have i mentioned how much i love the 85mm lens?

so, my favorite, yet most persnickety, lens i shoot with is Canon's 85mm f/1.2 lens. its a beast to haul around and when opened up full blast, the depth of field is exceedingly narrow. it borders on being a make or break lens in the sense that one wrong move or ill-timed inhale/exhale can ruin the shot. the more i've worked with it, though, the better i've gotten with it and its a coin flip in between that and the 70-200mm f/2.8 II IS lens as our next major gear purchase. for now, it remains a constant piece of gear in our rental list for every wedding we shoot because of its super-powered abilities and its seemingly magical qualities. its one major weakness is chromatic aberration, and when it shows up... well, its fixable to a degree, but it always stings a little bit.

anywho, this last wedding we shot, Carrie & Alberto's, we had the 85 in tow (two of them, actually). one of the big recurring design themes throughout the day was the peacock feather. it really showed up when we got to the reception and as we are wont to do, we started shooting all the different decorations around the reception hall. i made especially sure to get pictures of peacock feathers, but didn't think too much about it until we got home and started unloading pictures.

jac was sorting through and she got to this particular shot and she kept zooming in. and again. and again. and again.

       
Click here to download:
have-i-mentioned-how-much-i-love-the-85mm-lens-vDituBmErmDdGDlBbzhe.zip (11966 KB)
i freaking love this lens. the more you zoom in, the more that CA i wrote about earlier shows up (its the purplish tint around the very fringes of the smaller feathery bits). i suppose its a "deal with it" scenario, as its barely even there... unless you're looking for it. like i was. ha.

anyways, i've yet to see a lens anywhere that can capture as much as the 85 does. Canon really knocked it out of the park with this one and it continues to absolutely astound me the more i use it.

Tagged 7d 85mm f/1.2 canon peacock feather photography

documentation

for the most part, you can probably skip this post, although there is a universal truth herein that i get to... eventually.

so we have a little problem. now that we (finally) have two full-time external Speedlites available, we need more power, especially for the bigger, more powerful 580EXII flash. the solution: an external battery pack, and specifically, Canon's CP-E4 Compact Battery Pack. it holds a total of 8 AA batteries inside. combined with the onboard batteries in the 580EXII, that's a total of 12 batteries at play. from all accounts, its a wonderful tool for all-day shooting (read: weddings).

so i did my research, read nearly every single review on B&H (there are a ton), and decided that for the convenience and price, it was worth it. my last step was to try and find instruction manuals or documentation online from Canon so I knew what to "officially" expect. but there wasn't any. i had to Google search "Canon CP-E4 compact battery pack" to even find it on the Canon website (a search on the site gave me nothing). but i figured, hey, nearly 200 reviews with an overwhelming positive response must mean its simple to use and just go. and it also has a handy-dandy tripod screw mount on the bottom to attach it to the bottom of the camera! sweet!

it came in today, and the first thing i did was pull out the one-sheet manual included. the very first note?: (not verbatim) do not attach the battery pack to the tripod socket of any EOS Digital camera except for the 1D-series. otherwise, the electromagnetic interference will cause noise to appear on all images.

huh. well that sucks, because we shoot with a 5DMII and a 7D, and it'll primarily be used on the 5DMII. my next step was to find out what year the one-sheet was printed. perhaps since then, later models have been built to counteract this problem. date: 2007. alright! 5DMII came out well after this, so maybe we were in the clear. but just in case, i called Canon to triple-check.

their verdict? that note still holds true. the 1D-series cameras are built like tanks (true) and are able to negate any interference caused by the battery pack. for any other model, the pack must be at least 2 inches away from the body, preferably in a pocket (it does have a nice stretchy cord) or strapped elsewhere away from the camera body.

our problem? since the flash that needs the battery pack will mostly be used by Jac at weddings (somewhere she'll most likely be wearing a dress while shooting), there's nowhere to really put the battery pack except for strapping it to a dress strap. the pack itself with 8 AA batteries, while by no means "heavy," is probably going to be quite uncomfortable when attached to a dress strap and may cause a wardrobe malfunction (!!).

this is, of course, vexing. we have to have that extra security that batteries aren't just going to die at critical moments and its either the Canon battery pack or a $500 Quantum battery pack. lemme stress that: $500. we've been lucky the past couple of months being able to purchase most of the extraneous gear we needed without coming close to breaking the bank, but i know we cannot plunk down $500 on a battery pack anytime in the near future, not with so many other things that have to come first (like RML stuff and lenses).

so here's that universal truth i spoke of earlier. everyone these days has a website, and for the most part, manufacturers of consumer goods are happy to put their manuals online in PDF format, freely available. Canon makes their camera manuals freely available as well. its truly frustrating when companies leave the small things out or make them impossible to find. i don't know if this battery pack is going to work for us now, but i also know we cannot do without it. we can't risk missing that critical shot or fleeting moment because the batteries decide they're tired.

and thats all.
Tagged canon cp-e4 battery pack fail

the Microcell and other miscellany

so we've had this AT&T 3G Microcell thing in the house for a few weeks now and yesterday, i decided to turn it off. handful of reasons...

