Measurement and efficiency were some of the themes for 2009, and I’m sure they will be for 2010. Through Homecamp I learnt about monitoring home power use, and with Redcatco we got even better at measuring things and making business cases.

In 2009 I experienced my first ever SXSWi, which meant heading to Austin, Texas, with Chinwag and the Digital Mission crew to meet with lots of new and familiar faces from the digital industry.

And I got to see a few bands while I was out there too, including The Webb sisters, for the second time in the year!

A fair amount of the year was taken up with psychology study – reading, experiments, write ups and an exam. Probably the highlight of all of that was attending the CAPP conference, hearing some very well grounded, but inspiring lectures, case studies and talks. I ended the year with a First in cognitive psychology, so it feels like the hard word paid off.

The summer was an eventful one. Although a lot happened in the spring, Redcatco social media work started to build up over the summer, and I seemed to be speaking and doing social reporting at more and more events. I even bumped into this chap…

There was still time for fun side projects, one of the most memorable was the Twitter Cook Off, watching a chef judge a set of sandwiches via Twitter, as you do, and listening to Caalie relay the results to Nicky and Maggie Philbin.

I was involved in quite a few NESTA
related events over the year, and also a couple of Reuters ones. The meant that I got to work with some bright, fun people, and chase political leaders around London. A very different perspective from the Cabinet Office events I helped with earlier in the year. This was also the year of the Digital Britain report.

The 1pound40 event at Reuters was one of the highlights of the year, although presenting at SMiB09, Online Information 09 and the Dell B2B Huddle was close to top of the list too.

The number of meet ups seemed to grow over the year, and I added to the mix by kicking off the Thames Valley Social Media Cafe, inspired by the model Lloyd Davis pioneered in The Tuttle Club. One of the evening highlights was the Cozytweetup that ended up with a candle lit picnic in St. James Park, before everyone was moved on, in a very friendly manner, by the police.

During the summer our eldest son managed to break his arm not once, but twice. Oh, and he burnt the other arm just for good measure!

VannFest was, as the previous year, the highlight of the summer. And for the record, I didn’t get a tatoo… Although did this photo of me ever cause a saga! I’m assuming it was the QR code on the T shirt .

VannFest wouldn’t be VannFest without a picture of some sky candles…

There were quite a few business trips during the year. Too many to mention, although the visit to Bonn, Germany sticks out in my memory. Amazing place:

Very oddly I appeared in a Vodafone advert in Germany, both on-line and in posters. You’ll have to look closely, but you’ll see me on the screen of the phone, next to Robert Scoble (remember what I said about those faces at that dinner!)

Over the course of the year my photography set up evolved, with some new cameras and lenses. I started to shoot some video – having been won over by the Canon 5D Mark II.

I squeezed in a photo walk or two, including a memorable afternoon with friend and Flickr super star photocillin.

And Canon let me try out some amazing gear, at just the right moments during the year, including the largest lens I’ve ever handled. The photo doesn’t do it justice – that’s a full size camera body on the lens in the picture there. It takes two hands to lift and gets comments everywhere – including during the Legoland fireworks, where more than one young lad said “I want one of those!”. Needless to say, it captures some amazing images.

Seeing real-time Time-Slice photography in action at the Canon Pro Solutions Exhibition was a definite peak camera-geek moment.

The expanding photography set up meant the chance to shoot some memorable pictures at various places around the planet, as well as Sara’s amazing body painting art.

I read lots of books, not just psychology ones, including reviewing quite a few, and featuring in some too.

Oh, and printed one of my own…

Back at home, the apple and pear trees and the vines were fruitful, the kids grew up some more and the recording studio remained sadly unused – something I hope to fix in 2010.

In the autumn I got to watch two of my favourite bassists play, at the same time! Michael Manring and Steve Lawson played together in London:

And I even managed to edit together this video for the bass guitar blog:

That wasn’t the only music in the year. Later in the autumn I went up to Birmingham and photographed and interviewed behind the scenes at the UB40 Live Loud and Local gig:

In November Kate showed quite how much interest a fox on the underground can create! By then I’d also set up SocialOptic with Jim, something which will be very much at the centre of 2010. With November on the scene, I dived in and took part in Movember – growing a moustache to raise awareness of men’s health issues, including prostate cancer. It opened my eyes to a few things I will write a lot more about in 2010.

