EOS 1D - Very quick first impressions

It arrived a few days ago, so I haven't really had time to shoot with it (other that to 'set it up' for my shooting style and fire a couple of quick tests to see that it is all working as it should). Luckily - but hopefully not surprisingly - it is (working as it should).

First impressions are one of solidity - of course this is a very solid 1.4kg+ camera. And it feels it in the hand. But then again, not intimidatingly so. It's heavy, without being oppressive. It's definitely a Canon EOS, and therefore very easy to find your way around if you have come from that stable with any previous EOS camera (like the film 1 series or the 5D etc). What did throw me slightly, however, and something that took me about 5 minutes to get my head around, was the way the menu system works.

With other Canon digitals I have used, you press the menu button, choose a category with the fly wheel, and press 'SET' to enter it into the camera. It's a two step process, but it works well and is fairly intuitive. With the EOS 1D, you press the menu button and use the fly wheel to get to the correct sub menu, then you hold the 'SELECT' button down while using the fly wheel to highlight your choice in green, and then when you let go of the SELECT button your choice is set. This makes it a three step process, but it does mean that nothing can get changed 'accidentally' and this is presumably why the 'professional' cameras are controlled in this way?

I don't like it - or hate it. It's just different. It does mean I have to 'remember' a different way for each camera (the 1D and 5D), but largely they will both be set up to go anyway. As I said, it took me all of 5 minutes to figure it out (no, I didn't read the manual beforehand), and I suppose the more I use it, the more 'used to it' I will become.


This is a shot I took of my daughter - one of the first from the camera. Shot with a 50mm f1.8 (at f2.8) with late evening light coming through our kitchen window. Even though it's 'only' 4 megapixels, I reckon this would make a very sharp 11x16" print - so I'm more than happy with it for wedding work.

A couple of other things to mention with the 1D - first: it's NOT full-frame, so you need to multiply the lens focal length by x1.3 (which makes my 50mm f1.8 prime lens a 65mm f1.8 on the 1D), and second: it only takes CF cards up to 2Gig. With a 2Gig card and the camera set to RAW only, I can get about 400 photos. Not great, but probably OK considering I have heaps of cards for the 5D.

Anyway, that's first impressions. I'll shoot with it some more in the next few weeks, and confirm or deny what I've already written thus far. I'm off to take some photos.

EOS 1D - I weakened...

So I've got this EOS 1N film camera, right. And it's a back-up for my wedding kit if the 5D and 10D fail, right. Only I didn't take it with me to the last wedding I shot - did I. I used the 5D and 10D instead. Only the 10D annoyed me because it was so slow at reviewing after the shot has been taken. It bugged me. I wished it was my 1N. Except I wished the 1N was digital and not film. See where this is going...?

You know where it's going. Although this time, rather than go looking for one, I had a 1D offered to me by a guy who replied to an unrelated auction (for some CDs) I was running on Trademe (NZs equivalent of Ebay). He 'made me an offer I couldn't refuse' and so, to cut a long story short, my 1D should be arriving early next week.

If you can see a pattern emerging here, then you're right. Since starting this blog I've gone through a 30D, Pentax 645, Canon EOS 1N, 10D and now the EOS 1D. All in about the space of a year. What does this say about me? Well, the cynical might say that I can't make up my mind and go through cameras like some hollywood actresses go through husbands. Mmmm... Maybe.

The more astute amongst you, however, might think that I've embarked upon a great search to get together 'my' ultimate kit and, as the saying goes, you have to break a few eggs if you want to make an omelet.

Am I there yet...? Probably not. I'm there with the 5D, for certain. It has everything I want in my main wedding body, and nothing I don't. The new 5D Mark II doesn't interest me in the slightest. Sensor cleaning would be nice, but other than that I don't want (or need) more megapixels, I certainly don't want HD video, and I certainly don't need Live View on my Digital SLR's.

Will I be there with the 1D then? Maybe. It'll be fast enough, of that I have no doubt. And it will certainly be rugged enough. It's 'only' 4.5 megapixels, but that should be enough for wedding albums and prints up to 11x16 (and probably slightly beyond) considering I do most of my cropping 'in camera'.

One of the camera's most compelling reviews for me was one written by Dennis Reggie, one of the greatest Wedding Photographers on the planet, and the 'father' of the modern photojournalism style we are all shooting in. He was given a pre-release 1D back in 2001 and spoke glowingly of the camera, using it in 4 weddings before having to hand it back to Canon. Not long after he bought three for himself! If it's good enough for Dennis, it's good enough for me.

