Entries Tagged 'Things I Use' ↓

I was fortunate, back in late May, to receive one of the very first Canon EOS 1D Mark III’s. (Come on Canon, do something about your naming scheme…) It arrived, thanks to the fine folks at Badger Graphics, one week prior to a three week photo trip to Iceland. I bought it specifically for the Iceland trip and with the intention of selling it sometime after I returned.

Six months later I still own and use it. It is hard to imagine not owning and using it. I would only trade it for the full-frame goodness of the EOS 1Ds Mark III. (Really, Canon, huddle up and come up with a better name for the pro line…)

The 1D3 has had a fair amount of bad press, along with the usual forum centered righteous indignation, in regards to it’s occasionally sub-par AI Servo focus. Rob Galbraith was the first to quantify this and by throughly documenting the exact conditions under which the focus problem occurs, helped to convince Canon that the problem was real.

With the problem identified, Canon has begun a program to repair a defective part. They have also recently posted a firmware fix that seems to take square aim at the problem.

Any day now, Galbraith will post his evaluation of the mechanical fix by Canon along with the firmware upgrades and pass judgement on what may yet be called the Canon EOS 1D Mark III Blue Dot. As I type this, I have no idea what his testing will show.

But here is what I do know. I have never seen the problem. Several thousand frames shot in all sorts of conditions and it just isn’t there. I haven’t seen the problem because likely I haven’t shot in the specific conditions where the problem occurs. The full explanation is here. Remember, the problem is specific to what Canon calls AI Servo focus. I use AI Servo focus less than one-half the time with the 1D3 and basically never with my 5D. Follows is the executive summary:

It means that when the light is especially bright and the temperature is warm, the camera’s autofocus performance drops like a stone. Yes, you read that correctly. On sunny, warm, beautiful days – the sort of conditions in which autofocus usually thrives – the EOS-1D Mark III’s ability to make in-focus pictures of still or moving subjects is greatly reduced.     

But it is 2007 and the world is full of opinions and opinions, thanks to the constant din of the web, turn into facts. A specific defect in an otherwise very capable camera has turned into a wholesale focus defect in a sub-par steaming pile of a camera.

What Galbriath has to say about the fixes Canon has in place will be interesting. Just as interesting, especially if the specific autofocus issues are fixed, will be the response by the indignant forum trolls.

iLife ’08, specifically iPhoto and iWeb, noticably darken images when posted using the default iWeb Photo template.

Example 1: The image as I intended:

Example 2: The image as iPhoto / iWeb displayed it as hosted on .mac:

I shoot RAW with my DSLRs and fuss endlessly with the files in Aperture. Since most of the Occasion shots are taken with a Canon Powershot SD 550, iPhoto is where the Holiday and Birthday jpegs live.

When I need to do a Professional looking and quick web site for a Commercial client I use the Web Template feature in Aperture. It is flexible enough, easy to use and most importantly, it is quick. For WideWorldPictures, my personal portfolio site, I’ve long used GoLive. Adobe is famous for it’s high prices and complete indifference to it’s customers. I’m looking to replace GoLive with something not made by Adobe.

I’m also trying not to (re) learn HTML and CSS and start something from scratch. I’d like a dynamic solution but I’m too cheap purchase one. Not incidentally, I have more than enough to do as a photographer so anything that even threatens to save me some time seems worth a try.

With iLife ’08, the latest version of iPhoto has been coupled Apples .mac web service to produce what Apple calls a “.mac Web Gallery.” Web Gallery is a chock full ‘o AJAX with some Flash web application that is a very nice place to hoist portfolios. Additionally, .mac now allows personal URL’s rather than the former www.mac.com/yourmembernamegoeshere/content addressing scheme. All this is most easily hoisted onto the web using yet another iLife ’08 app, iWeb.

I’ll write more about the .mac Web Gallery web application in the near future. Now I need to complain.

Aperture 1.5x is fairly well integrated into the iLife suite. You can basically see your selected Aperture projects, folders and the like using iPhoto and File > Open Aperture Library. This makes iPhoto / iWeb a one stop web content generating tool that can author both traditional HTML web pages along with the new Web Galleries.

Well, almost.

