Tag Archives: Canon
It’s not the body, it’s the glass! (New Canon gear…)
Okay, while everyone is salivating (or slamming) on the new 60D Canon just announced, let’s not forget that it’s not really about the body upgrades – it’s the glass we want to invest in. And, true to form, there are also a significant number of additions and upgrades to the Canon lens line-up that bear some discussion, so here we go: Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye USM lens – Touted as the worlds widest fisheye zoom, it’s an impressive feat, but not many shooters really need such a lens. At $1400 price point, the price point will likely be too … Continue reading
The 60D Cometh! New Canon Gear!
It’s official – about ten minutes ago I got the word from the horses’ mouth directly (a.k.a. Canon), that the new 60D is hot off the presses! Rather than spout all the technical details, (which the rest of the blogosphere will do in short order), here’s the ones I like the most and why: The Vari-Angle Clear View LCD Screen Just the other day over on Camera Dojo, I was lamenting with Kerry Garrison about how the LCD’s in Canon EOS bodies didn’t have the resolution. In addition to having the tilting LCD for a variable angle of view (great … Continue reading
Canon Rebates Announced
With the economy being in the belt tightening times, the time for Canon rebates could not have come sooner. They announced them on Sunday, and you have until July 10th to cash in. The full page of rebates is available here, but of specific note are the lens discounts that you can get at reduced prices include two that I have had my eye on for a while:
An interva-what?
A friend of mine asked me if I had any recommendations the other day about time lapse…specifically software for post production. It’s a great question and brings up a subject that I am actually quite interested in, although I have no hands-on experience with as of yet. He’s got a Nikon D300, which apparently has the feature built in, so lucky him, because I need to go find an intervalometer now! An interva-what? You heard me – an intervalometer! It’s just a fancy name for a remote control timer. I like the former though as it’s cool sounding word! … Continue reading
Saving Money is Always Good
In photography it’s pretty much accepted that you get what you pay for. If you want super fast glass with pristine optics, then expect to pay for it. Alternatively, if you’re on a budget, don’t expect apertures in the 2.8 range do bring the sharpest images. You can also kiss things like Image Stabilization goodbye (Vibration Reduction for the Nikonian crowd). So, yeah, we all know that photography is a field where you have to spend money. But, this does not mean you have to spend money unnecessarily. When there are savings out there to be had, I am all … Continue reading
Building the Perfect Camera, Pt. 1
One of the more recent episodes from the guys over at This Week in Photography had them wrapping up their coverage of PMA, where they talked tech about all the latest cameras to come out from the various vendors. Canon was noticeably absent from the show, but it didn’t detract from an interesting comment I think Ron Brinkmann said where he wished he could pull all his favorite features from each of the cameras and basically make his own. To me, the idea screamed “blog post”! So, I decided to go for it. I went through every major SLR on … Continue reading
The Canon Rebel T2i – A First Look
Yes, that’s right, I am looking at the T2i, but like everyone else, my look is virtual rather than real, so for those expecting a hands-on review, you’ll have to wait until it ships. For what it’s worth though, here’s some initial thoughts on looking through the specs that Canon released. First off, their PR description from the landing page on their website:
The Life of a Lens
Yesterday we looked at things to consider when getting a new camera body…while the idea is all well and good, lenses are another story, and since we are likely to invest more in glass than in cameras (Have you seen the costs of some of the really good glass lately?), the life of a lens is something worth considering. In all things technology-related, there is a principle called Moore’s Law which states that technology will advance at a rate of re-doubling roughly every two years. While this principle was developed primarily for computers, we can draw similar analogies for digital … Continue reading
That’s why they call it a “Beta” (or RTFM)
The latest buzz to hit the photography world has been a trinity of buzz and hype. First, Canon announced the 1D Mark IV, then, on the heels of that, Adobe announced the release of Lightroom 3 in Beta form. To round things out, Lensbaby came out with a couple new optical shift lenses to appeal to the creatively inclined. I mentioned the 1D Mark IV last week, and today I was going to give a rundown of what the buzz is all about with Lightroom. We all know about the new features including exporting video (musical slideshows), and I was … Continue reading
Canon 550EX Review/Eulogy
Hardware Review/Eulogy – The Canon 550 EX Ah, how I loved thee, the Canon 550 EX, with your 3 flash modes, ETTL, Manual and Multi mode. You were especially wonderful because of how well the ETTL worked in conjunction with the Canon bodies. Your typical standard hotshoe fit every Canon SLR from the first days of DSLR’s (I think)), and you worked beautifully both as a slave and as a master via the toggle just below the button panel. Another especially nice feature you had was the variable power settings when in manual, where I was able to adjust you … Continue reading
Super Sigmas, photo walks and seminars!
