Why Aren't Extended Timer Facilities Built-in to my DSLR?

On the weekend whilst photographing the limestone pavement on top of Malham cove in the Yorkshire Dales I lost my remote timer switch. It was dangling from my camera and got tangled up in my tripod legs as I was moving my tripod; one of the legs closed, snapped the timer cord out of the socket on the side of the camera which then disappeared down one of the deep grykes in the limestone pavement, never to be seen again. Thankfully it wasn't an original (and very expensive) Canon TC-80N3 remote timer; my original TC-80N3 bit the dust last year when I managed to dangle it in salt water on a Scottish beach, this latest disaster was a only a considerably cheaper eBay clone.

However, this recent disaster got me thinking, why am I using a remote timer like this in the first place? I know part of its use is to isolate camera shake, but my main reason is so I can take longer exposures than the maximum of 30 seconds using the settings in the camera alone. Like a whole host of other landscape photographers I enjoy taking pre-dawn and sunrise shots, where the light levels are low and exposures times are long, often well in excess of the limiting and punitive 30 seconds maximum allowed by the camera settings.  As landscape photographers we are always being told that the best light to be had is within Golden Hours, that magical time around sunrise and sunset when the sun is below or only just above the horizon and suns light takes on a wonderful, golden, warm hue as it is filtered through the low atmosphere. Are there no landscape photographers at Canon? Does no one at Canon take exposures longer than 30 seconds?

My 5D Mark II is a sophisticated beast, with way more processing power than several of my early PC's no doubt (8086 processors .. remember them?), so why do I need a clumsy, dangly, plug-in wired contraption to take long exposures. Well I don't I hear several of you say; I can just put the camera in bulb mode and time my exposure; my 5D MII even has a second counter on the LCD display on the top, but that's if I could see the dam thing. Yes well, right, but that's not the point. The point I'm trying to make is that surely all the functionality of the TC-80N3 remote timer could (should) be added to the Camera by a simple firmware upgrade? The processing power is surely present in-camera already, probably the software functionality too, but I somehow doubt the if willingness is there for Canon to implement these features.

If you've never used a remote timer then perhaps you've missed out. Apart from being able to set exposure times from 1 second up to an incedible 99 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds, you can set similar values for the self timer (time before the shutter is activated), the interval timer (time between exposures) and exposure count from 1 to 99 exposures, although I'm not sure why the exposure count has been limited to just 99 exposures.  Thus with the TC-80N3 you can takes exposure of almost any length which is ideal if you happen to be a fan of using a 10-stop ND such as the Lee Big Stopper, low light photography at sunrise or sunset, or even astrophotography. I particularly like the ability to set the self timer to any value since if you ever tried shooting landscape with a 70-200mm zoom or any other long lens, then tripod vibration can be a big problem, so allowing a long rest period before the shutter is activated can improve sharpness considerably. God knows why you can only choose 2 or 10 seconds for this in your camera; surely we should be able to set any value?

It's funny how when every new camera is released that the makers focus (no pun  intended) largely on new features rather than improving existing ones, and much has done with movie features. We seldom see major changes in firmware to change old functions. Really we shouldn't need a device like the TC-80N3 remote timer, all that functionality should be in-camera, and  the most required would be a simple cable release remote cable. All this functionality would be a doddle for Canon to implement in a firmware upgrade but I get the feeling they would much rather you buy their over priced accessory. Thankfully their are many remoter timer clones to be bought on eBay and Amazon nowadays at less than a quarter of the price of an original Canon. I've tried a few and they are just as good, if perhaps not quite as good in build quality, but at a 75% saving surely sales of the originals must have plummeted.

I'd love Canon to take note but won't hold out my hopes; they seem obsessed with making our DSLR's into movie cameras these days. Some of us continue to be stills photographers!

Benro C-298 Carbon Fibre Tripod

Equipment Review & Retrospective

Reviewing a tripod nearly 5 years old may seem that I’ve missed the boat somewhat, but there’s a message to this story …

Back in October 2006 I purchased what I thought was my first professional quality tripod. Up until then I’d survived using a Manfrotto (Bogen) 190 Pro B aluminium tripod which, although adequate, I’d found weighty and not particularly stable, with the metal centre column being quite prone to vibration and an elastic wobble. This hampered the use of a large or heavy lenses and was especially prevalent under windy conditions. I also wanted a lighter, more compact tripod I could take on my travels. Carbon fibre tripods were the current rage then and the monthly periodicals and photo journals were festooned with articles praising their virtues which seemed to offer increased stability at a significantly lower weight. They also looked real cool! Like everyone else I aspired to owning one and had thought my photography had become sufficiently proficient to warrant the acquisition of such as tripod. Unfortunately my pockets did not run deep enough to afford the Rolls-Royce of the tripod world, those exceedingly expensive Gitzo tripods. There is an old adage saying that “you get what you pay for” and I’ll return to this later, however with limited funds, and after much online research and price searching, I bought a Benro C-298 carbon fibre tripod for £228.99 on eBay.

