What a year 2009 Was… I’ve been looking through my Flickr stream and pulled out some highlights. Apologies, as the page may take a while to load, but pictures seem to express the year better than any words I could write. Towards the end of 2008 I was at a dinner with Caalie and the Scobles. There were quite a few faces at that meal that ended up playing different roles through out 2009 – you can see Neville Hobson and Chris Heuer as well as Robert Scoble here.
Canon sponsored this week’s Tuttle Club, so not only did I catch up with Tuttle folk in London, I got a chance to see some of the kit from the Canon Pro Solutions Show in more detail. The video here was shot at Tuttle, with special thanks to Brian Condon for playing camera man and operating the Canon SX200is this was shot with. By the way, this is possibly one of the last shots of me with the Movember Mo. click HD or watch on the S90 Video on Vimeo to see a higher quality version. I’m even speaking in Web 2.0 now – “favourite-liked” indeed:
I spent a good chunk of today in the company of Canon and many of the businesses in what has become a large and successful eco-system around their photography and video products. They took over the business design centre for two days, filling the exhibition space with dozens of exhibitors, as well as their own stands, and a steady stream of seminars in the rooms upstairs.
I’ll blog on some of the specific products over the next week or two, but first a few highlights:
Good news for Canon 5D Mark IIusers in Europe – it sounds like we can expect a firmware update in the new year to give us 24p & 25p frame rates. If that means something to you, you’re probably dancing in your seat. If it doesn’t, just take it that it is good news and will be something to look forward to early in 2010. Continue Reading…
Posted 4 months, 2 weeks ago at 10:53 am. 4 comments
It’s been a little while since I had a Canon 5D Mark II in my hands. I’m very grateful to the good folks at Canon and at 1000Heads for loaning me such a wonderful beast to shoot the digital mission out at South by South West. When a gadget is “shiny new” it is hard to give an objective view of it, actually that is true for as long as you own any gadget. If you paid good money for something, you are always going to want to tell yourself it was good, aren’t you?
Well, the 5DII went back to its true home quite a while ago and since then I’ve been shooting with a 1Ds, a 40D and an old 5D (mark I). Now seems like a good time to reflect back on having the 5D Mark II and what I remember of going Full Frame and Becoming a Videographer.
The odd thing that really sticks in my mind was the battery life – it was brilliant. I normally have 2 or 3 batteries when I cover a long event. For the trip I had just one. In over a week of using the 5D it only got charged every other day, as I dived into my hotel room to change into evening clothes, then unplugged shortly after as I headed out. It didn’t get charged over night, as I only had one adaptor. Despite all that, it never even got close to having a low battery. Stunning.
Low light performance. This gets talked about a lot, and I mentioned it in my posts at the time, but it is a fact: the 5d Mark II seems to create light where there was none. I’ve used dozens of cameras from different manufacturers. Never experienced anything like it. With my love of night time photography and shooting events, it is a killer feature.
The size – it is not a full body – I’m playing with a 1Ds right now, boy is it a monster (and I love it in its own sweet way), but the 5D is big enough to get you into the press enclosure without being laughed out, and compact enough that you don’t end up looking like rambo.
The full frame sensor made my 70-200 IS f/2.8 L series lens a joy to use – a perfect zoom range for what I do. The 24-105 f/4.0 L IS lens I had on loan was a great walkabout lens, and ideal for shooting video (the image stabilisation a big plus).
I was stopped several times each day by people enquiring after the camera, “is that a Canon 5D Mark II?” Who knew there were so many camera geeks in the world! When I was shooting in New York a photographer brushed Julia to one side and started to ask questions about the video and image quality. It wasn’t so much Benjamin with a 5D Mark II, as the 5D Mark II with Benjamin. Anyway, my ego survived, and I got some great photographs to show for it.
There was just one thing holding me back from rushing out and buying one, and that was the lack of manual control in video mode. That’s now fixed in the latest firmware. Oh dear!
Posted 9 months, 2 weeks ago at 7:40 pm. 1 comment
A week in, and I’m convinced that the Canon 5D Mark II is a truly great camera – and I’ll post more about taking shots with it soon – However, it is the video capability that is getting a lot of buzz with users. You can hardly move about the interwebs without bumping into an amazing video shot with it.
It is a big thing moving from photography to video, but the 5D II has really opened my eyes to the posibilities. Traditional handycams just left me cold, and there was no way I could justify spending 10,000’s on a pro-video set up. But with the 5D you really can get great footage from day 1, and without the need for post-processing – important to me, because that is one of the things that makes video production so time consuming, I’m shooting events live and can’t spend days editing before getting things uploaded.
