Month: January 2018

From My Office: The Canon Printer Without Ink Cartridges

by

I’ve had this printer, the Canon G3200, for about a year now and I keep meaning to tell you guys about it. It’s part of a new line of printers from Canon called “Mega Tank”. As you can see from the photos, it has ink tanks instead of the typical cartridges that are found in most small printers. Refilling the ink is a simple matter of buying bulk ink in a bottle and pouring it in. Even if you buy Canon ink, it’s still much cheaper than the old scenario of replacing entire cartridges, and there’s also cheaper third-party ink …

Read more

My Favourite Canon Multipurpose Lens Trifecta

by

These are the three lenses I usually grab if I’m heading out for a day of photography and want to be prepared for anything! With this kit I have a focal range from 11-400mm and can tackle everything from landscapes to astrophotography, portraiture, sports and wildlife.

New SanDisk Extreme Portable SSDs Look Cool!

by

It looks like SSD pricing has really turned a corner this year and I’m seeing products that are less then half the price, and half the size of the ones that were on the market last year. G-Technology launched a series of small, USB-C enabled rugged SSDs, and now SanDisk has done the same thing with the Extreme Pro SSD. Since both SanDisk and G-Technology are both Western Digital companies, it’s entirely possible they contain the same drives, but the external styling is quite different. The SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD looks to be significantly thinner than the G-Technology equivalent, and …

Read more

Behind the Shot: Sky Pilot Pano

by

I was tweaking a few galleries on my website today when I came across this panoramic photo of Sky Pilot mountain in Squamish, BC. The smaller peak on the right-hand side is called the Co Pilot. This photo was taken from a viewing deck outside the lodge at the top of the Squamish gondola, just a few seconds before sunset. You can see the last light of the day is just kissing a few parts of the mountain, but largely the whole thing is in the shade by this point. Something about the symmetry of this scene made me want …

Read more

How Not To Perform Autofocus Microadjustments

by

As I mentioned recently, I’m working on some in-depth tutorials for Shutter Muse about autofocus microadjustment, which is a feature of some mid-to-high end cameras that allows you to fine-tune the autofocus performance of particular lens and camera combinations. Perhaps microadjustment is something you already do, and maybe you even own a LensAlign II or a SpyderLENSCAL? Well, during my research, a bit of lateral thinking lead me to discover something which many people are getting wrong when they are performing microadjustments. These days all cameras have a live view function, but what many people aren’t aware of is that …

Read more

Do You Microadjust the Autofocus On Your Camera?

by

A few days I was performing some microadjustments to my camera’s autofocus system and I snapped a photo of my setup and posted it to my Instagram stories with the question “do you microadjust your cameras and lenses?”. I wasn’t thinking too hard about it at the time, I was just snapping a quick photo of day-to-day life behind the lens as I often do on Instagram. Some of the responses to the question caught me by surprise though! I’m paraphrasing them slightly, but they loosely speaking they fell into 4 categories You know, this is the reason I use …

Read more

LaCie DJI CoPilot Backup Device

by

I always keep one eye on announcements at the Consumer Electronics Show that rolls around in January every year. Whilst major camera launches tend to happen later in the calendar year, CES is often the place where exciting new peripherals are revealed, such as new hard drives and LCD monitors. This year the product that has got me most excited is the DJI CoPilot from LaCie/Seagate. The naming of this product is confusing though! Some people are referring to it as a Seagate product, and some people are referring to it as a LaCie product. LaCie is owned by Seagate, …

Read more

How to Speed up the Charging of Your iPhone

by

Like a good many people, I rely on my iPhone for work but I’m constantly trying to keep it charged. I have a collection of scattered chargers in my home and I usually try to add a little more juice to the phone whenever I’m near one. I would never think of using the charger that actually came with the phone, but the other day it occurred to me that this might not be a well known suggestion, so here I am today to tell you all why… The little USB charger than comes with an iPhone is the same …

Read more

Behind the Shot: New Year’s Eve in Whistler

by

Happy New Year folks! In this BTS post I’m going to be talking about a nightscape photo of the Whistler, BC, that was taken right as the clocks ticked over into 2018. Equipment Used for this Shot Having just returned from a two-week vacation over the holiday period the day before, I decided to get right back to work on December 31st. Mountains of fresh snow had just fallen in the valleys around my home town and a high pressure area was set to bring clear skies. On top of that, a nearly full moon (91%) was scheduled for the …

Read more

Gear of the Year 2017

by

For the last few years I’ve written an end of year post summing up my favourite and most used photo gear of the past 12 months. I don’t sit down to write this with a specific number of items in mind so we’ll just have to see what springs to mind as I keep typing. Canon 11-24mm f/4 L I’ve had an interesting journey with the Canon 11-24mm f/4 L, and previously written about why it was the lens I wasn’t sure I could love. This year I made more effort to carry around its significant bulk, and I was …

Read more