Why Benro you may ask? Well, they had more than a striking resemblance to Gitzo range of tripods, had that classy, grey, gun-metal finish like the Gitzo’s, looked very professional in the online photographs, and hey, even the name even sounds similar. In fact I read they were practically identical and were actually made from the very same Gitzo blueprints. Rumour had it that Gitzo had been lining up to outsource some of its manufacturing and had agreed a deal with a Chinese manufacturer in Guangzhou. Whilst they were in the process of setting up the factory, unbeknownst to them, their so called partner was setting up their own factory behind their backs and producing almost exact Gitzo copies which soon started appearing on the Chinese market. Gitzo pulled out but Benro gradually crept onto the tripod scene. I don’t know how much truth is in this story, but China’s blatant disregard for intellectual copyright is well known, so who knows, and for quite some time Benro tripods were only available online and on action sites like eBay. Even now they won’t ship to France or Italy so perhaps the story holds some element of truth. So, worth a punt perhaps, a Gitzo at a Manfrotto price? Well that’s what I was hoping for.

First Impressions

First impressions were remarkably good. The Benro C-298 tripod was well packaged, appeared very professional and quite well equipped. The tripod has 4 section carbon fibre legs, is lightweight and compact. It also has a multi-function centre column which you can pull up and clamp at various angles without having to remove it. It seemed well constructed, reasonably well finished (although there was some roughness to the finish of the carbon fibre visible at the base of some leg sections), and it came with a good quality bag, extra spike feet and a comprehensive tool kit. It even had a compass and a bubble level. Good value then? It certainly seemed so.

Field Use

The Benro performed quite well in the field. It was reasonably sturdy, much more so than my previous Manfrotto. The legs work just like the Gitzo model, where pulling out the Angle Adjustment Sliding Lock (Benro terminology, Sliding Stops in Gitzo language) at the top of each leg section allows the leg to set in 3 different positions, and although these could be a bit fiddly, the widest setting does allow the tripod to get pretty low down if necessary. The rubber twist locks on the legs seemed to work quite well, although I soon found working on beaches that these began to grate with sand, especially the lower ones, and required regular cleaning. The multifunction centre column I found to have it’s drawbacks however. Whilst seemingly a great idea, the metal bracket that clamps the centre arm into different positions by it’s very nature provides some elasticity and I found that with the arm fully extended with a head and camera attached, it was exceptionally prone to vibration. You could just slightly knock your camera (even pressing the shutter would do this) and the centre column would vibrate providing a resonance that not even my IS lenses could cope with. The way around this of course, was to use a cable release, mirror lock up and allow a lengthy period of time to allow the vibrations to damp down, but even doing this still resulted ion a number of un-sharp image captures. I also found this procedure quite prohibitive to my style of photography and eventually seldom used the centre column extended at an angle. Likewise I also had slight vibration problems with the centre column extended in the fully vertical position, but this is well documented problem common to almost all tripods with centre columns and not something exclusive to this particular Benro.  In most other aspects the the tripod performed admirably for quite some time, providing you took care of the caveats listed above. I used it some quite harsh environments too, most noticeably in the deserts in Oman and UAE of the Middle East and for a while it was a regular component of my travel bag.

Maintenance

As I mentioned above, sand posed a problem to the threads under the rubber twist locks. At first I was unsure how to clean these as I’d been advised that they just needed unscrewing, wiping and washing down with water. However, I also noticed the white nylon bushings were beginning to show signs of wear too. Luckily (and the only time I’ve know them to be there), Benro had a stand at the Focus on Imaging show at the Birmingham NEC in 2008 where I was able to ask one of their Chinese representatives how to clean the leg joints. He said just to grease them which is what I did and which seemed to improve things for a while. Apart from that just regular cleaning seemed to work and a good wash down if the tripod had been in salt water. I did notice the rubber feet have a tendency to become loose and gradually unscrew, so you have to keep an eye on those if you don’t want to loose one, but that’s common to many tripods.

Failure & Repair

In the summer of 2008 I began to have problems with one of the legs. The uppermost joint began to become stiff and didn’t slide in and out as easily as it had done before. When I took it apart I found the white nylon bushings to be heavily worn, the largest of which had split into two parts and had completely worn away around the edges, so much so in fact, that it hardly resembled the part from the manual. The largest bushing is the one that allows the legs section to move back and forth and stop the leg rotating. I cleaned this up as best as possibly but after a few days the leg became inoperable and the joint would not move in and out without force. In other words the tripod was rendered unusable. I inspected the other leg joints and all the uppermost sections revealed a high degree of wear/deterioration in the nylon bushings and this after only a couple of years of use. Now I was stuck, without a usable tripod, and regretting my decision to buy a cheap Chinese tripod. This time however, I bit the bullet and ordered a Gitzo.

