This image is seriously in focus.

For the last few months I’ve been having a blast with the Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye lens. I wrote about my first impressions of the lens soon after I got it in August last year. I won’t be repeating that here, so you may want to go back to read it. Back then I hadn’t yet used the lens for work, but now after a few months of using the lens on assignments I have a much better idea of how the lens performs. And in short, my conclusion is: it absolutely rocks.

Keep in mind that this isn’t supposed to be a review where I’ll discuss all the technical aspects and features of this lens. For that you’ll have to look elsewhere. I’m just going to give you my personal opinion of this lens after using it for a while.

First of all, the lens is expensive, but I can assure you that it’s worth the money Canon is asking for it. It has quickly become one of my favorite lenses to use. You can get really creative with it and it just never gets boring. I’ve used the lens for a variety of purposes so far, but mostly I’m using it to shoot architecture, panoramic images and aerial shots. I absolutely love the effect this lens gives to aerial shots; it really exaggerates the roundness of the earth. You can see what I mean in some of the sample images in the gallery below.

I think that especially photographers who shoot images for 360 degrees panoramas and virtual tours are going to really love this lens. The reason for this is that the Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye lens allows a photographer to shoot both “low” resolution and high-resolution panoramas at the same time without having to change the camera or the lens. The nodal point of the lens is exactly the same at both 8mm and 15mm. Because of this, shooting at 8mm or 15mm doesn’t require you to recalibrate your setup to make sure that the nodal point is in the correct position. So at 8mm you can shoot a panorama consisting of about 4-6 images (approx. 65MP final resolution on a EOS 7D body), but at 15mm you can shoot a much higher resolution panorama of about 25 images (approx. 240MP final resolution on a EOS 7D body). This gives you the flexibility of shooting both resolutions on location at the same time very easily. You shoot first at 8mm, zoom to 15mm and then shoot again without changing anything else.

The panorama below was shot at 15mm and has a final resolution of approx. 240MP. You can zoom in all the way to view all the details.

The panorama below was shot at 8mm and has a final resolution of approx. 65MP. This was shot shortly after the one above, and all I had to do was move the camera and zoom the lens to 8mm.

When focusing this lens manually, you’ll have to look really carefully to make sure that your subject is in sharp focus. It is really difficult to see through the viewfinder if the lens is focused correctly. Everything pretty much looks in focus most of the time and it can be difficult to see slight changes in focus. I’ve found that using Live View on the camera in the greatest magnification possible to focus gives me the best and most reliable results. You’ll have to double-check your focus especially if you want to set the focus to infinity. Don’t rely on the infinity marker on the distance scale on top of the lens! Even Canon warn you to double-check your focus in the manual that comes with this lens. With autofocus this isn’t an issue.

The bottom line is that I am extremely satisfied with this lens and I can’t recommend it to you highly enough. I think this lens is a real gem in Canon’s assortment of lenses right now, and since it is so unique, it could influence a lot of people to choose a Canon DSLR just to be able to use this lens. When I had to choose which brand of DSLR I would buy 5 years ago, the wide assortment of Canon lenses (along with their lead in image quality at the time) was one of the important things that made me choose Canon. Traditionally Canon has always had the lead in the area of lenses, and this lens just strengthens their position even more. When the Canon EF 200-400 f/4L IS 1.4x (another brilliant design) hits the market later this year it’ll become even more difficult for the competition to catch up.

Canon EOS 1DX

Could 2012 be the year where Canon makes a serious comeback in the professional photography industry? Well, from the looks of it, it’s going to get very exciting for photographers using Canon equipment.

For the last 4 years I’ve been bashing Canon here on my blog for their poor quality control, poor product releases (50D, 5D Mark II, 7D, 60D) and questionable business practices (5D Mark II, 50mm f/1.2L). I’ve also often mentioned how it seemed like Canon was out of touch with the market and didn’t listen to what professionals were asking for. But with the announcement last year of the EOS 1DX, I think I’m starting to see the long awaited change we’ve been asking for.

On paper, the 1DX is a dream camera. Just reading the specifications will get you high in seconds. The most important thing to note, in my opinion, is the sensor size. Canon actually went back from 21 megapixels on the 1Ds Mark III to “just” 18 megapixels on the 1DX. If you’ve been keeping in touch with the industry, you’ll know that this was one of the important things photographers were asking for around the world: less megapixels and better image quality, especially at higher ISO values. To be sure, the priority was more on better image quality. And reducing the amount of megapixels is an easy way to achieve that (because of the photosites becoming bigger). While Canon appeared very stubborn in the past with regards to this issue and kept pushing the megapixels up at the expense of image quality, now all of a sudden even Canon acknowledge the fact that “there’s more to image quality than just resolution”:

The biggest specification change to the 1D X is its new sensor – an 18MP full-frame CMOS chip capable of shooting at 12 frames per second. This represents a big change over the 1D Mk IV (it represents a move away from the smaller APS-H format that Canon has previously used in its sports cameras), and a decrease in pixel count compared to the 1DS series. However, as Rick Berk, Technical Specialist in Canon USA’s Pro Engineering and Solutions Division says: ‘there’s more to image quality than just resolution.’

For years I’ve been having heated discussions in some of the posts here on my blog with many people about megapixels and noise in images, and I have to say that I’m happy to see that even Canon admit this now. More resolution in images is pointless when there’s also more noise present. Using any kind of noise reduction on those images eliminates the extra resolution you had in them as well. So I would rather have less megapixels with cleaner images that also have better dynamic range and colors.

I’m happy to see that Canon has finally listened to all the professionals who were asking for this, and after so many years, has finally made a camera that I can honestly say that I seriously, seriously want. In fact, I think this may be my dream camera. I just like everything about this camera. The sensor that promises (at least from the specs) great image quality, the insanely high frame rate of 12-14 frames per second, the 61-point autofocus system which is able to focus in EV -2 (equivalent to shooting under the light of the full moon!!), ISO range of 50 – 204800, 7D style viewfinder upgrades, built-in Ethernet port etc. etc. For a detailed overview, check out the technical information on the Canon Europe website. Pay attention especially to the capabilities of the Dual Digic 5+ processors and the functionalities that they enable such as being able to stack multiple exposures and correction of chromatic aberration, color fringes and halos. Image quality is taken to new heights with the 1DX.

And what’s crazy about this is that Canon actually announced the 1DX on my birthday on October 18th, 2011. What a strange coincidence. I mean here I was consistently bashing Canon for more than 4 years, and I mean seriously bashing them, and then they go ahead and announce what I consider a dream camera on my birthday – almost 6 months before it will really be available. Perhaps this is the present they’re giving me after all the effort I put into providing them with all the valuable feedback in the last 4 years.

But seriously, Canon has me excited again to be using Canon equipment and I’m hoping that with the 5D Mark III (if that’ll be its name) they will surprise us all again. With the announcement of the new EOS Cinema line (the C300 camera and the EOS C DSLR) things are looking to get very, very exciting in the near future for Canon users. I love the fact that we can use our L lenses on the C300 camera, for example. And of course, I also love the fact that the image quality of the C300 is currently the best out there in low light situations. This is why I chose Canon 5 years ago; they were the king of image quality and it looks like they’re on their way again to reclaim that title. Because when it comes down to it, all the bells and whistles on these cameras are nice to have, but nothing is more important than image quality. Nothing. And closely related to image quality is of course a working autofocus system. Because a clean image that’s out of focus is also bad image quality (poor resolution). So it’s image quality and great autofocus (in terms of speed and especially accuracy) that really matter in the end. And Canon appears to have nailed that with the EOS 1DX. I hope that this will also be the case with the next 5D camera.

Let me also mention that at this point I haven’t yet seen sample images from a production 1DX, so my assessment of the image quality is solely based on the specifications of the sensor, which theoretically should provide exceptional image quality. I’m hoping that this will be the case once the camera is released. Let us also hope that this camera won’t be plagued by quality control issues like the 1D Mark III (autofocus issues) and 5D Mark II (noise and banding in images, autofocus issues).

The only negative thing I can say about this camera is that the price is a bit too high at $6800. Many people have complained about this. Nikon recently also announced their D4, which is at least as good as the 1DX, with a price of $6000. In my opinion the 1DX should cost around $5800. Considering that the 1D Mark IV was priced at $5000 when it launched, and that the 1DX is essentially a 1D Mark IV with a full frame sensor, a price of $5800 for the 1DX would have seemed more reasonable to me. And as you can see, Nikon is closer to that price point as well with their D4.  Even with the C300 camera Canon appears to have been overconfident with their pricing. Many people also complained that the price of the C300, though it is an excellent camera, isn’t worth the $16000 Canon wants for it.

However, I’ve read somewhere that the price of the 1DX at $6800 is not a final price, so here’s hoping that Canon will lower the price to something more affordable, especially now since Nikon is selling the D4 at $6000.

The bottom line is that I’m very impressed and very satisfied with the 1DX and I look forward to being equally as impressed with the next 5D. I hope Canon continues to listen to us and keeps impressing us from now on.

Sunglasses (Model: Carol Chen Poun Joe)

I was hired recently by Art Design to create images for the 2012 calendar for Optiek Ninon and Instyle Optics. Optiek Ninon is an optician in Suriname that sells eyewear and related accessories. Instyle Optics is a special division by Optiek Ninon that focusses on the more exclusive eyewear and related accessories.

This was essentially a rush job as I had just about a week to deliver the images after I got the job. It wasn’t until four days before the deadline that I got an idea of what I wanted to do. I had gotten some sample eyeglasses from Optiek Ninon and after selecting two of them I decided that I wanted to do something with beautiful eyes that would complement the eyeglasses. I teamed up with model/artist Carol Chen Poun Joe, whom I worked with before to do the images in the Cactus V5 review and for the photo shoot with Natasha Benjamin, among other projects. I had two reasons for working with Carol again: number one is that she has very beautiful eyes, and number two is that she’s a very good make-up artist. I knew she’d be able to create what I needed.

Reading glasses (Model: Carol Chen Poun Joe)

We did the photo shoot two days before the deadline and because of the limited time we had, everything was done in a hurry. For example, the photo shoot took place late at night just so that Carol and I could match our schedules and work together on this.

The Optiek Ninon / Instyle Optics 2012 Calendar

While this looks like a fairly simple and easy photo shoot, there were some challenges. We had to prevent reflections in the glasses as much as possible, not only from the lights but also from the surroundings. It looks very unprofessional if you can see the studio and body of the model or photographer in the reflection in the sunglasses for example. Another challenge was to keep the glasses as clean as possible, free from fingerprints and dust.

Fortunately everything worked out and I was able to get exactly what I wanted in the end. The client was not only surprised, but also extremely happy with the results. Apart from the calendar, these images should also appear in at least one billboard design in the near future.

In search of food

The 2012 calendar for Historex is out featuring six of my macro/micro pictures. Historex is a brand of paint being made by Varossieau Suriname N.V. and is especially suitable for painting buildings in a tropical climate. The design and production of the 2012 calendar was being done by Henna Brunings of Art Design, who hired me to deliver six colorful macro photos for use on the calendar. The theme for the 2012 calendar is “The colours of detail.” In the end a selection was made by the client which included some of my older work as well as more recent pictures. You can see them on the calendar in the image below.

The HISTOREX 2012 Calendar

The months March and April feature a picture of a Crab Spider which is one of my more recent pictures. You can read more about how I took that picture by clicking here. Below are the images that were used in this calendar.

Crab Spider

It’s amazing how much exists around us that goes unnoticed every day while we go about living our busy lives. Everywhere around us are areas that, when closely focused in on, reveal a whole new world that can sometimes look very alien and different to what we’re used to. One of the things that I’ve learned while doing close-up/macro/micro photography is that once you zoom in on the world of the small, many surprises await you.

Flowers

Take this flower bouquet for example. I bought these flowers on a rainy afternoon at a flower stand for a photography project I was working on. I just randomly picked out flowers with different colors and the owner of the stand added some green leafs to make it all look better. In the snapshot to the right it looks quite normal and boring right? But once I set up some good lighting and zoomed in on them through my macro photography setup, it was as if I entered a whole new world. A world filled with beauty that you can only really notice once you start to pay attention and look closer at what’s in front of you. And in this case, the small world of the flower bouquet filled with beautiful colors, patterns and small (sometimes alien looking) creatures.

Where fairies live

I felt like an explorer in a new world that I had discovered. Every shot I took contained detail that you can’t really see that well with your naked eye. The challenge was to find nice angles to capture these details. Soon enough I encountered the first few very small insects. My jaw almost hit a hole in the ground when I came across the scene below.

Final Destination

It almost looks like a staged scene, but believe me, it’s not. There in the middle of one of the flowers lied a small lifeless insect. He was so small that I hadn’t noticed him until I took the first shot and saw him appear on the LCD on the back of my camera. It seems that he must have died shortly after reaching the middle of the flower. He was already in a state of decay as you can see from the white spots on his body. In the image below you can see how small this insect really is with some 100% crops from the image to be able to see the detail that was captured.

Final Destination (Close-ups)

Being able to see these small areas at such a scale really helps to visualize what life on a flower might be like for such a small creature. To us, this is just a small flower, but to such a tiny insect it’s a whole world to live in.

As it turned out, this bouquet of flowers was home to yet another creature. While I was busy taking pictures I suddenly noticed something moving. When I looked closer and focused on it, I saw a tiny Crab Spider walking on one of the flowers. But before I could take some good pictures of him he vanished deep into the bouquet. Being the patient guy that I am, I decided not to look for him but to continue shooting other things until he would appear again. It wouldn’t be until the next day that I would see him again while taking pictures. And this time, instead of hiding as soon as I came closer he just seemed to ignore me and went about his business. He literally traversed the whole bouquet, and I have to say, I had a blast following him around and trying to take shots of all the stunts he was performing. Later when I looked at the shots on my PC I found out that he was not just walking and jumping from flower to flower, but that he was actually spinning a web all the time. It was just difficult to see the very very thin strands of web through the viewfinder of my camera while I was taking pictures.

The Crab Spider lived on the bouquet for 5 days until all the flowers dried up. On the last day I searched for him in what was left of the bouquet and when I found him I released him outside before throwing away the flowers.

To be honest, it wasn’t all beauty that I came across while exploring the world of the bouquet as you can see from the image below.

Left Hanging

This guy was hanging in mid-air on a very thin, almost invisible, strand of web very likely from the Crab Spider. He was probably dead for more than a day at least and was already starting to decay. If you look closely you can also see that one of his eyes is busted. One can only wonder what happened to him and how he ended up hanging in the middle of the flowers like that.

So the next time someone brings you flowers, you may want to take a closer look at what exactly you’re getting along with the flowers. Chances are that you’re getting much more than just flowers. ;)

suriname360 - Visit Suriname from the comfort of your own home!

After many months of hard work I today finally launched suriname360 - a website that features high resolution 360 degrees panoramas and interactive virtual tours of places in Suriname. I’ve had the idea for this website for a few years now but due to other priorities it wasn’t until March of this year that I could start working on this project. And I did so mostly in my free time while also working on other projects for clients of mine (after all, the bills don’t pay themselves ).

Most of the websites that promote tourism in Suriname focus too much on text and on information. But nothing is capable of attracting people more than nice and interesting visuals. People don’t like to read; they want to see and experience things. People remember 80% of what they see, and only 20% of what they read. So there was a need for a website promoting tourism to Suriname that focuses on strong visuals and the experience of visiting Suriname. And so with suriname360 I’m hoping that I’ve filled a gap and that the website will deliver a significant contribution to the development of the tourism industry in Suriname.

I’ve enjoyed working on this website and I hope you’ll enjoy viewing the content that’s available so far. I’ve invested a lot of time, money and other resources in this website and I’m hoping I’ll be able to continue to further develop this website in the future. There’s a lot more content coming up and I have a lot of very exciting (long term) plans for suriname360 that I hope to be able to share with you soon.

Visit the suriname360 website and take a look. A good place to start is the tour of the City of Paramaribo.

Rainclouds - Picture taken with a Canon EOS 7D and Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye lens (click for larger view)

Ever since Canon announced the EF 8-15mm f/4L fisheye lens back in September 2010 I have been impatiently waiting for it. I knew that, at least in theory, it was going to be awesome and after having it for a few days now, I can say that it’ll blow you away. Whoever came up with the idea for this lens has to be a very brilliant designer. I know it may sound like I’m biased, but I’ve got plenty of negative posts here on my blog about Canon. The most famous are my posts on the EOS 5D Mark II autofocus issues. But with this lens, if I want to be honest, I have no choice but to praise Canon.

The lens is beautiful, extremely well built, feels very solid in your hands, focusing and zooming are very smooth and the image quality is simply awesome. The lens delivers very sharp images all the way to the edges. Even on an APS-C camera like the EOS 60D or EOS 7D you can now get a 180° view in your pictures with a full 180° circular fisheye view on full frame cameras such as the 5D Mark II. You can capture the entire sky with just one image on a full frame camera.

The picture above was taken two days ago just outside my house. I noticed some really scary looking rainclouds outside and grabbed my camera with the 8-15mm lens on it to capture them. The picture was shot at 8mm on an EOS 7D, and I did crop out the corners to remove the vignetting. But even then, just take a look at how much of the sky I was able to capture in just one shot!

The angle of view is so wide that it takes some getting used to because objects at the edges that you don’t want in the frame show up, such as tripod legs and even your own hands or feet.

Where dreams take me (click for larger view)

As you can see in the picture above, having a 180° field of view can give you interesting results. You can see my feet as I was standing outside while I took a picture of what was in front of me. I did crop out the corners again to remove the vignetting, but even then, it’s incredible how much you can get into a single frame.

The Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye lens attached to a Canon EOS 7D

I’m very satisfied so far with this lens. I have yet to do some real work with it, but so far I’m impressed. The only issue I had with this lens as soon as I started using it was the fact that the lens cap can easily come off. I’m not the only one complaining about it, you can find more info on this issue in the review at The Digital Picture. But next to the incredible awesomeness of the lens itself, the lens cap issue is a very minor problem.

Keep in mind that this post of mine is not meant to be a review of this lens. I’ve just used it for a few days and not yet on assignments. But my initial impressions are that you’ll be blown away by the results and the awesomeness of the lens itself. I’ll be posting more about this lens in the future once I have done more work with it.

