Canon 7D, EOS Flashes, Lenses, Canon, Canon 60D, Nikon

Micro Focus Adjustments

Most professional and prosumer cameras have the Micro Focus Adjustment (MFA). The MFA allows for the variation between the focusing with focusing module and the focusing at the CMOS sensor. I do my MFA on regular basis:

  • Before a “big” job, just to make sure when I prepare the cameras, just like fully charged batteries for the cameras and the flashes, empty memory cards… It's part of the ritual.
  • Twice a year, usually the end of February and the mid-fall. The temperature extremes can change the MFA settings needed.

How Canon did in 2012

Please note that I'm only highlighting Canon's Imaging division which represents 40% of the company.

  • As with all multi-national companies, the financial information changes according to the currencies. Canon, like Nikon and most other Japanese camera companies, keep their “official accounting books” in Japanese Yens. They also provide US Dollars conversion (which I will use). The unknown is how is the exchange rate calculated? Is it on a transaction basis, on a daily basis, on a weekly or monthly basis?
  • Usually, the exchange rates are averaged over the month but they can use any other method, like the last day of the month as long as they always use the same method.
  • They do not have to explain the details of how they calculate the exchange rates, they just have to state which exchange rate they used.

Demand for interchangeable-lens digital cameras continued to display strong growth across global markets while demand for compact digital cameras shrunk not only in developed countries, but also in China and some emerging nations.

Source: Canon financials for the year 2012

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The Secret to IS/OS/VR

Every camera manufacturer is has some type of stabilization. For some cameras like Canon and Nikon, the stabilization is built in the lens, for others like Olympus, Pentax and Sony, the stabilization is built into the camera. Some camera manufacturers claims 3EV gain, the newer ones are claiming 4EV and Nikon is now claiming 5EV of stabilization. Most people doubt these claims then they show their photos where they didn't get the 4EV gain. That's because they don't know how to make it work!

Here is a serie of 6 consecutive photos with the IS. 3 consecutive photos where the IS didn't work as expected and 3 consecutive photos where the IS gave me the full 4EV gain.

I'm using Canon, but this is the same for all the camera manufacturers: Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus, Pentax…

These photos are photos of Wile E. Coyote, from the RoadRunner cartoon. BTW, the E stands for Ethelbert.

Canon 7D Quirk

Saturday was a very foggy day on Canada's West Coast. I still went to hand feed the sandhill cranes and see if there is any way to improve my BIF skills. There is BIF, Bird In Flight, there is BOG, Bird On the Ground, there is BIT, Bird In Tree… Very few people make photos of BIF, most people talk BIF but they don't do BIF, they do BOG or BIT. I'm mostly a BOG/BIT guy, but that's OK since I do not claim to do BIF. So I decided this year to make thousands upon thousands of BIF and eventually they will be good. So I started with one of the most difficult subject for BIF, the ducks! They are fairly small and they are extremely quick. Easy to find but very hard to photograph in flight.

Please note the underexposure from the Canon 7D quirk.

Flying Mallard

Underexposed Flying Mallard  Canon 7D, Aperture Priority f/6.3, AutoISO: 160, 1/320s, Evaluative metering, Canon 70-200 IS f/4L @160mm

Raw and Colour Space

Almost all dSLRs (except some of the really, really old dSLRs from the early 2000) provide two colour spaces, the ubiquitous sRGB (standard RGB)1 and aRGB (adobe RGB)2. aRGB was developed by Adobe as a colour space that would cover the full CMYK colour space used by printing presses like magazines…

A raw file has a much larger colour space than either sRGB or aRGB.

  1. sRGB is an 8 bit colour space: 8 bit (256) reds, 8 bit (256) greens and 8 bit (256) blues. ↩

  2. aRGB is a 12 bit colour space: 12 bit (4096) reds, 12 bit (4096) greens and 12 bit (4096) blues. ↩

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.

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!”).
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