Entering the world of the videographer means understanding pulling focus, if you want cinematic shots, and thinking about movement as well as framing. It’s a big jump, but a fun one. Using the 5D is a very different experience than running about with a miniDV camera, there’s more to think about, but it is also a very rewarding experience.
While I was at South by South West Interactive I spotted Tim Vetter across the floor. He was shooting vox pops using the 5D Mark II and his unusual home made rig caught my attention. Here’s an interview I did with him, shot on the 5D of course, and uploaded in Blip.TV:
To my eye the video looks a little better in Vimeo, but there again, lots of people have told me that Vimeo doesn’t play on their machines.
Tim’s obviously thought about his set up a lot, and his DIY rig gave me some food for thought. Personally I’m more than happy with the built-in sound (I have a sound engineering background and I’ve mostly been using an external stereo condenser mic from my studio). Using the 50mm lens and the 24-105 f/4 lens with image stabilisation got me very good results during the show, even shooting hand held (JetBlue managed to loose my monopod on route – the joys of international travel)!
Posted 11 months, 3 weeks ago at 9:36 pm. 7 comments
This is what I’ll be using to photograph the Digital Mission to South by South West. A HUGE thank you to the folks at 1000Heads and Canon for getting this beast into my hands in time for the trip. Getting hold of an EOS 5D Mark II is like getting hold of gold dust, so I really am very grateful!
Initial impressions of the 5D Mark II? Well, the body. Very sturdy – and looks all the better for not having a pop-up flash (my 550EX flash will be coming along to Texas). Putting a lens on and firing it up took my breath away. I’m of the generation that started with a Digital SLR – I’ve never used 35mm film. So, forget the technical arguments about full frame cameras versus cropped frame for a minute, and imagine the difference between looking out at the world through a port-hole and looking out at it through French windows. That’s the best description I can think of.
Pretty much everyone who has seen the camera today has asked about it – even when I was on the train in to London. Lots of interesting conversations. I’m really pleased with the shots I got this afternoon – I’m looking forward to some good subjects. Anyway, I better go and get some clothes packed for this trip, or I’ll just be wearing the camera… In the meantime, here’s what one of my sons says about it (filmed on the 5D of course):
That’s shot handheld with an 85mm lens, and transcoded (recompressed) by Vimeo to host it… There will be much more in my flickr stream and the digital mission blog as the week goes on. South by South West here I come…
One of the secrets to getting good at photography is to carry your camera everywhere, and that’s pretty much what I do. However, there are times where lugging around my trusty red rucksack with a full Digital SLR, a couple of lenses and a flash, just isn’t practical.
Then there’s the impact of whipping out a full sized SLR camera with a big lens. Seriously, last week at an event I pulled out my camera to take a picture of the speaker (I’d asked his permission before he started talking). I would probably have caused less disruption if I had drawn out a firearm and waved it about whilst shooting at the ceiling. Some people are nervous of cameras, and REALLY nervous of BIG cameras. Sometimes, small is good.
So, back to that Canon PowerShot SX200 IS. I ignored it at first, even though it was shiny-new-not-even-available-in-the-shops-yet. I was distracted by the small, sexy IXUS 100 IS - there was even a red one, what did you expect me to do?
Then I picked up the Powershot. I looked at the screen, which felt strangely like looking through the view finder of my DSLR. It is big, clear and fast. Then I fiddled with the very familiar dial on top and set it to Aperture priority mode. Ooo… Nice… Then I took a couple of shots. Ooo… Really nice.
It has got a 12 X optical zoom (equivalent to a 28-336 mm lens on a full frame camera, which is about the range I carry in the lens set with me when I’m using my DSLR). The sensor is 12 Megapixel with ISO up to 1600, and Canon’s DIGIC 4 chipset handling the image processing.
You can put the Powershot into auto mode and use it as a (very clever) point and click – it has face detection and scene detection with really good image stability – or you can twist the dial and go all Tv/Av/M and make like you have your DSLR with you, tweaking the settings to your heart’s content. The aperture is wide for a compact camera, so you can even get shall depth of field for arty portrait shots.
Here’s the clincher for me: it supports 720p HD Movie recording, complete with an HDMI output ready to plug into an HD screen. Something my current DSLR won’t do! This thing is ideal as a complement to my full bodied DSLR when I want something I can just slip in to my pocket. Very neat. It is also a nice step up for someone moving from the point and click world towards a full on digital SLR. I’ll be recommending it to a few folks.
lens I had on loan was a great walkabout lens, and ideal for shooting video (the image stabilisation a big plus).