With this lens Canon strengthens their lead in the area of lenses even more. All they need now is an update to the EF 16-35mm f/2.8L that can rival the Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 G in sharpness, or a 14-24mm f/2.8 lens of their own. I hope that the 5D Mark III will be a significant upgrade to the 5D Mark II when it will be released soon and that everything we complained about will be addressed. If that happens I’m going to be a very happy Canon user.

Update January 31st, 2012: I’ve added another post about this lens after using it for a few months. You can read it here.

Shiny and Black

I launched a new design for my blog today after launching a re-design of my website weeks ago. Visually the new blog design matches more with my new website. I think this is a nice improvement on the older design while still using a similar layout. As usual I’ll still be doing some tweaking in the background in the coming days. Any feedback you have is very welcome, and if you notice issues or broken links, please let me know.

Destined Evolution My Ass!

By now you’re probably thinking I’m being too hard on this camera and I understand if that’s so. After almost 3 years my opinion on the Canon EOS 5D Mark II DSLR hasn’t changed at all. In fact, from what I’ve seen I’m just more convinced that so far this has been the biggest piece of shit camera ever released by Canon (maybe even by anyone), with the Canon EOS 1D Mark III very close behind it. From the moment this camera was announced by Canon back in September 2008 I knew it had issues. In fact, I was one of the very few who didn’t buy into the hype and saw the rather serious shortcomings of this camera. A few days after it was announced by Canon, I wrote here on my blog about one of the biggest issues that would haunt this camera during its lifetime, namely the old and crappy autofocus system. Many rushed to attack me and tell me how I was being stupid and wrong. The comments to all my posts about the 5D Mark II are still there and it’s quite amusing to go back and read them. It turned out that there were many more issues that we’d have to deal with when using this camera, among which the rather poor image quality it produces under certain circumstances (banding and noise issues).

And although in the beginning it seemed like I was almost the only one who didn’t like the 5D Mark II or had issues with it, as time passed and reviews started appearing and people actually got to use the camera professionally, more and more professional photographers started to express their frustrations with the 5D Mark II autofocus system and other issues. I have documented a lot of those instances in previous posts and in the comments of those posts. Below is a listing of my posts so far on the 5D Mark II:

• Canon EOS 5D Mark II: Not all it could have been
• Canon EOS 5D Mark II: Barely worth it!
• Canon EOS 5D Mark II: NOT WORTH IT - Save your money!
• Canon EOS 5D Mark II: Camera from Hell

In the past I’ve covered well known photographers such as Zack Arias and Lloyd Chambers expressing their frustration with the 5D Mark II autofocus system and other issues, as well as comments from many other pros. More recently celebrity stock photographer Lise Gagne made a blog post where she expressed her frustration with the recent Canon cameras, among which the 5D Mark II, and explained how she had to switch to Nikon:

I’ve always been a Canon addict. I was in love with the 1ds Mark II. Then the 1ds Mark III arrived, Ive bought one and, I was on shock, I was not able to have a good sharp image. After 3 months, I sold it, I continued to use the MarkII. Then, I’ve tried the hassel. I was in love with the sharpeness, razor sharp details, etc.. I’ve bought one. This camera is amazing, but.. this camera has been built for studio and to work with lot of strobes. In natural light, in low light situation or to capture a real moment, this camera is too slow, it needs lot of light to focus properly, so very hard to capture THE moment.
I’ve started to try the 5dmarkII’s Louis, to at least, produce some natural images, unfortunately, don’t know what’s wrong with that camera, but I just cannot autofocus properly! The focus goes everywhere except on the target. It looks like that camera only focus on the brigher point.  I was quite disaapointed. So I’ve tried a couple cameras and, after those experiments, I’m now a Nikon’s user. The focus is where you want, the quality is awesome, it’s sharp, focus is real fast… It’s sad for Canon, I’ve always been loyal to them, but since the markIII and 5dmarkII, they’ve lost me. Hopefully they will come with a better one this year, I still keep all my lenses (anyway Louis uses them for video).  Nikon will probably announce a new one even if I’ve just got mine (3dx for those who are interested, the dx4 might be announced this spring and will be available in fall for us). Then I’ll choose between them but my trust is now for Nikon.

Lise Gagne makes some interesting remarks about the 1Ds Mark III and the 5D Mark II. She was unable to get sharp images with both. Many people complained about soft images being produced by the 5D Mark II, and since the 5D Mark II was said to use a similar sensor to the 1Ds Mark III, or slightly “improved” even, then it’s possible that they  both suffered from the same issues. It’s also possible that these issues are related to poor quality control. And in the case of the 5D Mark II, the softness produced by the 21MP sensor was compounded by the poor performance of the autofocus system. This would explain many of the comments I received about the 5D Mark II over the course of almost 3 years now. I sure am glad that I didn’t invest in the 1Ds Mark III myself. In fact, I almost did so but couldn’t get one in the beginning due to the low stock levels in the first few months, and then the autofocus issues with the 1D Mark III received publicity thanks to photographer Rob Galbraith and I decided to wait and not buy the 1Ds Mark III until the issues were solved (and they never were really solved).

If you think Lise Gagne is alone here, think again. Top stock photographer Yuri Arcurs expressed similar frustrations with the 1Ds Mark III in his comparison with the Nikon D3x. Arcurs was using the 1Ds Mark III when he later switched to the Nikon D3x because it has a better  autofocus system, or to be more precise, it delivers sharper images compared to the 1Ds Mark III:

The Canon has lower noise levels and the lenses perform generally better, but what does this matter if your images are more out of focus, if the camera is much harder to work with on a daily basis and if you can get the same results form a Nikon by just choosing the right lenses and get another 3 mega pixel on top?

…

If Canon is to stay competitive then they have to start listening to their photographer’s needs and they also have to come up with a new top model within the next six months or so.

So issues with soft images may be related to the sensor being used in the 1Ds Mark III (and the 5D Mark II) and/or the autofocus systems on both cameras. I know for a fact that the autofocus system on the 5D Mark II is simply inadequate to do the job. But the sensor itself may also just be producing soft images making the problem much worse.

Wedding photographer Ryan Brenizer made the following remark on Twitter recently:

Always an adventure shooting a wedding with the 5D and its faith-based autofocus. The D3s in my other hand kept snickering.

Even award winning photographer and Canon Explorer of Light, Vincent Laforet, recently mentioned the old autofocus system on the 5D Mark II as one of its disadvantages:

Lastly – the autofocus system (for still photographers) is the same system that was found in the original 5D – therefore it is close to 5 years old relative to newer systems.

You have to keep in mind that Laforet often closely works with Canon and he can’t openly come out and be too critical of Canon and put his relationship with them at risk. Under normal circumstances this shouldn’t have to be an issue, but a lot of photographers seem to be afraid of Canon. And if I look at Canon’s recent behavior towards photographers, then I can certainly understand those fears. In the last 3 years I’ve received emails from professional photographers who agreed with me on many of the issues I was blogging about but weren’t willing to openly come out and say certain things about Canon in public. But I think that it’s exactly this behavior that has now caused Nikon to gain ground and be ahead of Canon. Nikon photographers were very critical of Nikon in the past and Nikon listened and fixed many issues (among which the noise issues) and came back stronger than ever. Now the latest Nikon bodies (consumer and pro) produce image quality that far exceed anything Canon can currently offer according to benchmark data from DxOMark. Even professional photographers, like Lise Gagne and Yuri Arcurs, have made similar comments. In fact, quite a lot of professional photographers have switched from Canon to Nikon in the last 3 years. I’ve written about some of those cases here on my blog, but Fake Chuck Westfall has also documented a lot of them on his blog.

Here’s what photographer Laurence Kim had to say recently:

That’s one of the frustrating things about Canon. The 5D produces gorgeous image files. In fact, I prefer the files from the 5D to any other dslr. But it’s saddled with a crappy focus system. So they come out 3 years later with the 5DmkII – more megapixels, better high ISO, video mode………..but still the same crappy focus system!

It’s not hard to understand what’s going on. Clearly, Canon wants to protect their flagship 1-series by deliberately crippling all of their “lesser” camera bodies. By contrast, look what Nikon is doing. They put their best professional focusing system in the D700 (their equivalent to the 5dMkII). Hell, they even put nearly as good a focusing system into their D7000 – a body that matches up against Canon’s 60D! To quote Thom Hogan, it’s as if Canon missed a memo somewhere.

If you want a great focusing Canon, you are forced to pay $5k for their (crop sensor) 1DmkIV. So in other words, there is no such thing as a full-frame camera with a top-notch focusing system from Canon!

And let’s not forget Thom Hogan:

Canon missed a memo somewhere. The camera market is changing, but they seem stuck on executing on the old memo. Basically: more pixels, more video, same camera. Some things (autofocus comes to mind) are getting a little stale in the Canon world, while other companies seem to be pushing lots of new tech into their equipment (pellicle mirrors, new focus systems, new metering systems, etc.). This needs to change or the overall trend of Canon being nibbled to death will continue. I don’t see any evidence yet that Canon is going to change, though. 2010 was more of the same. Everyone will be looking to see if 2011 is more of more of the same.

Although it took some time, many in the industry have come to agree with what I said right from the start. But this post is not to tell everyone that I told you so, although, yes, I told you so (even before the 5D Mark II was actually available):

So now you have a high resolution sensor, 21 megapixels, but guess what? You can’t easily take pictures that are in focus, eliminating the entire point of having that much resolution available! So now you have a sensor that is extremely capable for low light, high ISO photography, but guess what, you can’t quickly and accurately focus in low light conditions. But hey, you can shoot HD quality video!

The reason why I’m writing this post is that I hope that I and many others have done enough to make it clear to Canon exactly what it is that we want to see in future cameras. And since the successor to the 5D Mark II is probably going to be released this year, I hope that we’ll finally get the full-frame camera we’ve all wanted. Like Thom Hogan said, everyone will be looking to see if 2011 is going to be more of the same for Canon, and I’m very much hoping that it won’t be. Nikon has had a 51-point professional autofocus system (same from the D3s!) on the D700 for almost 3 years now and it can only get better for the D800. Canon needs to seriously step up their game with the 5D Mark III and in my opinion can’t afford to include anything less than the autofocus system from the 1D Mark IV in it. Because Nikon, aggressive as they are right now, are going to be throwing everything they’ve got into the D800, and then some (just look at what happened with the Nikon D7000 and the Canon EOS 60D). It will be interesting to see what happens in a few months.

Update June 12, 2011:

Photographer John Edgar, a Canon shooter, recently decided to try the Nikon system for a day and although he went in expecting not to like it, you’ll be surprised by his remarks about the difference between the Canon and Nikon systems. Just like many others are saying, and like I wrote above, Canon has a serious problem with autofocus. Here’s some of what Edgar said:

Generally, a pretty high proportion of my images shot with my Canon system are out of focus, mostly because it just can’t seem to focus on the right thing. This has been a frustration for a while and definitely my main friction point with the Canon system.

…

I realized that in less than 30 minutes of using the camera, it felt second nature to me. Believe it or not, after 10 years of shooting on the Canon system I still sometimes get lost and turn things the wrong way or forget where a setting is. I was very, very impressed with how quickly I was able to adapt and learn the Nikon layout, and found it extremely natural and ergonomic. Hours in I said to a guest who asked me about the camera, “it really is a joy to shoot with.”

…

This was the perfect time to test the higher ISO ranges. I sent a quick message to my friend Ryan Brenizer to confirm that the files are pretty clean around 6400 ISO before I went trigger-happy. He gave me the nod and with a smile I set the camera there and went to town. I shot for a bit and then zoomed in to 100% and checked the shadows. Just as Ryan had mentioned: very, very clean.

…

The AF focus system is, at worst, much better than anything I’ve experienced with Canon. In continuous focus mode, while a lot of the AF lag is gone, so is a lot of the accuracy. That being said, I still found more of the images to be in than out or at least acceptability soft. During the photo session, shooting with good light in AF-S, the focusing was almost always spot on.

The only thing Edgar didn’t like about the Nikon system was the way it renders bokeh, though he admitted that was more his personal taste. But if I have to choose between different bokeh and to have a working system with reliable autofocus, then the choice is very easy for me. And I don’t think I have to tell you what it is.

Canon's new slogan

Canon are at it again and this time they’ve sent a take-down notice to a fan site called Canonfilmmakers.com. The owners of the site have posted some information about the issues on their blog. The exact details of why Canon wants them to take down the website aren’t clear, but what is clear is that the reasons have something to do with claims that the Canonfilmmakers.com website is infringing on Canon’s trademark. I took a look at the website and the only reason I could immediately see why they would claim infringement is the use of the word “canon” in the domain name of the website.

This is not the first time Canon tries to shut down a fan site. A few years ago they also tried to shut down Canonrumors.com, though the owners of that site were later able to work something out and keep the site online. I believe they removed the Canon logos from the site and included a statement saying the site was not affiliated with Canon in any way. Canonrumors.com remains online to this day. Fake Chuck Westfall, who’s blog was also being targeted by Canon lawyers two years ago, has written about this on his blog where he lists some more examples of Canon’s legal attacks and ill behavior towards customers.

A screenshot of the Canonfilmmakers.com website

In the case of Canonfilmmakers.com there was no use of the Canon logo, and no claims being made that the site was affiliated with Canon and I don’t see where there could be any confusion in that regard. You’d have to have a very low IQ to take that site as an official Canon website.

And yet this doesn’t stop companies like Canon from intimidating innocent fans and customers on the Internet. A post on The Blog Herald mentions the issues Canonfilmmakers.com are having, and also details how other companies (the smarter ones) treat these kinds of issues completely different:

The real problem with fan sites isn’t merely the legal aspect of them, it’s that virtually every company and creator has a different set of rules as to what fan sites can and can not do.

For example, where Canon is obviously out to try and stamp out every site that uses their mark, no matter how genuine their intentions, Star Trek actively links to interacts with fan sites in their community and Blizzard entertainment, the makers of World of Warcraft, even provide an official fan site kit to help fan sites get started and provide clear licensing terms.

In short, no two communities have the same set of rules. Where one artist or one company may routinely go to war with fan communities, often times pushing the boundaries of what the law actually says they can do, others may offer licenses and do everything they can to nurture them.

Trademark law doesn’t so much exist to protect the rights companies have to their trademarks but more to protect consumers:

Trademark law is designed to fulfill the public policy objective of consumer protection, by preventing the public from being misled as to the origin or quality of a product or service. By identifying the commercial source of products and services, trademarks facilitate identification of products and services which meet the expectations of consumers as to quality and other characteristics.

The problem is that companies, such as Canon, abuse these laws and go out to intimidate people for no good reason. They’ll mention how the use of the word “Canon” in the domain name may confuse people and lead them to think the site is an official Canon website, but that is just bullshit. Canon Inc. didn’t invent the word “canon” and can’t prevent people from using that word, especially not when people need to use it to talk about their products. I mean, if you run a camera club for Canon users, how else will you be able to indicate your club is specifically for Canon users if you can’t use the word “canon” anywhere? How would you run a magazine specifically for Canon gear? Jon Connor, one of the owners of the Canonfilmmakers.com website, made a funny video showing just how difficult things can become when you can’t use a trademark when talking about it:

The purpose of trademark law was certainly not to limit free speech or to limit the way in which people can express themselves. Here’s an example of a case where this is made very clear:

Some courts have recognized a somewhat different, but closely-related, fair-use defense, called nominative use. Nominative use occurs when use of a term is necessary for purposes of identifying another producer’s product, not the user’s own product. For example, in a recent case, the newspaper USA Today ran a telephone poll, asking its readers to vote for their favorite member of the music group New Kids on the Block. The New Kids on the Block sued USA Today for trademark infringement. The court held that the use of the trademark “New Kids on the Block” was a privileged nominative use because: (1) the group was not readily identifiable without using the mark; (2) USA Today used only so much of the mark as reasonably necessary to identify it; and (3) there was no suggestion of endorsement or sponsorship by the group. The basic idea is that use of a trademark is sometimes necessary to identify and talk about another party’s products and services. When the above conditions are met, such a use will be privileged. New Kids on the Block v. News America Publishing, Inc., 971 F.2d 302 (9th Cir. 1992).

That sounds logical, right? That “the basic idea is that use of a trademark is sometimes necessary to identify and talk about another party’s products and services.” If I want to run a website where I talk only about Canon gear, I should be able to use the word “canon” to talk about their product in all communication and that includes in my domain name and meta data in my webpages. The domain name is what people use to find your site on the Internet, and if you’re running a website for film makers specifically using Canon gear, it makes sense to me to let that be clear immediately to everyone by including it in the domain name, which gets indexed by search engines and will help you reach those film makers using Canon equipment more easily. In the same way, if I want to start a fan club for Canon DSLR users specifically, I should be able to call it the Canon DSLR Fan Club so that it is immediately clear what kind of fan club it is. How else can I communicate to people that the fan club is specifically for users of Canon gear if I can’t use the word “Canon”? How can you start any fan club if you’re not allowed to use the trademarks, and as a result, are not allowed to say what your fan club is for??

Let’s look at nominative use a bit more:

Nominative use may be considered to be either related to, or a type of “trademark fair use” (sometimes called “classic fair use” or “statutory fair use”). All “trademark fair use” doctrines, however classified, are distinct from the fair use doctrine in copyright law. The nominative use test essentially states that one party may use or refer to the trademark of another if:

1. The product or service cannot be readily identified without using the trademark (e.g. trademark is descriptive of a person, place, or product attribute).
2. The user only uses as much of the mark as is necessary for the identification (e.g. the words but not the font or symbol).
3. The user does nothing to suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark holder. This applies even if the nominative use is commercial, and the same test applies for metatags.

Furthermore, if a use is found to be nominative, then by the definition of non-trademark uses, it can not dilute the trademark.[2]

With the above 3 points in mind: Canonfilmmakers.com wouldn’t be able to effectively run their community website if they couldn’t use the Canon trademark in their communications to exactly identify the type/brand of gear they cover or specialize in, so therefore, their use of the word “Canon” in their name (including domain name) is justified (1). They used only as much of the trademark as was necessary, in their case just the word “Canon”, no use of the Canon logo (2). And they did absolutely nothing to suggest that they were being sponsored or endorsed by Canon themselves (3).