The trouble was, having a Chinese tripod there was no way of getting this repaired in the UK or acquiring replacement parts. Plus I’d bought it on eBay so there wasn’t any prospect or returning it to the supplier. The Benro web site at that time too, was far from helpful, so I gave it up as a bad job and mothballed the Benro. Then early last year I read that Kenro (who had no prior connection to Benro what-so-ever despite the similar name) had become the UK distributor for Benro tripods. I called them but was told that parts and service had not been set up just yet but could I call back in a few months. It was not until September, 6 months later, before I managed to get a positive answer from Kenro that yes they could supply Benro parts. Several emails pursued before it was determined that I need to send the tripod in. Eventually I was informed that the damage to the anti-twist bushing was due to a split on the inside of the uppermost carbon fibre leg section and that this, and all the bushings would need to be replaced at a cost of £64.70 plus VAT. They didn’t stock these parts so would have to wait for spares from China. I paid up front and awaited their response.

About a month later I received my repaired tripod. All looked OK. There was a complete new top section to one leg (which included the bit where it attached to the tripod) and and the leg extended without problems. However when I put up the tripod it appeared to be leaning slightly off-vertical. At first I though I’d not extended one of the leg sections fully, but all were fully extended. Then I noticed the plastic sliding stop (that you pull to adjust the leg angle) on the replaced section was ever-so-slightly bigger than the remaining two, causing the new leg not to open as fully as the other two. I called Kenro to explain and then tripod was sent back only for me to be later informed Benro no longer had any spares to fit my particular model, thus this problem could not be fixed. Kenro refunded my money, but now I’m left with a rather odd tripod. One with a limp!

Ending Note

The C-298 tripod is still available from Benro, albeit under a slightly different guise. It’s now called the Benro C-2980F Vesatile Transformer tripod. It has a slightly different type of carbon fibre (apparently), has leg clamps instead of twist locks, gone is the gun-metal Gitzo-like finish in favour of a sleek, modern, black finish, but for all intents and purposes it’s the same beast. I wonder if the bushings are the same inside? These days Benro has almost acquired an air of respectability. You can but them on Amazon, eBay as always, and recently they have appeared at WarehouseExpress. They learn quick the Chinese. They may poach ideas, but boy are they a quick to adapt them and call them their own. There is also another make of Chinese tripod around now too. You may have come across them advertised in the American press, Induro. Sound familiar, well yes, they are Benro tripods with a different label.

Does this put me off Benro tripods, knowing that service, parts and repairs may be difficult to get? Well you may be just a tad surprised to hear I’ve bought another. But this one is a cheap tripod I’m using whilst working out in Africa. I bought it in Dubai for around £75. It’s nothing special, but adequate, but at that price I won’t care if it breaks, gets lost, or eventually drops to bits. I know it won’t last.

Nowadays I use a Gitzo GT-3541-LS systematic tripod for the majority of my photography/ It’s not been without it’s problems, however, whilst significantly more expensive, it is in a different league from the Benro, much more stable and is a joy to use. If I’d known then what I know now, I’d have saved up and bought a Gitzo first time around, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Just remember … “you get what you pay for”

 

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New Prototype 200-400mm f/4.0 Zoom Lens goes on Show from Canon

Equipment Announcement

“LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y., February 7, 2011 – Canon Inc. today announced the development of a new super-telephoto lens, the EF 200-400mm f/4L IS USM EXTENDER l.4x, for use with all EOS SLR cameras. A prototype of the new lens will be exhibited at the CP+ tradeshow, held in Pacifico Yokohama, from February 9 - 12, 2011.”

Much to everyone's surprise Canon announced a whole host of stuff yesterday including two new entry level DSLR’s, two new flash units, and upgrades to their wildlife long focal length specialist lenses. The latter comprise the EF 500mm f/4.0 MII and the EF 600mm f/4.0 MII, both of which are expected to be commercially available some time in March, but as you’d probably expect these are going to be very, very expensive and as such only available to serious pro’s and those blessed with wads of spare cash.

However, what really caught my eye was the announcement of a prototype EF 200-400mm f/4.0 IS USM EXTENDER 1.4x lens. That’s some title!  Nikon wildlife photographers have long since been extolling the virtues of the Nikon 200-400mm f/4 AF-S lens which also received an upgrade last year. This is a lens favoured by British wildlife photographer Andy Rouse and is generally accepted as just about the best multipurpose, wildlife zoom lenses around. It’s also a gap in the market place that Canon had failed (as yet) to match. Canon do of course have their EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6mm IS USM lens ( one of which which I own), but this design is getting quite long in the tooth and whilst it performs admirably on sensors sizes up to 12mp, todays 21mp plus sensors highlight it’s short comings in the digital age.

