A Windy Day in Derbyshire

Photographic Location & WORKSHOP

Last week I was a budding participant on one of Doug Chinnery’s landscape photographic workshops. Doug is a professional photographer that just so happens to live not far from where I live and whom I met at my local photographic club in Worksop last year. I was much impressed by Doug, not just his superb photography, but with his down-to-earth approach and willingness to share his knowledge with fellow photographers, something that many other expert photographers' seem almost reluctant to do.

Sadly for our foray into the Hathersage area of Derbyshire that day we weren’t blessed with good weather and my 5:00am pickup in the dark for sunrise seemed somewhat in vain. Our rendezvous with two other fellow photographers just below Higger Tor ended up in a rather hasty retreat to Grindleford station for some shelter from the rain and wind, and chat about photography and a welcome cup of coffee. With no abate in the weather one member decided to call it a day. However after fuelling up with a hearty, full English breakfast in Hathersage a second attempt was made at Higger Tor, but high winds prevented any photography on the top and grey skies and eventual rain brought that sessions to a close. 

Doug then took us down to an area of birch trees above Lawrence Field well away from the windy tops and by now patches of dappled sunlight were starting to appear. This was quite different photography from what I’d normally attempt and to be honest I was well out of my comfort zone here. However Doug encouraged us to shoot tree trunks, grassy tussocks and I even and a few (albeit unsuccessful) attempts at some macro photography.

After a lengthy spell there it was off back down to the rather quirky, but excellent Grindleford Station Cafe for some hot chocolate and cake. Whilst gorging ourselves on some inordinately well proportioned slabs of date and walnut cake, Doug took the opportunity to download our CF cards direct to his iPad and proceeded to present us slideshows of our efforts. This was really useful as we got to see each others work and discussed what worked and what didn’t. The iPad is a really neat device, has a great screen and is ideally suited for viewing and backing up RAW files in the field. It beats devices like the Epson P-7000 viewer hands down in my opinion, and there are already RAW editing apps around too (that’s another gadget to add to my wish list). It’s a pity they don’t make one with more than 64Gb memory, but I guess that will come eventually.

By that time the weather was beginning to look quite sunny so we went to Padley Gorge and spent a couple of hours trying out all sorts of shots. What a great place it is and believe it or not it was the first time I’d been there. The leaves are just starting to turn, so it’s not quite the best time, yet but there’s not doubt I’ll be returning here soon. One of the classic shots is off a large old mill stone underneath an oak tree. I tried many compositions of but none that really worked when viewed on my monitor back home. The sunlight was quite strong and I ended up with many many shots with burned out highlights.  I should have waited till the the sun was hidden by the clouds. If you want to see how it should be shot check out Doug’s version here. I did however get a rather nice but querky shot of a curtain of moss/weed behind a small water fall which made an almost abstract image.

We decided to set off for Stanage Edge for sunset, but spotted some fantastic light and sunbeams (Crepuscular rays as Dough pointed out!) over the hope Valley on our way. We stopped on Fiddlers Elbow road off the A6187 about 3/4 of the way up to Higger Tor but sadly the sunbeams and gorgeous light did not reappear.

My favourite image of the day is the one at the top of this blog of a small gap in the wall and out of focus trees behind. Nothing spectacular or compositionally great but juts one I like. Maybe I’ll attempt it again well the autumn leave are in full colour and use a slightly wider aperture blur the background even more.

View Derbyshire Photo Workshop in a larger map

I can’t say I came away with any memorable images, but I certainly came back with many new locations to try, an improved compositional knowledge and a list of new subjects to try. If you’re a budding photographer and want to take your skills to the next level and learn more then workshops are a great way forward, and fun too.

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…