  • when i bought it, presumably, we were under a "nationwide 3G outage." i thought perhaps it was time to shut it off and see how we fared purely with a normal signal.
  • i don't know what it is, whether it has to do with the fact its connected to our router and when data passes through this happens or its switching something, but frequently, the sound on the other end would get really, really choppy. like, borderline Max Headroom choppy. it got real annoying, real quick.
  • Apple released the 4.0.1 update, so i was curious as to how the corrected algorithm magic things affected in-home signal.

now, we bought it for a few reasons: our in-home 3G reception has always been crap; for some reason (perhaps the "outage"), neither Jac (on an iPhone 3GS) or i (iPhone 4) could make, receive, or keep calls from droppage; it seemed like a sensible solution, especially with the whole rebate thing.

but in the 24 hours since i unplugged it, we've had nary a problem. Jac conducted a 20 minute LAP phone call this morning from a notoriously bad spot in the house (another wedding booked, thankyouverymuch) with no problem and i made a couple of phone calls with no trouble. the final test was tonight when i called the landline phone, once from the iPhone 4 and once from the 3GS. i slowly walked throughout the house, giving the phones plenty of time to run into interference and drop the call like a bad habit.

perfection.

now, granted, i'm still looking at this...

but hey, we've both had lengthy phone calls inside the house and i've tested it out and it works fine (and obviously, away from the house we're good). soooo... back to the store with you, Microcell!

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we just knocked a whole load of needed gear off our "to buy" list, and we're pretty stoked about it: monopods, new 580EX II Speedlite, a slew of super-charged rechargeable batteries. we're gonna start experimenting with off-camera flash shooting techniques very soon; in fact, we started today (with mixed results). we're pretty stoked about how many new interpretations its gonna open up for us.

that in mind, i've had to really start digging into some research about flash photography. i'll be the first to admit it: i know squat. whenever i've tried, i just get garbage, but i've really started delving full-on into learning just about everything i can. there's a whole bunch to pick up on and i'm doing my best to not cram it all at once in my head (as i know i'll only forget it that much more quickly).

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ok, going back to the original topic... kinda'.

Apple had their little/big press conference this past week, and i have to say i'm generally pleased with how it turned it. i'm absolutely in the camp that believes this whole thing has just gotten way overblown and that there's some small nugget of truth (as smarmy as it may have sounded out of Steve's mouth) that after a string of unprecedented successes, the second any bit of negativity popped up, the media pounced on it like a lion on a steak.

also, much has been said about the comparisons to other handsets, mostly negative. what, did you expect them to not give video proof after they mentioned it in earlier press releases? you can see for yourself on the Apple website. what, you can't reproduce those same results on your exact same make & model of phone? guess what: i can't make my iPhone 4 do it either unless i am earnestly and sincerely trying to. the "Death Grip" is just that, a Death Grip. i have to squeeze to the point of "OMGAMIGONNABREAKMYPHONE" before i start losing bars. regular usage, i'm fine, just as most of you probably are.

but besides all that (and me sounding like the fanboy i know i am), i only have trouble at home, where a problem already existed. elsewhere, i'm golden. i just hope when that free case offer rolls around that InCase will be an option. i really like their stuff.

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and thats all i've got.

Tagged apple canon flash iPhone iPhone 4 speedlite

night brite moon

the moon was out in full force, so we took some pictures. focus is way, WAY off in 98% of these; we discovered it is quite difficult to focus in the dark. please check them out, as we feel it was all quite neat.

specs!...

  • Canon 5D Mark II
  • 50mm f/1.8
  • ISO stayed right around 400
  • all controls set to manual, including timing. you can check the flickr image EXIF data for more specifics, but the brightest ones (obviously) are the 30" ones.
Tagged 50mm 5DMII canon late night Montgomery moon photography

good morning

i promised a little bit of RML video action last night on twitter, because, yeah, its been quite some time since the last update, but hey, we've been busy with, you know... a BABY... as well as l.a.p. obligations, so here you go, your morning dose: Good Morning.

[preemptive apologies to Jason, who will hate me because this video won't work for him for some bizarre reason.]

Tagged 7d canon rosemary video