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There’s one thing that I use with all of my computers (laptop, desktop, netbook, and even my iPod Touch) that makes the task of moving files around so painless that I’m not sure how I ever got by without it. I’ve been using it for almost two years, and I continued to be baffled by how uncommon it is to find other users. I’m talking, of course, about USB flash drives Dropbox. It’s a way of having your files on your computer and in the Cloud all at the same time.
Read More after the jump!
The Canon 135mm f/2L lens is one of the more highly regarded lenses. Together with the 35mm f/1.4L and the 85mm f/1.2L II lenses, it is popular among photographers for the special “look” that it gives images, and in a way, deservedly so. The subject is easily isolated from the rest of the frame, making the challenge more of creating a pleasing composition than of worrying if the image will be too “cluttered.” However, my experience with the lens for a week, courtesy of Canon Professional Services, has left me wondering if the reputation that the lens built for itself is as deserving in the age of 21+ megapixel camera bodies and circular aperture blades. While it surely is effective wide open, the lens appears not to be as sharp as it could be in all circumstances, and stopping the lens down reveals the potential for distracting backgrounds, as my comparison between this lens and the 70-200mm f/4L IS zoom lens will reveal later in the review.
Without question, wide open the lens creates a very compelling and desirable effect for its focal length. The advantage of telephoto compression means that the foreground can be easily distinguished from its background, and the lens’ wide maximum aperture (f/2) helps to obliterate what’s left of said background. With such a fast telephoto lens, foliage only a few feet behind a subject can be turned into an almost seamless background of solid color. Furthermore, the glass is cut in such a way that some subjects seem to literally pop out of their two-dimensional planes, giving them very “3d,” almost Zeiss-like appearances. Indeed, the color and the contrast that come from this lens is impressive.
Below are a few examples that illustrate some of the very best traits of this lens:
In this example, the background flowers are no more than inches behind the central subject (with the yellow flowers about two feet behind). And at 100%, the sharpness is quite stunning despite being made wide open. I must note, however, that images made of subjects physically closer to the lens (particularly in the 3-5 foot range) appear sharper than do those made in the 10 foot to infinity range. However, as I do not have any lens AF Micro-Adjustment equipment on hand, I can say only that this is a perception, but I cannot say an incurable one–AF Micro-Adjustment very likely would address this issue.
More after the jump!
For the past week I’ve been working with a Canon 135mm f/2L lens from Canon Professional Services. I’ll be publishing my thoughts on this lens soon, but until then, a bit of a “teaser” from last evening.
Last weekend I was at Horicon National Wildlife Refuge and experienced some focus problems with my Canon 7D heretofore non-existent, or so I thought. Upon reviewing photographs from the 7D from the past several months, I noticed that none of them were actually as sharp as they could have been. I attributed the softness to the lack of acutance in the files, and while I continue to believe that is an inherent property of cramming 18 megapixels into an APS-C format sensor, there was a real problem in play.
I didn’t want to believe that it could be a question of the camera “back-focusing” (or front-focusing) because I’ve grown to distrust people’s claims that their camera, and not their own inabilities, are to blame for their out-of-focus photographs. I don’t remember these claims from the film days. Perhaps I was just oblivious to the complaints, but I tend to believe that the instant feedback of the digital camera is partly to blame for the knee-jerk reaction that anything wrong with the pictures must be camera, not operator, error.
I will not mince words: ever since the Canon 10D and the Nikon D70, there’s been a lot of bitching and moaning in online forums about back-focused images, and I did not believe them. At all. Until now.
Now, I will argue that there is definitely operator error to blame in most many cases of complaints about back-focusing. Last weekend I was convinced that I must have chosen the wrong focus point or didn’t have the AF locked by holding in the rear button–some prefer AF to only be activated by using the back button, I prefer AF to only be turned off if I hold in the back–and allowed AI Servo (Continuous AF for Nikonians) to screw up the focus. To confirm my assumption, the next day I took test photographs in the garden around my parents house in Racine, Wis. and was shocked to discover that none of them were sharp. Sure, the wind was to blame in a couple cases, but even when conditions were perfectly still the results were poor, so I rented a LensAlign from Lensrentals.com to investigate whether front or back-focus was to blame.
And what did I find after I unpacked and set up the LensAlign? The 7D and the 5D Mark II both back-focused with the 400mm DO IS lens. Well, there goes the neighborhood. And a lot of preconceived ideas, with it.
Post continues after the jump! Continue reading “Horicon after LensAlign and Focus Tweaks”
On Saturday evening my dad and I went down to Pugh Marina in hopes of catching a moonrise. But as we got to the lake, we saw a heavy haze on the horizon above Lake Michigan, and the hopes for a moonrise dimmed. However, I took advantage of the fleeting golden-hour light to walk into a normally gated area at the marina that used to be chock full of derelict boats. Evidently, the marina has been getting rid of them, because the gate was wide open (it actually has been for days–I just finally took the initiative to walk over to it) and only three remain. I’m 99% certain that if you dropped this boat into the lake it would just sink.
