James Duncan Davidson wrote about the best deal in photography at this point in time. He’s a proponent of an inexpensive, fast, prime lens, in this case, the Canon 50/1.8. This lens has a reputation as being slow to autofocus, tough to manually focus, and not have a sliver of metal in the whole thing… although I expect at the least the electrical contacts must be metal! 🙂 This lens weighs in at a slender C-note, and can easily contribute a fast lens (optically) to the camera bag for small spuds in the big scheme of things.

I’ve gotta agree. Once upon a time, I owned the big brother to that lens, the Canon 50/1.4, and I’ve really regretted getting rid of it. The ability to shoot indoors without a flash, and the great depth of field opportunities are things I gave up when I traded it away.

The big point of Duncan’s that really sings to me is about zooms. Of the four lenses in my bag, three are zooms: 10-22/3.5-4.5, 28-135/3.5-5.6 and 100-400/4.5-5.6L, with only my macro being a prime (105/2.8). Notice anything interesting about those lenses? They’re all on the slow side, especially at the long end.

I’d love to go to primes, and that’s something I’ve been considering for a while. There’s nothing functionally wrong with my lenses, but the rumored sharpness of the primes, along with their faster optics, makes them very attractive.

Now, I can’t see me dropping my 100-400 anytime soon. It’s just too valuable for use at airshows and sporting events, although I’d drop it in a heartbeat for a 600/4L! 🙂 The other lenses, though, could stand to be replaced with primes.

On the short end of things, the beauty of the 10-22 is the effective wide end, which is around 16mm. Once upon a time, I had the Canon 16-35/2.8L, and I was convinced that I needed something wider. When the the 10-22 was released, I jumped on it and dropped the 16-35. Again, I think that was probably a mistake. I mean, yeah, you can see the difference in the width of the shot between the two lenses, but for landscapes, that’s just not that big a difference.

As for my 28-135, well, I just plain love that lens. It’s solid, and has just about the best color rendition of any lens I own. It’s not super huge, and is at a range that is nice for just walking about. Admittedly, the 50mm lenses fall right in the middle of this range, so they might be a good substitute, but the ability to quickly compose the shot differently without moving is real attractive.

So, do I have any real direction? Well, not really, although I’m really swayed by the siren song of the primes. Maybe it’s time to take a harder look at them.

OK, so I still bleed Canon — just look at my receipts over the last five years! — but Nikon really does some cool things to promote their brand, the ease of use of DSLRs in general and to advance some pretty unusual photography. Take the Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition, for example.

This has got to be one of the coolest photo galleries I’ve seen. The images are microphotography done well, and the colors and symmetry nature has provided for the subjects are breathtaking. The cool thing is that, from all appearances, both scientists and artists are welcome to enter. And while using Nikon gear doesn’t appear to be a requirement, the contest pays awards as Nikon vouchers, so if you win, you get some exposure, and so does Nikon. Guess that makes sense.

I gotta tell ya, I’m inspired to play with this. Obviously, a microscope is pretty much a requirement — and one that I can’t currently fulfill — as would be some plumbing to attach my 40D to the ‘scope. It’s probably not all that different from the plumbing needed for astrophotography, although the observational gear is quite a bit different.

I haven’t yet put the 40D on the C8 to see what they’ll do together. I still contend that the live view functionality on the 40D is just about the best thing to come along for macrophotography, astrophotography, or anything else where critical focusing is key. If I can get a clear sky tonight, the Andromeda galaxy is high in the sky, and that might be a good target for the evening. Unfortunately, there’s no planetary objects up until much later in the night, with Mars, Venus and Saturn up when I go to work in the morning. If things are quiet next weekend, maybe I’ll try some shots of them from the mountain while I’m visiting.

Watch this space!!! 🙂

I enjoy buildings and structures. I’m a big fan of symmetry, and buildings frequently top the list of symmetrical things to look at. Our site manager at work clued me in on an architectural shoot that would take place tonight, with an architectural photographer capturing our new building for the use of the architect. The downside is that we weren’t gonna get any of these photos, so she invited Lenny and me to shoot alongside this architectural photographer.

OK, so the first thing I noticed was the photographer’s assistant. The photographer carried his tripod and Canon 1D (of some sort), but the assistant carried camera bag, ladder and whatever else was needed (like picking the fallen leaves off the grass for one shot). The photographer would ask for something from the bag, and the assistant was to produce it quickly. Wow. I’m sure this is the “real world” of photography, but I don’t think I could work like that. I’m just as willing to carry things, and frankly, carrying the bags is only gonna teach the assistant so much… like how to be a porter.

So I watched and listened as the contracted shooter popped photos of this and that, staged folks in the right places and watched him and his assistant running faster and faster the closer it got to sunset. (“Let’s move… now!“) The more I watched, the more I realized I shoot differently than this kind of team. I’m not sure I can exactly put my finger on the difference on their view and mine, but there was definitely a difference. I think they were looking for form and function, and I was looking for color, reflection and symmetry.

