It’s that time of year again, the holidays are coming, and for most of us that means exchanging gifts. With that in mind, I present this list of great stocking stuffers for the photographer in your life. Like most things in photography, not everything is cheap, but they should fit in a stocking.
I’ve tried to avoid big ticket items, and things that aren’t somewhat self contained. I’ve also tried to keep this as platform agnostic as possible (at least within the big 2).
Most of the things on this are things I’ve either asked loved ones for or gifted to fellow photographers in the past. They’re all things that I find indispensable to have and use.
For some time I’ve had intermittent issues with one of my 580ex IIs, but never could put my finger on it, literally. Touching the flash would often fix the problem. On some rare occasions it just wouldn’t fire, or would fire at the wrong power, but never often enough for with enough regularity to be something I could put my finger on. Sometimes it would happen with the camera in portrait orientation, then on the next frame not at all….It was infrequent enough that I never really looked into it until I read a post at the end of a thread on Canon Rumors about dead flashes and Pocket Wizards.
My problem, and it’s the first place I’d start looking before I took the flash in for repair, was that the hotshoe mechanism had somehow worked loose. Specifically the clamps weren’t fully clamping down, which would let the flash wobble in the camera’s hotshoe breaking contact with the camera.
There are two ways to check this without actually having to take your flash in for service (or take it apart and fix it yourself).
First is if the flash obviously wobbles in the hot shoe. In a properly adjusted flash, there will be a little be of play—the cam based clamping mechanism in the 580Ex II simply can’t produce the mechanical force that the older screw-down clamps could—but the flash shouldn’t noticeably rock or wobble.
The second method is to check that the “clamp tabs” actually close all the way. Start by pulling the rubber hotshoe off the flash’s foot. Then slide the lock lever to the fully locked position. You’ll see 4 small plastic tabs, 2 on each side, that extend down towards the metal foot (they’re indicated in the image below by the arrows).
On a properly adjusted foot they should just barely touch the metal plate. In the flashes I’ve checked, there’s enough of a gap to slip a sheet of regular typing paper paper between them, but not much more. If there’s a large or noticeable gap something in the mechanism has worked loose and needs to be tightened.
For disassembly and tightening instructions, check out this guide by Jan Shim. Also pay special attention to the shock warning noted in that guide, working inside of a flash gun has the potential to be lethal if it is not properly safed first.
This has been a bad year for rectangular/drop in filters. Cokin had issues earlier this year, and stopped production for a while, as a result sourcing a 4″ filter holder from either Cokin or Lee has been a challenge. Sourcing the filters hasn’t been any easier.
In the mean time while trying to get filters, I’ve been playing with my Cokin Z-pro holder, trying to find the right orientations for each of my lenses while trying to get as many filter slots available as possible.
What I’ve found is that there are 3 possible orientations you can use without having to take the filter holder apart. They will give you 1, 2, and 3 available slots without having to take the holder apart. (Click the images below to enlarge.)
1 Filter Slot
The filter holder is reversed so that the mounting ring is in the closest filter slot on the front (3-slot) side with the threads pointing away from base plate. Just about any wide or ultra-wide angle lens (for FX and crop DSLRS at least) should not show any vignetting with this configuration.
2 Filter Slots
The adapter ring is inserted in the “rear” most filter slot in the 3-slot side, and then the whole ring and holder assembly is screwed into the lens’s filter threads.Though this is most difficult method to setup, it doesn’t vignette on the widest lens I’ve tested it on (a Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM) and you get 2 useable filter slots instead of 1.
3 Filter Slots
The normal mounting, with the adapter ring slotted in the single rear slot and the filters in the front. This shouldn’t vignette on anything longer than 24mm.
While they’re kind of obvious once you see them, I spent a good 30 minutes trying different sized “stacks” of front filters trying to find the right combination that didn’t vignette on my EF-S 10-22. It turns out that the biggest problem with that lens is the thickness of the “baseplate” that holds everything together; take that out of the equation and you can do 2 filters without any vignetting.
And for those who are curious, I went with the Z-Pro holder and the 4″ filters, even though they’re more expensive than the P system’s 80mm filters. The answer is simple, I’ve used P series filters on my ultra-wide and the holders has always vignetted at the widest focal lengths. As a result, I either can’t shoot as wide as I’d like, or I end up holding the filter instead of using the holder.
The X-pro (4″) filters, are big enough that even on the EF-S 10-22 at 10mm I can get 2 filters of effects without having to worry about vignetting. Besides, if you need/want to save a couple of bucks on P filters for occasional use on longer lenses, there’s always the Cokin P to Z-Pro Adapter(Affiliate Link).
