Month: November 2010

World cup bobsled in my home town

Posted by | Nov 26, 2010 |

I don’t often get to post photos of what I’m currently shooting because much of it has to stay under wraps until the clients have used them in the magazines or adverts. This weekend though I have my photojournalism hat on in my home town of Whistler, BC. The bobsled and skeleton world cup is here for the first round of the winter season at the Whistler Sliding Center that hosted the event for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Here is a photo from lasts nights 2-man bobsled event. Canada 1 bob piloted by Lyndon Rush grabbed joint second place in the event and I liked this shot of them pushing off from the start on their final run. Shooting in a snowstorm under artificial lighting in the dark is about as tough as it gets for sports shots so it really pays to have an f2.8 lens in this scenario. In my case I was using the Canon 300mm f2.8 L IS Even at f2.8 I was still at iso 4000 but the 1dMKIV handles that with no problem at all. Shooting in manual exposure is the way to go as the lighting does not change and I also used just the central AF point as that is also faster in the dark. A shutter speed of 1/320 was great for getting things mostly sharp but a little blur...

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Canon 5d MKIII speculation

Canon 5d MKIII speculation

Posted by | Nov 24, 2010 |

Ok lets have some fun this week!  What would you like to see from Canon in the 5d MKIII ?  I asked myself this question and this is what I came up with. There’s no doubt that the 5D MKII was a revolutionary camera both in terms of it’s video capabilities and also it’s full frame still image quality at a much more affordable price than then 1DS MKIII.  I have no official information on 1DS sales figures but it’s pretty safe to assume they took a huge hit with the 5D MKII’s introduction, to the point where the...

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My backup routine

Posted by | Nov 22, 2010 |

All hard drives will fail with 100% certainty. The only question is when ? It could be after a week, or it could be three or four years, but because they are mechanical it is a certain event. If you are not keeping redundant backups of your photos then at some point it is guaranteed you will loose some of your photos. They might be some family holiday snaps with only sentimental value or they might be your best selling stock images with a residual value of $100,000s . Either way there are some simple precautions you can take to prevent this from happening. Different sizes of photography business will benefit from slightly different routines. If you are running a huge photo studio with 10 employees working on projects constantly then check out Chase Jarvis’ site for info on that scenario. My business is relatively small in comparison because I do that majority of the work myself, shooting, archiving, editing and client delivery are all done from my workstation and most of the time done by me when I am around. So if you are a one-man-band then this will be a bit more suitable to your needs. There are plenty of other permutations on how to handle this but this is what works for me. I will go into specific downloading workflow and Lightroom work in future articles,...

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ThinkTank launches new long lens rain cover

Posted by | Nov 19, 2010 |

Think Tank Photo have just launched a re-designed version of their Hydrophobia 300-600 rain cover.  The name is a little deceptive though as you can easily use this on a Canon 800mm f5.6 lens too using the included cover extender.  Think Tank make some great rain covers and you can check out my review of the small Hydrophobia 70-200 HERE. The great thing about the design of this is that it stays on the lens even when it’s not raining, and then simply unfolds when it starts to pour so you only need to take your eye off shooting for a second to get your gear protected.  The new V2 Hydrophobia 300-600 features a tethered front rain cap to go over the lens shade when it’s not in use (just like on the 70-200 version) and a much larger see-through area around the camera body allowing better viewing of the controls and LCD on the top of the camera.  They also launched an eyepiece that is compatible with the Canon 7d too. Think Tank gear is available online from their store and any order over $50 (when you use one of these links) will allow you to select a FREE gift at the checkout where you can choose from a range of smaller...

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SBC Skier cover shot of Dane Tudor

Posted by | Nov 17, 2010 |

As a photographer there is very little that is more satisfying than walking into your local grocery store and seeing one of your images adorn the cover of your favorite ski magazine. When the issue in question is also the special 10th anniversary edition of the magazine it is even better! This photo of Dane Tudor was shot in Haines, Alaska while I was up there last spring time shooting alongside the Poorboyz Productions crew. You can read all about my trip in this post HERE. The line that Dane is skiing was one that he had his eye on for a couple of weeks and it’s actually called “Too Short”. We’d scoped it out and taken photos of it from the heli a couple of times and as we past the time waiting for weather to clear in our hotel room Dane kept returning to the same photo over and over again, studying every detail and every angle and even marking his planned route down it. As with everything in Alaska though you have to be patient and wait for the conditions to be absolutely perfect. That means weather and snow and further still, snowpack stability. This particular line only gets a small amount of side lighting right at the end of the day so we needed a full clear day where no clouds rolled in. After 10...

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