canon 5D MkII that I got to borrow for the weekend. To be honest, I wasn’t quite as keen on the camera as I was on using a wideangle but since there was no wideangle lens I could get my hands on (that would be a wideangle on the 40D), the full-frame camera did fine with the 24-105mm lens of mine.

I really should have stopped at every interesting place, but for whatever reason, I drove past most of them. This small tarn was the first spot I saw so it was a good beginning, but then after a while… how many nice tarns can you shoot during one trip? After I had set up the tripod for the picture and started attaching the camera, I found out to my horror that I had forgotten to switch the camera plate from the film camera to the 5D. I had no way of securing the camera on the tripod! After thinking about it for a moment, I noticed that the rubberised zoom ring of the lens provides enough friction to make the camera stay on the quick release platform by itself, so with the remote release in one hand the camera strap in the other (so I could catch the camera if it slips off!) I was able to use long shutter speeds without compromising image quality. By long shutter speeds I mean ISO 50 and polarising filter – it’s not handholdable even in sunlight. This makeshift support system worked fine for horizontal pictures, but it was a whole lot trickier to balance it for vertical. Adjusting the camera position for the composition was a real pain in the butt in horizontal, and it was near impossible in vertical!

The goal of this trip was Amsen, a large-ish (in local scale) lake north-west from Fågelsjö. I saw on the satellite picture that there’s a really long curving beach at one end of the lake, and sandy beaches are rare enough around here that it would get my attention. I had a suspicion that it would be difficult to get that long beach in a picture so that you can actually see what it is, and indeed it turned out to be even worse. You can see the beach in the horizon, but obviously it’s impossible to appreciate it from this earth-worm perspective. And I didn’t find many other opportunities either, the place is ruined by logging which reaches all the way to the shore so just trying to avoid the ugly wasteland reduced the composition options to minimum. Having said that, it was interesting to see the place. Never seen anything like it in this corner of the world and I might go back there one day, to explore it better than I did now.

And the 5D MkII then? Interesting. It has ISO 50 which I love. Honestly, if the next version in the x0D series has ISO 50, I’d seriously consider switching. That is more important to me than any other feature, closely followed by weather-proofing. But working with a full-framer gave me a problem I never have with the 40D – vignetting with filters. I was still seeing black corners at 28mm and what kills me is that the vignetting was evident in one picture but not the next, when they’re both taken at 28mm with the same filter, with only a slight difference in composition. I can only speculate that I rotated the filter in between the frames and the glass element is a little bit loose so that it would hang down a little bit in some position. I only saw the vignetting in the upper corners which would support this theory, even if it sounds a bit strange. In any case, it’s not the camera’s fault. The camera is fine, but it’s not good enough for me to upgrade. For one thing, I can’t afford it. For the second, my 40D still works and that is good enough for me!

A couple of weeks ago Canon announced a whole pile of new products, including a Powershot G11 and S90. There was no SLR in the announcements but I guess they wanted to release it separately so people would pay more attention – so enter EOS 7D! It’s a follow-up to 50D (and here I was thinking it would be called 60D, duh) which means that it’s the camera that I would potentially upgrade to (my plan is to hop over every second release). So I pored over the specifications but the first thing I saw put me off immediately – 18 MP. 18?! For a sensor that is only marginally larger than on my 40D. Forget it. That’s almost as crazy as 15 MP on the G10, and Canon seems to have realised that and jumped off the megapixel race and reduced the pixel count to 10 MP in the G11. So one would hope that they would’ve been equally smart with the 7D, but apparently they plan to cater to an un-educated audience who think that more pixels is better.

So I’m disappointed to say the least. But as I continued reading the specs, I was kind of relieved to find nothing of any interest to me. HD Video is there, of course, but for the life of me I can’t think of any reason why I would want it. Just something extra I’ll be paying for, no thanks. It’s probably too much to hope for a non-video alternative in the future.

However, it’s not all that bleak. The new camera has weather sealing! Yes, after years of waiting, it’s finally there. But during all those years of waiting I’ve learned to photograph in inclement weather without weather sealing and I’ve never had a problem, so ironically, I don’t really need the sealing now.

And the best news of all – since the 7D is definitely not for me, I can save my money for something useful. Like a MacBook Pro!

* * *

DP Review has a hands-on preview of 7D.

This day was even worse than yesterday – just as foggy, but now we got rain as well. Lovely. So it was another long walk with the G10 and this time I experimented with the ISO values. And again I agree with what everyone says, the IQ is usable up to ISO 200 and anything above that should only be used in desperation. This image is taken with ISO 200, it was originally full colour but trust me, the difference to this b&w version was minimal; the days don’t get much more gray than today. So although I’m not a fan of b&w, I’m kinda happy with this one (and it will work better when I can properly process the RAW in LR… please Adobe, please!). Just had to crop all around to tighten up the composition and then to 2:3 dimensions. It may seem that I’m really attached to the 2:3 format but the thing is that my brain is so programmed for it that I have trouble seeing my compositions in 4:5. It will be useful to learn it though, just in case I ever want to move up to medium format!

