Weatherproof L Lenses

According to the popular belief L lenses (the professional line) are supposed to sealed and weatherproof. Weatherproof doesn't mean waterproof. My watch is waterproof to 20 atmospheres. This means that my watch can withstand pressures of 280 pounds per square inch! That's a lot. Weatherproof means that under light rain, the water will not go inside the lens.

So back to our L lenses. Some L lenses are weatherproof out of the box, some L lenses need some filter to make them weather resistant and finally some L lenses are not weatherproof at all.

The State of the Photography Industry 2013

I was at a presentation in preparation for CES 2013. (What do they need to prepare?) It was a panel of men in the imaging distribution industry. We are talking the distributors, not the individual retailers nor the photographers. We are talking the big boys, the guys with the dollars. And yes, it's the guys, there were all men. They spoke percentages, they never mentioned units or dollars. I wrote down a few numbers. To confuse the matters a little more, the various distributors spoke “differently”. Some of the numbers are for the whole 2012 year, some of the numbers are for the first 9 month of the year 2012.

My comments are in the footnotes.

Lightroom: Improve Your Photos

A photo session and 400 or 500 photos later… “Oh! I like that. Oops! I missed that. I really like that photo! This is portfolio material…” My first step after copying the photos from the memory card to the computer is to look for all the out of focus, the screw-ups, the person picking their nose. It's amazing what I get at 8 frames per second, the good, the bad and the ugly.

I also delete all the really ugly, the really bad ones like when the exposure is completely wrong, not even close and can't be rescued in Lightroom, the flash that reflects on a surface that I didn't expect to be reflective. I can already hear:

Check your LCD review

I rarely check the LCD playback for review. I use the LCD playback when using the flash during setup/testing, but in general I do not, because it interrupts the flow from my point of view and from the person that I make photos off.

Proper Battery Use

Lithium-Ion batteries are expensive buggers, especially for cameras. They run in the $70 to $100 range for the “real” batteries from Canon, Nikon… and then there are the “fake/generic” batteries from other manufacturers and these range from $15 to $30. Why the difference in price?

Shouldn't Lithium be Lithium? Yes and no. Lithium is Lithium. The Lithium is the material used to create the charge by having the ions move from the negative to the positive during discharge and from the positive to the negative during the charge. This is a fairly simple, well-known process, but you can pack-in more lithium to get a higher capacity, use better electrodes…

Canon Sells More dSLRs

Over the Xmas - New Year break many websites and business news reported that Canon sold more dSLRs than anyone else in 2012. The pundits gave the following numbers:

  Canon:    28.6%       
  Nikon:    25.0%       
  Olympus:  14.3%       
  Sony:     13.3%       
  Panasonic:11.3%

We know that the Olympus-Panasonic alliance is about the micro4/3. This makes the micro4/3 represent 25% of the market. 99.9999% of Sony is APS-C, over 85% of Nikon's dSLR sales are the APS-C and Canon is slightly less than 85% sales are APS-C dSLR.

Camera of the Year: 2012 Edition

2013 is here and we had all the possible announcements from every possible manufacturer. Now is a time for me to award the title of the camera of the year, the 2012 edition.

Nikon is on a roll when it comes to full frame cameras with the D800 (the monster), the D4 (the speedy Gonzales) and the D600 (for the rest of us). Accoring to a local dealer that sells both Canon and Nikon, the sales of the D800 are “very disappointing.” The Canon 5DMk3 outsells the D800 by 2 to 1. He was expecting a lot more sales since the D800 has no competition in the resolution department.

My 2012 Predictions

My predictions for 2012 are not a typo. I have been doing this since 2008 because I do not like being wrong and I procrastinate a lot. By the time I'm ready to write my predictions, it's well passed the spring, so I just have to procrastinate a few more months.

  • We survived! The most important is that we survived the end of world. Think about the alternative, what a bummer that would have been.
  • 2012 has been a very good year for the photo industry. It came following 2011 and before that 2010 (“duh!”).

Answer the "Bloody" Phone

In the last month, I've contacted 3 professional photographers. I have emailed all of them and I have left voice mails with two of them. Three weeks later, nothing. Either they have not replied to my emails. One said, “I am very busy right now but I will email you back in a couple of days.” The second photographer sent me an automated reply. “I very busy right now, email or call me back in 48 hours.” The last one never answered his phone or his email. How do they stay in business? How do they earn a living?

This is work, this is business. Many photographers complain about how people do not value photos anymore. Then they complain that there is no money in photography, that every Tom, Dick and Harry poses as a professional photographer…

When was the last time that you hired somebody that couldn't be bothered returning your calls, replying to your emails… You do not answer, next … There is always somebody else available…

If you run a business, this is a business. Businesses have:

Photography: The Latest Killer App

Facebook is the biggest photo gallery, by far. Nobody even comes close. Mark Zuckerberg understands that photography is the latest “killer app.” He just has to look at the numbers, 350+ million photos uploaded to Facebook every day and 150+ billion photos hosted on Facebook. In April 2012, Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook purchased Instagram for a billion dollars, and the acquisition (legal…) was finalized in September 2012. Now Instagram has announced new terms of service starting 16-Jan-2013:

The Canon 6D Revolution

This weekend, I met with “Jimbo.” Jimbo is a geek, always the latest… Jimbo just bought, a week ago, a brand new Canon 6D. He explained how switching from his Canon 7D to his new 6D changed his outlook on photography. Going back to a full frame is so fantastic, the bokeh, the high ISO and the low noise… Everything worked except that he had to get rid of his 17-55 f/2.8, which is an APS-C lens.

How can we be so stupid to use APS-C cameras… BTW, I use APS-C, I love it and I must be stupid! Anybody with a “real brain” must immediately switch to a full frame camera. And to show me, he took a photo and instead of “chimping” on the LCD at the back of his Canon 6D, he pulled his iPad from his bag and showed me the photo on the iPad.

Now, it's my turn to be blown away and not because of the low noise, the high ISO or the bokeh but by just what he didn't do. He did nothing and “by magic” the image appeared on the iPad.

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