Camera Blog

The winter holidays are upon us, and many photographers are out there right now weighing their options on which new camera to buy.  I have put together the following buyers guide to aid people with their decision:

Beginner/Point & Shoot

Intended uses include parties, bars, afternoons photographing your dog/kids/some ducks/etc. in the park.  You’re an attentive consumer so you know what to look for in a piece of electronics: big numbers.  The more mexapixels the better, the bigger “x” on the zoom the better, and if you can save 3 grams in weight it’s worth the extra $5.79 over that other model.

Camera-blog.net’s recommendation: Buy something that looks cool.  Consult GQ, Wired, or Men’s Journal and find the neatest-looking camera you can, or choose from the advertisement that features the hippest 30-somethings out having a good time.  Everything from a major brand under $200 is about the same anyways.

Advanced/dSLR

Intended uses include: taking 30 pictures of your cat at varying f-stops, long exposures of rush-hour traffic from a highway overpass, and wide-angle shots of cathedral interiors from your European vacation.  Be sure to pick up a “How-to” book on photography then go to every photography forum on the internet and clog it up with inane questions, lens “tests”, slightly creepy pictures you took at a local high-school girl’s volleyball tournament, comments on how good your “copy” of your kit lens is, and how much you love the “cinema look” that you get from its video mode which is in reality just crushed black levels and f/1.8 on your borrowed 85mm.

Camera-blog.net’s recommendation: Whichever dSLR under $1100 that feels the best in your hands.  Video features that you probably won’t take advantage of are an important part of your buying decision, as are flash systems that you probably won’t ever fully figure out, built-in “Picture Styles” that will forever ruin your camera-created .jpgs, and the number of $2,000 lenses that you’ll be buying (eventually!) even though you’re shopping around for the easiest $50 rebate right now.

Expert

Intended uses include: “Fine art photography” that you can show off to your pretentious friends at your monthly photo-club get-together, lens resolution charts, close-ups of a tiger’s iris at the zoo. It’s important that you look like you know what you’re doing so lots of buttons, in-camera menus that go 4 levels deep (tethered laptops are an acceptable substitution), giant petal-shaped lens hoods, and CNC’d “L-brackets” are important.  Bigger is better here!

Camera-blog.net’s recommendation: Something with a German or European name that you can be sure others will mispronounce.  Leica, Seitz, Hasselblad, etc.  Suffixes and prefixes such as -pan, hypo-, helio-, -lux, -gon, and -nar are all important to have on your lenses and accessories.  A writeup on Luminous-Landscape.com is essential to confirm your good taste in gear.  Make sure that you practice your concerned chimping face in front of the mirror before you go out on a shoot, and don’t forget to budget for an $1,800 tripod.

We all read the press release for the Red Scarlet on Monday.  For between $5,000 and $10,000 it looks like you can get yourself a pretty incredible camera that shoots 3k on a 2/3″ sensor at up to 120fps (150fps burst) in a completely modular system with multiple lens mounts, great upgrade paths, raw workflow, and a whole host of other goodies.

I’m not normally one to praise the virtues of a product that doesn’t yet exist, but I feel that I need to in this case; compared to every other sub-$10,000 camera right now, the Scarlet simply slaughters everything else in terms of features and price.  The usual comparison between the Scarlet and existing cameras is with the Canon 5D II or the 7D, but I think that is the wrong comparison to make.  This needs to be compared to the likes of the XL-H1, or the Sony XDCAMs, or the various Panasonics and JVCs.

Another way of looking at it, assuming that the Scarlet lives up to Red’s current promises, is this: If you’re going to spend $5,000 to $10,000 on a new video camera, why wouldn’t you choose the Scarlet?  Nothing else offers the pixel pitch, pixel density, framerate, or raw workflow that the Scarlet promises to deliver for the price.