So I don’t really see why Canon would insist that Canonfilmmakers.com take down their website. It’s not like their trademark was being diluted or misrepresented in some way or otherwise being abused. On the contrary, you could argue Canonfilmmakers.com only added value to Canon’s products.

What happens when you're being stupid about protecting your trademark. Photo is (c) Anthony Dunn Photography.

I absolutely hate it when people and/or companies abuse the law to unnecessarily limit, attack or intimidate others like in this case with Canon. Often it’s the case that these kinds of threats are being sent out by lawyers even while they know that they don’t really stand a chance in court, but they do it anyway just to see if the victim (yes victim) gets scared and allows him/herself to be intimidated by their threats. Similarly, a while ago I also got a Cease and Desist letter from Amazon/dpreview where they claimed I was infringing on dpreview’s rights. I replied and after more than a year I have yet to hear from them. These companies shouldn’t forget that the victims can also take legal action against them when they make groundless threats of infringement:

Various jurisdictions have laws which are designed to prevent trademark owners from making wrongful threats of trademark infringement action against other parties. These laws are intended to prevent large or powerful companies from intimidating or harassing smaller companies.

Where one party makes a threat to sue another for trademark infringement, but does not have a genuine basis or intention to carry out that threat, or does not carry out the threat at all within a certain period, the threat may itself become a basis for legal action.[17] In this situation, the party receiving such a threat may seek from the Court a declaratory judgment; also known as a declaratory ruling.

I’m sad that I am not the owner of Canonfilmmakers.com because I would have loved this opportunity to defend myself against these claims made by Canon, assuming that their infringement claims are based on the domain name (because so far that’s the only reason that seems likely to me if I look at the website). We need to stand up against this kind of abuse of trademark and copyright laws because if we don’t, it will only get worse in the future. As a photographer, I love that I can have certain rights to my work under copyright law, but I’ll be the last one to abuse those laws for something that I shouldn’t be doing (like in the Amazon/dpreview case where they clearly tried to influence my criticism). I respect their copyrights, but they’re not going to stop me from exercising my right to free speech.

There are many other websites out there using the Canon brand name in their domain name such as Canon-Questions.com and even ACanonLawyer.com. A simple Who-Is lookup reveals thousands more of which hundreds are really related to Canon. So it seems that when Canon’s lawyers have nothing to do, sending out take-down letters to fan sites could give an impression that they’re working hard to earn their money. You may think that this is a silly idea, but these kinds of things really happen. I was told by a lawyer (yes really) a while ago that since it is often the case that they get paid for every letter that they send out, it doesn’t always really matter to them whether the claims they make in those letters are valid or not, and if their client’s position is strong, weak or groundless. They get paid for sending out a letter, so they do it and it’s another $100-$200 earned. Especially if the other party is just a simple person with limited resources where they can have some kind of expectation that he/she will let him/herself be intimidated by the threats made in the letter and give in to the demands. I’ve been the victim of this myself so I know what I’m talking about.

I really hope that the owner of Canonfilmmakers.com lives up to his name (Jon Connor) and decides to fight back and lead the resistance against Canon Inc. He will be doing the entire Canon community and the global population in general a really big favour, especially so when he wins and makes the details public.

Timeless Stare

Today I launched my new website after spending almost 3.5 months working on it in my spare time. The previous site was launched in 2007, so a refresh was necessary. Along with some updated information about the services that I offer I have also updated all my portfolios and there’s a lot of new work to see. I’ve also finally written some more about my background and there are some testimonials from people I’ve worked with over the years to give you an idea of what it’s like to work with me. I’ve gotten feedback from clients in the past who mentioned that I had to “sell myself more” and talk more about my work. I could totally understand them, I’m not one to go out and promote myself or boast about my work. I find that very difficult to do, but at the same time I also realize that sometimes I have to act like a salesman in order to sell my services. So instead of me talking about my work, I choose to have some of my clients giving their opinion about their experiences in working with me.

I’m still doing a little tweaking in the background but the site is now essentially complete. In the near future, as time permits, I’ll also be updating my blog to match the design of my new website more closely. Head on over to take a look and if you have any feedback whatsoever, just leave a comment on this blog post.

A car belonging to a frustrated Korean photographer. The text on those banners translates to: “Camera that is a piece of trash – Canon EOS 1D Mark 3”

Canon has been seriously disappointing everyone since the release of the EOS 1D Mark III camera. The 5D Mark II sucked, the 7D sucked a little, the 50D seriously sucked, the 60D sucked, and the recently released 600D and 1100D also suck. Professional photographers using Canon equipment are in desperate need of a working DSLR body that will make them competitive again compared to other photographers using Nikon gear and these days even Sony gear. The only good option Canon has right now is the 1D Mark IV, but even that can’t deliver image quality as good as the Nikon D3s for example, and costs close to $4500 while being a lot bigger and heavier (not something most photographers appreciate).

Fake Chuck Westfall has put up a petition online for feature requests for the next update to the 5D Mark II, which may be a 5D Mark III but could also be a new model like a 3D or 6D if we are to believe some of the rumors. If you are a Canon user that needs a good body now or in the future, take the time to sign this petition and let’s hope Canon Inc. will actually deliver something close to what is being requested demanded.

Cactus V5 Transceiver Review. Model credit: Carol Chen Poun Joe (more test images with this model in the gallery below)

In the second week of November 2010 I was contacted by Harvest One Limited as part of a small group of photographers around the world about testing a new version of their Cactus wireless flash triggers. At that time their latest model was the Cactus V4 Wireless Flash Trigger which I had been using for a few months already. So when the opportunity was presented to me to be able to have an early look at the next generation of these triggers I accepted it immediately. Harvest One would ship all participating photographers a couple of pre-production versions of the new units and the only requirement was that we would give suggestions for improvements and other feedback during the testing period and in the end write about our experiences with the new units on our websites and/or blogs.

As a user of the Cactus V4 triggers I have overall been very happy with the value I got for my money. The V4 triggers have proven to be very capable and reliable and I have done some serious work with them including using them during my photoshoot for the president of Suriname. There were some things that could have been better with the V4 system. For example, the battery compartment door could easily get detached and this was an issue many people complained about. Occasionally you could also get some reliability issues with flashes not firing when taking a picture, though this didn’t happen very often. In my post about the photoshoot for the president of Suriname, I mentioned how the Cactus V4 trigger was a lot more practical and reliable when in use than Canon’s wireless trigger (the ST-E2, which I also own), while also being a lot cheaper. And I still think this is the case. So the Cactus V4 already offered some good value for the money you’d spend on them. But with the new Cactus V5 transceiver the value you get for your money is taken to a much higher level.

The Cactus V5 Transceiver compared to the Cactus V4 Trigger

Improvements

The Cactus V5 system represents a significant improvement over the older V4 system. Let’s look at some of the new features:

- New Transceiver Design

The Cactus V5 has a new transceiver design. This means that each V5 unit can function both as a trigger and a receiver (controlled through the Mode Switch on the unit). It is also much bigger compared to the V4 unit so you’ll have to keep this in mind when using it with other gear.

The Cactus V5 mounted as a trigger on the Canon EOS 40D

With the V4 system you had a dedicated trigger unit and a dedicated receiver unit. You’d then use a V4 trigger to trigger a number of V4 receivers. If the trigger unit became defective then you’d have to have a backup trigger unit to be able to continue to work. But with the V5 system any of the units can function as a trigger, so you can just take one of the receivers and use that as a trigger in such a case. This is one of the advantages of the transceiver design. You can always walk around with an extra V5 unit and that can be used both as a backup trigger and backup receiver. In comparison, with the V4 system I had to walk around with an extra V4 trigger unit and an extra V4 receiver unit.

Cactus V5

The specifications are as follows:

- Working radio frequency: 2.4 Ghz.
- 16 selectable channels
- Sync speeds of up to 1/1000s supported
- Maximum effective distance of 100 meters
- Operating temperature of -20 °C to +50 °C
- Dimensions: 82mm (L) x 70mm (W) x 37mm (H)
- Weight: 58g
- Power input: 2 x AAA 1.5V batteries
- Flash voltage handling up to 300v
- Camera voltage handling up to 6v

- Better Reliability

The Cactus V5 transceiver is a lot more reliable than the V4 system. I have yet to experience reliability issues with these units. They’re practically 100% reliable within 50 meters. During tests, as long as my flashes were able to recycle fast enough, these units kept firing them every time.

- Frequency Self-Tune (FST)

The Cactus V5 transceiver has a unique new Frequency Self-Tune (FST) feature that automatically adjusts for frequency shifts in extreme weather conditions to increase reliability. According to Harvest One this feature will minimize no-fires in extreme conditions. I live in a tropical part of the world, but some of the other photographers in our testing group have tested the V5 in very cold weather conditions and they have proven to be practically 100% reliable. Check out the list of other reviews further down for more information on this.

- Improved Battery Compartment

The new battery compartment on the V5 is a big improvement compared to the V4 and according to Harvest One it is highly durable and has been tested to continue to function even after 3000 clicks. The door to the battery compartment on the Cactus V4 could detach all by itself if you merely gave it the wrong look. In comparison this new design on the V5 is just great.

The Cactus V5 Battery Compartment

- Maximum Range of 100 Meters!

The Cactus V5 transceiver can work reliably over a maximum distance of 100 meters. Some testers have reported even greater distances, as far as 240 meters (with decreased reliability), where they were still able to use the V5 with some no-fires in between. At least one tester reported reliable results at 200 meters (check links to other reviews below). But it is important to note that Harvest One themselves only advertise a reliable working distance of 100 meters. How much further you can take this also depends on the environment that you’re working in.

- Multi-Channel Triggering

With the Cactus V5 transceiver you can have up to 4 groups of receivers each with their own channel (Channel 2 – 5) and with any number of receivers in each group. You can then control on the trigger which one of these groups you want to trigger when taking a picture. Channel 1 on the trigger fires all groups. If you want to trigger only a certain group of receivers, all you have to do is set the trigger to the group’s channel and only that group of flashes will fire.

- Camera Shutter Release Functionality

The Cactus V5 transceiver can also be used as a wireless shutter release. To be able to use this functionality you’ll have to buy a shutter release cable that is being sold separately by Harvest One. When using this functionality, half pressing the test button on the trigger activates the autofocus system of the camera and fully pressing the test button takes a picture. Using this feature you can reliably trigger your camera wirelessly from up to 100 meters away.

The Cactus V5 mounted on a Canon EOS 40D and being used as a wireless shutter release (shutter release cable is sold separately)

- Extra Hot Shoe

There is now an extra hot shoe on top of the V5 unit that functions as the trigger. This enables you to mount a flash on top of the trigger on your camera and use it as an on-axis fill light. TTL information will not be passed through to the flash mounted on top of the trigger so you’ll have to work in manual mode.

The Cactus V5 mounted on a Canon EOS 40D with a Canon 580 EX II Flash on top

- Improved Status Led

The status led on the V5 indicates when the receivers are being triggered by the shutter release on the camera (green light), when they are being tested by half-pressing the test button on the trigger (orange light) and when the batteries are low (blinking red light). The battery low indication is a very welcome new feature because on important shoots you can get an early warning if the batteries need to be replaced. According to Harvest One, after the low battery indicator flashes at room temperature, it’s possible to get an average of 7-8 hours of “standby” time until the batteries completely die out.

- Maximum Sync Speed of 1/1000s

The Cactus V5 supports a maximum sync speed of 1/1000s. I used the V5 on Canon EOS 40D bodies and was able to work at the maximum supported (by the camera) sync speed of 1/250s without banding issues. On some Nikon bodies for example you’ll be able to work at sync speeds up to 1/1000s.

- Better Flash Stands

The Cactus V5 transceivers come with a much better flash stand compared to the older V4 system. The flash stand can be used on the V5 unit itself or on the flash.

A Canon 580 EX II Flash mounted on the Cactus V5 Transceiver

No Support for TTL

The Cactus V5 does not support TTL. So if you plan on using these triggers, prepare to work in manual mode all the time. It also does not support TTL pass-through for the flash mounted on top of the V5 trigger on the camera. Depending on how you like to work, this may or may not be an issue for you. When using off-camera lighting I want to have precise control over my lights, so the fact that TTL is not supported is not a big deal for me personally. If TTL is important to you then you’ll have to look at the more expensive Radio Popper or Pocket Wizard.

Compatibility with the Cactus V4

As far as compatibility with the older V4 system goes, there’s good news and there’s bad news. The bad news is that you will not be able to trigger the V4 receivers with the V5 trigger, and you will not be able to trigger the V5 receivers with a V4 trigger. The V5 is not compatible with the V4 in that way. However, the good news is that if you already have invested in the V4 system, it won’t be useless if you want to get a couple of the V5 units. You can use the V4 system together with the V5 by mounting the V4 trigger on top of the V5 trigger on the camera as shown in the image below.

Using the Cactus V5 with the Cactus V4

This way you can trigger both V5 and V4 receivers when you take a picture. It is not an ideal way of working, but it does the job. There’s also the possibility of having a V5 receiver trigger the V4 trigger using the supplied sync cable, but then you’ll get banding at the maximum sync speed. So the best way to use the V5 and V4 together is by mounting the V4 trigger on top of the V5 trigger on the camera. I’ve actually used this setup during two test photoshoots that I have done (read about them below) and it worked very well. But you’ll have to keep in mind that using the V5 and the V4 together is not recommended and not supported by Harvest One, and any damages resulting from using these units this way will not be covered by the warranty.

Test Photoshoots

While testing the Cactus V5 I thought of doing some test photoshoots to see how it would perform if I were to use it for actual work. Based on my experiences during these test photoshoots I would know if the V5 would be worth upgrading to in the future.

I like macro photography so one of the first things I tried out was to see if I could use the V5 for off camera lighting during macro photography. I went out with a lightstand, a Canon 580 EX II flash on a V5 receiver and a shoot through umbrella and made shots of insects, flowers and other small objects. In most cases the flash was positioned to my left at about 45 degrees from the subject, about 50cm to 1 meter away. Sometimes I would stand at equal distance from the subject to the light and sometimes even slightly in front and to the side of the light. This is a scenario that wouldn’t work with the Canon wireless trigger, the ST-E2 since you’d always have to place your lights in front of the trigger within a specific range and distance. But with the Cactus V5, I just placed my light where I wanted and was free to walk around to try all kinds of angles on my subject. I had 100% reliability here. A couple of images I took during this outdoor macro session can be seen in the gallery below, all were taken with the Canon EF 180mm f/3.5 L Macro lens.

I also tried a portrait shoot to see how the Cactus V5 would do in a studio setting. I invited my friend Navin Poeran, a SEO specialist, to have some photos taken which he could later use on his blog and social networking websites. For this shoot I wanted to end up with a specific kind of tech-look, which was achieved in part with the lighting and in part with post processing. I used 4 Canon 580 EX II flashes, 2 of them triggered by Cactus V5 units and 2 of them triggered by Cactus V4 units. There was one background light, 2 lights (small shoot through umbrellas) on each side and slightly to the back of the subject and one light in front and slightly to the side in a 90cm x 90cm softbox. I wanted to experiment with shallow depth of field so I shot mainly at f/2 (Canon EF 50mm f/1.2 L lens), which meant that the power on the flashes was dialed down all the way to about 1/64th. The lights were placed close to the subject. Here I had 100% reliability for the V5 units and some no-fires for the V4 units. All shots were taken at 1/250s (max sync on the EOS 40D) and I had no banding issues.

And finally I did yet another studio shoot with a very talented painter and make-up artist named Carol Chen Poun Joe. You can find her and see some of her work on her facebook page. I wanted to do a photoshoot with extreme eye make-up and Carol was prepared to not only do the make-up but to also be the model for this photoshoot. This means that she had to do the make-up on herself. I told her what I wanted to do for the eye make-up and she came up with two very nice make-up styles all by herself: A zebra eye make-up look and a fantasy look. The fact that she also did this make-up on herself (especially the more complex looking zebra eye make-up) is a testament to her skills. You can see her doing her own make-up in the gallery below. Apart from being very talented she’s also very beautiful and can sometimes be mistaken for Megan Fox.

Carol Chen Poun Joe or Megan Fox?

Now if you’ll stop staring for a moment, I want to explain the lighting I used for this photoshoot. The lighting here was very similar to the previous photoshoot with Navin, but the difference here was that I placed the lights much further away from the model and used higher power settings. So it was 4 Canon 580 EX II flashes, 2 of them triggered by Cactus V5 units and 2 of them triggered by Cactus V4 units. There was one background light, 2 lights (small shoot through umbrellas) on each side and slightly to the back of the subject and one light in front in a 90cm x 90cm softbox. During the photoshoot I sometimes moved the softbox to the left or right of my position depending on the orientation of the model. Here I also experimented with some shallow depth of field shots using the Canon EF 50mm f/1.2 L lens. I also used the Canon EF 35mm f/1.4 L lens for some of the shots. During this photoshoot I had 100% reliability for the V5 units and some no-fires for the V4 units. All shots were taken at 1/250s (max sync on the EOS 40D) and I had no banding issues.

Gallery

Below is a gallery of pictures I made during my test photoshoots. Click on the “Full Screen” button in the lower-right corner to see larger images.

Conclusion

Based on my experiences with testing the Cactus V5 transceiver, I can tell you that I am going to be buying them as soon as they are available and will be replacing my Cactus V4 system entirely. They are a lot better than the Cactus V4 and certainly a lot more reliable. And if you look at the costs (two V5 units for a mere $60), I think it’s an incredible deal. Radio Popper and Pocket Wizard have some serious competition now with their (lots) more expensive products. For the price of a single Pocket Wizard FlexTT5 unit ($229) you can get 7 Cactus V5 units. And reliability is just as good and perhaps even better if you look at the comparison another reviewer made (check reviews below). The only thing the Cactus V5 doesn’t have that’s really worth having for some users is the TTL functionality.

Another thing is that the Cactus V4 already put the Canon ST-E2 to shame and now the Cactus V5 is doing it all over again. Canon is still trying to sell us a fucking piece of plastic junk for almost $250 with a maximum working range of 15 meters (10 meters out-doors) that needs line of sight to be able to work well. For that price you can get 8 Cactus V5 units that work a lot better and give you a lot more freedom. I keep wondering when Canon is finally going to bring us some fucking innovation after all the mediocrity they’ve been releasing recently. If a small company like Harvest One Limited with limited resources is able to design such a relatively kick-ass product in about 18 months, why can’t the big and mighty Canon do it? Okay let me stop now, I’m beginning to sound like someone else.