In my last post about the Lensbaby I was hesitant to recommend it. I will say that, after using the Lensbaby Composer some more, it does have a learning curve and I think the hardest thing to know is when to use which aperture with this lens. This is especially true as you have to manually insert and remove the aperture “blades” (washers), and since it’s a rental I don’t want to risk carrying them around and losing them! What I am slowly discovering is that I like this lens with a little more depth of field than it has wide open or even at “f/2.8.” The image above was captured at f/4, and I think I may try f/5.6 in my next experiment. Food for thought.
I am currently in the process of properly calibrating the focus on my Canon lenses using the LensAlign system I rented after some recent frustrations with back-focusing while using the Canon 7D and 400mm DO IS lens. At the same time, I am also experimenting with a Lensbaby Composer that I rented to round out the order. It offers the complete opposite of what I am seeking for my other lenses: fuzziness. In fact, its effect is akin to a zoom blur, only far more consistent in its results than zooming a telephoto lens while dragging the shutter could ever be!
One of the first things I noticed when using this lens is that its color rendition on my 5D Mark II left something to be desired. I was prepared for and expected to have fun with the highly-selective focus / blurry nature of the Lensbaby, but I did not want wonky color to be a part of the experience. As I wrote earlier this year, the X-Rite Colorchecker Passport can be an incredibly useful tool when a camera and lens combination is not yielding the kind of color that you expect. Have two bodies and want similar color? Profile both of them in the same lighting condition.
More after the jump!
Continue reading “Perfect zoom blurs every time: Lensbaby Composer”
I have owned the Canon EOS 7D for a few months now; I purchased one in November 2009. One of the concerns I had with the 7D, at least initially, was that the files simply did not seem sharp “enough” at higher ISO’s because of the noise degrading the image quality. And I do believe that, in the case of basketball arenas and other dark situations where, frankly, “exposing to the right” to get a good histogram (and a good exposure) means cranking up the ISO to 4000, the quality certainly does go down. However, that’s true even of the oft-touted Nikon D3. And I don’t necessarily give the camera its fairest chance in those situations, because I prefer to use f/4 telephotos. Why? They’re smaller, they’re lighter, and they cost less. They cost less now, and they will cost me less in the future because I won’t need an artificial shoulder or knees like some of my colleagues when we all grow older.
This past Saturday, I found myself crawling around Peace Park with the 7D and the 300 in order to make this series of a Robin spitting out a berry. One of the things that pleased me greatly was that, as the light got dimmer and I resorted to higher ISO’s, the detail was held solidly from my ISO 1600 frames. How well? Below is a 100% crop of the head and bill detail:
Note that this is before processing the image with any noise reduction plugins, such as Noiseware or Noise Ninja. Neither has this sample been sharpened! Not bad. Not bad at all…
For outdoors use, the 7D should prove to be a very capable camera indeed.
Last Wednesday I found myself sitting on the court at Mizzou Arena in Columbia, Mo. with two different camera bodies and three different lenses. So, what’s the problem? The 7D and the 1D Mark IIn see colors differently. Add to the equation that the glass in a lens affects the color rendered in the final photograph. For newspaper photography, usually captured in JPEG instead of RAW, this is just something you would normally “live with.”
Maybe you’d just take two identical bodies and figure no one will notice the difference once its printed on Charmin, any ways. But online, the differences can be stark. Take, for instance, this Columbia Missourian slideshow where I was using my 7D and a 1D Mark III on loan from CPS, but my colleague Chris Dunn was using an older D2Xs body at the football game between MU and Kansas State. This is an extreme example, but it is amusing to watch Kansas State’s jerseys suddenly jump from purple to blue depending on which camera was used. Hint: Nikon didn’t figure out what purple “looked” like until the D3 and D300 came out.
Article continues!
Continue reading “Tigers vs. Sooners Women’s Basketball & The X-Rite Color-checker Passport”
A belated Happy Thanksgiving to American readers of this blog. Here in Columbia, Mo., the weather has been ridiculously warm, with today reaching 71 degrees Fahrenheit. The past few days have been fairly relaxing–a welcome reprieve from the rest of the semester. I have mostly been using the 7D to continue my evaluation of the body.
Of particular interest to me was the usefulness of the new built-in wireless transmitter for the Canon speedlite system, shadow noise, and live-view functionality.
More after the jump!
Last Friday I was assigned by Vox Magazine to go to a pseudo rave at a Bassnectar concert held at the Blue Note, a theater-like venue here in Columbia, Mo. I decided to pack the 1D Mark III and the new 7D, leaving my 5D II on the shelf at home. While it is a great camera in low light, I was more interested to see how the other two would perform as they are both relative “unknowns” to me. Risky? Sure. But I figured it made sense to have one pro body with me, and my own 1D IIN is terrible in poor lighting conditions. The only rule imposed on me was “no flash.” This was going to be ISO 3200+ territory.
More photographs after the jump!
Continue reading “Bassnectar & the continuing story of the 7D”