I really can’t fathom what Canon’s XL-H1 team must be thinking right now.  They have a $6,000 camera that, assuming the Scarlet is released this Spring, is completely dead in the water feature-wise.  Does anyone really believe that the existing major manufacturers have new models in the pipeline that can seriously compete with the Scarlet?

Adobe released a public Beta of Lightroom 3 today, to much fanfare.  It includes some nifty and useful features that are a real improvement over what we’re currently working with, most notably a better sharpening tool that no longer makes it look like you were going for a subtle watercolor effect with your sharpened images.  We also finally get a decent watermarking feature (how the hell did that one take so long?) and some new publishing options for those of you that use Flickr (I happen to hate Flickr with the power of a thousand Speedlights, mostly because I feel that the user interface and display/slideshow options look state-of-the-art circa 1998).

In a break from my usual tradition of only sharing my favorite shots from a particular shoot, I decided last night to put together a quick and dirty video of “the rest” of this weekend’s climbing trip to Leavenworth, Washington.

Leavenworth Octoberfest Picture Roll from Peter Franzen on Vimeo.

It’s fun for me to watch the video too, as it gives me a nice opportunity to look closely at what I was doing with the camera while shooting; I should probably take more rapid-fire sequences when there is action going on, although I think I caught the moments that I had in mind at the time.  I also notice that I didn’t take as many abstract or experimental shots as I’ve been wanting to lately, so I’ll need to work on that for the next trip.

The completed slideshow of my favorite 30 shots can be seen here.

It’s awfully easy to hold all of your cards too close to your chest when it comes to something as personal as your photography, and it’s actually quite relieving to show them every once in a while.  There’s absolutely nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to 30 shots in a row that didn’t quite work out, and if you can see why they didn’t work and what you did to make that 31st shot a good one then you’ve really learned something.

Also: Canon has a new body out.  It’s pretty cool, I guess.

So we’ve all seen the new Nikon D3s, and we all agree that it’s the best PJ camera body out there. Right? Right.

Nikon's newest PJ tool

Insane ISO levels, 9fps, top-of-the-line autofocus, and all of the other features that we’ve come to expect for a high-end professional body. There are already thousands of whiny camera enthusiasts complaining about the lack of 1080p video who don’t understand that they’re largely mistaken that the 720p MJPEG is “not good enough”, but as usual they don’t realize that the videos that this thing will take in warzones, candid interviews, and on-the-spot news locations will end up as a tiny YouTube-sized stream on the web, and not on CNN’s HD broadcast.

Nikon knows that it can’t compete with Canon in video right now, so they’re sticking to what they know best and by the looks of it they’re doing a hell of a job. The biggest question that this raises is: What will Canon now come out with in response? This is Canon’s opportunity to go all-out with the best crossover still/video camera that they can possibly muster. An XLR input, an option for RAW 1080p or 2K video, full manual controls, and a form factor somewhere between a dSLR and a camcorder.

Now is your chance Canon. Nikon made their game plan pretty clear here and we’re all waiting to see if you have the smarts to match it.  Let’s see you split your professional line into 2 segments: the D3s competitor, and the indie-filmmaker’s dream-come-true.

A bit of early-morning wake surfing

Every time a photographer picks up a camera and goes shooting they end up learning something new, and a big shoot I did a couple of weeks ago was no exception.  It was scheduled to be a pretty full day: wakeboarding and wakesurfing in the morning, skydiving and B.A.S.E. jumping from a helicopter in the afternoon, and some big-time zip-lining in the evening (that last bit didn’t happen since we ran out of daylight, and beer:30 really snuck up on us).  It wasn’t a professional shoot per se, but there were a few photographers there and we had a lot of specific shots in mind.

One of the goals of the day was to soak up as much knowledge as we could from shooting these activities– I had never even been in a helicopter let alone shot people jumping out of one, and even though the shooting was more spec work than anything else I wanted to treat it as though there was a paying client expecting results.  I often take pictures of my friends doing crazy and extreme sports, but I really wanted to step this day up a notch from just casually observing it as I often do.

