Canon delivered today.

As I've mentioned several times here, I've had lots of issues with my Canon gear. I bought into the Canon system after using consumer Nikon gear for years. I needed a fast body with AF for some work I do.

Immediately things bugged me. So, in the first month I sent several lenses and bodies back. I took loads of pictures and then winced when they were brought into Lightroom. I finally got really angry and ordered a D300, thinking that maybe Nikon could make me happier.

I mentioned this to a good friend and fellow Canon shooter, and he suggested that before I do this crazy switch dance, that I give Canon the chance to make it right. So I did. I called, they were great to work with and I sent my stuff in.

Well, they arrived back at my house about 8 days after sending them in.

Things look much better. The 24-70L lens had a faulty mechanical chassis (whatever that is) replaced. The 70-200L needed adjustment as it was back focusing. The 40D also needed some adjustment - AF was off on occasion. You're telling me. Like 98% of the time.

I was anxious as I took the camera out and mounted the lenses. A few test shots showed promise.

The only lingering issue in my mind:

I bought three Canon products. All three were faulty. Anyone who has taken a basic stats class will recognize the probability there. And yet they still managed to place three faulty items into my hands. 100% crap rate. Boy does that suck or what.

One has to question the kind of QA do they have at Canon? I will have to admit that the service was *almost* great, but I am still out $75 just to ship/insure it. Thats $75 I had to spend to get decent Canon gear.

Kinda makes me angry - but having a camera/lens combo that focuses makes me feel a bit better.

Of course, the much-maligned Leica M8 with my collection of old lenses (ranging from 10 to 50 years in age) has never had problems. Ironic.

Interesting.

Tags:Canon, Leica

On the camera front, I'm sending the Nikon D300 back. Its a nice body, but I just don't like it as much as the 40D. I put it thru its paces (keeping the shutter below 200 shots as per B&H's requirement) and wasn't blown away.

I found it felt cheaper and less solid than the 40d. Some of the controls I like better, some less (I always hear how NIkon is more intuitive). Granted, it really is a bit better at high ISOs than the 40d, but not markedly so. The grain has a different structure that I can see liking more than the Canon, but its not light years ahead as I understand the D3 is.

I was talking this over with a friend of mine and he recommended that I send in the 40d and my lenses for calibration under warrantee. That in mind, I called Canon up and they were super easy to work with, so the whole lot heads off today for California and I should have them back in a week or two.

So maybe I'm not giving up on Canon yet. I sure wish they'd release the 5D replacement.

Tags:Canon

Its been just over two weeks since we opened the floodgates on the Lightroom 2 public beta.

Most of the feedback I've seen is very positive and the potential is getting many excited for the full release later this year (note how I'm being very vague).

Matt Kloskowski has posted a nice Q&A on the Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips website that covers many of the questions I'm hearing.

On a related front, I've given up on the Canon 40D.

I've had this camera and several reputable pieces of L glass for about 5 months now and I've never really been very happy with it. Why? Lots of issues with sharpness, detail, focus and noise. Every time I look at images from that camera I am not as happy with it as I should be. What is weird, performance aside, I was much happier with the images from an old NIkon D40 than I've been with the Canon 40D. Go figure.

So I'm done as of today. I just ordered a D300 and some nice Nikon glass, and hopefully it will live up to my expectations. It arrives tomorrow and I'll put it thru the ringer in short order. I realize I'm somewhat spoiled by the Leica gear I own, but disappointment just got the best of me. With no 5D replacement on the horizon yet, it looks like I'm jumping ship again.

I expect that means my 40D and its assorted paraphernalia will go on Ebay in the near term as well. I feel I really gave it a go and it has become clear to me that I need the speed and flexibility a good DSLR delivers.

So its Nikon's turn. I hear spectacular things about the new Nikons, so lets see what happens. I'll probably pick up an SB-800 and the battery grip as well as I've become quite fond of them on the 40d.

That said, here is another few images from my desert vacation. These are all square formats of the local flora and I'm quite happy with them.

I was also in the studio yesterday with some dancers, so I'll be posting some non-desert stuff soon.

Thats all. Have a great day.

Tags:Lightroom, Personal Work, Canon, Nikon

I printed and shipped a big order today. This was for a series of pictures I shot for Emerald Ballet Theatre as part of their 2007 Nutcracker rehearsals and performances.

Emerald Ballet Theatre Galleries

There are some wonderful images in these galleries and I'm glad to see parents/grandparents taking advantage of this opportunity to have high-quality archival fine art prints of their young dancers in an important performance.

Moving along, I found a great resource (linked from the excellent The Online Photographer blog) that links to a sizeable gallery of free tutorials for various Adobe products. I'm glad to see we are finally putting these together in a single place and with a comprehensible browser to find what you are looking for.