Now granted, that was 6 years ago (such a long time in digital camera history), and Canon have gone on to 'better' the 1D with a Mark II and Mark III version. Faster processing, bigger buffers, more megapixels, full frame, live view, sensor cleaning... the 'upgrade' list goes on. But as an 'entry' into Canon's professional digital EOS 1 series, I'm willing to bet that the 1D is still a kick-ass camera.

I will give another report once the camera has arrived and I've had a chance to 'play' with it a bit. One things for certain though, it will be a heavy beast - a real shoulder cruncher. I'd better go and find those dumbells and start working up the old arm muscles then.

Leisha & Ross 01/11/08

Shot my first wedding for the season last weekend and surprise, surprise, it didn't rain - it poured! I haven't done a wedding for a couple of seasons, and this was my first out on my own, so my worst fears were realised when I awoke Saturday morning to torrential rain, with no sign of a let-up. Bummer!

The original plan was an outside wedding (yeah right) on a cliff overlooking the beautiful coastline, with bridal party shots on the beach. So with that out of the way, it was on to 'Plan B'.

Unfortunately plan B meant shooting everything inside, mainly with on-camera flash (which I don't 'love' as a rule), in cramped little spaces. And this is with a wedding party of 12!

The image above of Leisha (the gorgeous bride), taken while she was getting ready, was shot with the Canon 10D and 50mm f1.8 (taken at f2.8). It was shot looking down a tiny hallway, with Leisha placed in the middle, looking up into one of those small tungsten recessed lights that are popular in modern households now. The light is warm, contrasty and harsh - and has been softened slightly with a soft-focus blur applied later on in Photoshop. It's an example of an image I would never have taken if it had been an outside wedding on a sunny day, but it's also an example of an image that I pre-visualised and took knowing that I could make something out of it later on.

Despite the mornings torrent of rain, it did actually clear for the afternoon (thank goodness), so we were able to go out and take the bridal party photos outside. The lighting was very flat, and it was cold and windy, but at least it was outside - and not raining! Leisha and Ross were great about it though, and were naturals in front of the camera. This shot of them together was taken on my Canon 5D with the 70-200mm f4 'L' lens on f4.

I'd never shot a wedding party of 12 before, and it was as challenging as it sounds! No sooner would you get one couple placed where you wanted, you would turn around to place another couple only to find that the first couple had then moved! It was an exercise in diplomacy and patience, in very cold, windy and trying conditions - but fortunately I managed to pull it off enough times that I think Leisha and Ross will be happy with the final results. The Bridal party image above was taken using the 5D with 17-40mm f4 'L' lens on f5.6. The sky has been 'burnt in' later in photoshop, with a slight vignette added to draw attention to the group.

The pancake rocks at Punakaiki were a great place to take wedding photos, especially with such a large bridal party. Next time though, I'd like it to be slightly warmer, with no wind, or rain (hey, I don't want much).

All in all it was a very stressful, yet very successful day. I'm happy with what I produced for my clients under the circumstances, and I think they will be too?

Street Racing

I started my love affair with photography by shooting a Rally Sprint event in Canterbury. I had no idea what I was doing, shot far too many rolls of film, and got pretty average results. But I was hooked.

I'm a photographer and not a petrol head (I appreciate that you can be both), but I hold a certain amount of nostalgia for shooting racing events because that is where it all started for me. I don't shoot them often, but when I do I have a lot of fun and, I'm pleased to say, get some OK results.

This Labour Weekend the town I live in (Greymouth) hosted its Annual Motorbike Street Racing event. I had shot the event about six years prior - on film - but thought it was time to 'upgrade' the images and try my luck with digital. I loaded my Canon 5D with a fast 16Gig card, set it to shoot large jpegs (I thought RAW processing might slow me down a little), and moved the autofocus from one-shot to servo mode so that it would follow the action across the frame as it happened.

Shooting in this way is fun, but it requires a total mind shift from how I would normally photograph. For portraits and weddings, even though there is 'some' action involved, I usually have the 5D set on one-shot, single frame mode. This is plenty fast enough, but tends to promote a fairly precise way of composing and shooting.