I had the pleasure of shooting with Boone Speed, who is an accomplished photographer as well as a professional rock climber and all-around cool guy.  It took just 5 minutes of working with him to pick up some great insights into how he goes about a day of shooting, which for me made the day worthwhile all by itself.  In short: drop the timid attitude, leave the long lenses in the camera bag, and walk up and ask people to do what you want.  Drill the helicopter pilot on what he can or can’t do, what he’s comfortable with you doing, and tell him exactly what you want.  As it turns out, most people are perfectly willing to follow a few instructions or go out of their way to really make a shot work out.

“Aggressive” probably isn’t the first word that most people want to have assoicated with their working personality, but leaning a little bit more in that direction can have a great impact on certain types of shooting if you’re normally not the type to get in people’s faces.  The air of confidence (coupled with a big camera and maybe a remote flash or two) can encourage your subjects, assistants, and other people involved in a shoot to go out of their way to make your shots happen the way you want them to happen, rather than just waiting to get lucky.

Can you spot Mt. Hood in this picture?

I’m still trying to remember all the little bits of information that I picked up that day, and I’ve been carefully studying my metadata in Lightroom to see why some shots worked and others did not; the technical challenges posed by shooting from a boat with a huge flash, hanging halfway out of a helicopter, or on the ground trying to predict how a skydiver is going to land are enormous and both Boone and myself know that the next time we shoot like this we’ll have a much higher percentage of keepers.  It’s the non-technical side of the day that stood out as the most beneficial to me though, and that’s something that anybody can use on even the most casual picture.

Coming in for a smooth touchdown

So apparently it’s a good idea to put your nice new studio strobes on their own power strip before firing away.  My computer’s battery backup unit, which is apparently on the same circuit as the rest of the outlets in my computer room, just had a fit and at one point indicated that I needed to replace its battery because I was happily firing away with a White Lightning X1600 in the room.

I let the little APC box cool down, said some soothing words to it, and it’s now working again.

Having just spent a bundle of money on a studio flash and battery pack, I felt the need to go out and take some low-tech shots at one of my favorite events: Last Thursday on Alberta St. here in Portland.  As usual, the camera is my DP2.

Natural light only

Waiting for the grilled cheese at Le Petite Provence

Both of these can be anylized from a lighting point of view.  There was a huge wall of windows at camera-left with the evening sun coming through (though not directly), there was a large mirror directly above and behind the subject that allowed for a bit of a hair light accent, and I think I just happened to get lucky with the catch light in the eyes– I’m pretty sure those are the window reflections though.  No on-camera or off-camera flash was used.

It’s fun to take apart images like these and it’s good to keep notes on them, because it seems like half the time that I’m fussing with lights I’m merely trying to re-create what a nice big window in a big open room already does.  I love throwing technology at problems, but I also love the simplicity of doing without it.

Long story, short:

I was having some fairly severe focus calibration issues with my Canon 40D, which I purchased a couple of years ago from someone on the FredMiranda.com Buy & Sell Forum.  I sent it down to Canon’s Irvine, CA facility with a letter explaining the problem, and I fully expeded to shell out a couple hundred bucks for the service.

To my great surprise, not 3 hours after the UPS tracking widget on my desktop confirmed that Canon had received my camera I had an email from their service department stating that they’d re-calibrate it free of charge and ship it back to me within the week!

Not bad for an out-of-warranty used body!

Let’s be honest: despite Canon’s greatnes when it comes to lenses, we always want to see more.  We want updates to the old ones (100-400mm update, anybody?) and we want to see some new and exciting technology put into their offerings; new versions of existing lenses are great, but it has been a while since the magicians engineers have really ‘Wow’ed’ us.

Hopefully that will change with today’s announcement.  Some new innovation in the world of IS is really exciting, and if I’m reading it correctly it looks like this will be able to adapt to movements in a way that in-body stabilization systems won’t be able to do.

More to come, as soon as it is announced!