Using iPhoto / iWeb and .mac together with the standard iWeb Photo page template makes a muddy mess of images. Everything previews fine on the desktop, but something goes terribly wrong by the time the images arrive on .mac. It’s either no or poor color management or worse. Aperture output onto .mac looks fine so it would not appear to be only a .mac problem but something that iWeb is doing prior to sending content up to .mac.

In any case, until this gets sorted out, don’t bother using iWeb ’08 to post photos onto .mac. Your images deserve better. I received my copy of iLife ’08 in early August. Five weeks and counting. This is long past needing to be fixed.

I have, for more than 20 years, stood behind a 4 x 5 view camera and composed my images on a ground glass.¹ When I added digital, I chose a Canon 5D in part because of the three tilt and shift lenses that are part of the EOS system. These Canon TS-E lenses bring some of the geometry-bending camera movements of a view camera to Canon DSLR’s. The Canon operation and specs of the TS-E lenses are covered very well here and here.

However, the viewfinder of a DSLR is not to be confused with the back of a view camera. A View Camera allows close inspection of focus with a magnifying loupe as well as real time, interactive adjustments. A good view camera, even a not so good camera, is a precision instrument compared to the combination of a DSLR view finder and the fairly course tilt adjustments of a TS-E lens.

My two Canon TS-E lenses, I own the 24mm and the 45mm, have been, until recently, more useful for their shift capabilities (up and down or right and left) than their ability to tilt (changing the angle of the front of the lens relative tot he film plane.) When I shoot commercial architecture lens shift is vital in maintaining the geometry of buildings. Doing so on the camera results in far sharper and not incidentally, larger files than relying on Photoshop or any other software to correct geometry after the fact. Shift is also very useful for making two shot, stitched, panoramic images.

I suspect that few of the folks lined up to pay real money^(tm) for the recently introduced EOS-1D Mark III did so wondering if, in addition to the the superior high ISO performance, amazingly smooth 14-bit RAW files, unmatched shadow detail, occasionally hinky auto focus, blinding speed along with a bewildering number of features and custom functions, if it might be a very good match for the TS-E lenses.

OK. It is possible I was the only one.

At any rate, the combination of a gorgeous 3.0-inch LCD monitor and Live View, which lets you composition and shooting directly from the camera’s monitor, make EOS-1D Mark III, hence forth the Mark III, a very nice, if somewhat over-qualified, match to the manual focus TS-E lenses.

Once you have the world’s fastest DSLR set firmly on a tripod and Live View enabled Canon has provided several tools that make the faux view camera work quite smoothly. First, a mouse like Multi-controller allows for quick navigation around the LCD screen. At any point one can hit the Magnify Button and jump to first 5x and then, with a second poke, 10x magnification. This makes checking focus, and adjusting tilt to achieve focus, nearly as accurate as a loupe applied to the back of a “real” view camera. Additionally, Canon has built in on-monitor masks for various aspect ratios. Because I will forever think that a 3:2 ratio makes for way to tall a vertical, 4 x 5 is my personal favorite.

Finally, when the world is in focus from here to infinity, there is the perverse joy of knowing you can fire off a 5 frame HDR (High Dynamic Range) bracket in a half-second or so. Now if only Canon would allow the LCD image to be upside down and backwards…

Icebergs, Jökulsárlón Lagoon, Iceland.

Canon EOS 45mm (58mm eqivelent on the Mark III) TS-E Lens

f 9.0 with front tilt. Foreground ice is 3 feet from camera. Distant Mountains at infinity.

¹ It’s been a very long time since I used a ground glass, having switched long ago to far brighter focusing screen systems with a Fresnel lens and far more plastic than glass.

Unless you take a solemn vow to never change lenses on your DSLR, dust and worse will find their way onto your sensor. Much of this is invisible, lost in the shadows and details of an image but some, sometime more than some, will show up repeatedly and need to be removed from the final files. The longer you’re away from home, the worse the dust problem will become.

I’ve just spent three weeks in an unusually dusty Iceland (the Southern part of the country in particular is in the midst of a full on drought) and thanks to the The Visible Dust SensorLoupe ™ I picked up just prior to my departure, along with the same company’s Arctic Butterfly ™ charged brush, I kept my two DSLR sensors pretty much dust free.

So to the fellow tourist who liked my view at Gullfoss so much that he and his extended family had to shuffle over kicking dust into my open camera backpack just as I had pulled off a lens… nice try. I had the Canon 5D factory new that evening. But you and your family are, and will forever remain, clueless.