Canon 7D, Canon, Canon 60D

Many people confuse Burst Rate with Frames per Second (fps) speeds:

• Burst Rate: How many of photographs you can take in a continuous/single burst without shutting down.
• Frames per second: The speed at which you can take consecutive shots.

The burst rate is related to how much internal memory the camera has. The higher the RAM, the higher the burst rate, but eventually the camera needs to store the images from the internal memory onto the memory card.

As you can see, I was able to get the face in focus through the reeds across the pond. Here's is the crop.

This guy must be a Kiss fan, he is wearing their hoodie. You can get your own Kiss hoodie from LiveNation's website (the official agent) for $39.95 + bazillions for the shipping and handling.

According to the manual, the Canon 7D has 3 customs settings: C1, C2 and C3. Contrarily to the manual, I use 6 custom settings.

1. I paid full price when the Canon 7D came out in September 2010.
2. I want to get my money's worth.
3. I'm special ;)

Like everybody else, I first used the C1, C2, and the C3 Camera User settings.

• C1: My basic Av default setup, ISO 400, f/6.3, Daylight, Zone Af, and High speed continuous.

Canon has extremely sophisticated focusing systems, but there are still people that can't make them work. Most of the problems are due to the fact that they do not understand how Canon has designed them to fit all the various possibilities/combinations. I explained it on DPReview.com. Here it is in a slightly different format.

One Shot

The AF assumes that the subject is static

• If the subject is static, The AF will achieve focus immediately and that's it, you can remove your finger from the back button, it won't keep on focusing.
• If the subject is moving, the photos will be out of focus.

AI Servo

One of the common problem with the Canon 7D, 60D and 1DMk4… is that the first couple of photographs are fuzzy, and all the other photos after that are sharp and crisp.

The 2 major causes are:

1. The IS/VR, in the Canon lingo: Image Stabilization, in the Nikon lingo: Vibration Reduction in the Nikon world
2. The focus

Image Stabilization/Vibration Reduction

In Canon and Nikon cameras, the image stabilization (VR in Nikon) is in the lens. The other camera manufacturers followed Olympus' lead when it created the image stabilization directly in the camera body.

The image stabilization/vibration reduction uses some motion sensors and 1 or 2 micro-gyroscopes to shift, either some element of the lens, or the CMOS/CCD sensor. Basically, it introduces another movement to counter-act your movement. You can see it in action if you mount a “not a new generation” IS/VR lens on a tripod with mode 1 enabled with the head slightly loose, then the camera will start to drift.

It takes half a second for the Image Stabilization/Vibration Reduction to kick in. This means that the IS/VR engages half a second after the focus has been engaged. The IS/VR has started, but it hasn't achieved stabilization yet. It can take between another ½ sec to another full second to achieve stabilization. With the new Canon L lenses and the new Nikon VRII lenses, when the IS/VR has been achieved after another second, the IS/VR reaches the Lotus position and achieves “nirvana” to give the full 4 or 5 f/stop of improvement.

This is the equivalent of using a tripod.

Focus mode

The prism contains a lot of “stuff”. It's the top of the camera and houses the flash, the hot shoe for the external flash and inside, it contains the pentaprism which is according to Canon gives a vertical/horizontal coverage of approximately 100% (p253 of the manual). The prism also contains a lot of electronics and sensors like the AF sensors and the exposure control.

The pentaprism is designed so that the eye is 22mm away from the eyepiece.

Here's a 41 megapixels photo:

Here is the screen capture of the photograph size:

There are 2 uses for the Auto-Exposure AE lock:

1. When you want to have the area of focus to be different from the area metered for the exposure.

Do you remember when you were in high school? When I was in high school, we had to study physics. We had to study light, waves… For the people that either didn't have to study physics or have forgotten it:

The light coming from a flash bounces like billiard balls. This means that light that bounces against a reflecting surface will bounce back with the same angle, i.e.

Canon created the LP-E6 battery for the Canon 5DMk2. It's an expensive battery, $100+ in Canada. Canon said that it's expensive because it has its own CPU. Many people have speculated that it's a strategy to “kill” the “generic” batteries. Actually it's not just the CPU but also the significant higher capacity. The benefit of the LP-E6 is the much longer battery life. In the “good old” days, it was very common for a battery to last between 300 to 500 photos.

Canon claims that the LP-E6 last approximately 1,000 photos at 23°C/73°F without the popup flash and 900 photos with a 50% popup flash use.

Here's a poor photo of the battery info on my Canon 7D. It had to be, I was in the field, and I had to use somebody's else point and shoot. My other camera had a long tele without any close focus. But it's good enough to see the battery status:

Now that Nikon has finally announced the D800 and the D800E at around $3,000 and $3,400. The biggest, the meanest camera at 36 megapixels, but great looks. This is a full-frame FX camera. The megapixels are the numbers of a medium format camera: Mamiya starts at 22 megapixels for $11,000, Hasselblad and Phase One both starts at 31 megapixels and at $14,000 each.

We don't know if the trinity, that's the 12-24 f/2.8, the 24-70 f/2.8 and the 70-200 f/2.8, will be able to resolve the full 36 megapixels. Let's hope so and that will be great news.

One of the most popular photography website is the http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/ from David Hobby. I'm not in the same league and I don't even pretend. But I use flashes regularly. I specialize in simple setups. The problem with most of the photos sites where they give you the lighting diagram, they tell you how they did it but not why they chose this or that solution.

Jasper is not a happy camper. Jasper clearly doesn't want to be here. If he could escape and go back home he would. Treats and weird/special noises didn't help to get his interest.

Jasper is not a happy camper   click on image for gallery

First look at eyes, no “evil” glowing eyes, good definition and not hard shadows. Here's the technical data:

Did you ever forgot to take… for a very important photo session or for a trip? I did, I realized that I forgot to take my flash cables (at the time, we only used cables, there were no Pocket Wizards) and forgot the extra batteries to make it worth.

That's why I created my photographic equipment list.

1. All of my photo gear is in a chest
2. All the boxes or unused equipment or monopods, tripods are in a separate closet
3. Almost all of my “everyday” is already in the backpack

Do I use my list everyday? No, because many items are in small pouches.

The mine's better than yours war has ready started. Nikon has finally announced their D4, almost 6 weeks after Canon announced their 1Dx.

• It looks like Nikon will ship first. 1 point for Canon announcing first and 1 point for Nikon shipping first.
• The prices are in the same range, the $6,000 range, 1 point Nikon and ¾ point for Canon because the announced price will be high end of the $6,000 range but I'm convinced that they will quickly match Nikon's.
• Photo side: technically, if you read the specs, they are pretty much equivalent on the photo side. Canon is a little bit more here, Nikon is a little bit more there. In the real world, the major difference is clock-wise (Canon) vs counter clock-wise (Nikon). I defy you to identify a photo taken with the 1Dx or by the D4. They both have 60 years of experience and it shows. Nikon has closed the megapixels gaps by going to 16 megapixels. So 1 point for Canon and 1½ point for Nikon.