Canon’s “revolutionary” new camera was announced today at a press conference at Paramount Pictures studio in Hollywood, California. High end cinema cameras are decidedly not my forte, and I had initially not planned on commenting on this if it turned out to be a cinema body. However, after looking at both the specs for the new C300 and the announcement of a new VDSLR in the pipeline I decided I’d throw my 2¢ out there too.
I won’t event try to summarize the specs, they’re way out of my comfort zone (but you can read the press release). That said, the big thing that stands out to me, are that the camera has a QFHD/4K sensor (weighing in at 8.3MP), but can’t output 4K video. Instead Canon has elected to down sample the 4K bayer sensor into a 1080p Full HD ouput that has full RGB color for each pixel. On one hand this will provide a better image than a line skipping VDSLR. On the other hand, if you have to read the full sensor out, it seems like it would be reasonable to have the option of storing the full sensor output. Doesn’t it? Then again, Arri doesn’t do more than 2K resolution with the Alexa, so, maybe it’s not that big of a deal.
What they did do right, is not try and cram another video camera in an SLR body down our throats. Which makes the second announcement all that much more confusing; Canon says they have a VDSLR that can shoot 4K video in the works. In my opinion, the success of the VDSLR isn’t because of the form factor, but because of the cost and the fact that just about anything can be adapted to any use with enough “hacking”. However, starting from a better user interface, makes for a platform that’s that much easier to use and adapt. The C300 is definitely designed with that in mind.
Oh ya, I’d be remiss for not mentioning that in addition to the C300, Canon announced a handful of new cinema lenses. Three primes, a 24mm T/1.5L, a 50mm T/1.3L and an 85mm T/1.3L all EF mount; and 2 zooms, a 14.5-60mm T/2.6L and a 30-300mm T/2.95-3.7L in both EF and PL mounts. There’s not much I can say about them, other than they’re designed for cinematographic use, i.e. they’re fully manual (zoom, focus, and aperture), they have geared control rings (zoom, focus, and aperture), the focus and zoom throws are considerably longer than still photographic lenses (300° focus throws), and are designed for minimal breathing when focusing. Canon’s press release has the details.
Finally if you want to see what the C300 is capable of, check out Vincent Laforet’s Mobius in all it’s 1080p detail.
You know it’s fall when the camera press spins and spins on new camera after new camera. Sometime a while back Lytro, a newcomer to the market, had released a press release talking about their new camera design they were preparing to release. It’s finally come to fruition and while the technology is certainly novel and cool, though the camera appears less impressive form a UX perspective.
Capturing Lightfields not Images
In a traditional camera, the pixels on the sensor count photons that have been filtered to one of the 3 primary colors (red, green, or blue) laid out in a specific pattern. Then though some simple statistics, if you can say that about statistics, the two captured color values for every pixel can be reconstructed fairly accurately based on the values of the adjacent pixels. The result of this is that normal digital camera’s capture an image, in focus areas are in focus, out of focus areas are blurred and can’t be reconstructed.
What Lytro has done is (and you’ll have to pardon me because the physics is slightly beyond my grasp I don’t have a PhD in optics) is added a second set of micro lenses in front of the normal lenses. The first set of lenses, break the image down in such a way that the sensor itself captures in focus light at what amounts to every focus position. Then using even more clever than normal processing, an image can be reconstructed so that focus can be placed anywhere in the scene and depth of field can be simulated.
As a result of this, the camera doesn’t need an AF motor or a variable focus lens. Ultimately presenting some interesting implications for simplifying lens design.
When the 1D mark 4 came out 2 years ago, I was markedly underwhelmed by the specs. More megapixels, same frame rate, same silly 1.3x crop factor. The specs alone pushed me from release day buy to wait for the reviews. As time when on and the camera was put though it’s paces, the reviews became increasingly underwhelming. The resolution didn’t help, the sensor was capable of way better performance than the camera could provide. As much as it pains me, I skipped it.
Enter the 1D X. Canon’s line of pro cameras has always been split between the 1D for sports and photojournalism and the 1Ds for studio work. I always thought the distinction, and the design choices, were a bit odd, but those are the breaks. Supposedly, at least if the Rumor mill is to be believe, the 1D X seeks to unify the two pro bodies. I’m not convinced of this, there’s nothing in the naming that doesn’t indicate that they can’t continue to produce a 1D S and a 1D X.