Adobe's Design Center Tutorials

Here is an photo I took last night at EBT friday night...

The new Canon 24-70 L 2.8 lens I purchased is actually working out quite well. Its sharp and although not quite wide enough (argh, 1.6 crop factor!) its pretty nice. I'm afraid I'll have to go to primes for the same IQ as my Leica glass (if even then) but its more than acceptable. I should really look into putting Leica R glass on this camera, but I hear things about flakey adapters (and I loose AF). Primes? No AF? Sounds like my M8...

Tags:Emerald Ballet Theatre, Training, Canon

Well, I've spent a few more weeks with the Canon 40D and have a few new things to add to the mix (the original summary review is here- scroll down a bit).

1. Lenses - I gave up on the 17-55 2.8 EFS IS lens. The second lens came from B&H and demonstrated the same issues - things were just not sharp. Now granted, I'm spoiled by decent Leica glass (and funny enough, I don't own the nicest Leica stuff - my lenses are all older generation technology) but they are sharp and give me beautiful results. I ended up buying a 24-70 2.8L last week and I'm much happier. The lens is finally giving me results that I'm happy with. Funny, but even my old D70 and its kit consumer lens was loads better than the 17-55 2.8 EFS IS. Go figure. I find the 24 is not wide enough (I really loved the 17 end of the previous lens) but I didn't want to lop off all those MM for a 16-35 L lens, despite the great things I'd heard about it.
2. Auto-Focus - I've come along way in understanding how to use all the various modes on the 40D. Several of you even emailed some hints on what would help and I find they are spot on. Thanks
3. CR2 - man I still hate converting them. I swear that copying files from the 40D takes twice as long as my M8 files.
4. I ended up just buying some bigger CF cards (2 12 GB Sandsik Cards) as they had a great rebate at the time of purchase. Wahooo.
5. I bought the battery grip. It makes a big/heavey camera even more unweildy, and I've only shot with it on a few occasions, but I like the vertical shutter and the extra power (I'm sure it will come in handy). But man, that camera is big.
6. I ended up needing a larger Domke bag to carry it all in (ended up with the excellent Domke Super Sachel) and I'm loving it. Its big and heavy, but I just wasn't fitting into the F2 anymore. Domke bags rock. Seriously.
7. I'm probably going to get the alternate focusing screen - the FTM focusing on these lenses is kinda cool sometimes, but not nearly as cool as the focus tab on my Summicron or that wonderful rangefinder patch. Its nice to have both cameras in my bag.

Enamored? Yeah. Will it settle? Yeah.

Here is another picture from yesterday's studio shoot.

Tags:Canon, Tech

Well, I recently purchased something I never saw myself getting: a shiny new Canon DSLR.

Mind, until January of this year I was a dedicated film shooter.

Why? Simple because I loved my Leica glass and bodies too much. I shot both an M6 and a Hexar RF with a few standard lenses that just knocked my socks off. I loved what I got with those cameras/lenses. I didn't like the darkroom as much, but the tactile nature of the machine and print were enough to keep me silver. In 2006 I decided to get a Bronica 645 as a way to do some medium format work on the premise that, if I was going to soup, I should do it with big negatives. I loved that camera too and the results were even easier to scan/print than the 35mm stuff.

My did I stick with film for so long? The reasoning was twofold - I couldn't get the hardware that I wanted to shoot with in digital and the black & white printing space in digital wasn't up to snuff yet. The media and ink-sets were either non-existent (paper) or too rudimentary (ink) to provide a tactile print that *I* like to make.

These two things finally changed in 2006/7 with the introduction of the Leica M8 digital camera and the Epson Ultrachrome ink-sets. The M8 is a wonderful camera - and the best part is it lets me use my Leica glass. The 1.3 crop factor is pretty easy to work around and those lenses....ah...those lenses. Yes, the M8 shutter is too loud. Yes, the white balance is random. Yes, you're limited to a usable range of up to 1250 ISO. But the files are nice and its a wonderfully small, unobtrusive camera to use. No wiz-bang goofball stuff, just a shutter speed dial, an aperture dial and Aperture priority when moving fast.

The Epson r2400 is a decent printer as well and I'm generally happy with the prints I get from this unit - that is when I'm not having head clogging and random lines appear in my prints. I just sent my almost-one-year-old printer back for an exchange because I think the printer head was damaged. The new one is working great so far. Kudos to Epson for being so straight up about it.

Now to the Canon part.