Availability

The Cactus V5 will be available for sale on Gadget Infinity starting on Monday, January 24, 2011 at 00:00 (PST) and first shipments are expected to begin on January 26th. It will be available in two packages:

• Wireless Flash Transceiver V5 Duo - Price: $59,95
  A box containing two Cactus V5 transceiver units.
• Wireless Flash Transceiver V5 Single – Price: $34,95
  A box containing a single Cactus V5 transceiver unit.

Other Reviews

There’s much more to say about the new Cactus V5 system and many more tests were done by others. Below is a list of reviews done by other photographers in our test group where you can find additional information:

• Review by Brian Hursey
  General information, maximum range reliability tests up to about 180 meters and videos.
• Review by Nicolas B Photo (French)
  General information, maximum range reliability tests in cold weather, wireless shutter release information.
• Review by Eric Duminil
  General information, maximum range reliability tests comparing the V5 with the Pocket Wizard Plus II. According to this test the V5 is a lot more reliable than the Pocket Wizard Plus II, even as far as 240 meters. Very impressive.
• Review on Steelevisions
  General information.
• Review on Pentaxforums
  General information, maximum range reliability tests, comparisons with other wireless flash triggers.
• Review on Rudy’s Rants
  General information, maximum range reliability tests up to 200 meters in cold weather, maximum frame rate tests with an impressive 39 fps result!
• Review on Lighting Rumours
  General information, max sync speed tests on Nikon D40 (1/1000s) and D700 and comparison with other wireless flash triggers on the market.

Updates

Update January 25, 2011: There appears to be an extremely high demand for the new Cactus V5 transceivers and initial stock has been completely sold out within 15 hours. Gadget Infinity seems to be caught by surprise with the high demand, but in my opinion they had to have seen this coming because the V5 is a killer product. So if you go on their website and find the Cactus V5 out of stock, try again the next day. Here’s part of a message from Gadget Infinity:

As many of you are aware, the Cactus Wireless Flash Transceiver V5 (V5) was released yesterday, and after less than 15 hours, the V5 Duo was all sold out while a limited number of V5 Single is still available.

We are extremely excited about the high demand for V5. However, given that each V5 unit is inspected one-by-one to ensure quality and reliability, our supply level is insufficient to meet this unexpected high demand. In light of this, we are making efforts to increase our production supply, and hope to achieve this within the shortest timeframe possible.

For the time being, we will make a limited supply of V5 (Duo and Single) available on Gadget Infinity every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 00:00 PST.

Please accept our sincere apologies if this supply shortage has caused any inconvenience for you. Lastly, we’d like to thank you for your support of Cactus Image and Gadget Infinity, and we look forward to serving you soon.

Snapsort

Today if you want to buy a digital camera, and especially if you’re new to photography, it can be quite difficult to choose a camera from all the many different brands and models out there. The market is saturated with all kinds of cameras with various capabilities at price ranges from $200 to $8000 and more. In addition there are many websites on the Internet where you can find reviews for cameras which can often be many pages long containing all kinds of technical information which may or may not mean something to you. Making things even more difficult is the fact that on these review sites the reviewers often give a very subjective rating to the cameras. For example, if you compare the Nikon D7000 with the Canon EOS 60D on Dpreview, the Nikon D7000 has a score of 80% while the Canon EOS 60D has a score of 79% making it seem like these cameras are practically similar and that it almost wouldn’t matter which one you choose. But this is very far from the truth. Dpreview used to be a lot worse in the past, where almost all cameras got a simple “Highly Recommended” rating in the end, making you wonder why you’re spending time reading 20-page reviews if every camera is highly recommended anyway. Many other review sites have similar issues.

Enter Snapsort, a refreshingly simple and easy to navigate website that helps you to quickly and easily go through a whole database of currently available cameras to find exactly what you’re looking for.

Simplicity

The Snapsort website has a very simple and clean layout making it very fast and easy to navigate. At any given time only the information you need is being displayed, which is a big difference compared to other sites that surround the content with all kinds of unnecessary information. When I saw Snapsort initially, the thought that came to my mind immediately is that this is the Google of the camera review websites. And this for many more reasons than just the website layout.

User centric

Snapsort cares about what the user wants and gives the user all the tools he needs to help him make a choice. As soon as you’re on the site, you get presented with 4 options right at the top: Explore, Compare, Learn and Just tell me! You can choose an option under Explore if you want to start looking at cameras based on a combination of criteria which you can define yourself out of a list of possible options. Snapsort even provides you with simple explanations for all of the available criteria options. Are you looking for an entry-level DSLR costing around $700? No problem, just select those options and do a search. But what if you also want just the cameras in that price range that can record HD quality movies? Simply add the Movie Format criteria to your criteria list and search again. All kinds if combinations are possible. I’m not kidding when I say that in just a few seconds you can have a pretty good recommendation on what camera to buy.

Explore cameras on Snapsort

If you click on one of the cameras in the search results, Snapsort gives you detailed information about its capabilities with pictures of the camera. What I find important here is that you can easily see how it ranks compared to other similar cameras and other cameras in the same price range.

Easily check camera rankings on Snapsort

If you want to have detailed information of how it compares to its competitors, you just have to click on the “Competitors” link at the top. You then get a list of other cameras that your currently selected camera can be compared to. Not only that, but Snapsort even tells you in a nutshell what the differences between the cameras are and lists the important advantages and disadvantages of each model so that you can choose more easily. And all of this on a single page in just a few lines.

View competing cameras on Snapsort

If you want a more detailed comparison, you can click on a “Compare” link provided below each competing camera which will take you to another page with a more detailed comparison. Snapsort then provides all the relevant information you need in order to make a decision that will best suit your needs.

Compare cameras on Snapsort

But what I really like about this is that Snapsort also gives you a clear recommendation on which camera you should buy. This is a huge plus compared to other review websites and very helpful to users who can’t make a decision based on camera specifications alone (for example those who don’t know very much about photography or are new to photography). You’ve got to have huge balls to be able to specifically recommend a camera to the user above another model, and Snapsort does this. Remember the example I gave at the beginning of this post of the scores of the Nikon D7000 (80%) and the Canon EOS 60D (79%) on Dpreview? How difficult wouldn’t it have been for you to make a decision based on that? Instead, Snapsort clearly tells you what you should buy: The Nikon D7000. Also notice that the scores of these cameras on Snapsort differ a LOT more from each other compared to Dpreview, and this is very consistent with reality (check my review of the Canon EOS 60D for more on this).

Objective camera recommendations on Snapsort

I’ve tried a number of different possibilities and comparisons, and so far I found myself agreeing with all of the recommendations that Snapsort made. This will save many users a huge amount of time and will help them spend their money wisely. And speaking of spending your money wisely, a killer feature on Snapsort is the “Just tell me!” option, where you can simply enter the amount of money you want to spend on a camera and let Snapsort give you a number of possibilities to choose from. Depending on your needs (do you want an ultra-compact camera or, for example, a waterproof camera?) you can start to look at the possibilities in a category that makes sense to you.

Easily find a camera for your budget on Snapsort

Objectivity

It may not be apparent to many people, but these days it is very difficult to find objective information on the Internet on camera review sites. Most of the popular sites such as Dpreview accept money or favors from camera manufacturers in various ways (mostly through advertising and sponsorships) and can be biased as a result. Many people have had negative comments made on Dpreview forums deleted and got banned there for expressing criticism. As far as I can tell, right now all the information Snapsort provides to users is very objective and transparent. Even their scoring system is very transparent and shows you exactly how they calculate the scores of all the cameras. And I love their no-nonsense approach. Most important here is that Snapsort uses data from DXOMark for DSLR cameras to rate the image quality and low light sensitivity among other things. And this data is highly objective and highly reliable. One thing I can guarantee you is that if you’re looking for cameras with the best image quality, you can blindly trust the recommendations on Snapsort. As far as I know, Snapsort is one of the first websites to rate cameras based on a high importance of image quality and is the first to use this to directly influence buying decisions. Users are being educated on the fact that higher megapixel numbers on cameras don’t necessarily mean that the camera is better compared to others with less megapixels. So when you compare cameras on Snapsort for the best image quality, you can rest assured that Snapsort will always show you which one has the best image quality.

Room for Improvement

I’m sure the guys at Snapsort have a big list of features they want to add to the website. There’s always room for improvement but there’s not a lot you can tackle at the same time. One of the things that is missing right now on Snapsort and that I hope will get on there in the future is the ability to also compare cameras based on build quality and the level of weather sealing. Another option, which in my opinion is just as important as image quality on a camera, is the ability to compare cameras based on the accuracy, speed and level of sophistication of their autofocus systems. I know that to objectively gather this data for many camera models is not an easy task, but it would totally rock if this could be taken along with image quality and other criteria to help users make a better buying decision. In my opinion the most important features on any camera are the image quality and the autofocus capabilities, because if one of those has a problem, the quality of your images will surely suffer.

What about Lenses?

Lenshero

So now you have a camera recommendation from Snapsort, but in the case of a DSLR, which lenses should you buy? Well, the choice for lenses is almost as difficult to make as cameras these days. There are many options out there from various manufacturers and for various purposes. Some lenses may or may not (completely) work on your camera. So what to do? Fortunately you can get help with this on Lenshero.

Lenshero has the same simplicity and user centric approach as Snapsort. If you open the Lenshero website, the first thing you get asked is the type of camera you own (this is important since each camera model uses specific lenses) and what your budget is. Then you can also choose what style of photography you want to use the lens for. No technical stuff whatsoever, just plain and simple questions complete with examples so that any user can understand.

Finding lenses for your DSLR camera on Lenshero

Once you’ve specified what you’re looking for and click on the big “GO” button, Lenshero gives you a list of possibilities in the lens explorer. There you can view all lenses and compare their features. Similar to Snapsort you can choose from a list of criteria to refine your search. You have the ability to make your own combinations of these criteria to find exactly what you’re looking for.

Exploring lenses on Lenshero

If you click on a lens in the explorer, you can view details for that lens such as compatibility information, pros and cons and lens specifications.

Review lenses on Lenshero

While Lenshero is already very good right now to help you go through the large amount of lenses that are available and help you to make a choice, what I’m missing is the ability to compare lenses similar to how you can compare cameras on Snapsort. Most importantly, the ability to see and compare the performance of these lenses, the build quality and the level of weather sealing. It would be very helpful to compare the sharpness (or resolution) of all these lenses as this is very important to image quality. DXOMark already has this capability, though their database currently only has the performance data for a relatively small amount of lenses. Perhaps this is also one of the reasons why it’s not yet integrated into Lenshero. It may also be a feature that is on the to-do list of the developers at Lenshero. But I hope that in the future the lens performance data will also be available on Lenshero and that there will also be an objective rating system similar to the one on Snapsort that will help users choose the best lens for their camera. The lens performance data is important because, for example, a more expensive lens doesn’t neccessarily have to be a better performing lens. On DXOMark I found out that the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens was a lot better than the more expensive Canon EF 50mm f/1.2 L USM lens when you consider the image quality you can get from it. Ofcourse the 50mm f/1.2 lens has a better build quality (more metal, weather sealing etc.) than the 50mm f/1.4 lens, but if image quality is important to you instead of build quality, then you could choose the cheaper lens in this case and have more money left to buy an additional lens.

Valuable tools

I think that Snapsort and Lenshero together form an excellent combination of tools to help people make a decision on what camera and lenses they should buy. For a while now I’ve been sending everyone who asks me about cameras and lenses to these two websites. Snapsort alone has the potential to become the Google of the digital camera industry. Together with Lenshero it could become THE destination on the Internet for quick and objective camera buying advice in the future.

Canon EOS 60D

I’m going to be very short with my review of the Canon EOS 60D: IT SUCKS.

On second thought, let me elaborate on that.

The Canon EOS 60D is a step backwards in the xxD series on almost all levels. If you own a 20D, 30D, 40D or, heaven forbid, a 50D, then by getting a 60D you won’t really be upgrading. Well, maybe if you own a 20D and 30D you could consider it an upgrade but only because those cameras are now very old and outdated. But in the case of the 40D it is definitely a downgrade, and in the case of the 50D everything is a downgrade except for the image quality, which will be better on the 60D (but keep in mind that the image quality on the 50D was terrible compared to the 40D).

Why am I saying this? First because the imaging sensor used in the 60D is the same sensor that is used in the 7D. I have said a lot about the inferior image quality that the sensor in the 7D produces compared to the 40D. For details on this, please read my review of the EOS 7D. The same things I said there about image quality on the 7D apply to the 60D as well because both use the same 18MP sensor. Basically the images from the 60D will also contain more noise compared to images taken on the 40D at ISO values lower than ISO 3200. So if image quality is important to you, then the 60D is not the best choice right now, especially not when you also consider the competition, namely the Nikon D7000. A comparison between the EOS 7D, 60D and 40D models can be seen on DXOMark if you follow this link.

In the graph above taken from a comparison on DXOMark you can clearly see how the performance of the 7D and 60D are very similar, and how they both perform worse than the 40D with regards to noise levels on screen.

If you compare the 60D and 40D to the Nikon D7000 on DXOMark (follow this link) you get the results below:

In the graph above taken from a comparison on DXOMark you can see that the image quality on the Nikon D7000 comes close to the Canon EOS 40D as far as on screen noise is concerned. This is a great achievement for Nikon, as the D7000 has a 16MP sensor while the 40D has a 10MP sensor. The 60D performs worse than the new Nikon D7000 and worse than even the 3 year old 40D. This is a shame for Canon.

Apart from the inferior image quality, the 60D is also a step backwards in the xxD series when you consider build quality. Older models like the 40D and 50D had a strong magnesium-alloy body whereas the 60D has a body that is made up of aluminum and plastic, putting it more in the entry level Digital Rebel (xxxD) category. Essentially the 60D became a Digital Rebel that’s a little more advanced than the EOS 550D. Perhaps Canon didn’t want the 60D to compete too much with the 7D, and I’m sure that in true Canon style they also wanted to save a couple of bucks on build quality so they could make even more money off of us. But the result is not worth the money they are asking for it in my opinion ($1100), and especially not when Nikon came out with a body in the same category that DOES have a magnesium-alloy body, namely the Nikon D7000 costing $1200. Canon is now slowly building up a history of wanting to sell products with inferior specs for a lot more than they are worth. In a similar way they priced the 5D Mark II at $2700 with a ridiculously underperforming autofocus system, while Nikon had their D700 also priced around $2700 with an advanced pro-level autofocus system. This time Nikon is one-upping Canon again with their D7000, as they have consistently done since the release of the D3.

As if scaling back the build quality on the 60D wasn’t enough Canon also removed some features such as autofocus micro-adjustment for lenses, an essential feature that was missing on the 40D, introduced with the 50D, and now taken away again with the 60D. When you’re familiar with all the autofocus issues with Canon cameras and lenses, you realize even more how important such a feature is on a camera. You only have to do a simple search on Google to find thousands of cases where people are complaining about their (often even brand new) lenses having front or back focus issues. In such a case the autofocus micro-adjustment feature is very handy to try and correct the issues yourself, or to fine-tune autofocus on your camera in combination with the lenses you own. But somehow Canon had to remove this from the 60D, I suspect to make it even more inferior to the 7D. But guess what? Nikon put this feature in their D7000, again one-upping Canon’s 60D.

And so it appears again that engineers and marketing people at Nikon have a much, much, MUCH better understanding of what photographers really want in a camera, and what combination of features make sense. While Nikon went a couple of steps forward with their D7000 compared to the D90, Canon actually went backwards on exactly the same steps from the 40D to the 60D. Nikon even equipped the $1200 costing D7000 with an advanced 39-point autofocus system. It may not be as good as the 51-point AF system in the D300s, for example, but it won’t surprise me one bit when it turns out to be A LOT better than the old 9-point AF system in the 60D that Canon has now been using ever since the 40D (!!!). It seems that Canon purposely holds back every time while Nikon is constantly innovating and pushing the envelope with each new DSLR model they release. It is incredible what Nikon has achieved with the D7000. The D7000 is so good that it can easily compete with the Canon EOS 7D ($1800 price range). Even the image quality of the D7000 is better compared to the EOS 60D and EOS 7D. If you look at the features of the D7000 and the 60D side by side, it becomes very clear that the D7000 is vastly more superior than the 60D while costing just $100 more. Some of the features on the D7000 include dual memory card slots, autofocus micro-adjustments, continuous AF in movie mode, magnesium-alloy body with weather sealing, 39-point autofocus system with 3D matrix metering and of course better image quality – all for almost the same price as the 60D.

So as far as I’m concerned, the 60D is another disappointment in the line of very disappointing camera bodies Canon has released in the last 4 years. Clearly Canon is trying to sell us inferior technology at a premium price, while the competition has a lot more to offer at the same price levels. If you’re looking for a DSLR in the $1000-$1200 price range, the Nikon D7000 is currently the best there is on the market. The D7000 is a better choice compared to the Canon 7D, 60D, 50D, 40D, the Nikon D90 and the Nikon D300(s). Depending on your needs, the D7000 is also a better choice compared to the Canon EOS 5D Mark II (only if you really need 21MP and full-frame) and the Nikon D700 (only if you need full-frame).

President D. D. Bouterse of the Republic of Suriname

It’s not every day that you get asked to shoot the official portrait of the president of your country, or any other country for that matter So when that opportunity presents itself to you, you grab hold of it with both hands. And feet, if necessary. The call came in on Sunday August 15th 2010 late in the afternoon. I was at home fooling around behind my PC when my mobile phone rang. I answered and a female voice on the other side started explaining to me that I was speaking to the presidential cabinet office of Suriname and that they were looking for a photographer to make the official presidential portrait (the president had been inaugurated a week ago). She explained that I got recommended by a few people and that they had a look at my work. Then she asked if I was interested to do it. I got a little nervous on the phone and I started wondering if I would be able to pull it off. It may look like something simple, and perhaps it is for a lot of pros out there, but this wouldn’t be a photoshoot for some model. It’d be for the president! What if I screw up? Obviously there’s a lot of pressure involved in such a high profile photoshoot.