It was definitely a different approach to doing things, and was a good thing for me to see. I like my slow methodical way of shooting — although Lenny’s methodical path makes me look like I’m on speed. I believe I’ll continue to not stress over the shoot too much, and remember to treat the folks around me as humans, too. Odds are, they’ll have something to teach me, or see something I’ll miss, and after all, isn’t communication what we’re supposed to be doing as photographers?

Today, Sio and I delivered the largest pieces I’ve produced: a 36″ x 48″ canvas of Fall’s Dance. I’ve had it in the house for a couple of weeks, and have taken it to a show to let some folks take a look at it.

First off, it’s just plain massive. Seeing one of my images on that kind of scale is just flat impressive. I’ve been getting drawn into the vortex of bigger is better, and this particular treatment just flat feeds that. It’s been harder and harder for me to enjoy my smaller pieces anymore, and I guess once you start looking at an 18″ x 24″ frame as a small piece, there’s some definite shift of scale going on.

Secondly, the canvas treats that image very, very well. There’s a kind of depth that I can’t quite explain, and no photo of the piece could ever capture. I don’t know if it’s the texture of the canvas that contributes to the sense of depth, but there’s definitely something extra — some “X” factor — that makes this stand out as compared to other large versions of this image.

So, the customer who commissioned this piece loved it, and I can’t wait to see it hanging in their new home. It’s just a kick to have someone else see the beauty that you saw in an image you’ve shot and produced. True coolness.

After a few days into having the new rig, it seems appropriate to write a bit more about the Canon 40D. There’ve been no great negative revelations, although I have found one little thing that I think is designed a little backwards.

The cable release port on the 40D is in the same location as on the 20D. However, on the 20D, the cable is run toward the back, while on the 40D, it is run to the front. For the way I use my cable release, routing the cable to the back makes more sense, but at the end of the day, it’s not a huge big deal.

OK, so the ugly is over; now to the beautiful. And there are two beautiful things tonight… speed and focus.

Tonight, I was photographing hummingbirds on the feeders. Everytime I hit the shutter release, I fired multiple shots — man is this thing sensitive! Quick, too. I was firing shots of those quick moving little dudes waaaaay quicker than I could with the 20D. Really, really impressive.

I’ve also played with live view. This feature has killer application for crazy sharp focus. I’ve played with using live view, and then zooming up the preview to 10x for some really sharp focus. I don’t know that I’ll use live focus outside of macro or astronomical shots, but the uses there just seem amazing.

More to come….

Well, 40D, actually.

Yep, I bit the bullet and put a new Canon EOS 40D in my hands tonight. I picked up the kit with the 28-135 IS f/3.5-5.6 lens and lemme tell ya, this camera rocks.

So first, why this camera? Well, all my accessories from my 20D will fit it, and I mean all… the battery grip, cable releases, batteries, all my lenses, everything. And then there’s the features.

This body has a huge LCD display on the back — 3 inches! — which makes photo review a joy by comparison to the 20D. Also, this camera has a self-cleaning sensor — after having just cleaned the sensor on the 20D, I can really appreciate the benefit that’ll be. And, you can change the focusing screen for the first time in this line of cameras. The biggest new feature though is one I thought could never happen: live view.

Live view is a new feature that allows you to use the 40D like a point-and-shoot, composing and shooting using the LCD instead of the viewfinder. The mechanics of SLRs really prohibit that kind of functionality, but somehow Canon figured out a way to do it. It sounds like the shutter lifts in this mode, allowing the sensor to see light all the time, and then shuts and opens when a shot is fired. This is a really cool feature, and since you can zoom in on the live image on the LCD, it appears that I’ll be able to use it to achieve really fine focus on macro and astronomical shots.

How about performance? Well, it’s 10Mp at 6.5fps. In large JPEG mode, I shot over 170 shots on a 4GB Sandisk Extreme III card before the camera had to pause to write to the card. That’s pretty dang amazing! I sure wish I’d had that kind of frame buffering and write speed when I shot the Blue Angels a couple of weeks ago.

Weight-wise, it feels a little lighter than the 20D. I’ll never complain about having less weight in the bag.

As with anything, there’s a couple of warts. The first one is the battery door. In order to install the battery grip, you have to remove the battery door. On the 20D (and I think the 10D also), you had to move a little metal slide to “de-hinge” the door from the camera. On the 40D, you just pull the door off the camera. The hinge posts are plastic, and I’m pretty convinced you wouldn’t wanna do that a whole bunch.

The other wart is on the included lens. The AF/MF switch on the new lens doesn’t have as much height to it as the old version of this lens. This isn’t a huge thing, but it’s a little bit of an annoyance, as I have to look at the lens to figure out where the switch is, and to what it’s set. I’m sure I’ll get used to it.

Overall, this is a gem of a camera, and a steal, given the inclusion of a lens that usually goes for a D-note ($500) on it’s own. With the big changes between this body and either the 20D or 30D, that just makes the deal sweeter. The step from the 20D to the 30D wasn’t huge, but this one is monumental. Absolutely a keeper!