With sports action photography however, precise composition almost goes out the window. Some of the big 1000cc bikes reached 200km+ going down the straight. That's FAST! When you are shooting things traveling at that speed, you have one chance to nail it and then they're gone. Pretty cool - and a hugh challenge for someone like me who doesn't normally shoot that way.

As you can see, I did manage to nail it some of the time - although it really was only some of the time. I shot about 700 images in the space of 3 hours, and culled it down to about 100 from there, getting rid of the ones that weren't sharp enough or well composed.

The 5D was set on aperture priority, f4 (as wide open as my Canon 70-200 f4'L' goes) which gave me a shutter speed of around 1000sec - plenty fast enough to use the 3 frames per second that the 5D is capable of. I also used the camera with a monopod, and I'm glad that I did because it allowed me to keep the camera at an even level while shooting through the protective wire barrier that is in place around the whole track.

All of my images were taken at the same place on the track - at a hairpin bend where the bikes had to slow down before taking off again down the straight. This allowed me to get great head-on shots of the bikes and riders when they weren't going 'as' fast.

Could I have gotten better results with a 'sports' camera like the 1D, with its 45 segment autofocus and 10 frames per second shutter speed? Yeah, of course I could. But I haven't got one of those have I. The 5D isn't known as a 'sports' camera, but I'm not a sports photographer. It performed well enough for me to get images like the ones above (and several more besides), and boy was it a lot of fun.

Now having said that, if I was to get into sports photography in any serious way, then I probably would be lusting after a 1D Mark 3 (and the Nikon equivalent D3? if you're a Nikon shooter). Faster autofocus and higher frame rate would be helpful if this was my full time gig.

Luckily for me, it's not. My full time gig starts this weekend with my first wedding for the season. It's with a wedding party of 12 (gulp) and surprise surprise - the long range forecast is for rain. Prey it ain't so.

Beauty in the Eye

What is it with the lottery of photo judging?

Now I have to be careful here, for a couple of reasons. First, because I am a judge myself, so anything I say can (and will) be held against me and applied by others to myself (if you follow).

And second, because this could quite easily come off sounding like a bunch of sour grapes - which it isn't - (honest).

But hang on a minute. What am I going on about? Let me explain...

We had our local camera club evening last week, and as is usual for all camera clubs around the country (and around the world I would suspect), our images were 'judged' by an 'expert' from away. Nothing unusual there, and I've had some very good feedback from this type of judging process.

This time, however, we struck a judge (and I'm naming no names) who must have forgotten to put his glasses on and had skipped his medication all that week! He was atrocious. Brief, bizarre, unfounded and horribly dismissive grading then ensued, to the point where he rejected a good 80% of all the images submitted.

Above is the image I submitted for the Set Subject which this month was "Still Life". It was rejected. "Don't like it" was about as helfpul and as informative as the judges comments on this particular image got.

This is where it could start to sound a bit like sour grapes. He rejected my photo - how dare he! But it really isn't like that at all. I don't think it's the greatest image ever taken, and it was a bit of an experiment for me with some gritty HDR photoshop techniques that I'd wanted to try out for a while. So I really didn't expect it to score highly, or get me an honor mark or anything. But rejected! Really?

And trust me, there were images better than the one above who also suffered the same fate. So it got me thinking - what kind of lottery is this whole judging process - and does it need to be?

We all know that judging art is subjective - right. You like what you like, I like what I like etc, etc, etc. But hang on. Do we really want judging to be purely subjective? Or is there some objective elements that can serve as guidelines or principles when judging others work? Well, I believe there are. But who judges the judges? And who gets to be a judge? Is there some test you have to take to determine whether you'll make a good judge (no, there isn't), and if not, why not?

If you're looking for answers to these questions, then sorry, you've come to the wrong place. I could give 'My' answer to the above (having been an Art Critic, Lecturer in Aesthetics, and Camera Club Judge myself I have probably pondered on this more than most), but it's a scope way too big for this blog. Suffice to say that I think the judging (and passing of 'opinion') of others work is not a job to be taken lightly, to be handed out to anyone just because they've been in the club the longest, or who doesn't take the responsibility seriously.

I'm not worried about me - it's the children for heaven's sake, think about the children! Fortunately, my 8 year old daughter didn't put anything in for last months camera club assignment, so she didn't have to be put through the farcical judging process. But what if she had entered...?