They gave me a few hours to think about it and in the end I decided to do it. What was just another quiet Sunday became a day to start worrying about how I would do this photoshoot. The next day I went to check out the location at the presidential cabinet office where I’d have to do the photoshoot, and I decided to do it in one of the larger conference rooms. Meanwhile the date of the photoshoot had been decided and it would have to be done on the coming Friday which was just four days away. I didn’t know how I would do the photoshoot yet, but I did know that I wanted to do something a little different.

Flag of Suriname

As I was thinking about various ideas I decided that I wanted to do something with the colors of the flag of Suriname as the main theme. As you may know the colors in the flag all have their own meaning (Wikipedia: English and Dutch). I thought about using a red or green background and ultimately went with red. The reason why I went with red was because if you look at the flag of Suriname, you can see that there’s a yellow star in the red area. So since the president would be standing in front of the red background, I could light him with yellow light and then he could be the yellow star in the flag.

Now I had another problem and that was that I couldn’t just completely light the president with yellow light. Obviously that would make him look very strange. I quickly decided that I would have to rim-light him with yellow light. Not only would it then add some more meaning to the picture (meaning of the yellow color in the flag) but the yellow light would also help to separate the president from the background. But then I thought what if the yellow light would come from above? Obviously that could add some more meaning to the picture in a spiritual sense. During his campaign the president often talked about how his campaign and the formation of the current coalition was being directed by an invisible hand, and how a higher power was guiding the process of change in politics in Suriname, and I thought making the light come from above would make sense in that regard. By carefully positioning the flash I could also make the yellow light fall on just his head and shoulders.

And finally the president himself would be lit with a medium sized softbox on one side and a reflector on the other side. Two days before the photoshoot I experimented with the setup at home to see if I’d be able to pull it off and what equipment I would have to bring with me on location. Even for such a simple setup, planning and rehearsing is absolutely necessary to make sure you’re prepared and can make the most of out the short period of time you’ll be able to work with the subject. Once I was confident everything would work, I packed all the equipment I needed for the photoshoot.

On the day of the photoshoot I arrived on location an hour and a half before we were expecting the president. I had purposely planned it that way to allow for enough time for me to set up everything and test the lighting again before the president arrived. I knew that he would be very busy and I wouldn’t have time to fool around with the equipment while keeping him waiting. In fact, as I was setting up a TV crew was also preparing to set up their equipment in the same room and as soon as I was finished he sat down with them for their interview. That’s how tight his schedule was. So anyway, I’m glad I got on location an hour and a half earlier, it proved to have been just enough time to get access to the location, unpack, set up the equipment and test the lighting and have about 20 minutes to relax and wait for the president.

In the picture below, taken with my mobile phone, you can see how everything was set up.

Photoshoot Setup

As you can see there was no red background material, I decided to “paint” the white wall red by just placing a red gel on the background light (a Canon Speedlite 580 EX II). The distance between the subject and the wall is also big to make sure the wall would be out of focus and appear to be smooth in the pictures and also to minimize spill light from the softbox. I also didn’t use the tripod during the actual shoot with the president, it was easier to hold the camera and have the freedom to make quick changes in positioning and framing.

I used the Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L lens for this shoot. I had the 35mm f/1.4 and 85mm f/1.2 with me, but I found that the 50mm gave me the best framing at my preferred working distance on the EOS 40D body. Before you write in to me mentioning how I bashed the 50mm f/1.2 lens before here on my blog and ask why I keep using it, let me say that, yes, the focusing issues this lens is known for were present, but that at f/5.6 the focusing errors are not very noticeable in the pictures that have them due to the larger depth of field (depending on the picture and subject). Not only does this lens backfocus, but it also is very inconsistent when using autofocus. You can place the camera on a tripod in a completely static scene with a subject that is completely still and autofocus 3 times on the subject and get a slightly different focus plane each time (a slight difference that’s not so slight at f/1.2. The 85mm f/1.2 lens is very consistent in comparison.) So I shot many extra frames to make sure I’d have pictures where the focus was just right. I guess we can only thank Canon for this marvelous $1600 piece of engineering. And I hope you realize I’m being sarcastic here.

I’ve included a lighting diagram below where you can also see the equipment I used and some of the settings. You’ll note that I used a Cactus V4 wireless trigger and receivers to trigger the Canon Speedlites. I didn’t use the Canon ST-E2 because quite frankly it can be a pain in the ass to have to make sure every time that the infrared sensors on all the flashes are within line of sight with the ST-E2 trigger. And in this case the background light would be behind the subject so there would be no way for me to maintain line of sight with it. You would have thought that by now Canon would have already worked on a wireless flash solution based on a more reliable radio frequency technology. Fake Chuck recently wrote about this too, and one can only hope that Canon updates the old and overly expensive ST-E2 sometime soon with technology that’s worthy of the 21st century.

Lighting Setup (click for larger image)

The gels I used on the Speedlites were from the Rosco Strobist collection (very nice set). In the picture below you can see just the effect the yellow light had on the picture. The background and key light were turned off. Here I was trying to position the president in such a way that the light fell on his head and shoulders the way I wanted. I had to ask him to step back and sideways a few centimeters a couple of times.

Test shot with just the yellow light on top

And in the following picture taken after setting everything up you can see the effect that just the red background light and the yellow light had on the overall result. The flash with the red gel behind the model was pointed towards the white wall and made it completely red. There was some light from the yellow gelled flash hitting the flag and I tried to minimize that by repositioning the flash and zooming the head to give a narrower coverage. The black thing on the left is part of the softbox (turned off for this picture) and you can also see part of the reflector on the right. During the actual shoot with the president I had the softbox placed much closer to him and had him stand right next to the reflector.

Test shot using my assistant as the model, just the red background light and yellow light on top

And of course in the end it all came together to create the final picture:

President D. D. Bouterse of the Republic of Suriname

The makeup for this photoshoot was done by Gillian Calor, and she did a very nice job. There was very little I had to do in that area in post production.

As I mentioned before, there’s a reason why I chose to use the above setting for this picture and that is to add some meaning to the end result. The president is standing against a red background that’s supposed to resemble the red color from the flag. The meaning of the red color in the flag is love and progress. The president resembles the yellow star in the flag, which is why he is lit by yellow light shining from above. The meaning of the yellow star is unity of all ethnic groups and a golden future. Before his election the president often mentioned how it was his dream to bring together the people in Suriname, all the different ethnic groups, unite them and have them all work together for a much better (golden) future for everyone. So by making him resemble the yellow star I think that this portrait highlights one of his most important goals, and further communicates the idea that he’s the one who’ll lead the nation to achieve that goal. And he will do this against the background of love and progress for everyone (red color). In addition the yellow light is shining from above, which adds a spiritual meaning to it. During his campaign the president often mentioned how he was being assisted by an invisible hand, and how a higher power was guiding the process of change in politics in Suriname. So by making the yellow light shine from above and making it rest on his head and his shoulders it resembles the help and guidance he receives from above during his term as president of Suriname for the following 5 years. The president wore a purple tie that day and I decided not to modify the color in post production. Purple is the color of the National Democratic Party (NDP), which is the political party the president comes from. Although the overall picture is mostly about Suriname as a whole, the purple tie adds a hint to the NDP in the final result. So in summary this picture shows that president D. D. Bouterse, with the guidance he receives from above and against the background of love and progress for everyone, will further strengthen the unity of the people in Suriname and lead them closer to the promised golden future.

I’m glad that they trusted me enough to give me a lot of creative freedom to do what I wanted to do. I’m also glad I really got the expression on the president’s face that I was looking for. I was worried that I would not be able to get the expression I wanted from him. Usually the president looks serious, neutral or cheerful. But I managed to get this very friendly look from him after trying for about 30 shots. Two shots later I was done. This look was important to me because it portrays him as a nice and friendly person, and hopefully it will contribute to his image in a positive way.

And finally I thought it was nice to see how this portrait compares to official portraits of previous presidents of Suriname and other presidents in the region:

Presidential Portraits (click for larger image)

UPDATE September 17th, 2010:

Yesterday David Hobby from Strobist.com linked to this post on his website, and I’ve been receiving a lot of comments and exposure as a result of that. I don’t think I have to say what an honor it is for me to be mentioned on Strobist.com. It’s one of the most important websites on the Internet as far as off-camera lighting is concerned, and I have learned a lot from all the information there, some of which I’ve used in the shoot I wrote about above. I even used the Strobist filter kit. I appreciate all the comments, the positive ones and also the criticism, I can’t reply on each and every one of them with a “Thank you” but I want to let you all know that I value all the feedback. Thanks a lot

UPDATE January 8th, 2011:

Radio Nederland Wereldomroep (RNW) interviewed me about taking the official portrait of the president of Suriname last year, and I’ve now uploaded an MP3 of this radio interview which you can download here. There was also a newsitem on their site, and you can download a PDF copy of that here.

Picture taken for Uniqa Marketing Campaign

When you have to do an outdoor photoshoot during that time of the year when you can’t really rely on the weather to be good all the time it takes more time to prepare for and plan the photoshoot. And if your client has a deadline for delivery of the pictures that’s just a few days away, then you can probably imagine that it can get really stressful. Such was the case with a photoshoot I had to do last April for Uniqa, one of the three telecom service providers in Suriname.

I am happy to say that I did manage to deliver the pictures on time in the end but it wasn’t easy. I can still remember not being able to sleep the night before the photoshoot because it was raining outside and I was worried that it would keep raining until the morning which would ruin our chances of shooting outdoors. I had checked the weather forecasts and had chosen a day when the weather would be the nicest according to the forecast information, but as it turned out, you can’t always rely on weather forecasts, especially not when you’re planning a few days ahead.

Picture taken for Uniqa Marketing Campaign

So I had a plan B ready right from the start. I picked a location for the photoshoot where we’d be able to shoot indoors as an alternative in case we just couldn’t work outside. Cancelling the photoshoot because of bad weather could not be an option since everything was planned for that day and at least one of the models would only be available for that day and rescheduling would have been an issue. This photoshoot was done at Hotel Torarica. They have some really nice outdoor settings with lots of nature that can be used as a backdrop, and this was one of the requirements the client had. In addition they also had some nice indoor locations for us to fall back on in case of bad weather.

Fortunately the weather wasn’t very bad when we actually had to work outside. There was some very light rain in between longer dry periods and we were able to do the outdoor shoots we had planned. The sky was constantly grey so that wasn’t very nice, but on the other hand the sunlight was very soft which as far as I’m concerned is a big plus. All I had to do was to try not to include the sky in the frame when possible.

Picture taken for Uniqa Marketing Campaign

I teamed up again with Euvie Karijoredjo for the makeup and hair, and Taciana Soerodimedjo for wardrobe advice and styling. The model casting was done by the client in advance, and I have to say that the models were really wonderful and easy to work with. The only exception of course was the little boy. Working with children isn’t very easy as they tend to have very short attention spans and get impatient quickly. In this particular case though I think the cute little guy did pretty well and I was fortunate to have his attention for a good while before he started complaining about being tired.

I’m sad to say that I don’t have any behind the scenes pictures to share this time. Normally I take the time to take a couple of quick behind the scenes snaps when I’m working, but in this case I was constantly worrying about the weather among other things and totally forgot about it. It didn’t even cross my mind to ask my assistant to take a couple of snaps.

Picture taken for Uniqa Marketing Campaign

For those of you who’re interesting in the gear I used: I used two Canon EOS 40D bodies with the Canon EF 50mm f/1.2 L and EF 85mm f/1.2 L lenses. I am in love with the Canon L primes; the results you can get are simply amazing.  For the lighting I used a couple of Canon 580 EX II Speedlights with some light modifiers such as umbrellas and reflectors. The speedlights were all triggered wirelessly. I tried to blend the additional lighting in with the available soft sunlight as much as possible as I was going for a more natural look in the photos instead of a stylized look where the use of strobes is obvious.

The above pictures are currently being used in various places such as in TV commercials and on billboards throughout Suriname. I’ve included a few pictures of billboards below.

Uniqa Billboard

Uniqa Billboard

Uniqa Billboard

United Magazine June 2010 Edition

About two months ago I was hired again by Global Publishing to shoot pictures for a feature article in the upcoming edition of United magazine. Global Publishing is the publisher of United magazine.

The article is about three succesfull business women and the editor of the magazine, Edward Lee, was looking for some nice looking portraits of these women to go along with it. He also needed a group shot that could be used to open the article with. In the end the editor was so happy with the results that one of the pictures, the group shot, also ended up being used on the cover of the magazine. So this is my 3rd time on the cover of United Magazine. You can read here on my blog about the first and second times too.

The photoshoot took place at Leader’s Group Conference Room. During the photoshoot I had about 15 minutes per person, and 15 minutes for the group shot. I tried to get as many possible poses and settings with each one of them in the time I had. I also got to know the women a little during the photoshoot and tried to get a feel for their personalities, and in the end I chose a picture for each one of them that I think matched the most with their personalities. And from the feedback I got so far I think the pictures really do go along well with their personalities.

You can see the images that were used below:

United Magazine Group Shot

Portrait of Angela Yang for United Magazine

Portrait of Matchameryll Felter for United Magazine

Portrait of Rishma Ratan for United Magazine

For those of you who are interested in the gear used, I used two Canon EOS 40D bodies with the EF 35mm f/1.4 L and EF 85mm f/1.2 L II lenses from Canon. For the lighting I used a couple of Canon 580 EX II speedlights, sometimes with umbrella’s and mixed with the available light.

In addition to the images above, my images are also featured in ads from two other clients of mine who advertised in United. Below are those two ads:

Double page Ad for Nado Computers in United using one of my images of the Independence Square in Paramaribo, Suriname. One of the cool things about this image is that you can see the clouds forming a hand in the upper left corner. This was really there when the picture was taken and was not digitally added.

Ad for Tropical Gem Tours in United using an image of mine

The picture used in the ad for Tropical Gem Tours above was taken a while ago and if you’re interested you can read about it and see some more images taken during that photoshoot here.

Ever since I wrote some posts about the Canon EOS 5D Mark II DSLR on my blog last year, I’ve continued to get comments from many users around the world who’ve used the camera and had issues with it. Most of the time these users went online after experiencing issues to search for a solution and then found my blog only to wish they had read it before they bought their 5D Mark II. Just yesterday I got the following two comments from two different people:

From Troy:

Being a Canon user makes me feel cheated. The autofocus is terrible, owning a $3000 camera and having so many shots out of focus is unacceptable. Shooting landscapes is most of the time fine (even there AF hunts at times) but anything moving and easy to lose over 75% of your shots. Slow frame rate and many out of focus shots, bad news. I have tried every AF combination and get the same results. I have some great photos but have lost too many. I hate to switch but selling my Canon gear and moving to Nikon. I would love to stay with Canon but AF issues are too much, and they don’t seem wanting to fix it anytime soon.

From Mark H:

Hi Karel,

I haven’t read all the responses but I can’t believe some of the assessments of the camera based on limited shooting situations. I’m a wedding photographer, shoot 2000-3000 images per wedding in all kinds of lighting and all situations, and yes, low light shooting with the MK2 sucks compared to even prosumer cameras like the 40D. IMO it’s the outer autofocus points….focus dead-on with the center point (to hell with the rule of thirds or any sort of off center composition) and you’ll do ok in low light (in most situations), but try “getting ready” shots with a window behind the bride’s head (bright backlight), or low light church shots and good luck getting 30% of them in focus with the off-center focus points. I shoot a lot wide open at 1.4, so I know when it’s on and when it’s off. It’ll focus fine in bright light (so it’s not needing microadjustments or a lens problem), it’ll focus fine with off center points in bright light most of the time, but go indoors and be careful. Get trigger happy if you want some images to choose from. I love the resolution, love most of everything about the camera, can live with the speed of the autofocus, but a “low-light” camera that only has 1 “usable” autofocus point in low light is kinda disappointing.

And there’s a lot more where those came from.

If you’ve read my previous posts about the 5D Mark II, you know that the issues these users are describing are exactly the issues I mentioned in my posts. From the moment the 5D Mark II was announced I saw based on the specifications alone that Canon had seriously crippled the camera with an old autofocus system that wouldn’t be able to let people really take advantage of the other features the camera had to offer. Many users who’ve bought the camera for professional use have had no choice but to sell it again and move to something that worked much better and offered A LOT more, such as the Nikon D700. Here are just two cases:

Case 1: Sold Canon gear and switched to Nikon:

Canon was good to me, especially back in the day when I rocked a cropped sensor and a 35mm lens for 90% of my shoots. It was simple, reliable and dependable.  Then I got a 5d.  The 5d offered great high ISO features, a full frame, a nice big LCD and the worst focusing system money could buy.

Let me preface this next part by saying that I am a hard-core stickler for sharp images; “A little soft,” or “a little back-focused” is not ok by me.  It’s tack sharp or it get’s the hose. So, as you can imagine, the 5d became quite a handicap for me.  But, nonetheless, I figured out that if I only shot on One Shot and kept my aperture up, I could make in-focus photos.

Despite my near-constant frustration with Canon, I held out for the mythical 5d Mark II – a camera that promised even better ISO, an even bigger sensor, an even fancier LCD and (you guessed it), the same crappy focusing system. At that point, Canon had me by the you-know-whats (I don’t actually have you-know-whats… it’s a euphemism, silly) – I had *thousands* invested in lenses (see below). So I shot my 5d Mark II for the entire 2009 wedding season…. on One-Shot…. using a high aperture… constantly cussing under my breath.

Case 2: Sold Canon gear and switched to Nikon:

So, my 5DII came back from Canon’s repair center AGAIN on Tuesday. I took it out for a 45 minute stroll and took pictures of cats, leaves, berries, trees, the water.. etc. I used both the center focal point and the outer focal points. I spent the entire 45 minutes cursing after each shot as it became more and more apparent that it was just the same (if not worse) as it had been when I sent it in.

…

So, I sniffled a little, I paced back and forth, I thought. Then I typed up all the Canon gear I own on a forum and titled it ‘For sale’. I sniffled some more and grit my teeth and clicked the ‘post’ button. There. I said it. It’s for sale. I’ve been a Canon girl for eight years. I busted my ass to buy that 5D, and I love it. If I could afford to keep it and the 50mm lens that’s been with me for four years, I would do it in a heartbeat.

