Canon 5d MKII + 17-40 f4L , 1/1000 ISO 800 f8.0
This is an unused shot from a commercial shoot for Whistler Blackcomb last spring. You can view the final ads here in a old blog post.
I’ve been on the road for the majority of the last month so posts have been a little sparse. Over the last few weeks though there have been quite a few announcements in the photography world with the PMA tradeshow taking place in the US. In case you missed any of them, here is a quick run down of new developments.
- Apple has announced Aperture 3. The third iteration of the popular image cataloging program features some big advances that look likely to bring it more in line with Adobe Lightroom. It even features full support for video including options to edit the videos in Aperture. Available to purchase here. You can download a free trial from the Apple website and give it a try for a month. At the moment I am using Lightroom 2.0 but I have been unimpressed with the speed of it. I’m definitely going to give Aperture 3 more than a passing glance, especially with its video support. I’ll report my findings but feel free to chime in with comments below of you have already given it a trial.
Nikon announced 2 new lenses , the 24mm 1.4 and the 16-35 f4 VR. With the 24mm lens Nikon is just playing catch up to Canon’s stunning 24mm 1.4 that I have recently purchased myself. I’m sure Nikon users will welcome the addition to their prime lineup. With the 16-35mm f4 VR though , Nikon looks to have produced a fantastic and currently unique lens, the only wide angle stabilized zoom available on the market. Previously Nikon had no compact f4 zooms where Canon now has a nice selection. Something that has been a frustration for Nikon shooters who would benefit from lighter weight lenses. With this lens though, Nikon has jumped right into that market AND added VR (for the canon shooters that is simply Nikon’s version of IS). If I were a Nikon shooter I would jump on this lens!!
Canon has announced a new Camera, the Rebel T2I or the 550d depending on which part of the world you live in. The camera features the same 18MP 1.6 crop sensor from the 7d and impressively retains all the same video functions as its more pricey brother. This is a very nicely specced camera for those looking to get into photography without breaking the bank. The 7d’s sensor is very capable of producing great images the the video functions of the T2I are much better than the other Rebels in the lineup. Obviously the T2I lags behind the 7d in terms of weather sealing and build quality as well as autofocus system but nonetheless its packing some impressive numbers for a camera retailing for much less than $1000!
Sigma introduces a slew of new lenses at PMA but the one that caught my eye was the new 8-16mm f4.5-5.6. This is a rectilinear lens designed for crop body sensors and produces the widest available non-distorted view yet for these types of cameras. All you guys out there shooting the 7d should definitely keep an eye out for a review. Looks like an interesting product. They also announced an 85mm 1.4 lens. Given the prohibitive price of the Canon version of this lens, this could be a winner too if the IQ is in the right ball park. We’ll have to wait for some reviews.
Samsung has now joined the field of high quality pocket friendly digi-cams with the new EX-1. Featuring an f1.8 24mm lens it sets itself up firmly against the likes of the Panasonic lx3 and the Canon G11 or S90. The f1.8 lens is the fastest in it’s field and it also features a flip out screen like the G11. Again, this has just been announced so we will have to wait for some reviews but it’s one to keep an eye on if you are interested in a high quality point and shoot that lets you capture RAW images.
Canon was not present at the PMA show but they will have a strong presence at the upcoming WPPI show next month. Expect at least a couple of new lenses from them, including the oft-rumored 24-70 2.8 IS (via CR). We should also be seeing the firmware update for the 5dMKII early next month that will enable 24p mode. Recent rumors have also indicated that there will be some new audio features enabled too , audio meters and maybe a live on-screen histogram. There were a lot of other things announced at PMA but the majority were consumer p&S cameras that I have no interest in. These are just the things that caught my eye though.
I’m in the lucky position right now to have all three of Canons latest cameras sitting here in front of me. I have been using the 5dMKII since January last year , I purchased a 7d in August and just over two weeks ago I picked up the new Canon 1dMKIV. Whilst I’m not going to do exhaustive comparative testing between all the cameras (I simply don’t have the time to do this and plenty of websites out there will do this anyway) I thought I should collect together some of the thoughts I have had whilst using these cameras. These 3 cameras cover a broad spectrum in pricing so they are likely to appeal to both professional and amateur photographers. Which camera would I chose for a particular task? Read on to find out. Continue reading ‘Camera choice, thoughts from an over crowded camera bag.’