If you examine the press release picture above you can’t help but notice that peculir looking bulge on the left side rear of the lens. This houses the in-built 1.4x extender, and has a lever just above to engage or disengage the extender elements. The 1.4 extender can boost the zoom range from 200-400mm to 280-560mm. On an APS-C sized sensor then this would be the equivalent of a staggering 448-896mm! However, don’t get your hopes up as Canon failed to state whether this configuration will autofocus on the semi-pro and consumer bodies. The new lens will feature Canon’s high-performance Image Stabilizer technology and advanced optics materials such as fluorite crystal to provide top notch optical performance.

You may also notice the camera has a fixed tripod collar, 3 stabilization modes and also features a Focus Pre-set button. All new stuff.

A a wildlife photographer this sounds like a dream lens and one I’d truly love to own, however it is just a prototype and still obviously at the development stage. I just hope that when it does eventually hit the market it’s not going to be priced so ridiculously that photographers like myself will never be able to afford it. Maybe I am just dreaming though!

The Great Canon Rip-off – Sky High New Lens Prices!

EDITORIAL

  If you are a full frame Canon user like me I sure it won’t have escaped you that Canon have recently released a plethora of new highly desirable new L lenses. These include an EF 70-300 f/4.5-6.6 L IS zoom, an EF 8-15 mm f/4 L fisheye zoom lens, an EF 300mm f/2.8 IS Mark-II lens, and an EF 400 mm f/2.6 IS mark-II lens, not to mention version III of their 1.4x and 2x extenders.  Plus new mark-II versions of the 500mm f/4 and 600 mm f/4 lenses are also in the pipeline. That’s quite a lot of new glass. But have you seen the prices!

I’m sure that a few of these lenses may have been on your wish list as well as mine, but when I saw the prices I must admit I was simply gob smacked!

Lets take the extenders for a start. The current version II of these sell at about £260-£270 within the UK, but the suggested retail prices of the new versions are £549.99. That’s a price increase of around 107%. Sure there may be some improved optics, but a price increase of that much…wow.! They are going to have to be really, really good.

Next I’d like to mention the EF 300 mm f/2.8 IS USM lens. This is a lens I’ve have coveted ever since I had the chance to borrow one for a brief time at one of my kids school sports days. It’s a simply fabulous lens, receives 10/10 reviews and is generally regarded as one of the best pieces of glass in Canon’s current line-up. One wonders just how this could be improved? It’s also a lens that really seems to perform with the 1.4x and 2.0x extenders so would be ideal for wildlife photography too. Ever since that sports day I’ve paid close attention to the price of this lens, which was around £2,500 and just too much to fork out back then. To my horror the price of this shot up to around £3500 plus in January 2010 with Canon citing falling exchange rates (more on that below) necessitating an across the board increase in lens prices. To be honest the lens then became just a pipe dream.

The new version II of this lens is priced at a staggering £7,499.99 which is a inordinately large sum for a 300 mm lens no matter how good it may be. This is an increase of over £4000 on the previous model. How on earth can Canon possibly justify such an increase no matter how good the lens performs?

According to Canon the new 300mm f/2.5 mark-II has a the new IS version II, is a lot lighter due to new titanium components, and has 16 lens elements with high performance fluorite elements. However, the current 300mm f/2.8 has 17 elements, weighs only 150 grams more, and is practically the same size at only 4mm shorter. They look practically identical. IS-II is supposed to give quicker stabilisation and a up to 4-stops, but on spec. the new lens is going to have to have some sort of mind boggling, blistering, optical performance to be able to justify such a hike in price.

It will be very interesting to see what happens to the price of the EF 300mm f/2.8 IS mark-I. Normally you’d expect a lens to come down in price when superseded, but version-I is so good you may see existing supplies being snapped up quickly as many will view the mark-II as simply unaffordable.

 

The Yen Exchange Rate debacle

At the end of January 2010 the retail price of Canon lenses increased by an average of 30-40% across the board within the UK, with Canon citing the strengthening Yen against the British pound necessitating the price hikes. Well lets just have a look at that shall we. At the beginning of 2009 you’d get around 130 Yen to your pound, but from January through till August the value of the Yen to the British pound actually fell reaching almost 157 yen to the pound. This meant Canon were actually earning more Yen for their British sales within that period. Were prices reduced in the UK? No they remained pretty much the same. During the later part of 2009 the exchange rate stabilised at around 147 yen to the pound which continued through to the start of 2010.

At the end of January 2010 the rate fell to from 147 to around 133 and Canon  duly increase their prices. The pound has continued to fall steadily against the Yen throughout 2010 but even by September this year the average rate is 130 Yen to the pound. That’s exactly the same as it was in January 2009. Yet why are the same Canon lenses still 30-40% more dearer than 21 months ago?