I've been shooting in a couple of ballet studios for a year now - a couple of documentary projects (here and here) on dancers and the experience of growing up in the dance world as centered around a local studio. Its been a lovely experience and I've grown exponentially as an artist shooting these lovely dancers as they go about their work. And until December of this year, I shot everything with my M8. Its a lovely camera, as I mentioned, and I've gotten some spectacular results. Consider, however, that the M8 is mostly a manual photographers camera - we're talking manual focus and lovely prime lenses. I've gotten really good at focusing on these dynamic subjects and exploiting the best that Leica lenses can offer. However, the camera isn't as fast as I'd like it. The buffer holds about 8-10 images before it starts to slow down, and I hit that wall all the time as I shoot. And sometimes I needed longer lenses (performances for example) that the Leica could offer.

So I decided that it was time to try the dark side. I've actually owned DSLRs for years (Nikon D70 and a Nikon D40) but they were always the lower end consumer cameras because I kept saying to myself that I couldn't justify a large outlay of money on them as I didn't like the experience of shooting them. But that put me in a catch 22 situation - the consumer level cameras are not up to the performance or quality of the pro counterparts and so of course I wasn't going to like using them or the results I got.

So finally I decided that the time had come for some long-reach lenses for performance work (sometimes I can't stand on the stage and shoot away). And maybe I'd give auto-focus a try. So when the Canon 40D hit the market and people were raving about it, the camera interested me. So I went for it. I bought a 40D and the kit 28-135 lens. I didn't like the kit lens much - it was too slow and not wide enough so it went back. Then I meandered thru the Canon lens offerings for days - excruciating really to see the twisted logic that compromises a zoom-lens range. Picking primes is easy. Add the crazy crop factor of the 40D (1.6x is much more troublesome than the 1.3 on the M8) and it took me awhile to decide.

Finally I bought an EF-S 17-55 2.8 and a EF 70-200 F4L. I had to send both my first 40D back and my 17-55 2.8 lens for quality issues. Anyone who complains about Leica quality with the M8 forgets that all manufacturers have issues with new products and Canon has had its fair share in the last year. The former had an erratic meter and the latter wasn't focusing properly.

What do I think, after putting about 4000 exposures on the 40D?

1. I miss my Leica glass. The L glass is close, and I certainly have *not* tried every canon lens, but I get consistently better results with my M8. Granted, this is a new camera and a new way of seeing, so I'm sure I'll get better, but the Leica still has the je ne sais quois that makes my pictures look and print better. I'll probably buy a prime or two for the Canon, but versatility is part of the draw and zooms give you that.
2. Auto-Focus - I had a lot of shots that were out of focus or not-focused where I'd like. Like I said, I'm really good at manual focus, and I found the 40D doing all kinds of goofy things. The 17-55 2.8 lens went back because I suspect it had IS or back focus issues and If found my keeper rate went *way* down with that lens. The L lens was much better, so lets hope the new lens is better.
3. I like rangefinders for their size, viewfinder and simplicity. I like the DSLR for raw performance (17 RAW images before it chokes - I can hardly get it to stall on me) and some of those extras that clutter the experience but can really add to your toolset when you master them.
4. Canon has better low light ISO performance, but the faster Leica primes make up for most of that. I can use 1600 ISO on the 40d with no issues. 3200 ISO was a bit too problematic. The Lecia will do 1250 ISO quite nicely with the latest firmware updates. Yes, I need to try Canon prime, fast glass, but I lose the versatility of a zoom.
5. Battery life is excellent on the 40d. It just goes on and on. The leica is certainly acceptable in this regard as well. I can get 600 easy on a battery.
6. CR2 is a pain. And converting to DNG as part of the Lightroom import is a time-consuming process. Sidecar files? Come on... And the 40d files are variable in size (unlike the M8 DNG's) so it eats up a lot more CF card space.
7. The canon is big and heavy. And my camera bag is now overflowing with stuff. Canon lenses are freaking huge. And heavy. I pity someone carrying a larger compliment of this stuff. But overall, the camera is comfortable to use and isn't getting in my way.
8. The 40D has some cool features (user programable dial settings), Auto ISO, sensor cleaning etc.
9. I still need to learn to use Auto-Focus more effectively. There are lots of different auto-focus modes/metering modes and I'm not really comfortable with any yet. I love the simple center-weighted, patch-focused predictability of the M8.
10. The 40D's shutter is much quieter than my M8. Sigh. I miss the shutter on the M6 - that quiet snip sound it made.
11. I'll probably buy the battery grip as I find I shoot more portrait than landscape. I like that the 40D can provide that versatility. I swear the 645 format is perfect for me looking at my shots for the past year.
12. The 40D's auto white balance is no better than the M8 - completely random and annoying. If I were a jpeg shooter, this would kill me.

Tags:Canon, Leica, Tech