Late Night Light

I've often written about late evening light and how it can transform a landscape. In fact my first D-Photo article was on exactly that topic. But often, you only get to see the 'final' shot - the one I want to keep and print - without it being put into context with the other shots. It's only when you do this that you begin to see why late evening light is so special for landscape photography.

So while out shooting last night, I thought it would be a good idea to show how an image progresses, according to the lateness of the evening. All images were taken with my 5D, a 17-40mm f4 L lens, on a tripod with a cable release.

The first image has a 6th of a second shutter speed, using an f-stop of f22. There is some nice light - it is dark enough so that the highlights in the sky have been easily retained by the cameras sensor, as has the shadow detail. Not much was done to this in Aperture, except a slight shadow adjustment and saturation boost. Not a bad shot, but the lake isn't 'glassy' enough for my liking. Better wait around a bit longer.

10 minutes later, and this is the result. Exposure is now 6 seconds, at f22. It's getting more like it with the longer exposure for the water - but to me it still isn't 'quite' there. The Canon 5D can shoot at up to a thirty second exposure before going to its 'bulb' setting, and that's about where I aim for with my long exposures. I could go longer, but 30 seconds seems about right for me in terms of colour and water effects.

And here it is. One of my last shots of the evening - taken with a 30 second exposure on f22. It is really very dark now - almost difficult to see the hand in front of the face, but the camera sensor still manages to pick up lots of detail with the long exposure. I love the saturated 'blueness' that this long exposure gives, as well as the silkyness to the water, which is exactly what I'm after. My landscapes tend to have a simple, serene quality to them, and I can get this kind of effect perfectly with long night time exposures.

To me this last image stands head and shoulders above the rest - although others may think there's only subtle changes. They are basically all the same compositionally speaking, but the largest (and most important) difference has to do with the 'mood' they create. The later the light, the longer the exposure, the more mood is conveyed.

The 30 second exposure does take a little more post-processing work though - I did quite a bit of fiddling with shadow, black-point and levels in Aperture before I got this looking how I wanted. Noise is also a factor with a 30 second exposure, even with the 5D shooting on ISO 100. But Noise Ninja cleans it up nicely, and I could probably get away with some noise from the Canon sensor without it effecting the image too negatively.

Anyway, that's how I go about getting some of the best light for landscapes. I'd get up early in the morning and do it too, if I wasn't so damn lazy...

Pre-Photokina Rant (Prt 1)

Well, Photokina 2008 is almost here - the camera industry trade show to end all trade shows.

'Pre' Photokina releases from Canon (and Nikon) have been very interesting and thought provoking (for me at least) in terms of where the whole DSLR industry is going.

So without any further ado, and if I may hop up onto my soapbox for a while (and since it's my blog I think I may) here's 'some' of my thoughts on the Canon 50D pre-release.

First - 15 megapixels. Wow. Double wow even.

But why? Wasn't 10 big enough for everybody? Who was out there shooting with the 40D and wishing they had more megapixels? I DON'T WANT ANY MORE MEGAPIXELS! MY FILES ARE BIG ENOUGH ALREADY! I'M RUNNING OUT OF HARD DISK SPACE AS IT IS!

Now I realise that it's just because they can. Technology moves on. But we, the consumer, are the ones that have to deal in real terms with the ramifications of such technology. Maybe it's just me? Maybe every other photographer prints A2 and needs bigger files? Maybe 10 megapixels isn't enough? Will 15 be enough do you think? What about 20? How about 40? How many images will you be able to fit on a 1Gig Cf card if we get up to 40 megapixel cameras? See my point...

We don't really 'need' all these megapixels. Manufacturers just tell us that we do.

And speaking of manufacturers telling us what we need -

Second - Live view. Wow. Double wow even.

And again I ask - but why? Who asked for live view on DSLR's? Who was shooting a year ago and saying "yeah, using the viewfinder gets me sharp images, but I really wish I could hold my camera out at arms length in front of my face and take photos from the LCD screen". I mean - SERIOUSLY.

I personally would have kissed someone at Canon if they'd left Live View off of the 50D.

Ah, but no. We demanded it - apparently.

But it gets worse folks. The 50D also has... (drum roll please)... Live View with Face Detection. Aaaaarrrrrggghhhhhh!!!!!!!!!! Shoot me now!

Please, please, please Canon - leave these stupid noddy technologies off of the 5D's replacement (he asks, knowingly in vain).

Don't know about you, but I want to use a camera - not a PS3 game controller.

Just my 2 cents worth... for now.