 

Summary

I see little evidence from exchange rates for justification of such a huge increase in retail prices from Canon earlier this year and I also feel that the new lenses prices seem simply extortionate. To the serious amateur like myself, and no doubt millions others, Canon is simply pricing us out of the market and items such as these will be left merely for the super rich and high earning professionals. There’s no doubting Canons expertise, research and technology is absolutely top notch, but to see new models being priced at twice the price of the previous one smacks of greed and could alienate a large portion of it’s previously expanding customer base.  It’s a real shame to see this happening as there is, without any doubt, a boom in photography and many more photographers are aspiring to acquire better quality glass. It seems to do this Canon will require a substantially larger slice of your hard earned dosh from now on.

I guess I for one, will have to keep buying the lottery tickets and hope!

Wish List for the Canon 5D Mark III

Equipment Editorial

Now that I’ve proclaimed my top ten features I’d like to see in Lightroom 4. I thought I’d do the same for my other weapon of choice, my Canon 5D Mark II. The 5DMII was released back in September 2008, so has now surpassed that 18-24 month period in which camera models are typically superseded by newer and more feature packed versions. The annual Photokina show in Cologne is fast approaching too, which is normally the stage for the major manufacturers to announce their latest and greatest. Having said that, Canon have recently announced several new lenses, a new EOS 60D camera body, and probably stunned the Camera world by announcing the largest ever CMOS sensor at 120 MP. So can we expect anything new, well if you take heed of the latest internet rumours there will probably be no 5D Mark III till well into 2011?

The current 5D Mark II is a fine camera and for many has been proclaimed by many as just about the best camera out there for landscape photographers. There’s no denying it’s been a huge hit both with professionals and serious amateurs alike and in capable hands can produce superb images. It does have it’s ‘Canonesque’ quirks however, many which I highlighted in my article Canon 5D II – One Year On, and I doubt Canon would ever radically change or vary from their basic design, so I seriously doubt many of my wishes will be met. I’m not a huge fan of the video functions, which looking at the 7D and 60D seems to be the headline grabbing features. It’s not that I dislike video features, but just that being a still’s photographer, they are just not on my radar as priority items. Lets get back to basics please. Anyway here are my top ten, in no particular order:

• Built in GPS: this must be a long overdue feature and probably an easy one to implement. There are many GPS tracker devices out there (I have an AMOD AGL 3080) and the prices have dropped significantly in the last year to where you can pick one up for not much over £60, so the hardware addition should not be that expensive. Currently however, getting GPS data back into your RAW file EXIF metadata is still a tad fiddly although can be achieved by free software. I certainly hope Canon don’t take the route of an add on GPS device that sits in the hot shoe, that would be disastrous and no doubt expensive to the consumer. If GPS were in-built this would be an upgrade deciding feature for me.
  
• In-Built HDR processing: a complete wild card this one, but wouldn’t it be nice. If know the purists will always want total control on merging multiple exposures, but I’m sure Canon could come up with something pretty good.
  
• Electronic Level: this feature is present in the new EOS 60D and has been a regular features on competitors cameras for a while, so a must for any new Canon Camera now. At last we’ll be able to ditch the hot-shoe bubble levels, but we need to be able to see this through the viewfinder not just on the rear screen. 
  
• Quicker and Better Focusing: an absolute no brainer here, the current 9-point focusing system is long overdue an update, and many had hoped would have been updated with the 5DMII. The 7D features a 19-point focus system and even the new 60D  sports a 9-points system. Improved focusing in low light would be a big hit too.
  
• Bigger, Better and Brighter Screen: the 5DMII screen was a big improvement over the 5DMI, but I think there is still room for a much, much bigger screen. Wouldn’t it be nice to have one where we can actually use to made subjective decisions on our photographs. Oh and please, please can we have a one-touch button to zoom straight in for a 100% preview!
  
• 3 Stop or greater Compensation: It’s present on the 1D’s and needed on the 5D Mark III. Many photographers are now experimenting with long exposures and filters such as the Lee Big stopper and B+W’s 10-stop filter have greatly extended the landscape photographers day. You can just about see through the 10 stop filters with Live-View in normal light, but forget it in low pre-dawn or evening light. Canon need to take heed of this expanding and popular aspect of photography and allow tLive-view screen compensation so we can compose, focus, and adjust grads even through a 10-stop filter.
  
• User Configurable Auto-ISO: auto-iso is a great feature but it’s a poor implementation of this on the 5DMII. Currently Auto-Iso chooses ISO values between 100-3200. Please let the user specify the upper and lower limits. It seems Pentax can manage this, so why not Canon?
  