If you are looking to become a ski or snowboard photographer then get ready for a long shopping list of gear you are going to need. Every time I pack my gear for a trip I’m amazed at the amount of gear I have amassed over the last few years. Some of it is fairly specialized and only necessary for people that shoot full time for a living, and some of it I would recommend for everyone looking to get into the business. In no particular order here is my top ten list of things you will need to get started! Continue reading ‘10 Things you will need to be a ski photographer’
The blog went quiet for a couple of weeks there as I have been away in Alberta shooting alongside the Poorboyz Productions crew as they work on their new Ski film called……ohhh I can’t tell you that just yet 
But I can tell you I just got a sneak peek at the trailer and it WILL blow your mind. We headed to the city of Edmonton on new years eve to shoot urban skiing for 10 days with Matt Walker, Leigh Powis, Mike Henitiuk and LJ Strenio. Poorboyz filmers Pete Alport and Cody Carter met us up there and we all piled into a basement apartment kindly provided by Mike’s grandparents. You can read a little bit about our exploits on the Poorboyz blog HERE. I wont go into too many details, the features we hit have to remain a secret for a while but you can see some snap from my Canon s90 on the Poorboyz blog and also on my Facebook page. While I am on the road I don’t have a lot of time for blogging but Facebook is a quick and easy way to keep people up to date with some behind the scenes photos so please become a fan if you’d like to follow that stuff! You can also find regular updates on my Twitter page. By the way, i’m still loving the s90. To know you have something that powerful in your pocket is very useful!
From an equipment point of view I pretty much took everything with me on this trip as I was driving there. 90% of my photos were shot with the 5dMKII though I did also have my 7D with me too. If I can use the 5d I always will, the image quality is leagues ahead of the 7d. The 7d gives me a fast FPS but the majority of urban images I use a multitude of flashes and that gives me the opportunity to use the 5d instead because i’m only taking one shot per trick. Occasionally I used the 7d for flash work too because of its slightly faster sync speed. The 7d is rated at 1/250 x-sync where the 5d is only 1/200. I was slightly disappointed to see that it was not possible to push the 7d past 1/250 without serious banding. With my old 1dMKIIN I could easily use 1/320 with no problems.
Portable office!
The temperature when we arrived in Edmonton was -20 Celsius and during the trip it regularly dipped below -25 and even to -30 on one day. I was initially very worried about what effect this would have on my gear. Nothing is really designed to be used in those conditions and temperatures that low was new territory, at least for such prolonged periods of time. I’m happy to report though that I had very few troubles and I was amazed at the resilience of my gear. Both filmers from poorboyz would eat through batteries on their video cameras even with hand warmers taped to them but I could easily shoot all day with one battery in my 5dMKII! I did experience slightly higher than average battery usage from my pocketwizards but nothing too shocking and all of my flash batteries lasted very well. In particular, the battery pack in my Elinchrom Ranger. It seemed to be totally unaffected by the cold and I got just as many full power pops out of it as I would expect in a normal situation! Incredible in such low temps where sometimes the battery would be exposed for up to 3 or 4 hours at a time. With the pocketwizard multimaxes, I did notice that the LCD display would go totally blank in the cold after a few minutes, but it would always come back to life at the end of the shoot once it warmed up. I did get one of my Multimaxes stolen during a shoot when i turned my back, so if anyone hears of one for sale in Edmonton perhaps you could contact me…..
I did receive a nice piece of news though while I was away, a call from Aden Camera in Toronto to say that a Canon 1dMKIV had arrived at their store with a note to say that it was for me! Only a week earlier I had inquired as to the availability of the camera in Canada and was told that it could be many months before I could get hold of one because a large number of them were being set aside for the Olympics. I have a couple of big trips coming up, including a trip with Salomon to Japan and I really wanted to get the camera for that trip so a big thanks to Canon Canada for getting me one so quickly! I will be posting info on it soon!
Next week i’m off to Retallack Cat Skiing lodge with Poorboyz, Dane Tudor, Mike Henitiuk and Charley Ager. It will give me a good chance to put my mew 1DMKIV through its paces!
Since I took delivery of my Canon 5dMKII last year I have had a lot of fun learning about shooting video and investigating the potential that the Canon DSLRs have in shooting HD movies. With so many people embracing the movie making capabilities of these new cameras, I wanted to check out some products that can potentially make your videos stand out from the crowd. A commenter on a previous post about video accessories for the 5dMKII, suggested that I try out some of the products from the US company Glidecam. At the time I had a few other things to check out but recently I saw some incredible war footage shot by journalist, Danfung Dennis. He used a glidecam HD-2000 to shoot the stunning footage for his documentary, Battle For Hearts And Minds. After seeing this I had to try it out and the kind folks at Glidecam were gracious enough to lend me one to try out for a few days. Read on to find out more…..