My first day day out with the new Canon PowerShot G10! And what a lousy day it was. By that I mean the weather – I wasn’t missing the 40D in any case so having the new camera to test meant that at least I got something done and not just sit inside all day watching an Indiana Jones marathon (I got the 4-DVD box yesterday!).

The G10 is pretty much what I expected – I had seen enough test pictures before I got this camera to know what to expect, and my own pictures confirmed the impression so I got the camera I wanted. I tried a variety of techniques, handheld with IS, timer and a tripod, bracketing for an HDR, and also tested the lens adapter so I could mount a polariser filter and just to make it more fun, used the 3-stop built-in ND also.

So if IQ is not an issue, then I have to talk about the controls. It felt like I had to fiddle with the buttons and dials a lot more than I do with my 40D. Logically thinking, there isn’t anything more involved in taking the picture than with the dSLR so it must be quite simply that I’m not used to the controls yet. I know the 40D buttons with my eyes closed so hopefully I will learn to know the G10 equally well as I keep using it.

Which only leaves the software. The latest Lightroom version was released just before the G10 so I’m stuck with Canon’s Digital Photo Professional, which I hate with passion. Ok yes it’s probably because I’m not used to using the software… but seriously, even if I was familiar with it, I’d still hate it. Please Adobe, release a patch for LR – yesterday wouldn’t be too soon!

You’re not gonna believe this but… I just got myself a compact camera, Canon PowerShot G10 to be exact.

I have wanted a small portable camera for a long time now. The 40D is no lightweight, neither is the 24-105mm zoom lens. Put these together and you’re dealing with a big and heavy camera. There are also a lot of times a big camera is not practical to have and then there’s also my high threshold for taking a picture in the first place, I mean that every time I pick up the 40D I want to take a serious picture. For example, the hike we did in September. Sure I have some nice pictures from it, but I completely failed to capture feeling of the hike itself. What I mean is that there is a time and place for snapshots and the 40D is no snapshot camera to me, but the G10 however, you just dig it out from your pocket, switch on and snap. No threshold to get over!

I mentioned the Panasonic G1 a while back. I was hoping that it would be small enough to be that portable camera I wanted, but now I’ve seen it compared to other dSLRs and it’s actually not dramatically smaller. Not to forget that I would then be investing in a second system with lenses and accessories and all, so I decided against it.

So G10 it is. It’s been receiving rave reviews and it seems to be a professional photographer’s #1 choice in compact cameras.

Pros

• Nice zoom range 28-140mm (the 28mm wideangle actually beats the 38mm I get on my 40D+24-105mm zoom). Sure I’d like to have more at the long end, but 140mm works. Especially when I have 14.7MP to crop from.
• RAW
• Nice functions like live histogram and built-in 3-stop ND filter
• Conversion lens adapter with a 58mm filter thread so I can use my existing filters with a step-up ring (which I already happened to have)
• Other must-have features like bracketing and manual mode

Cons

• It’s a compact camera, what can I say. 14.7MP on a small sensor, that’s just insane. With today’s technology they should be able to create a kick-ass 5MP compact but unfortunately Joe Public can only appreciate the pixel count and not picture quality.

Also-rans

• Panasonic LX3. Panasonic had the good sense of jumping off the megapixel-wagon and created a nice 10MP camera instead. Unfortunately, it only barely beats the G10 in picture quality but what really put me off was the zoom range. Sure, 24mm wideangle is unique but 60mm at the long end…? It would never work for me.
• Nikon P6000. Just simply not as good as the G10.

First impressions

It’s heavy. I mean, I had read the specs so I knew how much it weighs, but it’s still much heavier than I thought. However, it’s easy to see where the weight comes from – the camera is solidly built and it feels like a real camera and not just some toy. Even the tripod socket is metal, and you don’t often get that with compacts. Secondly, there are a lot of buttons and controls, my 40D seems very simple in comparison. I might even have to read the manual!

The battery is still being charged but I will have to wait until the weekend to try it out in any case, so watch this space!

I did my homework and found out that many other people have discovered exactly the same problem I have with the shutter release button, and it looks like it’s not just the 40D but other models as well. Judging by what people have written, Canon denies that this is a construction issue and sure enough when I called the support “this is the first I’ve heard of it”. So I’m on my own to get it fixed unless the Canon service centre agrees with me that this is a factory fault and the 3-year extended warranty applies.