To round out the year, snow arrived. Followed by more snow, and lots of it! The roads were chaos, so I holed up in the home office and click-clacked away to close of projects, ready for a clean start to 2010.

As the snow subsided, visitors arrived, and finally the family managed to squeeze in a break down to the west country.

Including a morning on the beach in Devon, before heading home for the New Year…

I’ve raved about the PowerShot S90 before – it’s a very high quality and very small camera in a very competitive market space these days. I purchased the SX200is for times when I go without a Digital SLR, like these shots at the movember party. The S90 is a notch above the Sx200is, in terms of both price and features, but it turns out it isn’t a straight forward comparison. Firstly, playing with the camera in the darkest corners of LEON, here is a mix of shots taken with my 5D Mark II and the S90:

Some shots from Canon Tuttle (on the S90 and the 5D Mark II of course)

It lived up to my expectations. Remember, the shots there are a mixture of the S90 and a big DSLR that is almost ten times the price. Yes, you can tell the difference, and no, I’m not trying to compare them (click through on a photo and look at the additional information on the right hand side of the Flickr page to see which camera took which) – Just saying that you can use the two together or substitute when needs must – it isn’t always easy to carry the 5D Mark II around all evening during a party.

The S90 is quite a bit more compact that the SX200is, and better in low light. It goes up to 3200ISO compared to the SX200is’s 1600, and the aperture range is f/2-f/4.9  versus f/3.4-5.3 – remember, small is good . Combined, that’s a quite a bit of extra range in the dark. What I’d loose in going to the S90 is the hyper-zoom capability  - the SX200is has a lens that is equivalent to 28mm-336mm, while the S90 reaches to 105mm. A 105mm zoom is none too shabby, and is more that enough for most photography. However, 336mm is an insanely long zoom, and one of the things that attracted me to the SX200is – I can’t travel with a zoom lens that large for my DSLRs, but the SX200is fits in my pocket. I can’t say I’ve used that level of zoom very often, but it does come in handy.

The S90 fixes one of my minor niggles with the Sx200is – it has a motorised flash that only comes up when it is needed. Only a cosmetic thing, but a nice touch. The s90 also has an extra dial around the lens, which is configurable for fast one-handed adjustments. It is one of the features that really grabbed my attention. The two cameras seem to share the same lovely 3 inch wide-view LCD display, and both support video – the S90 also adds in stereo sound recording. And here things get a little odd. The S90 doesn’t record HD video, or support 16:9 (wide screen) video – unless you count 480p as HD… to be fair, 720p is probably over kill in this format, but the lack of it might put off the ‘box ticking’ buyers, which is a real shame as this is a great camera.

Now, I’m going to let you into a secret: I looked at the new PowerShot G11 as well. I’d ignored it, because quite frankly it looked like a bunch of kids had gone nuts with mecano. It’s got dials and buttons EVERYWHERE. It’s another step up in price from the S90, but still a 10.4 Megapixel camera (the Sx200is is 12.4  - there really isn’t much in it). However, it shoots in RAW mode, which means more chance of rescuing borderline photos in editing back on the Mac/PC. The lens is 28-140mm equivalent, giving a bit more zoom. It’s quite a lot bigger, and double the weight at 12.5oz /355g, but it’s an all together more serious camera. The screen is a little smaller, but flips out and angles, and there is a hot shoe connector for an external flash. It also has a built in view finder, which I actually found quite fun, compared to holding a camera at arms length and looking at a screen.

You’ve probably figured out by now that there are some subtleties to picking out a high end digital camera, you need to think carefully about your budget and what features are most important to you. The S90 nicely slots into the range – if I was after something very high end, like the PowerShot G11, but in a much more compact form, then the S90 looks the business. For a compact camera with full DSLR features, I’d now give the G11 a serious look. All those dials and knobs make it very fast to operate. It is quite big and chunky, but there again it really is pushing the envelope of what a little digital camera can do and is a fraction of the size of a DSLR, even the diminutive 1000D. The PowerShot range now goes in almost every direction from waterproof to bullet proof (almost).

Do remember in all of this, that I’m a bit odd in a) doing lots of candid photography in dark venues (that doesn’t sound good does it? ) and b) my general refusal to use a flash. All of these cameras have very nice built-in flashes which will get you great shots. Flash just isn’t my style. I’m still very happy with my SX200is, its extended zoom range, HD video support and it’s good looks will keep it in my kit bag for a while to come!