I’m done. I’m switching to Nikon.

In both these cases the users were let down by the bad autofocus performance of the 5D Mark II and had no choice but to switch to the Nikon D700. Even the image quality offered by the 5D Mark II isn’t what you would expect from a $2700 camera with noise and banding issues even at the low ISO settings.

The reason why the 5D Mark II still appears to be selling well is because of the HD video features that are also built into the camera. But as a tool for photography, the 5D Mark II has some serious issues and shortcomings that I hope will be addressed sufficiently by Canon in the next version.

Canon EOS 1D Mark IV

With the release of the EOS 1D Mark IV, Canon has once again demonstrated that they don’t fully understand what photographers are really looking for these days. Somehow Canon can’t seem to let go of the megapixel race and seems to think that what we’re all really looking for is more megapixels on our cameras and even larger images, even if that has to happen at the expense of image quality. This while a constantly growing number of photographers worldwide, who’re using Canon equipment daily, are complaining and asking for less megapixels and a full-frame sports / journalistic camera. Nikon clearly appears to understand this with the release of the Nikon D3s.

Once the king of image quality, for the last 3 years Canon seems to have lost touch with the market. As far as image quality is concerned it started going downhill with the EOS 50D, which came with a sensor that produced more noise and banding than anything else. Then came the EOS 5D Mark II, which also suffers from noise and banding issues even at ISO 100. Other image quality issues on the 5D Mark II such as the black dot problem were ‘fixed’ in a firmware update. Then came the EOS 7D which produces images that contain more noise compared to a 2 year older camera, namely the EOS 40D, while it also appears to suffer too much from diffraction issues when using high f-stops due to the high pixel density on the sensor. The same can be said about the Rebel line of cameras and for example the G10. The G10 got equipped with a 15MP sensor that, similar to the EOS 50D, produced more noise than anything else. It was so bad Canon went back and released a newer model, the G11, which has a smaller 10MP sensor capable of delivering much better image quality.

In the case of the 1D Mark IV (1D4 in short), the image quality is comparable to that of the 2 year old 40D. This is not surprising considering that the pixel density on the sensors in both cameras is 5.7µm. So the noise levels are practically the same. However the sensor in the 1D4 benefits from advances in sensor development in recent years and, among other things, does not suffer from the banding issues that can sometimes be seen on images taken with a 40D at high ISO values. Some reviewers, such as Lloyd Chambers, have argued that the 1D4 produces the best image quality to date compared to previous Canon camera models, and I agree with this. But this isn’t such an achievement when you consider that the last 3 (semi) professional DSLR models released by Canon all suffer(ed) from various image quality issues. It’s like a kid in school who has been receiving D’s constantly and gets praise when he finally receives a B.

Because when you look at it, Canon has given us image quality that, currently, isn’t worth much more than a B. The A goes to Nikon for their image quality on the D3s. If you look at reviews of the 1D4 around the Internet, you’ll find reviewers (who by the way are all Canon users) who are wishing Canon had given us the image quality produced by the D3s. One example is this review done by a Danish photographer, here’s what he had to say (translated from Danish):

It would have been better if Canon had made the files smaller and improved high ISO as such 12,800 were usable.

In another 1D4 review, the reviewer looks at the noise in files produced by the 1D4, and says that it almost looks “D3s like,” but not quite:

As stated previously, regardless of ISO (even 102,500!) there is no banding (even when heavily processed), and the pleasantness of the grain is particularly distinguishable from 12,800 ISO and higher as compared to all other cameras tested. One might say, the grain is almost… “Nikon D3s like” (…gasp! I know!)

If Canon had kept the 1D4 at 10MP or 12MP at most, the 1D4′s image quality could have matched the D3s. But as it is right now, the D3s is the clear winner. Juza Nature Photography has done an excellent comparison of image quality between the 1D4 and the Nikon D3s. You can clearly see there just how good the Nikon D3s actually is. It is really quite unbelievable. I’ve written about such image quality before in my EOS 7D review, and I’ve said there that I am quite sure that Canon today is capable of delivering this kind of image quality, but simply refuses to do so, choosing to compete with megapixels instead. And the old stupid argument about the resolution advantage even though there’s more noise clearly doesn’t apply here. Yes the 1D4 (16MP) has more resolution compared to the D3s (12MP), but clearly the resolution advantage doesn’t matter when you view the images from these two cameras side by side, and in fact, the 1D4 images become so noisy at higher ISO values that you’d have to use noise reduction software on them which will also remove detail from your images. So in the end, you’re actually better off using the D3s.

1D Mark IV and D3s Image Quality

The image crops above are much smaller crops taken from the review by Juza Nature Photography. Head over to their review to see the larger crops and be able to judge things like detail and see the quality at other ISO values. In the small crops above, it’s clear that the D3s beats the 1D4 when it comes to image quality. Even at ISO 100 the 1D4 shows some color noise while the D3s image looks as smooth as you can ever expect to get an image from a DSLR. The colors also look a lot better on the D3s. The D3s is so good that the ISO 1600 image on the D3s comes close to the ISO 100 image on the 1D4!!! Who the fuck would care about more noisy megapixels if you can get smooth and creamy looking images like this?? And if you look at ISO 102400, the 1D4 simply produces unusable garbage. I’ve said it many times before, but apparently Canon thinks we’re all stupid. They did it before when they said they couldn’t include better autofocus technology in the 5D Mark II because the body was too small. Including ISO 102400 the way it is on the 1D4 quite frankly is an insult to our intelligence. In the same way, Canon could have included ISO values up to 819200 and have that on the box as a feature. The images would be absolute crap, but hey, you can make them! Looking at the ISO 102400 sample from the 1D4, I can’t help but think that what happened is that Canon saw after the D3s announcement that the D3s was capable of taking images at ISO 102400, and at the last minute they added that feature on the 1D4 as the H3 setting just so the 1D4 and the D3s features would look more comparable on paper and the D3s wouldn’t have the edge. Stupid marketing at its best. This might also explain why Canon ordered everyone to take down their sample images taken with the 1D4 shortly after they announced the 1D4, because they probably weren’t quite finished with tweaking the higher ISO output.

The good news is that so far Canon appears to have addressed the autofocus shortcomings from the 1D Mark III, and all reviews I’ve seen up till now are very very positive about the autofocus capabilities of the 1D4. Photographer Brad Mangin wrote about his experiences with the 1D4 autofocus system and was quite pleased. Photographer Justin Gryba while also quite pleased with the tracking capabilities of the 1D4 autofocus system discovered some inconsistencies and bad performance in low light conditions. Apparently Canon crippled the Spot AF feature on the 1D4 when compared to the EOS 7D. On the 1D4 the Spot AF feature can only be used with the very expensive long lenses with an AF Stop button, while on the 7D you can configure the camera to use Spot AF with all lenses. Because of this, the accuracy of the AF system on the 1D4 in low light is not as good as it could be, and as Justin shows in his review, is even worse than the 5D Mark II. This is a serious issue if you expect to use the 1D4 for events in low light conditions, such as weddings, where you simply can’t use lenses with an AF Stop button. For the details on this head on over to Justin’s website to read his review. Fortunately Canon should be able to address this issue with a firmware update. The functionality we want is already included on the 7D, it’s just a matter of enabling it on the 1D4. After reading Justin’s review, please contact your local Canon representative to request this feature to be added. This is a very important find by Justin and he deserves the credit. Let’s hope Canon listens.

The 1D4 will be a good camera overall for Canon users. After the 1D Mark III autofocus fiasco, Canon users worldwide were desperate for a working professional DSLR and the 1D4 will be able to keep them reasonably satisfied for a while. It won’t help Canon to win back those users who have already switched to Nikon, because Nikon has the better bodies right now and they’re working hard on the lenses. It probably also won’t convince many users to stay with Canon who have already decided to switch to Nikon. But it will convince many Canon users who already have a lot invested in Canon to stick with Canon gear for the coming 3 years. It’s the easier path to take. But deep down inside, at any event, they’ll all know that the Nikon photographers with the big black lenses and a D3s logo on their bodies will have the edge.

The future currently doesn’t look very good for Canon. They appear to be struggling to keep up with Nikon, and mostly because of their own shortsightedness and stupidity because they have the potential to blow Nikon away. But because of their fooling around they are giving Nikon a lot of room to catch up. Nikon has already surpassed Canon when DSLR bodies are concerned, and they are now working hard to close the gap with their lenses. They’ve released an updated 70-200mm f/2.8 lens that appears to match the new Canon version and just yesterday, Nikon announced the long anticipated 24mm f/1.4 professional lens along with a new 16-35 f/4 lens (read more here). According to recent information, they also have their new professional 35mm f/1.4 and 85mm f/1.4 primes in the works (patents have been filed) and these should be released soon. In 2011 Nikon will probably not only have closed the gaps in their lens lineup, but will also have the better quality optics. Add this to the already better Nikon DSLR bodies and flash system, and you can start to see that the future doesn’t look very good for Canon. For the short term, the release of an updated D700 body with the sensor from the D3s will be like a knife through Canon’s heart. They know it’s coming, and there’s nothing they can do about it.

As a Canon user, I hope I won’t have to make the difficult decision of having to switch to Nikon in 2011. The only thing keeping me back right now is the huge investment I currently have in Canon gear. Otherwise, I’d have been a Nikon user already.

Update February 11, 2010: Rob Galbraith has just published his findings on the autofocus system of the 1D Mark IV, and it doesn’t look very good. As you may know, Galbraith, a sports photographer from Canada, was the first who pointed out that the 1D Mark III had autofocus issues back in 2007. He has now done some tests with both the 1D Mark IV and the 1D Mark III, and also tested the D3s along with the 1D Mark IV, and although it does appear that the 1D Mark IV is an improvement compared to the older model (which isn’t saying much because the 1D3 had tons of issues), it still has some issues making the autofocus system from the D3s a better choice. Here’s some of what he had to say:

Add it all up and the conclusion is inescapable: the EOS-1D Mark IV has an AF system that is capable of greatness but is also so bewilderingly variable that there’s no way to trust it, especially for outdoor sports. Indoors, EOS-1D Mark IV autofocus performance has been less variable, but our results from speedskating and basketball are simply not up to par. If this is the best the company could muster, after the autofocus debacle of the EOS-1D Mark III, then it’s official: Canon has lost their autofocus mojo.

…

To sum up, our experience with the D3S’ AF system is that it’s trustworthy and dependable enough for us to be confident using it for peak action sports. Not perfect: it needs to be a bit faster off the line, in addition to the other quibbles we’ve mentioned. But it does work as needed most of the time, which is in stark contrast to the experience of the EOS-1D Mark IV in the last month.

Go over to read his full analysis and to check out the tons of sample pictures.

So I guess this makes things a lot worse for Canon than I initially thought and explained above. The 1D4 appears to be an improvement compared to the 1D3, but will it be enough to keep Canon users happy and loyal to the brand? We know that when the image quality is concerned, the Nikon D3s is the clear winner. And now it looks like even for the autofocus performance, you’re better off using a Nikon D3s. It really is quite a sad situation, and as Galbraith briefly shows in his article, the competition using Nikon gear is going to have a real advantage over you if you’re using Canon gear.

Update February 12, 2010: Photographer Lloyd Chambers posted some remarks about the D3s image quality and it’s worth taking a look. Here’s some of what he had to say:

The Nikon D3s handles ISO 3200 superbly. The flag shot at right was also pushed by 2/3 stop = ISO 5000 equivalent. Yet the noise is minimal, and the color true. I also shot at ISO 12800, and I’ll be pitiqualated if I wasn’t even more impressed than I expected. The Nikon D3s is truly a breakthrough camera.

The Nikon D3s is a low light dream camera. Couple that with some good low light lenses and you’re in low light photography heaven! As I mentioned before, Nikon is currently working hard to update their lenses for low light photography (this means lenses with small aperture values). They’ve already announced the 24mm f/1.4 and they’ll be releasing their new 35mm f/1.4 and 85mm f/1.4 lenses in the future. The fact that these lenses were not yet available is what made a lot of Canon users hesitate to switch to Nikon. Canon users have long enjoyed the ability to use the 24mm f/1.4, 35mm f/1.4, 50mm f/1.2, 85mm f/1.2 and 135mm f/2 lenses. The results you can get using those lenses are simply amazing. But now that Nikon will also have them very soon, especially in combination with an excellent body as the D3s, I think many will make the switch as soon as they can afford to.

Beauty & Home Systems Inc. Headquarters (click for larger image)

I’ve recently had the opportunity to photograph the buildings and offices of Beauty & Home Systems Inc. (BHS). BHS is the distributor of As Seen on TV products and the consultant of AVON products in Suriname. They currently have a number of outlets in Suriname and an office in Guyana. However the pictures I’ve included below are all taken at their main office in Suriname. The buildings and the offices were all decorated for Christmas.

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My recent post about the Canon EOS 7D caused a bit of controversy on the Internet and it is not surprising considering that in that post I’m essentially showing that the EOS 7D, Canon’s supposedly latest and greatest APS-C sensor camera body, is offering worse image quality compared to the two year older model, the EOS 40D. This was my conclusion based on my discussion of dpreview’s review of the EOS 7D and some of their test data.

After posting my article about the EOS 7D, I notified people of the post and one of those people was Philip Askey, the guy who started dpreview before Amazon bought them some time ago. Shortly after sending my email to Askey, he replied demanding that I take down the sample images from dpreview which I included in my post about the 7D. You can see the email conversation that followed below:

From: Philip Askey
Sent: Sunday, November 08, 2009 7:47 PM
To: Karel Donk

Please remove the copyright image quality crops from your blog post, you did not seek permission to reproduce these.

—-

From: Karel Donk
Sent: Sunday, November 08, 2009 8:55 PM
To: ‘Philip Askey’

Hi Philip,

Thank you for reading. I was hoping you guys would mention how the noise in 7D images was still worse compared to the 40D, like you did when you reviewed the 50D.

Also I use some of the crops to discuss the result of your published reviews and show how from your own reviews and samples, the 7D performs worse than the 40D, while also mentioning how you guys failed to mention in your own review that the 7D performs worse at low ISO compared to the D300s, as you can clearly see.
My use falls under fair use and that’s why i did not ask permission. But let me know if you think otherwise.

Regards,

—-

From: Philip Askey
Sent: Sunday, November 08, 2009 8:59 PM
To: Karel Donk

Karel,

You clearly have an axe to grind against Canon and I’m not hear to have a conversation, we would compare the 7D to the 40D if it were the clear predecessor.

Your use of our numerous images does not fall under fair use.  Please remove all these images immediately.

—-

From: Karel Donk
Sent: Sunday, November 08, 2009 9:03 PM
To: ‘Philip Askey’

Philip,

Can you explain to me why you think this is not fair use?

Thanks,

After my last email to Askey above, I didn’t hear from him again. However, after this email exchange I started contacting a few people to ask them for their opinion about my use of the images in my post. I was sure my use of the images fell under “fair use” but I still wanted to hear the opinion of others just to be absolutely certain that I wasn’t infringing on dpreview’s rights. As a photographer myself, I too would love to be able to protect my work, so I take such matters very serious. One of the people I contacted was Dan Heller, well known in the photography business community online, he has written about many similar topics in the past. We started a very insightful email discussion on the subject, and Dan basically confirmed my “fair use” argument.

In case you’re not familiar with “fair use” of content, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has the following to say about it:

The public’s right to make fair use of copyrighted works is a long-established and integral part of US copyright law. Courts have used fair use as the means of balancing the competing principles underlying copyright law since 1841. Fair use also reconciles a tension that would otherwise exist between copyright law and the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of expression. The Supreme Court has described fair use as “the guarantee of breathing space for new expression within the confines of Copyright law”.

3. How Do You Know If It’s Fair Use?
There are no clear-cut rules for deciding what’s fair use and there are no “automatic” classes of fair uses. Fair use is decided by a judge, on a case by case basis, after balancing the four factors listed in section 107 of the Copyright statute. The factors to be considered include:

a. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes — Courts are more likely to find fair use where the use is for noncommercial purposes.
b. The nature of the copyrighted work — A particular use is more likely to be fair where the copied work is factual rather than creative.
c. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole — A court will balance this factor toward a finding of fair use where the amount taken is small or insignificant in proportion to the overall work.
d. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work — If the court finds the newly created work is not a substitute product for the copyrighted work, it will be more likely to weigh this factor in favor of fair use.

4. What’s been recognized as fair use?
Courts have previously found that a use was fair where the use of the copyrighted work was socially beneficial. In particular, U.S. courts have recognized the following fair uses: criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, research and parodies.

Based on the criteria in point 3 above, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with my use of some of dpreview’s images as I did in my post about the EOS 7D. Especially considering the fact that I was mainly criticizing dpreview’s review of the 7D (they worded the review in such a way to make the 7D look positive at times) and using their own data to show what I feel that they failed to mention about the  7D (that it offers worse image quality compared to the Nikon D300s from ISO 100 – 1600 and worse compared to the EOS 40D at all ISOs).

But the next day, after I sent my last reply to Askey, I get the following email from a lawyer at Amazon:

From: Radliff, Lynn
Sent: Monday, November 09, 2009 8:36 PM
To: Karel Donk
Cc: Sheehan, Kathryn
Subject: Cease & Desist

Dear Karel Donk:

I am Associate General Counsel for Litigation and Regulatory Matters for Amazon.com, which owns dpreview.com.  It has recently come to our attention that you are using dpreview.com’s copyrighted material in your blog posts, specifically http://blog.kareldonk.com/canon-eos-7d-review-noisier-than-40d/, in connection with Karel Donk In My Opinion.  Your use of this content is unauthorized by dpreview.com and infringes dpreview.com’s intellectual property rights. The purpose of this e-mail is to demand that you immediately cease using or otherwise infringing dpreview.com’s copyrighted content and related rights.  dpreview.com would prefer to resolve this matter amicably with your cooperation. However, dpreview.com needs your written assurance that you are willing to immediately cease and desist from any and all use of dpreview.com’s intellectual property, including any images and content from the dpreview.com web site.
We look forward to hearing from you, and ask for your written response by Friday, November 13, 2009 to indicate your position on this matter. If we do not hear from you by this date, we will take those further steps that we believe are necessary to protect our rights.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.