I did some testing tonight and found out that the problem largely depends on how I press the button, it’s a little bit loose so not all clicks are created equal. Most of the time it happens when I pause halfway to focus and meter, then when the button is pressed fully it blanks out. If I don’t stop in the middle, it’s normally ok. It also seems to be possible to press down the button in different ways, so if I put pressure on one side only it’s a dud, but if I keep my finger right in the middle of the button so it’s pressed straight down, it works. (Did that make any sense?)

Anyway, since I have to pay to get this fixed, I’ve decided to keep using it as it is now, the problem is intermittent and I have a semi-decent way of avoiding it. I don’t want to send it to service and pay for the postage and examination only to have it returned with nothing done because it was working fine when they tried it. So I will wait until it is really broken, the cost to fix it will be the same anyway.

I’ve had 6 Canon cameras in a row and this is the first one with problems. I guess my luck was bound to run out.

Grrr.

I have this recurring dream (or nightmare) that I’m looking at a photo opportunity of a lifetime and then when I press the shutter button, nothing happens. Well, unfortunately it looks like this nightmare is now becoming true – lately the shutter button is not responding as it should. Halfway it’s just fine, it focuses just as fast as it always did, but then when I press it fully to take the picture – nothing. Zip. Nada. This happens maybe 1 time out of 5 and it’s not related to the lens I use (I’ve tested with two Canon L-series lenses). No such problems when using a remote, so it’s only the camera shutter button that’s now starting to act up.

A real nuisance when I’m photographing moving subjects like the birds with the 300mm lens. Having to use the remote makes the process very un-intuitive because you have to keep your right hand on the handle anyway to move and balance the camera, and then the left hand is on the lens to steady the rig which is not very comfortable when you also have to operate the remote.

Definitely a bug, not a feature.

Let’s see… I bought my camera in September last year. They come with a 1-year warranty, right? Bummer.

Canon is going to release a follow-up to 40D just a year down the road, quick pace. The 50D is built on 40D so it’s not really a new model, I’m surprised they gave it a new model number instead of a “Mark II” tag they normally put on these enhanced models. But I guess it’s easier to market a new model than a new version.

Some new features:

• 15.1 megapixels
• higher resolution LCD
• higher ISO
• better noise reduction
• peripheral illumination correction
• Auto Lighting Optimizer
• Creative Full Auto (CA) mode
• better Live View

So is there anything I want? Nope. I haven’t needed to stretch the 10 MP of my 40D so the only thing 15 MP does is that it takes up more disk space. I’m happy with the LCD, I hardly ever use the high ISOs, I can do all my image editing in Lightroom so I don’t need these functions like peripheral illumination correction in camera, I only use the manual mode so this new CA mode will be lost on me, and I’ve only ever used Live View once on my 40D… so I guess the only enhancement I might be interested in is better noise reduction, but it remains to be seen how good it really is. I’m not really suffering from the 40D noise and this one feature alone is definitely not worth the money.

I reckon that Canon doesn’t really expect 40D users to upgrade (and indeed, 40D will not be retired but will be kept in production parallel with 50D), but the 50D is there to help Canon keep their market share. The other camera makers are catching up, and I think that if Canon wants to keep on top of things, they need to come up with something better than a “Creative Auto Mode”. How about proper weather proofing, for starters? Now that would get me thinking for sure!

Canon 300 f4L IS, ISO 640, f4 @ 1/160

There’s not a lot of light but there’s even less subjects to shoot. So the squirrels are getting fat on the seeds and nuts…

Under these lighting conditions, I have to contend with long shutter speeds despite a high ISO. The 300mm lens has Image Stabilisation (IS) and I make use of it, hoping that it will compensate for the slow shutters. I’m using a beanbag but sometimes it feels like I’m making the rig shake just by holding my finger on the trigger. Thus, use IS. There’s just one problem. For those of you not familiar with Canon’s IS technique, it was introduced in 1995. The 300mm f4L lens that I’m using was one of the first ones to benefit from it, but since then Canon has of course refined the technology and these days it’s a lot smarter and quieter than it used to be. For example, my 24-105mm f4L has IS which can be left on even when it’s mounted on a tripod, because the IS mechanism can detect it and it won’t try to stabilise when the rig is steady as it is. And there’s my problem. The old IS in the 300mm is pretty dumb so it will work hard – even when the rig is steadied on a beanbag and held down by hand…!

This is where you tell me that I should’ve known better. I could’ve gotten sharper squirrel images all along by trusting my beanbag and hands and switching off the IS.

Luckily it’s not like the old squirrel images are completely ruined, I mean do have some standards and the shaky pictures can only end up in the bin. But compare the old IS images with these new non-IS images I took today… DUH!