Canon

Canon Cameras

2013 and Your Copyrights

2013 is only 2½ weeks away, if we make it pass the Mayan end of the world on 21-Dec-2012 aka 21/12/12 or 12/12/21. As a photographers, I have a list to prepare for the new 2013 year. One of the item on my list is to update my copyrights. My problems is that I need to change the copyright ©2012 to ©2013 in too many places:

  • My website in the footers
  • My cameras
  • My various software
  • My contracts

What used to take 15 minutes now is almost a full hour.

1.

Fill-in Flash and the Shutter Speed

Canon, like all other camera manufacturers, has a flash mode to balance the flash with the ambient light, aka the fill-in flash. You need to have the flash in eTTL and the camera in Av mode. When using the flash, the aperture controls the power of the flash and the shutter speed controls the ambient light.

What is a Professional Camera?

I was showing some photos and I got the usual “compliment”

You must have a good camera.

What made this compliment different is that the person kept on with:

It must be a professional camera.

The standard answer is “it's not the camera, it's the photographer that makes the photographs”, but we all know that it's not true even among photographers.

Canon 7D: AF Tracking response

I like to procrastinate, but I hide my procrastination by calling it research. So I can waste my time researching on the web instead of doing the things I know I should be doing but… Sometimes, I find nuggets of information like today's when sometimes the Canon 7D has problems following the subject in the frame, but this only happens in Zone-AF or in the 19-points AF.

Canon: Setting Flash Exposure Compensation

In the Canon system, you can set the Flash Exposure Compensation (FEC) either on the back of the Speedlite flash or in the camera menu system. And they can be active at the same time.

And that's where the problems start. To avoid confusion, you should use one or the other place to set the flash exposure compensation not both. Why not both? Because the effect depends on the order that the flash exposure compensation was set.

  • If the flash exposure compensation is first set on the flash, then you can't set it in the camera.
  • If the flash exposure compensation is first set on the camera, and then you also set it on the flash, the flash setting will override the flash exposure compensation set on the camera.

Why Are My Colors Flat?

Why are my colors flat when they looked so good on the review LCD of the camera? The photos looked fantastic for about 5 seconds in Lightroom, then they became flat.

It's complicated because they are so many variables:

The Color Spaces

There are 3 main color spaces for us photographers:

  1. sRGB, the smallest color space. This is the basic color space in photography. And, it's not fully supported by the vast majority of the screens. Even the New iPads with the Retina Display do not support the full sRGB color space (color saturation doesn't make color space).
  2. Adobe RGB(1998), a color space introduced in 1998 by Adobe for desktop publishing to cover all the colors possibles on CMYK printers.
  3. ProPhoto RGB, a color space developed by Kodak. It is currently the widest color space in use for photography. It was developed for the photo uses. All “serious” photo editors do their edits/calculations in the ProPhoto RGB color space, then they display/output in the appropriate color space (screen/printer/file).

2012 - Canon's Imaging Sales are Down 7%

As all companies listed on the stock market, companies have to release their financial statements every 3 month and what's the outlook. Canon did that on 24-Oct-2012. Here are some extracts that think are “important” about Canon's imaging unit. Canon's imaging sales are down 7.3% for the last 3 month ended on 30-Sep-2012 but imaging sales are still up 6% for the 9 month ended on 30-Sep-2012.

  • Despite efforts to achieve sales growth with the competitively priced EOS Digital Rebel series along with the EOS 5D Mark III and EOS 60D advanced-amateur models, sales volumes of interchangeable-lens digital cameras decreased from the year-ago period due to a delayed new-product launch.

Canon 7D: 1st/2nd image priority

The Canon 7D is already a 3 years old camera, so Canon gave it 2 Digic-4 CPUs, once of which is dedicated to the auto-focusing. Still at 8 frames per second, the Digic-4 has its limits. It's a battle of sharing the CPU cycles between the processing of the photos and the auto-focusing. So Canon decided to let you decide how should the camera prioritize the speed of capturing the photos vs the auto-focusing. This is controlled by the C.Fn III - 2 for the configuration menu > Autofocus/Drive.

LCD Reviews

The Canon 7D has gorgeous back LCD screen. Even 3 years later it's one of the best and one of the biggest around with its 3” LCD screen. There are very few cameras with 3.2” screens. The problem is that for reviewing the photos it's not that great, I can see the framing, I can see see which areas have the clippings, but let's face it, almost all photos look good on a 3” screen.

The question is what gets displayed on the LCD review screen? It's not the photo itself whether it is raw or jpeg. It is the preview of the photo that gets displayed on the LCD review screen.

The IS/VR at Work

Here are 2 sharp images. I'm using Canon but it's the same with Nikon, Sony, Olympus… These photos were made during the Vancouver SmugMug Headshot Workshop at the East Vancouver Studio. It was very, very busy.

Kid taking photos during the Vancouver SmugMug Headshot Workshop at the East Vancouver Studio/Canon 5DMk2

Kid taking photos during the Vancouver SmugMug Headshot Workshop at the East Vancouver Studio-Canon 5DMk2

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