Lame teaser alert, but that’s the title for the podcast over at Learning Digital Photography. Make sure to stop over to the podcast and download the show today! Here’s the show notes (I may add to these as I remember link references – if any are missing, let me know in the comments so I can be sure to add them…) The last day to enter your photos for the Lightroom giveaway is super close – so get your shots in the Flickr thread here pretty soon! Adobe updated the ACR to 5.4 (still in beta), and is downloadable here … Continue reading
The 70-200L f4.0
In keeping with the last few weeks of hardware reviews, I am taking a look in my own bag one more time to bring you this weeks’ hardware review: the 70-200mm L lens from Canon. Canon has several variants on this lens, with different minimal apertures both with and without Image Stabilization (IS). So, in the interests of full disclosure, this is a non-IS lens, and the aperture range is the standard one, 4.0 to 5.6. So, with that distinction being made, we’re off and running: The “L” distinction is one that bears discussion right off – Canon only gives … Continue reading
Shooting tethered with Canon gear
I’ve not seen much coverage of how to shoot tethered using the Canon proprietary software, so for today’s post, I thought it might be useful to offer the Canon perspective here (since the blog bears the moniker of my camera vendor of choice). For those who are Nikon shooters, I would highly recommend reading the post Scott Kelby did a while back that shows how to shoot tethered into Lightroom. While he walks you through the Lightroom element, he then discusses the Nikon approach… the counterpoint here is to take a look at the Canon approach. To start off – … Continue reading
Adobe’s DNG Converter
For many of us, an upgrade of one element in our tool kit comes with many unforeseen consequences and additional expenditures. Just as a new camera body can necesitate the need for larger memory cards, hardware upgrades can also come with software upgrades. The reason? Camera file formats! As camera vendors develop new proprietary formats for their raw file formats (CR2 for Canon and NEF for Nikon as the two predominant players in the game), the need has always existed to update your software to accommodate the new formats for body upgrades. The best example of this was when I … Continue reading
The Canon 10-22mm Lens Review
Happy Monday to all! Today is an exciting day here at the blog, because a new schedule of sorts is going to start, both to make reading more enjoyable, and to make writing more planned and easily executed. The reason behind the new flow is due to many listener questions asking a wide variety of questions, ranging from hardware questions to software questions, technical questions, work flow questions and the like. So, in the interests of providing answers to each of the wide subject matter areas, here’s the new schedule: Monday: Hardware – I’ll take a look at hardware components, … Continue reading
An Interview with Peggy Dyer…
As you may recall, a few weeks ago I had the pleasure of meeting up with Peggy Dyer, a professional photographer here in Colorado, and I got to learn about her latest project – One Million Faces. We got a chance to sit down a second time and I learned a lot more about her creative energy, where she finds inspiration, and about where the One Million Faces project found it’s genesis. In addition, we also got to talk in more detail about the Lensbaby series of lenses, starting with the first one ever, going through the most recent Lensbaby … Continue reading
Sixteen days folks…
Are you ready for it? The biggest commercialization of the year is only 16 days away, and retailers desperately need your business so they can keep flying in those corporate jets. Okay, many retailers don’t do that, but news stories like that make me very unwilling to spend my hard earned money on a car this year. (Not that I could even afford it, but that’s another story altogether!) So, what can I afford? Well, believe it or not, the significant other has asked for a camera for Christmas! That’s right – I am winning her over, she’ll become a … Continue reading
Don’t Cash that Canon Rebate Check!!!