• Proper Camera User Settings: again, a great idea but a totally useless implementation.  User settings should be a useful starting point only. If you then adjust the aperture, ISO or shutter speed it should remain at those values. If you (like just about every other photographer I hasten to guess) have probably got got your auto-power off set for a short interval (as we all wish to preserve battery life), then as soon as your camera powers off, your User Settings are set back to their starting values. I don’t know any photographer uses the same settings for every photograph, so why on earth make them work that way? Make them work properly and give us several more!
  
• Ergonomics – Tactile Buttons & Analogue Controls: I know making all buttons alike probably aids the visual appearance of a camera body, but when you are fiddling around in low light they all feel the same and it’s easy to press the wrong one. Tactile buttons would be nice; one’s that feel different and are readily identifiable by touch. They could be alternate sizes, have a textured or imprinted surface. A rubberised and larger DOF button would be a big improvement too; that tiny little button is just too slippery and awkward to locate. I also still have problems pushing down the joy-stick Multi-Control button to access the Quick Control screen, so much in  fact I’ve mapped that to my Set button. I like analogue controls and the Control wheels are great. They just make more sense and are so much easier to operate than digital equivalents. The three principals settings for any photograph are, shutter speed, aperture and ISO. We have Control dials for the first two so why not for ISO? One the front of the thumb grip perhaps?
  
• An Eyecup that doesn’t fall off: another one of my major gripes (that I know is an impossible request). For a camera that costs as much as the 5DMII, the crappy little plastic eyecup is truly awful. If you’ve never had reason to remove this it may have remained in place just fine. If you use an angle finder like me, you’ll know, sooner or later the eyecup it won’t grip anymore and will easily come off. Now I always travel with a spare.

You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned resolution in any of the above and that’s because I’ll take it as a given that resolution will be increased and I suspect, to around 24 mp or greater.  An increase in resolution is sure welcome, but 21 mp is pretty good for me, so it’s just not on my list. Also my last few items are mainly issues I have with the current body style and operation, most which I’ve mentioned before, and which I hold little prospect of ever being addressed by Canon.

Well, those are my wishes, now let me hear yours. Comments welcome…

Lens Correction for Lightroom 3

LIGHTROOM News

Having watched Terry White’s excellent video of  some of the new headline features in Adobe Photoshop CS5, one of the functions I really hoped that would be included in the release of Lightroom 3 was lens correction. Well now it’s official, lens correction will be included. Yesterday Adobe released a You Tube video from Production Manager Tom Hogarty who presents a walk through of the Lens Correction Features within CS5 and states that these features and more will also be included within the final release of Lightroom 3.0.

In addition to manual controls to correct for geometric distortion, vignetting and chromatic aberration the lens correction in LR3 will include profiles for many Canon, Nikon and Sigma lenses. The video features one of Canon’s most popular lenses the 24-105m f4.0 L lens, which is good news for me as it’s on my 5D mark II most of the time. The profiles will also be included in Adobe Camera Raw 6 (ACR) Photoshop plug-in which presumably will be released around the same time as LR3. Adobe will also be providing a free Lens Profile Creator Tool, which will include a number of test charts for you to photograph so you can create profiles for any lens.

This is great news for Lightroom photographers and at last we will no longer have to create an intermediate file to straighten those horizons and bowed verticals and correct for perspective. I must admit being to having been a tad disappointed with the new features in the original release of LR3 beta One, and not quite overwhelmed by Beta Two either. However, lens correction is one of those features that was pretty high up on my wish list and I’m sure there’s lots more surprises to come. Now I can’t wait till the the official release. let’s hope it’s not too long!

 

Resources

• Tom Hogarty’s Lightroom Journal
• Terry White’s 45 minute CS5 walk through

Canon 5D Mark II – One Year On

A year living with the EOS 5D Mark II Camera

It’s just over a  year since the arrival of my Canon 5D mark II, which for me was an upgrade from my original mark-I. Since then I’ve taken just over 12,000 frames in locations varying from a very cold minus 13 degrees Celsius in Glencoe, to a very hot and blowy 52 degrees Celsius in Death Valley, California.  I don’t intend to present a review of the camera here as there are far better qualified people than I whom have already published their findings online. I will however, tell you how I’ve got on with the Canon 5D mark-II, my thoughts and opinions and the problems and idiosyncrasies I’ve encountered.

First and foremost, the 5D MII is a very good camera indeed and in the right hands is capable of producing top notch photographs. If you have used a Canon 5D (mark-I) you’ll feel instantly at home with the mark-II. My 5D mark-II has performed well and I have encountered no major problems over the year. It feels much better built than the mark-I and with the improved weather sealing I’ve been perhaps a little more adventurous, taking it out in some inclement weather, where perhaps I wouldn’t have risked the mark-I.