Kathryn Sheehan

As you can see, they wanted me to assure ”that you are willing to immediately cease and desist from any and all use of dpreview.com’s intellectual property, including any images and content from the dpreview.com web site.” This would mean that I could not even quote some of their review text so that I could comment on it or criticize it. And of course this would severely limit me in exercising my right to free speech, so I couldn’t possibly agree with this. In addition, there was nothing wrong with my use of the dpreview images in the first place. So I replied as follows:

From: Karel Donk
Sent: Monday, November 09, 2009 9:03 PM
To: ‘Radliff, Lynn’
Subject: RE: Cease & Desist

Hi Kathryn,

In my blog post, which you mention in your email, I am discussing, among other things, the review done by DPReview of the EOS 7D. I quote part of their findings from the review, and offer my own comments and criticism on their review. I have included browser screenshots of their review images (not the original images) from the review which were relevant to my comments, to support my comments and criticism to show that THEIR OWN images show things that I feel they failed to mention in their review.

I believe that this is “fair use” of the material. I would not be able to discuss their review and make my points if I could not quote some of their text and show SCREENSHOTS of SOME of their images, and my comments and criticism would not be possible.

If you think this is not fair use, please let me know and also let me know why you think it is not, so I can consider taking the images down if I see that I am in fact infringing on dpreview.com’s rights.

Regards,

I have yet to receive a response from them on my last email above. Dan Heller later told me that he thought I used way too many words in my reply, and that an email asking the following would have been enough:

Explain to me why you feel my use of the images doesn’t meet the four criteria established by the courts in fair use assessments.

And I couldn’t agree more. Short, powerful and to the point.

I thought this information might be useful to many people out there, as the use of copyrighted images on blogs is an often discussed topic on the Internet, and I think it’s going to be discussed a lot more often in the future as more people discover the Internet and start blogging. Certain use of copyrighted images on your blog is certainly permitted as long as you keep the “fair use” guidelines in mind. But I’ll leave it to experts like Dan Heller to talk about this subject more in-dept.

Update January 23, 2010:

There’s a nice article at Black Star Rising about understanding fair use. Check it out.

Canon EOS 7D

Shortly after the announcement of the EOS 7D camera by Canon, I wrote a post here on my blog where I mentioned that the 7D looked like a very promising camera. Before I continue with my review of the 7D, let me take a moment to discuss some of the things I said in that previous post.

I mentioned right from the start that the noise in 7D images was a concern for me, this is what I wrote:

The only thing that I’m not so sure about right now is the image quality. Canon has included a new 18MP sensor in the 7D which, from the sample images I have seen so far, appears to deliver much better image quality compared to the EOS 50D even while having a higher pixel count, and comes close to the EOS 5D Mark II. I could see no pattern noise and banding issues so far, like I mentioned before, and this is a very good thing. However, looking at RAW files, I still think that the images produced by the 7D contain a little too much noise, even at lower ISO values, and the images at high ISO contain way too much noise. JPEG images coming out of the camera look better because of the noise reduction being done inside the camera, at the expense of lost detail, but RAW images look terrible so far.

As you will soon see, this is exactly the case. Another thing I mentioned was the following:

Looking at Canon’s recent DSLR releases and all the quality control issues they’ve had, it would be wise to wait at least 4 months after general availability before you actually buy a 7D, just to make sure that there aren’t any issues with it. You really do not want to spend money to become Canon’s beta tester. Wait for the reviews, read the experiences from those who were brave enough to buy one early and then decide.

And many of the people that couldn’t wait to buy the 7D are now experiencing exactly what I meant when I warned not to become Canon’s beta tester. Canon has so far had to release TWO firmware updates for the 7D in the very short time period of just one month that the 7D has been available. The first update (version 1.0.9) was to correct autofocus problems in Live View mode, and the second update (version 1.1.0) which was released a few days ago, was to correct a ghosting problem in images (Fake Chuck Westfall has more on this here). In addition to this, many people are experiencing autofocus problems with their 7D cameras. It appears that Canon’s quality control is still pretty bad and at this point in time, one has to wonder if it will ever get better. If you want some examples of people experiencing these autofocus issues on the EOS 7D, check out the following links:

1. Discussion at DPReview Forum

Unfortunately it looks like I’ve got a 7D that has the much-talked about Autofocus problem. I came back from the cottage last week with about 5 good images out of 600, all of the others were just blurry enough at 50% to make the image unusable, but still look fine when fit to the LCD. There was little consistency between back and front focusing, or the amount of error: AF is all over the place.

2. 7D Autofocus Problem Test with sample images

I ran series of pictures tonight on my camera in 19 point AF, zone AF, and spot AF. I’ll summarize the data and include all the photo’s below. I also took some with my Sony F800, it’s a bit above the point and shoot, but not a DSLR.

…

Most of the badly out of focus results ended up front focusing on the near floor which is supposedly out of the AF range. 19 point and zone auto focus seemed to almost be working randomly.

3. More 7D Autofocus Issues

The first day shooting was dismal and the light not the best so I didn’t pay much attention to the results. However, most images were soft. I was shooting on Sydney Harbour so conditions were not ideal in the late afternoon. I can tell you that distant foliage looked like an impressionist painting. I was very disappointed because I often shoot landscapes. The Jacaranda blossoms are out now in Sydney and I really love capturing the colours. Not sharp and not quite an accurate colour compared to the 5DII which is quite close to being right. I used my 200 f/2.8 lens which I knew was sharp on the 5DII but this was soft on the 7D for some reason.

The next day was bright and sunny so I returned with tripod and 500mm lens. I also tried a 70-200 f/4is lens but nothing was sharp. I used the 500 with the 1.4 extender to capture people on top of the Harbour Bridge and did the same with my 5DII as a comparison. I have shot climbers heaps of times so used a cable release as well. Most of the results were soft. Earlier in the day I used the 24-105 with the 7D and the results were good. The distant shots were a bit soft but maybe it was my fault. When I got home and examined my tele photos I found that the mode dial must have been shifted because my telephoto shots were all at 1/125 sec. That setting made the apertures over f/20 so I blamed that for the unsatisfactory shots. For some reason the letters on signs weren’t captured properly and were somewhat faded or invisible compared to the 5DII.

Day three found me setting up my tripod again and having another go with the 500 plus 1.4 extender. I took a couple photos with the 500 by itself and the two were sharp. When I added the extender none of the shots were sharp. Letters on signs were smeared. I tried several subjects at different distances but all were quite soft. Some looked fine at 25% but none at 100%. I then took a dozen photos with the 70-200 f4 and expected good results. It was sunny and bright but all were soft.

…

There was a lot of noise in many of my photos so I don’t think I will venture to buy another camera with a 1.6 crop factor. The 5DII in my opinion is a professional quality camera compared to the 7D. I certainly don’t want a camera that can’t focus or that has issues. Let us hope Canon sorts these problems out.

These are just 3 examples, but reading those threads and doing a simple search will reveal many more people experiencing the same issues. I see more people complaining about this almost daily. There are also people who are satisfied with the 7D autofocus system, so at this point it looks like these autofocus issues could be related to a quality control problem at Canon and are not a defect / shortcoming of the autofocus system itself (like was the case with the 1D Mark III and 5D Mark II). At least I hope so for those of you who bought the camera. So should you choose to buy this camera, be prepared to give it a lot of testing as soon as you get it to make sure your copy does not suffer from these issues. I’ve also seen reports from people who have sent their bad focusing 7D cameras to Canon for repairs and received it back working much better. Certain stores don’t even question you when you return the 7D mentioning bad autofocus, leading me to believe that most of them are aware of these issues.

These issues with the 7D add to what is already becoming a long list of quality control problems that Canon has had with recent DSLRs and lenses. If you want some more background information on Canon quality control problems, check the following links:

• Canon Quality Control Sucks Part 1 and Part 2
• Canon has Lost It
• Issues with 5D Mark II Autofocus
• EF 50mm f/1.2 L lens backfocus issues
• Interview with Fake Chuck Westfall at Black Star Rising
• Fake Chuck post discussing some Canon issues

Not too long ago, photographer Lloyd Chambers wrote about his experiences with the autofocus of the Canon EOS 1D Mark III and said the following:

This latest AF issue follows on the heels of a Live View exposure problem with the Canon 5D Mark II. I think it’s fair so say that with 3 professional camera models with issues, this firmly establishes Canon as having a track record of not testing products adequately. And at the cost of customer time, hassle, and perhaps money.

And you can now add the EOS 7D to that list of Canon professional camera models with issues.

All of this is rather disappointing because like I said in my first post about the 7D, the 7D looked like a very exciting camera. Canon added a lot of exciting new features to it that were long overdue:

The 7D seems to be Canon’s answer to the Nikon D300s, and it looks like it will give the D300s some good competition. There’s a lot that I like about the EOS 7D, such as the new 19 point AF system, 8 fps shooting speed, the new metering system, the intelligent viewfinder with 100% field of view, 1.0 magnification, and overlaid LCD display. Also the fact that you can now finally use the built-in flash to trigger external Canon flashes wirelessly (without an ST-E2).

Those are, in my opinion, the most important features that were added tot he 7D compared to other camera models like the 50D. And those features alone would make the 7D a perfect upgrade for users of the EOS 40D, 50D, 500D and lower camera models.

However, like I mentioned before, there’s the problem that the noise in images taken with the 7D is still too much. The 7D is supposed to be a better performer in low light situations, but as it appears this is not the case. It certainly is an improvement compared to the 50D (which was absolute crap as far as image quality is concerned), but it performs worse than the Nikon D300s at lower ISO values, and worse than even the old EOS 40D. But don’t take my word for it, let’s look at some sample images below. I took those sample images from some reviews over at DPReview. I did ask Canon for a sample 7D body so I could do my own tests, but never got a response back from them. The images below are taken from the following review pages at DPReview: EOS 7D review, EOS 40D review, EOS 50D review, Nikon D300 review. So if you don’t believe what you see in the images below, feel free to go take a look at them at the source.

One thing I have to mention about the review of the 7D at DPReview, is that it seems to me like the reviewers at DPReview tried to remain positive about the 7D and ignored some of its issues. For one thing, they don’t test autofocus on cameras, and in the case of the 7D, they clearly fail to mention that the noise in the 7D images is worse than the noise in images taken with a 40D and even with the Nikon D300s. Here’s an example:

Again, the graphs below confirm what we can see in the sample crops. The 50D produces more chroma noise than the EOS 7D at higher ISOs. The Pentax K-7 is still slightly worse than the Nikon and EOS 7D at very high ISOs but the gap is smaller in RAW. At high ISOs the the 7D and its closest rival, the Nikon D300S, are more or less level in terms of chroma noise.

While discussing the test results, the commentary is worded in such a way that it makes the 7D look positive every time. When reading this, most readers would think the 7D is the best. What they failed to mention in this particular case, is that by looking at the graph and sample images, it is very clear that the 7D performs worse than the D300s at lower ISOs. I’m including some of their own test images together below and you can clearly see this in those images. This means that the 7D is even worse than the 40D, since the 40D is better than the D300 with regards to noise performance. And comparing the 7D with the 50D is like comparing a healthy human being with a disabled person, to be honest.

Let’s look at some of DPReview’s own sample images and see if the 7D is as good as they claim:

Here you can see that at ISO 100, the 40D clearly has less noise, even while noise reduction on the 40D was OFF (!!!) and it was ON on the 7D!! Just check the amount of noise in the 7D RAW file at ISO 100. When has it become acceptable to have this much noise present at ISO 100? I placed the red circles around some dust or marks, I discuss this further below.

As you can see, even at ISO 100, the 2 year old 40D beats the 7D with regards to noise performance. In fact, the 7D doesn’t beat the 40D even with noise reduction on! At higher ISO values, the problem only gets worse. Let’s look at another sample image. I labeled the images below from 1 to 4, 1 being the best and 4 being the worst, as far as noise performance is concerned to make it easier to compare.

Here you can see JPEG comparisons between the 40D and 7D. As you can clearly see, the noise in the 7D images with noise reduction turned ON (!!!) is still much worse than the noise in 40D images with noise reduction turned OFF. So think of how much worse the 7D images would look, compared to the 40D, if the 7D images also had noise reduction turned off!

And now, let us look at the noise performance in RAW images:

Click on the image to view the bigger version. In this RAW comparison, you can clearly see that the noise in 7D images is worse than the D300s at ISO 1600 and lower. DPReview did not mention this in their review where they discussed these same images. The 7D is much worse than the 40D. Only the 50D is worse than the 7D, but the 50D really is a piece of shit camera to begin with.

As you can see, one can come to “slightly different” conclusions by viewing the exact same test images that DPReview used in their reviews.

Image test results over at CameraLabs also support my conclusions above about the DPReview 7D review. Just look at the image comparisons at these links: RAW Comparison, JPEG Comparison. Notice how the 7D images look so much noisier compared to the D300s images.

This proves that my initial fears about noise in 7D images were certainly grounded. I’ve said it before, but Canon really doesn’t seem to care about what photographers are really asking for. With the 7D they did take care of a lot of things, but image quality is very important. We do NOT want more noise in larger images! This is not an improvement. Now the 2 year old 40D costing round $800 delivers better image quality than the ‘state of the art’ 7D which costs $1700. Does this make sense to you? Not to me!

Canon should have equipped the 7D with a 10MP or 12MP sensor featuring the same improvements in sensor design in the 7D. That would have guaranteed better image quality compared to the 40D. Yes, the 18MP 7D images have more resolution compared to the 10MP 40D images, but really, this is not of much use when the images are also noisier, and especially not at high ISO. It just gives photographers a lot more work to clean up noise in post production. In addition, more dynamic range and other benefits would also have been welcome on the smaller improved sensor.

Since noise in images can be seen more clearly in the out of focus areas, it really makes images that should have nice bokeh effects look uglier. Instead of images with nice creamy looking out of focus backgrounds, you get images with out of focus backgrounds that have kind of a rough and grainy feel to them, even at ISO 100. This can often be cleaned up in post production, but depending on the images, this can add a significant amount of extra time to your workflow. This is why I also always wondered why reviews everywhere on the Internet feature noise tests with images that are in focus. The best way to test the noise performance of a camera, is to take out of focus shots so you can see the noise much better. Take the sample images from DPReview above, for example. The noise test on the gray background should have been done by focusing on a large gray area, and putting the lens totally out of focus. That way you don’t get the dust, patterns and other texture of the background together with the noise – something you can often see in the DPreview noise test images (check the red circles in the test images above). You could even confuse the texture on the background as being noise if you don’t look carefully.

If you’re wondering why Canon isn’t giving us what we want, check out this article:

Canon engineers are being held back from developing new sensor technology by marketing departments in a “race for megapixels”, claims an employee of the Japanese photography company.

The employee told Tech Digest that Canon have the technology to “blow the competition away” in terms of image sensors, but are instead being asked to focus on headline figures like the number of megapixels a camera has. When asked for his opinion on the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, which we covered this morning, the employee said:

“I am hugely disappointed because once again Canon engineers are dictated by their marketing department and had to keep up with the megapixel race. They have the technology to blow the competition away by adapting the new 50D sensor tech in a full frame format and just easing off a little on the megapixels. Although no formal testing has been done on the new model yet, judging by the spec and technology used, it just seems to be as good or as bad as the competition – not beating them by a mile (which we used to).”

The employee was keen to point out though that he wasn’t wholly disappointed by the new model though:

“The image quality on the 5d1 was so good that it’s still as good as the new NikonD700 even though the Nikon is 3 years younger. I was hoping (…) for two new cameras. One would be a ‘reheated’ 5D1 with a same megapixel count but a slight redesign in sensor combined with new processor and all the gadgets like micro autofocus adjustments, vignetting control, dust reduction, better weather seals and an upgrade to the autofocus.”
“The other one would be a ‘revolution’ 5d, with a completely new sensor design (so it can actually take a lot more megapixels), dual processor for faster frames per second and the gadgets above with a ‘near’ professional grade autofocus for the sake of protecting the 1D series and model segregation”.
“To be honest I was hoping for a bigger upgrade, but they can’t please everyone with one model. (…) On the whole though, I think Canon have done pretty well in fending off competition on all sides – providing a viable upgrade to the 5d1 and worthy competition (on spec at least) to the competitors”
It’s true that megapixels are often used as a benchmark to compare cameras on, but until the media change their reporting style, the pressure from the marketing department will remain on the engineers.

As we know today, the 5D Mark II also suffers from a lot of noise and banding in images even at lower ISO values, as low as ISO 100. This is just unacceptable. It is very sad to see that Canon, while they clearly have the technology to deliver better image quality, choose to compete in the megapixel race instead and are delivering bad image quality. This while Nikon has just released their new D3s camera with an improved sensor that is “just” 12MP, and fullframe at that, capable of delivering results at extremely high ISO values. Nikon clearly appears to understand much better what photographers really need. Meanwhile Canon is giving us 18MP on a 1.6x crop sensor with a lot of noise at ISO 100, and a 21MP fullframe sensor with noise and banding at ISO 100.

When will we see an EOS 3D camera, with same or better specs than the 7D and a 12MP fullframe sensor using the latest sensor technology, that is capable of delivering smooth, creamy looking images not only at low ISO but even at the higher ISO settings? There’s a reason why people loved the image quality from the old 5D so much. Just realize that today Canon has the technology to improve on that, but simply refuses to.

So to conclude, as far as the 7D is concerned, I’m afraid I can’t really recommend it. It is certainly not a waste of money, like was the case with the 50D and 5D Mark II, as it does offer some nice upgrades compared to previous models. But if you require good image quality, then it is not the best choice. Clearly the Nikon D300s and certainly the Nikon D700 offer more here. If you are a 40D user, you don’t have to upgrade. If you are a 50D user, I feel very sorry for you and upgrading to the 7D is a good option, but downgrading to the 40D is perhaps better and more affordable. If you are a 5D Mark II user, I would consider upgrading, yes upgrading,  to the 7D because images that are in focus most of the time win over images with a little more noise in them. Personally I will NOT be buying the 7D as long as the 40D remains available. I will be looking at the 1D Mark IV, hopefully Canon won’t screw up with that model.