We interrupt your normal blogging routines to bring you this alert from the Canon homefront (and being the Canon fanboy, I figured I’d better report on it here…) There’s a link off the Canon home page that quietly announces this. The linked page is here: Canon Rebate Announcement You can follow the link to confirm, but here is the text of the announcement: November 17, 2008. Dear Valued Customer, This is an official message from Canon U.S.A., Inc. The third-party rebate processing company that was responsible for processing rebate claims and issuing mail-in rebate checks for Canon-brand printer and video … Continue reading
Cactus Confusion
Well, I finally got the Cactus gear that I ordered online at GadgetInfinity last week. I had ordered their wireless trigger/receiver combo set and an extra receiver for the purpose of getting two lights to fire. I excitedly opened all the packaging and unwrapped it all, then – stop, hold the phones, and check this out – I read the directions! Yes, that’s right, an admitted geek read directions to make sure I utilize them right. After reading about these kinds of things on David Hobby’s Strobist site and over on the Flickr Colorado Strobist site, I wanted to make … Continue reading
Camera Profiles
So, today I had the day off work, and was catching up on a few things. I read through most of my piled up photo magazines, caught up on some NAPP tutorials, and some overdue email replies to various asundry things. One of the tutorials I watched was from Matt Kloskowski on installing camera profiles for ACR in both LR and CS3/CS4. It’s pretty cool stuff. Basically, Adobe has worked with various camera vendors to get the ACR to approximate the same colors that are shown in the vendor proprietary software (Digital Photo Professional for Canon and Capture NX for … Continue reading
Hot off the Presses: Canon 5D Mark II announced late yesterday!!!
Stop the presses! No What’s This today! CANON ANNOUNCES THE 5D MARK II!!! Here’s the first pics Canon released. The specs are pretty impressive and pricing is already amazingly low! I saw this over on TWIP, and verified it on Canon’s site. Here’s everything about it, specs, pricing, and photos! I didn’t want to jump on the 5d Mark II rumor bandwagon, but with this being public, I must say…”Holy Crap!” There’s also links at the end of this post to some video samples with audio in 3 of them from the camera. They look and sound pretty darn good … Continue reading
Forgetful Fridays
With my crazy work schedule, I completely forgot to write the Friday Funnies, so now it’s also the Forgotten Friday! So, what happened that was funny this week? Well, anyone that follows photography found out about the newest additions to the Canon and Nikon line-ups. Canon announced the 50D, and Nikon announced the D90 on the heels of Canon. While this may just seem to be news and events, what’s funnt about this is that there have been rumors about the next bodies that each would be releasing for a long time now, and most were resigned to waiting until … Continue reading
Thursday Thoughts v2.0
As I jump back in the saddle of topical discussions, I am going to actually share an experience I had with the readership today. You’ll notice the title of the post today includes a v2.0 – why is that? Well, because there are many versions of many things out there, and as photographers one of the things that is easy to lose sight of is the versioning of our firmware. See, cameras, like any other device in todays technologically advanced world, can have flaws that are discovered after it is released to the public. Most of the time the bigger … Continue reading
The 50D has surfaced
I got home tonight to quite a few emails of people asking if I’d heard of the 50D yet and whether there was any validity to the rumors flying around the internets. While Canon does not confide inme, I’ve seen some pretty intriguing information, and at the risk of perpetuating rumors, I will share some of what appear to be the more valid remors. Most specifically intriguing is a Chinese website for Canon that shows a banner of the entire EOS line, which includes a 50D on the right hand side of the banner. Hard to say whether it’s legit … Continue reading
What’s This? – Week 8
As readers have reminded me, I fell behind the 8 ball a little on sharing a “What’s This?” pic since we started our move from SC to CO. So, now that things are settling down again, the weekly photo challenge returns with gusto. See if you can decipher the object I’ve cropped down to this: Any ideas? Feel free to share them in the comments section below. Correct guesses win…well, not much, just bragging rights. But bragging rights are better than nothing, eh? So venture a guess, who knows – you may get to brag! In other news, the NAPP … Continue reading
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