 

Resolution

When I upgraded I must admit one of the most desirable features was the greatly increased resolution, which at 21mp is a huge step up from 12.8mp of the original 5D. Although it’s almost considered bad form to desire more pixels these days, the additional size lends much more scope to crop your pictures and still be able to generate a good size print. I regularly print A3-plus, and here the 5D MII does not disappoint.I have even had some 24 x 30-inch prints made and they absolutely stunning and tack sharp even at nose distance. The increased resolution has also allowed me to make larger wildlife prints where shots are often heavily cropped. Cropped shots that were only good enough for the computer screen with the 5D mark-I, I can now make reasonable sized prints. Compositions that were only good enough for A4 prints with a 5D,  are now good enough for A3 prints if taken with the mark-II. The step up in resolution is a huge benefit to my photography.

There has been one drawback however. I use a Canon EF 100-400mm F4.5-5.6 L IS lens for my wildlife photography and had always been amazed at how sharp this lens appeared using my 5D mark-I. Shots taken with this lens on the 5D mark-II however, did not appear as sharp at 1:1 (100%) as they did on the mark-I. At first I was a bit miffed and began to think I’d got a bad camera, but my other lenses were tack sharp. I did quite a few test shots and there definitely was, a albeit very slight, an apparent loss in sharpness. I had my focusing re-calibrated but the results were the same. Then I realised why this lens never received great review from owners of 1Ds III’s or any camera with 21mp resolution or above; 21 mp is simply above the resolving power of this lens. Now I hear rumours that this lens is to be withdrawn and perhaps replaced. So if you go for a high resolution sensor, bear in mind your current lenses and their ability to perform.

 

Live View

I didn’t buy the camera for live-view, nor did I think i would have any use for it. Boy have I changed my mind. What a brilliant tool. Yes it does run your battery down quicker...just buy another battery. For someone like me who wears specs and not in possession of the greatest eyesight, manual focusing was always a bit of a nightmare. In fact it was so hit and miss with me that I generally never bothered and just had to rely getting a focus point on something of contrast no matter what the light or else. But sometimes not even that works. Using live view however, makes focusing so simple. You can zoom up to x10 anywhere in your frame to check for sharpness, and you can open up your aperture or adjust compensation to check even the darkest areas, and simply stop back down to take your shot. It’s great too for checking your hyper-focal focusing.

 

QUICK CONTROL Screen

Pressing the joy-stick (Multi-Selector) button on the back of the camera brings up the Quick Control Screen. However I found that if you don’t  quite press this straight down it doesn’t work and sometimes takes a few presses. This may be my poor (and sloppy) technique but I find it irritating and wish Canon had a dedicated menu button instead. You can change the SET button in the centre of the Quick Control Dial to activate the Quick Control Screen via a Custom Control Function, but this effects other operations and so I have gone down this route.

The Quick Control Screen allows the user to adjust just about any of the cameras settings and is navigated by using the Multi-selector. Now I find I rarely use the buttons on the top of the camera next to the LCD status panel, in fact I rarely  ever look at the LCD panel now at all.

Setting bracketed exposure is so much easier now too. You just select the exposure screen from the Quick Control Screen and use the thumbwheels to set the Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) amount and Compensation.

The Quick Control Panel is a huge leap forward in usability but I still find it a tad clumsy to use. It’s good, but I still feel this could be refined. I’m not sure how, but scrolling around the page could be improved I’m sure. I’m also not a fan of digital controls and still would like to see more analogue style controls on the camera. We have thumbwheels to adjust the aperture and shutter speed, so why can’t we have another for ISO? These are so much easier and quicker to use.

 

No Mirror Lock-up Button

There’s still no dedicated Mirror Lock-up button, despite the zillion and one requests on the internet. None has appeared on any other Canon camera that has appeared since the release of Canon 5D Mark-II, so it seems canon will never pay attention to the general public no matter how vociferous the strength of opinion. You can however, add this function to a user menu, so at least it’s not so hidden as before, but it still makes it a pain to set and unset.

 

No Tactile Buttons

One of my major gripes with the original Canon 5D was that the buttons are all the same. Sure this makes for smart ergonomics and neat looks but when you are fumbling around in the night or low light it would be great if they felt different, making then easily distinguishable from one another and not all identical. I guess the Quick Control Screen goes somewhat  to overcoming the problem. but I’d still like to see (or should that be feel?) buttons that are different.

 

Expanded and Auto ISO

The expanded ISO range is great, but to put it simply, ISO 800 is the same as ISO 400 in the original 5D. You have about one stop extra. Photographs at ISO 800 are perfectly usable, beyond that it depends on the light and the subject matter.