Thank you to Canon for coming out to play, and supporting Tuttle. It made for a great morning!

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 II users 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.

1D Mark IV. The 1D keeps its crown. The body feels a little vintage – surprised not to see more new buttons on it – but the innards have been bought bang up to date. It now has video, catching up and overtaking it’s siblings. Hold down the shutter button for machine gun sound effects (10 frames per second), and it would probably lock focus on a speeding bullet too (45-point AF system). It’s definitely not cheap, but it really is top of the range and top of the technology curve. Should be hitting the shops in December.

Canon 7D. Want one. That’s all. Yes, it’s a crop sensor, but if you are doing both photography and video, as I increasingly am these days, then the simple switch to toggle between the two modes, together with the start/stop buttom and the ability to shoot 720p as well as 1080p, make it a joy to use. The focus functionality felt better than the 5D mark II as well (as it should from the spec sheet – 19-point cross-type sensors). Oh, and 8 frames per second shooting. Nice. It isn’t going to display by 5D Mark II, but would be a really nice back up, given the built in flash and built in speedlight controller.

The surprise of the show for me was the 70-300mm DO IS USM lens on the fellow in the shot of the 7D. It isn’t as big an aperture as I normally like (at f/4.5-5.6), but it is VERY compact for such a long zoom and great quality – I assume this is down to the DO (diffractive optics).

The new Canon Powershot S90 looks like a mighty fine product. Think every thing I said about the SX200is as a pocketable alternative to a DSLR (going without a DSLR), but a good few steps up. F/2 aperture (nice and wide ), 28mm wide angle lens with 3.8x zoom. Very compact, very easy to use with it’s function select and rotary dial around the lens, and a worthy pocketable alternative to a DSLR.

Lots of steady-cam type set ups for the EOS DSLRs on show, and a veritable see of LED based lighting that was low heat, low power and VERY bright.

Oh, and this…

But I’ll tell you about that in the next post… In the mean-time, a massive thank you to the Canon team for being wonderfully welcoming and helpful, and to the 1000heads team for being the social media stars that they are!

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.

Looking back on the 5 Mark II from Benjamin Ellis on Vimeo (shot, +2, looking into a mirror, a couple of months back).

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!

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:

And for reference here’s the same clip in Vimeo:

A Canon 5D Mark II Video Set Up from Benjamin Ellis on Vimeo.

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)!

Then I got to unboxing something very special…

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):

Nathan – on the 5D Mark II from Benjamin Ellis on Vimeo.

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.

Try the VisualDNA shop Beta:

That beasty is a Canon PowerShot D10. Now, if you don’t like its looks, don’t worry. That’s a clip on cover, so you can change the appearance if the camouflage isn’t to your personal taste (although it was a popular choice with people I’ve shown it to – I think that relates to the next bit). Love or loath the looks, you have to respect this little camera’s capabilities!

Yes, you are seeing right. There it is, hanging in a bowl of water. No protective cover. No magic. It is waterproof up to a depth of 10m (which happens to be about the deepest I’ve ever dived to). Let’s see that again shall we?

It will happily take shots – although you’ll probably want to find something more interesting than the inside of a bowl to shoot. The snake in the picture is the D10′s lanyard, which attaches to special fixings on the case. This isn’t your average camera, so it doesn’t have your average camera strap. The chord and fixings are robust enough to use in rock climbing, skying and diving. But what happens if it gets dropped? Let’s give that a try too shall we?

Now, here’s a little confession. I’m not great at timing shots. This one is from about the 6th attempt to time it right. I was feeling bad about dropping it so many times, right up until the moment someone had the idea of filming it falling down a set of stairs (a set of stairs which had The Hoff walking up them a few minutes before). And after all that?

Well, it was ready to take snaps. The lens and buttons use sealed-in-gas to ensure that there isn’t any condensation when moving between different temperatures (it will work down to -10′C). It is a 12.1 Megapixal camera (much higher resolution than my last D-SLR) and its has a 3 times optical zoom with image stabiliser.  Oh, it shoots VGA resolution video at 30 frames per second too.

A very impressive piece of technology I’ll be recommending to my skiing/rock climbing/canoeing/diving friends. They can email me the photos – I’m keeping warm in my office!

I’ll be writing more on the other models, but if you are impatient, check out Machines that go Bing. A big thank you to the 1000Heads team – Canon can!

Try the VisualDNA shop Beta: