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A friend bought one of these a few weeks ago. At the time (and every time he showed me a great photo since) I jokingly asked to borrow it, but without any huge conviction given it’s a thousand pound lens…

Imagine my surprise when he arrived at my door yesterday morning and handed it to me.

Suffice to say, that was the end of the weekend of chores and I’ve been shooting ever since.

Initial impressions are it’s heavy. Especially on a 400D body. It totally dwarfs the rest of the camera, but it’s still much more usable than I expected with the barrel width not encroaching on hand space very much at all.

Focus is fast. Blisteringly so, you don’t notice it seeking a huge amount either. The IS is noisy and seems to run for a little while after the shot as well which was a shock when I heard it.

In terms of image quality, it’s simply stunning. The bokeh it produces it lovely and the sharpness is to die for.

I’ve no intention of spending long periods of time seeing if it works well with low light or if the IF is good for 2 stops or 3. there are plenty of sites and people who’ve done that already.

Suffice to say, if you’re in the market for a superb zoom and you have the sort of cash needed, this is a great looking piece of kit.

Right, I’m off out to the park to see what other shots I can get before he realises just how nuts it was to loan me a lens like this!

Yeah, it’s been a quiet few weeks. Great thing about a hobby is when you get distracted it’s not quite the end of the world. My couple of weeks staring sullenly at my camera have passed and hopefully things are getting back on track.

Anyway….

This time last year I was tinkering with a set of cheap Ebay triggers and whilst they were fun, there was lots of issues with range, misfires and just general reliability. So much so, that they were almost a chore to use at times. Don’t get me wrong, they had their uses and I got some fun shots with them, but I hated relying on them for anything which involved people.

I was reading Paulo’s blog again recently and he mentioned picking up some Phottix Strato triggers, so I dropped him a line to see if his initial recommendation was holding up. Whilst it was, it turns out they weren’t made anymore. He recommended a look at RF-602 triggers.

Tonight I managed to get playing with a set I picked up.

First impressions are they’re fantastic. No misfires at all. Easy, clean operation with good signal lights to tell you what’s happening. And the range is to die for – they claim 100metres, but I don’t have a house that big – I was able to trigger the flash from 2 rooms away with no line of sight (OK, not sure why I’d ever need to trigger a flash I can’t see, but….)

All in all a cool set of triggers, and at £26 for a set it’s well worth a punt.

While playing with them I took a few self portraits (using Strobist for inspiration). They’re nothing special, but I couldn’t post and not post an image now could I?

(Yes, my eyes look odd. You hold a fekking flash under your chin and see how your eyes go…)

I’ll come back to the light box and other lighting tool another night….

I was asked to take some photographs of model cars tonight.

It seems there is a big anniversary coming up for Mini (40 years?) and since I had a camera I was asked if I would take some shots of classic model minis.

Not being one to say no to an opportunity to play with the camera, I jumped at the chance.

I took two styles of shot over the evening. A sort of typical archive approach, car at 45 degrees shot and a more adventurous shot. I’ll post a few of these over the coming weeks I guess.

Here’s one as a starter anyway.

I’m asked to do this sort of thing occasionally. Most everyone who knows me or knows me through friends or family knows I’m a bit of a photo nut. When I’m asked, I always make it clear I’m very amateur and still very much learning, but if they’re willing to loan me their toys, kids, whatever I’ll see what I can do. I make sure they understand they may get nothing out of it, but if I manage to take anything they’re welcome to it. It’s a great way to learn and to keep stimulated.

I guess what I’m saying is, make sure you’re available to improve your photography. If you’re like me, you only truly learn by taking pictures. And taking new pictures is a great way to learn…

No, this isn’t some sort of “…every Friday night, by the light of the moon…” confession.

So, what do you do when you want to try portrait photography. And macro photography. And it’s Friday and you’ve had a glass of wine. And there’s a good show on TV but it’s an add break. And your camera is sitting beside you?

Yup. you take pictures of your kids Barbie doll.

(f/16, 100mm, 1/125sec, ISO-200)

This was shot using my 400D with a Canon F2.8 100mm macro lens. Lighting was supplied by the pop up flash.

Some post processing was applied, including a little curves, some exposure highlighting of the left eye and a tweak to colours using LAB colour mode (applying an adjustment to the Lightness channel).

Anyway. It’s Friday night, the moons in the sky…

I’ve been suspicious about the images I’ve put up here for a little while. I’ve noticed that from time to time that when I view them as prints or on other machines they sometimes look different.

It’s never bothered me that much up until now. It’s always been “close” and I haven’t regarded anything I’ve taken as being important enough to fret over.

However, it does detract from an image. And it drove me mad when I reviewed this image on a different machine

When looking at my monitor I didn’t see the black cast from the body and the panelling effect in the background. All I saw was black. It made  the birds head look like it was isolated and it was the effect I wanted.

When looking at it in work on a different system, it looked entirely different. Half finished.

It drove me to get a hold of a Spyder monitor calibration tool.

It’s early days. The change to my monitor has been quite severe – most notably the colour temperature. I’m going to  rework a few images and get them printed to see if they are closer to what I expect. But in the meantime, take a look at this and tell me if it’s better/worse and if the background looks more “black”

Since I got the camera I’ve been fascinated by the concept of off camera flashes and using multiple lights to create effects.

There are a few good examples of this done well out there, try flickr or The Strobist as places to start.

One problem I did have was what kit (yes, more kit) would be needed to do it. In my reading I was constantly confused by terms like “pc to hotshoe” and “pocket wizard” and I’ve been reluctant to put a huge amount of time or money into something which, as an outsider, looked complicated.

However, never one to shy away from having a play I found a set of triggers (essentially wireless hot shoe mounts for the camera and the flash) on ebay for about £30. I had read that this sort of solution was definitely the budget option, but I figured what the heck.

For £30 you get a wireless transmitter and a wireless receiver. Each of these have a hot shoe attachment and slot onto your camera and flash respectively. One thing to note is your flash should really have manual controls on it.

What I discovered however was that when I plugged them onto my flash I had problems. Big problems…

The kit I bought consisted of an RF-04 transmitter and a PT-04 receiver. When connected to my 430EX flash all was ok until I fired the thing. The flash would then continuously fire as it recharged.

It took until today before I found the answer was as simple as setting the transmission signal to ’1N’. If you look at the transmitter and the receiver, there are two little switches labelled – O-1 and N-2, just set these and the problem went away.

So, if you’re using a 430EX and PT-04 receiver, hopefully this will solve your problem.

Edit: Forgot to say, as well as the 1N setting, the flash gun will need to be in MANUAL mode or it will just cycle and fire continuously.

Update (February 09) – If you’re looking for solutions to this problem and have found this page, please note it wasn’t as successful as I first thought. However, this post might offer you some hope – Ebay Triggers and the Canon 430EX

I NEED one of these.

OK.

I want one of those.

A lot.

Sadly, they cost many of your earth pounds and so I’m going to have to save and buy one later. So, in the absence of sponsorship from Canon (Mr Canon, if you’re reading I am still open to offers), I decided to try something a bit different. Andrew suggested a reversal ring, and after convincing me it wasn’t some sort of weird proposition and it wouldn’t hurt I looked them up.

Essentially you use a little adapter ring to mount your lens on your camera backwards. The reversal ring comes with the appropriate lens mount for your camera plus a thread of your choice. I’m not sure I understand the physics of it, but essentially it allows near 1:1 (macro scale) image capture depending on the lens you use.

You can pick one up on Ebay for about a tenner.

Well, since it was cheap and a bit of a giggle I picked one up and had a play. The version I bought had a 52mm thread on  it to fit my 50mm F/1.8 lens. Honestly, the only reason I picked this one was because it was to hand when I did the ordering. The ring (with appropriate thread size) will work fine on the kit lens as well I reckon.

Here’s some results.

 

None of these shots have been tweaked in any particular way in order to show you straight out of the camera what I achieved in about 5 minutes. There has been no cropping at all!

For the cost of a pizza (I’m a big lad, I like my pizzas man-size), it’s a nice toy and there are only two real downsides that I’ve seen with it.

1. You have to live in manual world. you lose the connection to your lens when its reversed so the aperture just defaults to whatever the lens rests at and can’t be adjusted that I could see. You’ll need to set shutter speed manually, though at least the exposure meter on my 400D kept working which helped a lot.

2. You have to focus manually. Now this doesn’t sound that bad, but look at those shots above again. Depth of field is razor thin, and I mean razor. You’re probably playing with millimetres in focus and given the lens is mounted backwards it can be tough to do any adjustment. I found it was simplest to just move camera (and head) backwards and forwards.

 

OK, lets be honest. this is never going to replace a dedicated macro lens (and Mr Canon, if you are reading I’d love a loan of the 100mm one mentioned above). But, if you want something different to try it’s not a bad way to spend ten quid and an afternoon. I’ve put it in my kit bag. You just never know…

I just received the first copy of my new subscription to
Digital Photo.

The few times I’ve picked this magazine up I’ve been very
impressed by the quality of the articles and the accompanying CD is brilliant
for tips and tricks.Having already subscribed to Digital SLR Photography (which
I’m really happy with), I was in two minds about paying out another £60 for a
different magazine.Then Geoff turned up with some interesting information.

Did
you know that you can subscribe to Digital Photo using Tesco Clubcard Vouchers?
No, neither did I.

Well, it seems you can. What’s more, an annual subscription
costs £16.22. Yes, sixteen pounds, not sixty. OK, you don’t get the Lowepro
bag, but if you’re actually into photography you probably have a bag alreaddy.

Only issue I have with it thus far is that it took a while
for the first issue to arrive.

So, if you’re looking to expand your reading, and you have
clubcard vouchers going spare, this might be the deal for you.

Oh, and on a related note. What’s the cover story on this
months magazine? Landscapes and HDR. If only I’d had that handy over Easter.
Still, every little helps… (do you see what I did there?)

I finally got the chance to play with my new tripod tonight.

I’d purchased the tripod based upon a few reviews I’d read and the head because I wanted an economical, easy to use, ball head.

 

Manfrotto 190XPROB

The tripod is exactly what I was told to expect from anything Manfrotto. Solid, simple to use and pretty well featured. It’s not too heavy at a little under 2kg’s and height ranges from 8.5cm to 146cm (according to the specs!), though that excludes the head dimensions.

Leg adjustment is managed via pressure locks on the leg, and the vertical column via a small thumb screw device. The legs themselves have a range of preset angles from 25 degrees through to just under 90. The vertical column can be extended and flipped out horizontally for shooting at 90 degrees (or if you’re into weird positions).

You can find the full technical specification here.

I really like the thing. It’s easy to use, it’s a good weight and it offers all the little gadgets my original cheapo tripod didn’t. Things like a little spirit level bubble and a hook for hanging your camera bag (useful on a windy day to as as ballast). It feels solid. I’ve used that word a lot. Well, it is.

I’m expecting many many nights of fun with this.

 

484RC2 Ball Head

I’d set out looking for a ball head for a number of simple reasons.

1. I didn’t like the 3 bolt pan and tilt operation of my original tripo – I could never get it to quite line up and still be happy the thing was secure

2. I’m kind of lazy and liked the thought of a simple one lock operation

Whilst I’m still happy a ball head is what I want, I kind of wish I’d spent a little more on something a bit more ‘user friendly’.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great head and has a really good feel to it. It’s well put together and things like the locking plate are an excellent size and do feel secure. The one lock nut does exactly what you’d expect and keeps the head and camera secure (so much so that I had the thing pointing vertically downwards at full tripod elevation with my heaviest lens on and still felt happy to go make a cuppa).

But, the failing for me is the position of the lock nut. Twice now I’ve opened it without thinking (not accidentally by brushing it or anything, just while setting up for a shot) and the camera has fallen to one side or the another with a ‘thunk’. Yep, a ‘thunk’. I’ve been telling myself that it’s just the noise as the head stops moving and not the camera getting a ‘thunk’. And I’m pretty sure I’m right.  It’s just a little unnerving. It’s all OK if you hold said camera in one hand and release the nut with the other, then it’s all just peachy. But, still, things did go ‘thunk’…

OK, so I mentioned last week about laying my hands on a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Lens, well I’d heard a lot of stuff about “quality glass” and “better than
the kit lens” before I used it, so I decided to have a play and see….

Let’s be honest. If you’re looking for a 50mm lens and you have the full
studio Monty you’re going to want to buy the F/1.2 or F/1.4 variant.

So I guess the questions I wanted to ask were….

1. Is the lens any good.

2. Is it better than the kit lens under similar circumstances

 

Is it any good?

My first impression of it was probably the same as a lot of people. It feels light and plasticy. Now I’m hardly a lens guru, but I expected some sort of weight from it – it is glass after all….

That said, it doesn’t feel fragile or fiddly. The focus mechanism is pretty solid and all the bits for mounting to the camera all seem pretty robust.

Shooting at F/1.8 is a blasphemy to God. I can only imagine what its big brothers are like. I found with decent house lighting you could almost get away without flash (certainly if you were willing to chuck up the ISO a bit). The test pictures I’ve taken have all been the right side of clear (unless I’ve been messing…).

Here’s a decent example of this from the great globe re-shoot of 2007!

(1/60, f/1.8, aperture priority, focal length – 50mm, ISO – 200, 17/10/07 19:44)

So, when all is said and done, it’s a smart little lens for 70 notes.

 

Is it any better than the kit lens?

Right, lets get realistic. It’s naive to assume that the kit lens is a top of the line lens. But, Canon probably won’t ship a camera with a piece of crap - it’ll hardly do their business model any good. Therefore, I think it’s safe to assume the kit lens is OK. Certainly, my experience of it suggests it does what it says on the tin.

Indubitably, the fact it ranges from 18mm to 55mm is a nice advantage over the fixed 50mm lens as well. It’s probably safe to assume most people buying the 400D are new to dSLR or trying to manage pennies and get the most bang for their buck.

So, is the 50mm fixed any better than the kit lens?

I set up one of babas teddies for a quick test (and it was quick, she wanted it to go for bed…). I also used house lighting and a standard hot shoe mounted flash (trust me, just buy one) since anyone in the market for this lens is unlikely to use studio lighting that much!

The first image is a composite of the 50mm and the 18-55. I’ll be honest, I got the setting slightly out on the 18-55 so the focal distance is 45mm not 50mm. In both cases they were taken at F/11 from a tripod. There should be little or no difference in lighting or camera position between the shots. (The only image change is a little cropping to find Eyeore)

Oh, and I used the jpegs for this…

(Edit: The 50mm fixed lens is left, the kit lens is right – Thanks Geoff!)

 My initial impressions for this was that the kit lens produced better results, but looking again I’ve started to change my mind. The 50mm seems to be a darker colour, but there is less burn out around the nose as a result.

Zooming in on the old fellas ear….

(Edit: The 50mm fixed lens is left, the kit lens is right – Thanks Geoff!)

In this case I used the raw’s because the loss in detail was a little obvious in the jpegs.

To my mind there isn’t a lot of difference here. Certainly nothing I can pick up on.

 

Summary

So, I guess the question is if I had it all to do again, would I buy the 50mm instead of the kit lens?

I think the answer has to be a reserved no.

Why?

Because quite simply the kit lens has a better range of zoom and is more versatile as a result. Whilst it probably loses a little in terms of quality, as a starter lens it does its job just fine. 

So why not a definitive no?

Quite simply, two photos of Eyeore do not a professional test make. I’m new to the hobby, I can only see what I see. If someone I respected told me I was wrong, I would probably listen to them. Sure, I’d want to see their evidence now, but…

Would you kit bag it?

Oh dear sweet lord yes. for portrait shots and for low light and for family stuff and candid’s and all the things I said I’d rarely post here it’s just blooming lovely. It teaches you to move instead of just changing the zoom on the camera, it gives good photo, it does exactly what it says on the tin (erm cardboard box). And for £60 – £70 it’s a bargain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Point to note. The images I’ve uploaded are tiny compared to the originals – web space and load times you know. If you want the original images to take a look yourself, drop me an email and I’ll sort you out.)