In any event, the 1D X goes a long way to correcting issues I considered to be major faults in the 1D line.
The other day I came across a discussion about Lens Rental’s blog post on lens variation. In retrospect it should be pretty obvious that there is going to be variation between lenses. In fact, any old hat photographer knows that some copies of lenses are gems and others are total bombs, even when we’re talking about high quality lenses. In fact, I’ve wanted to characterize the variance in a statistically meaningful way for sometime, only I have neither the personal collection of lenses, or the clout to get any manufacture to ship me the lenses to test.
Fortunately Roger at Lens Rentals.com was interested enough to start studying his lenses. The results are, well both shocking and not really surprising at all. In any case there article is well worth a read.
I don’t care how little noise, or how much dynamic range a camera has, if you can’t reliably get sharp images out of it it’s no good anyway. In this case, I’m referring motion blur due to camera shake, the same problem I complained about when I first got my iPhone 4.
In my opinion there were two major faults with the camera software in IOS4.
It allowed the shutter speed to drop below what would be needed to hand hold the camera without motion blur (1/30th)
It favored dropping the shutter speed below 1/30th instead of raising the ISO when possible (i.e. I’d get shots at 1/15th ISO 125 instead of 1/30th ISO 250).
Well iOS 5 doesn’t do squat for either of those issues. It still drops the shutter speed to 1/15th, all the damn time even when there enough light to be at ISO 125. Moreover, there’s no indication that the camera is doing that, or that your images might be blurry until you take the shot and go back and look at it.
So what did Apple do to make the camera better?
They gave us a rule of thirds grid and the ability to use the volume up button as a shutter release. Incidentally, in the little bit of playing around I’ve done, using the volume up button as the shutter release makes things worse.
Sigh.
Maybe Apple will really throw us photographers a bone and do something about this in iOS 6.
So Nikon has announced their entry into the compact interchangeable lens camera market, I posted about it yesterday. Apparently the, “what the hell is this shit” reaction has been strong enough that DPReview felt they needed to come to Nikon’s defense on sensor size. Having slept on it, the more I have to wonder what Nikon was thinking when they were designing this.
The question that should always be asked when breaking the status quo is, “what problem are we solving and is it the right problem to solve?”
Clearly there is a problem, for the past year or so Nikon and Canon have been steadily losing market share in Japan to the likes of Olympus, Sony, and Samsung and their compact mirror-less cameras. There’s clearly a market demand for these cameras, so much so that Olympus has completely left the SLR business, and is focusing entirely on mirror-less cameras. The writing has been on the wall for a while, have a compact interchangeable lens camera, or risk being left behind.
The real question though, is what is prompting consumers to buy these cameras and how do you address that need better than the competition.
Compact interchangeable lens cameras are a compromise, not that any camera isn’t. The question is where do you make that compromise and who do you aim towards? I think the answer is the higher the better. You can always pair back a higher end platform to make a lower end camera, but going the other way is difficult if not impossible. Moreover, the choices you make now bind you for the foreseeable future. This is especially true with cameras where the investment in a platform can last decades or more. Undershoot what the market wants in a couple of years, and you may be forced to reinvent the wheel again—segmenting your market when the competition has avoided doing that to theirs.
This brings us back to the Nikon 1. The small sensor means the camera will always be behind Sony and Olympus IQ wise. Now you might argue that it’s not going to be a serious photographers main camera. To which I’d point out the problem is the Sony NEX, and Olympus PENs are aiming to be a serious photographers main camera. Both of those systems target everyone from casual photographer to serious photographer; the Nikon 1 by virtue of the sensor size is only effectively able to target the casual market. Why would you limit the ability to include a whole market segment by design?
More over, Nikon has done a good job in shooting themselves in the foot right out of the gate. Making a larger sensor mirror-less body would likely require a different mount; meaning a fractured, at best, or quickly obsoleted, at worst, product line.
I’ve said it before, but if you’re trying to make a high end compact, a fixed lens over a large sensor will always be capable of being more compact than an interchangeable one. Moreover, the integrated package keeps dust off the sensor, cuts the costs, and allows the lens and sensor to be optimized for the best image quality. Conversely if you’re aiming for serious photographers, who want the ability to change lenses; small sensors, ultra tiny hard to hold bodies, and no controls simply doesn’t hack it and wont sell well. The interchangeable lens mount just adds costs and means that there are more compromises in the design. Whether the Nikon 1 proves to be a success or not remains to be seen, hopefully for Nikon it will be.