Canon have also implemented an Auto-ISO mode, which allows the camera to adjust the ISO speed if necessary. A great idea you may think, but this a very poor implementation of this function by Canon, and in effect making it practicably unusable. You can select Auto-ISO in Automatic, Program, Aperture priority or Shutter priority mode, but the camera then sets ISO values ranging from 100 up to 3200 ISO. Canon may think 1600 or 3200 ISO are fine but I can guarantee most decent photographers won’t go there. Canon need to take a leaf out of the Pentax book where on their cameras the user can specify the upper and lower ISO range, say 100-800 ISO, which would be usable. I’m sure this could be implement by a simple firmware fix, so this has to go down as a blunder by Canon. A case of lets get the function in, but with little thought of how the user would want it implemented. 

 

Camera User Settings

Listed in the pre-release press for the 5D Mark-II, one the new functions that really appealed to me was the ability to have 3 Camera User Settings. These can be selected by choosing either C1, C2 or C3 on the Mode Dial. Great I thought, I can one have with all the settings for my wildlife photography, one for landscapes and one for portraits. Err..nope, I found out that they are totally useless. I can not understand Canon’s implementation of these buttons and how they work, it’s completely backwards.  These only work if you take every photograph on exactly the same settings and I don’t think there is a photographer in the world who does that?

Let me explain, say I set C3 to my wildlife settings. I use my 100-400mm, so I’ll have my aperture set to f/5.6, ISO to 200, spot metering, and only the centre focus point selected and the camera in aperture priority mode. When I’m ready to shoot some wildlife, I simply rotate the Mode Selector dial to C3 and I’m ready to shoot.  I take several frames but then find some animals in the shade and I need to bump up the ISO to 800, I adjust the ISO take a few frames then move on to another subject. I raise my camera to shoot, thinking it’s still at ISO 800, shoot and my picture is strangely underexposed, but wait, my ISO has been set back to ISO 200! Every time your camera auto-powers off (remember the Canon default is after 1 minute) your settings are re-set back to their starting point. This is absolutely infuriating and can not be avoided unless you disable the auto power off feature and that of course will run your batteries down super quick.

Canon have really got this one backwards. The user settings should be your starting point and should never reset when the camera powers down, but only when you the user chooses to do so. The way Camera User Settings operate should be set using a custom function. Come on Canon this ones a no-brainer surely!

 

Battery Compartment

Still plastic, still not weather sealed and rather flimsy and cheap compared to the rest of the camera. Again, frequently mentioned on the web and still never altered by Canon.

 

Eyecup

The eyecup is a little like the battery compartment door, it’s plastic, rather cheap and flimsy and seems out of place on camera of this quality. However they are  pretty much the same design and quality on all Canon cameras and are very much in need of a serious redesign. These are probably fine if you never have to remove them and leave the original one on your camera for all it’s life. However if you use the Angle Finder eyepiece and even just occasionally swap between that and the standard Eb eyecup, you soon find the original one becomes loose and won’t stay on very well, and sooner or later you find it’s gone! I’ve gone through 3 or 4 of these. They gradually become so loose that just taking them out of your camera bag can cause them to come off and it’s generally too late when you notice it’s gone.

 

Minor Improvements and Changes

You can now see the ISO speed in the readout in your view finder; something I really missed in the original 5D.  The rear 3-inch screen is a lot better, and displays more detail, but I still find I need to see pictures on a monitor before I can tell whether they are any good or not. It’s still hard to see in bright sun light but they are all like that. The screen zoom still functions oddly and there is still no way of telling when you are at 100%. It would be nice to have a percentage zoom readout on the display at least, but what we really need is a 100% zoom button. I’d also like to have a way of overlaying the histogram (in RGB too) on top of the picture rather than by it’s side, where the picture is so small it’s of no use. An old Minolta bridge camera I once possessed could do this and I found it very useful.

 

Summary

I don’t want to appear too negative here although reading some of my comments you’d think I don’t like the camera. You’re wrong, I do. It is a very capable camera, it’s just that I think Canon missed the boat a little with some of the features and have failed to address the wishes of a large part of their customer base. It could have been so much better and still be improved with some simple firmware updates.

I’ve not mentioned the movie capability. I didn’t buy it for that and I haven’t really used the movie feature that much. It’s obviously very capable at producing high quality video footage, but I doubt whether 1 in 10,000 have bought the camera for that feature alone. It’s nice to have but hardly a vote winner. At the end of the day the Canon 5D mark-II is a fine full-frame camera but still has the same old Canon quirks that they may never address no matter what is said. That aside I can easily live with it. I probably couldn’t live without it.

 

Full Reviews & More Details

If you are in need of a full technical review of the Canon EOS 5D Mark-II or more information then try these links below:

DP Review: In-depth Review of 5D Mark II, February 2009
The Digital Picture: EOS 5D Mark II Review
Luminous Landscape: Canon 5D MKII Field Review
Imaging Resource: Canon 5D Mark II Overview
Northlight Images: The EOS 5D Mark II