It’s been a bit quiet on the blog in the last week as I have been hard at work. Winter is in full force here in British Columbia and that means i’m busy every day with one thing or another. Last weekend I headed north to the remote township of Bralorne. Bralorne is an old gold mining town high up in the mountains north of Whistler. At this time of year the best way to get there is with a snowmobile and a 2 hour sled up the Hurley pass from Pemberton meadows. In the middle of the winter the area has some phenomenal skiing but right now it’s not quite deep enough. I haven’t spent a lot of time up there before so this was an exploratory mission to get a feeling for the place and start to learn some of surrounding mountains. I have a love/hate relationship with snowmobiles. They allow you to access incredible terrain, but they are expensive and incredibly unreliable. On the first day of the trip a buddy of mine had a problem that was to plague us for the rest of the trip. Eventually his sled broke down completely at the top of Green Mountain and whilst towing him out in the dark ( it was also about -15 celcius) his foot got stuck in the foot-well as he got bucked from his sled tearing the ligaments in his knee….. not so cool. Eventually we got him back to Bralorne on the front of another sled, and back to civilization in Whistler the following day.
Back at home in Whistler I got a call from Jeff Thomas or Poorboyz. He was just getting into town with Tim Durtchi to go sledding for a few days. The following day was far to stormy to sled so we headed up Whistler Blackcomb with Brandon Kelly and Tim. The snow was DEEP but the weather was stormy so we headed into the trees and hiked around for a few hours. Next day the weather wasn’t much better but we decided to head up Rainbow mountain on our sleds for a few tree laps to find some pillows. Snow was great, bit heavy but Tim got a couple of cool shots. Brandon’s sled broke down in the parking lot so unfortunately he didn’t make it up (remember what I was saying about snowmobiles?). The following day we headed back up to the same area, temperatures had gone up though and throughout the day the snow got heavier and heavier. We spent a couple of hours building a jump but by the time it was finished, the snow on the in-run was so wet and sticky that there wasn’t enough speed to hit it. We were all soaked to the skin and freezing cold from water blowing off the nearby trees so we called it a day. And that’s where i’m at ! A day off the mountains to catch up on some office work. Hopefully next week brings a bit more sunshine!
A couple of quick photography related thoughts:
- My insurance company got me another Canon S90 after mine was stolen in Mexico. I LOVE this thing, there’s a couple of snaps in the gallery below. Something i have noticed though, when shooting in RAW, the embedded JPEG that is displayed on the screen has a heavy noise reduction applied to it. ISO performance is great, but the on screen JPEG tricked me into thinking it was slightly better than it actually was.
- The last few stormy days in Whistler I have been shooting with the Canon 7d. The weather sealing on this camera is clearly very very good, I have drenched this camera all day long covered in rain and snow with nothing covering it and it still keeps ticking. It’s nice to know I don’t have to baby this thing too much.
- It wasn’t really possible to take a laptop to Bralorne so I took my Colorspace UDMA with me for photo backup duty. Despite temperatures getting down to -15 Celsius is worked just fine!
Sometimes you stumble across something you wander how you ever did without; something that has so many uses that it instantly deserves a tiny piece of the valuable real-estate in your rapidly filling camera bag. These two accessories from LCD manufacturer Ikan are two such items but before all you stills photographers switch off, thinking this is just for video applications, think again…. and read on. Continue reading ‘Ikan Cheese Stick JR & Articulating Arm’
Almost exactly a year ago I posted some information about the RED Scarlet Camera. Since that time there have been a number of “announcements” from the company but most of them have said more or less the same thing. “ The cameras are delayed , but here is some more computer generated graphics of something that might possibly look like the camera when it finally arrives”. I would imagine that Jim Janard and his crew at RED have had to re-think a few elements of their designs in an attempt to combat the surprising success of Canons DSLRs in the video field. Continue reading ‘RED Scarlet update December 09′
This past Autumn I was in Mexico on holiday. I took my newly purchased Canon S90 camera with me and was having a great time snapping pics with that little thing. The quality of the shots coming out of that tiny thing was really blowing me away. I wasn’t traveling with a laptop computer so my photos remained on the camera’s memory card. Unfortunately, on the fifth day of my trip, my camera was stolen while I was in a restaurant. This was the first time I have ever lost photos and I was truly gutted, more so than I ever thought I would be. I didn’t give the camera a second thought, but all I could think about was all the photos I had just lost. When I got back home I started to look into some possible solutions to this problem in the future. Sometimes it’s just not practical to travel with a laptop, so how do you keep your photos safe? Continue reading ‘Hyperdrive Colorspace UDMA review.’