Update November 11, 2009:

It is also important to take note of the fact that Canon themselves do seem to know about the benefits of lower megapixel sensors to achieve lower noise and as a result cleaner looking images. When Canon introduced the G11 compact camera, it featured a 10MP sensor, which was actually a step backwards compared to the older G10 camera, which had a 15MP sensor. Why would Canon introduce a newer G11 model which has less megapixels compared to the G10? Here is what Canon themselves say:

The PowerShot G11 employs a newly-developed, 10.0 Megapixel High Sensitivity System by combining a powerful CCD sensor and Canon’s DIGIC 4 Image Processor. Thanks to this technological advancement, the G11 is dramatically more sensitive than cameras with identical megapixel counts, and delivers spectacular images with minimal noise.

If you go over to that page, you will even see the following comparison made by Canon themselves:

Here Canon themselves show us the benefits of a lower megapixel high sensitivity sensor - cleaner looking images. And yet, they release an EOS 50D camera which had TONS more noise compared to an older model, the 40D. Now they release the EOS 7D, which still features more noise compared to the two year old 40D model. Does this make sense to you?

Now ask yourself, why would Canon equip the G11 with a better sensor with LESS megapixels, that produces better looking images compared to the G10, and still release the EOS 7D, which is supposed to be more advanced than the 40D, with image quality that is clearly featuring more noise compared to the 2 year older 40D? Shouldn’t we expect newer camera models to feature less noise in images?

Update November 12, 2009:

Another review of the 7D has been published showing, and you’re not going to want to believe this, that the 7D performs worse than the entry level Canon EOS 450D (Rebel XSi). Here’s what they had to say:

Again to our eye the 7D files look soft and mushy compared to the snap in the other two files. Of course we expected the flagship Mark III to outperform the mid-priced 7D but we did not expect the entry level Rebel to better the 7D especially when the Rebel’s 12MP files were interpolated to 18MP!

Go over to their site and check the sample images for yourself. Remember that the 450D is now also almost 2 years old.

Update December 2nd, 2009:

A photographer ‘upgraded’ from the 40D to the 7D recently and wasn’t so happy about it:

After a week of playing with my 7D, I noticed the images on my 7D felt a bit soft, especially when comparing it to my 40D.  Went online and found some reviews concluding the same thing:

…

Doing my own quick tests, I came to similar conclusions.  Using DPP, the 7D produces images that are softer than my 40D at low ISO.  I even think the 40D produces less noise at low ISO. 

You have been warned.

Update December 13, 2009:

DXOMark have posted their test data for the 7D and you can actually compare the 7D, the 40D and the D300s side by side on their website if you follow this link. The DXOMark test data basically confirms my findings above about the noise in 7D images being worse than the 40D, and that the 40D offers much better image quality compared to the 7D.

In the graph above you can see that the 7D scores less than the 40D and D300s with regards to noise in images (in the Screen comparison), meaning the 7D has more noise in images compared to the other two cameras. Like I also said, the 40D performs slightly better than the D300s with regards to noise.

Not only does the 40D outperform the 7D with regards to noise in images, but according to DXOMark, the 40D also outperforms the 7D with regards to Tonal Range and Color Sensitivity. This means that the overall image quality is much better on the 40D if the two cameras are compared. Click here to see for yourself on DXOMark.

Imagine what would have happened if Canon had instead improved the sensor in the 40D with the technology used in the 7D. Instead of being behind Nikon, as they are right now, they would have been far ahead.

Sharda Johnn (Click for larger image)

Back in August 2009 I had the opportunity to do a photo shoot with Sharda Johnn, arguably one of the most talented Surinamese models at the moment. You can find her on Model Mayhem in case you’re interested in working with her, she should be available for international work. Sharda is a very pleasant person and it was really wonderful to work with her. She’s also wonderfully expressive and poses came naturally. I didn’t have a lot of directing to do during the photo shoot, which is always a big plus as far as I am concerned.

Click for larger image

Sharda is currently studying in China, but she was in Suriname for a brief period when I got in touch with her. Due to her very busy schedule and the fact that she’d be leaving again in just a few days we did not have a lot of time to do anything too fancy. So I decided to just do a shoot in a studio setting against what became known as The Yellow Wall (TM).

Click for larger image

The thing I like about Sharda is that apart from her talent, she has a very unique look. If you look at her exotic looking facial features, especially the shape of her eyes are very nice, with a nice nose and lips to complement them. In addition she has a very slim body shape, without being skinny. It all adds up to a very distinct looking appearance, something that could be used with great success in certain type of marketing campaigns. With her hair loose, she looks even more exotic. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to capture her that way.

Sharda Johnn

Sharda Johnn

Below are some more images taken during this photoshoot. You’ll notice that I was constantly changing the lighting setup and experimenting with different modifiers.

Sharda Johnn

Sharda Johnn

Sharda Johnn

Sharda Johnn

Sharda Johnn

In the very short time we had, I also tried some artistic type of shots, like the one below. Not entirely happy with that shot for a couple of reasons, but it is still one of my personal favorites.

Legs

If you’re interested to see more of Sharda’s work, visit her page on Model Mayhem.

Also worth mentioning is that I used this opportunity to test my copy of the Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L USM lens, and let me just say: Believe the hype. This lens is among the top Canon L primes.

Canon USA has asked photographer Vincent Laforet to take down his video titled ‘Nocturne‘ based on orders coming from their headquarters at Canon Inc. in Japan. Laforet used Canon’s recently announced 1D Mark IV camera body to shoot the video. The video did an excellent job showing the technical capabilities of the 1D4 in low light situations, so I was surprised to find out that Canon would want to take it down.

And when I found out about what the reasons were, I wasn’t surprised at all. I’ve written numerous posts here on this blog about various issues at Canon and especially their arrogant attitude towards customers. This time Canon Inc. is taking it a step further by bullying one of their own subsidiaries. Photographer John Harrington has some of the details on his blog:

Instead of Canon Inc saying “hey, good job Canon USA for making Canon look good”, Canon Inc is mired in the antiquated notion of that by Canon USA doing so good, Canon Japan looks bad because either that don’t have the talent to make the same type of content, or people in Japan are now looking bad because it looks like they’re not doing their job.

Fake Chuck Westfall has also written about this on his blog, and there’s an interesting update in one of the comments in that post:

@Brad, I have it under good authority that Fake Chuck Westfall’s blog is spot on, and this is held up by internal politics and a power struggle between Canon USA and Canon Japan…and the video’s being pulled has nothing to do with the quality of video from the camera or the content of the video. Japan is embarrassed that Canon USA has shown them up once again (after the same thing happened with Reverie), and bruised egos are causing orders to be handed to Canon USA preventing this video from being distributed.

Northlight Images is now reporting that sample images taken with the 1D4 are also being pulled from the web:

It seems that Canon have taken exception to unauthorised sample images – all the ones we found have been pulled from sites.

It becomes really easy to understand all the issues Canon has had in recent years when you see things like this happening. Like Fake Chuck said on his blog, having clueless, conservative and arrogant management running the company will cause issues. And this seems like a worldwide problem for Canon.

Just recently I was talking to a friend of mine, a professional photographer from the Netherlands, and he mentioned how difficult it was dealing with Canon Netherlands, and how in comparison, things were so much easier with Nikon even though he is currently primarily using Canon equipment. Just look at what another photographer from the Netherlands, who was having issues with the EOS 7D, recently had to say about Canon on his blog:

My good friend and journalist Bill Hewlett contacted Canon (Netherlands) on friday on my behalf. Their exotic response: “we are not in the position to comment on this”. Huh?! Are we politicians here?! I am a customer with a problem!

I think Canon has to change it’s attitude (at least Canon Netherlands) and come up with a solution QUICK.

This arrogant attitude of not caring about customers is very familiar to me, as I have been dealing with it for a long time now too. I’ve written about it numerous times here on my blog, just check out my Canon posts in the archives. It’s a worldwide issue with Canon. These days I don’t even get any replies when I send email to Canon USA or Canon Europe. Noud van den Boer from Canon Netherlands even deletes my emails without reading them as a standard procedure (I know because I’m tracking it). At least I know Canon USA’s Chuck Westfall reads my emails, but after seeing what kind of issues they’re dealing with at Canon USA, I’m getting a different perspective on why he may not be able to comment on certain things. Take the issues with the EF 50mm f/1.2L lens for example, of which Canon, up to this day, has failed to comment on (Fake Chuck has more on this here).

I recommend reading at least the first part of this interview with Fake Chuck Westfall, as it highlights some of the important issues with Canon.

I’ve recently ordered my copy of John Harrington‘s latest book, Best Business Practices for Photographers. I already own the first edition, and the second edition covers some more topics in addition to the ones in the first edition. Harrington has some more information about the new book on his blog.

I can’t recommend this book highly enough. This is simply a MUST READ for anyone thinking about entering the photography business, anyone already in the photography business and amateurs who are looking to make money off of their photography work. Harrington shares a lot of great insights on many different aspects of being a professional photographer and running a healthy business using real world examples. Even if you’re just an amateur photographer, sometimes making a little money selling an image license here and there, there’s a lot to learn from this book (for example, how to value your work and the thinking behind it, what mistakes not to make when licensing your work etc.).

Harrington also has a ton of great articles on his blog related to the subject. When I first found his blog some time ago, I read through the entire blog within a day. It’s really worth checking out, especially the archives.

Pamela Mangroelal, Miss India Suriname 2008

I’ve updated my photography and design portfolio yesterday, feel free to take a look. The image above was taken during the photoshoot I did with Pamela Mangroelal for United Magazine.

I noticed that the most recent posts here on my blog are almost all related to photography. Some new visitors of my blog think that this is a photography blog because of this, but it’s not. This is just my personal blog where I write about anything I am interested in. So don’t be surprised when you find many posts on other subjects appearing here in the future. Just take a look at my blog archives if you’re still not convinced.

Canon EOS 7D

Canon has announced the EOS 7D DSLR last week and so far it is looking very promising. It includes some new features and upgrades that have been long overdue. You may already know that I have been very critical of Canon in the last 2 years when it comes to their DSLRs and lenses. I have written numerous posts about apparent quality control issues at Canon (just search for them on my blog), and I have written some very negative posts about the EOS 50D (here) and EOS 5D Mark II (here) cameras. In the case of the EOS 50D, from the day of its announcement, I could see that it would not be a very successful camera, and it turns out that this is now exactly the case because of all the issues I pointed out right from the start. In the case of the EOS 5D Mark II, from the day of its announcement, I could see that it would be severely handicapped by the very old autofocus system Canon included with it. And if you just look at the comments at my post here, or search the Internet for 5D Mark II autofocus issues, you will find that I was again right. If you read the posts about the 5D Mark II here on my blog, you’ll find that there are even more issues with it, such as noise and banding even at low ISO values resulting in poor image quality.

If you look at my first post about the 50D, you’ll see the following:

I predict that the price of the 50D is going to drop very fast after its availability in October especially when Nikon will lower the price of the D300 soon. I also predict that Canon will release the real successor for the 40D, the EOS 60D in the second half of 2009 finally containing some significant technological improvements. As a result of the DEFCON 1 declaration at Canon’s DSLR division, the refresh cycle for the 1D series camera’s has also been shortened from 3 years, and new 1D models are going to appear in 2009 instead of 2010 and likely very early in 2009.

It looks like the upgrade to the 40D hasn’t come in the form of the 60D, but instead as the EOS 7D, right on time in the second half of 2009 indeed containing some very significant improvements. There will still be a 60D coming, and it will be close to the 7D with regards to features. And by the way, the next 1D is getting close to being announced.

With the EOS 7D, it seems that Canon has finally listened to what photographers have been saying, looked at what they needed, and designed a camera with the right combination of features. Canon appears to be back in the game, and any future DSLR announcements are going to be very exciting. It is a pity that it has taken them so long to deliver what we needed. The EOS 50D should have been what the 7D is today. It was about time Canon got up from their lazy asses and actually delivered something new and exciting. Many people who bought the EOS 5D Mark II are now very disappointed, some even mad, because the EOS 7D is in almost all aspects way more advanced than the EOS 5D Mark II, while costing an incredible $1000 less. Think about that for a moment.

I said that the EOS 5D Mark II was not worth its price when it was announced, and what we’re seeing today is just more proof of that. The only thing the EOS 5D Mark II has that could be seen as being better than the 7D is its full frame 21MP sensor. If you don’t need full frame, the 7D has an arguably better and more advanced sensor. From the sample images I’ve seen so far, the 7D images don’t suffer from the pattern noise and banding that can often be found in the images taken with a 50D or a 5D Mark II. Taking into account that the 7D costs $1700, and that it has features that are way more advanced compared to the same features on the 5D Mark II, the 5D Mark II should realistically cost around $1800 right now. People have paid way too much for way too little. The 5D Mark II costing $2700 should have been a 7D body with the 21MP full frame sensor in it. Having seen the 7D, I’m hopeful that in the near future the 5D Mark III will contain at least all the features of the 7D with a fullframe sensor in it.

The 7D seems to be Canon’s answer to the Nikon D300s, and it looks like it will give the D300s some good competition. There’s a lot that I like about the EOS 7D, such as the new 19 point AF system, 8 fps shooting speed, the new metering system, the intelligent viewfinder with 100% field of view, 1.0 magnification, and overlaid LCD display. Also the fact that you can now finally use the built-in flash to trigger external Canon flashes wirelessly (without an ST-E2).

The only thing that I’m not so sure about right now is the image quality. Canon has included a new 18MP sensor in the 7D which, from the sample images I have seen so far, appears to deliver much better image quality compared to the EOS 50D even while having a higher pixel count, and comes close to the EOS 5D Mark II. I could see no pattern noise and banding issues so far, like I mentioned before, and this is a very good thing. However, looking at RAW files, I still think that the images produced by the 7D contain a little too much noise, even at lower ISO values, and the images at high ISO contain way too much noise. JPEG images coming out of the camera look better because of the noise reduction being done inside the camera, at the expense of lost detail, but RAW images look terrible so far. An example can be seen on Rob Galbraith’s website:

Noise in 7D image at ISO 3200

You can see white specs in darker parts of the image, and this can be very difficult to clean up in post production. Apparently Canon is advertising the 3200 and 6400 ISO values on the 7D as usable, so I have to wonder if this is the image quality that Canon considers to be acceptable. It seems Canon and many other DSLR manufacturers still don’t get what photographers are really asking for. We do not want more megapixels containing even more noise. Most photographers would prefer a 10 or 12MP sensor that could deliver virtually clean ISO 800, instead of a 18MP sensor that delivers a lot of noise at ISO 800 and makes ISO 3200 barely usable.

At this point however I haven’t seen enough good sample images to really say if this is going to be an issue on the 7D, so we’ll have to wait for the reviews and experiences from people who have used the camera. But right now, the 7D does look like a camera that I will want to buy at least two of in the very near future. Looking at Canon’s recent DSLR releases and all the quality control issues they’ve had, it would be wise to wait at least 4 months after general availability before you actually buy a 7D, just to make sure that there aren’t any issues with it. You really do not want to spend money to become Canon’s beta tester. Wait for the reviews, read the experiences from those who were brave enough to buy one early and then decide.

I’ll try to get a loaner 7D body from Canon to do some of my own tests and will be updating my blog in the mean time as more information becomes available and to let you know if I’ll be ordering the 7D. By the way, Canon also announced 3 new lenses together with the 7D, and I can tell you that I’m going to buy the new EF 100mm f/2.8 L Macro IS lens as soon as it becomes available.

Update November 8th, 2009: I have posted my review of the 7D. Check it out.

Pamela Mangroelal, Miss India Suriname 2008

I was contacted by Edward Lee, editor of United Magazine, a few months ago to do some pictures for a feature he was planning for the August 2009 edition of the magazine (which should be out in Suriname and The Netherlands within days). There would be an interview with Pamela Mangroelal, who was crowned Miss India Suriname 2008 last year, and he wanted some exciting visuals to go with it. Being the creative person he is, he already had a concept in mind. Since Pamela is an avid chess player he thought it would be nice to do something involving chess. The details of what exactly we would do were left to me.

I spent quite some time thinking about it in the following weeks. I knew that I wanted to do something challenging for me, but it had to stay within the amount of time I had allocated for this project. I started looking for chess sets with interesting looking chess pieces that I could use in pictures with Pamela. I quickly decided that I wanted to use glass chess pieces, but it was difficult to find glass chess sets with chess pieces that looked sophisticated enough and didn’t cost a fortune. At the same time, I started experimenting in 3D Studio Max to see if I would be able to create the chess pieces in 3D and combine them with the pictures I would take of Pamela later in post production. As I was experimenting I soon decided that I would just do the chess pieces in 3D, not only because they would look much more detailed, but also because it would give me a lot of flexibility in terms of what I could do with them later when combining them with pictures.

The next step was deciding which pictures I wanted to deliver to United. I came up with 3 pictures. First, I wanted to feature Pamela with a normal size glass chess set, kind of a portrait to open the feature with in the magazine. Then, I wanted to do a picture where she’d be standing on a really big chess board, with chess pieces as big as her. The idea here would be to replace the white queen with Pamela. And finally, I wanted to do an image that would feature Pamela with the chess pieces on a really grand scale. I was thinking along the lines of scenes from Lord of the Rings, putting her in charge of incredibly large chess pieces on a large battlefield. I had some other ideas in mind too, which I would use as a backup plan just in case something went wrong with the others, but I won’t discuss them here.

Once I was sure which results I wanted in the end, I started building the scenes in 3D Studio Max and doing some tests to a point where I was sure that I would be capable of executing what I had planned. Time was running out so I met with Pamela and discussed the plans I had for the pictures with her and did an initial test photoshoot. The purpose of the test photoshoot was to get to know her a little better and get a feel for working with eachother before the actual photoshoot, and also to get some material I could use to see if I would be able to pull off what I had in mind. By using these initial pictures with various poses, I could narrow down which poses and angles would work better and then really focus on those during the real photoshoot.

With the deadline fast approaching I made final preparations for the photoshoot, got the material I needed (background, a real glass floor to get realistic reflections etc.) and discussed with Pamela what kind of clothes I wanted her to wear during the photoshoot. We weren’t able to find exactly what I was looking for but I decided to work with what we had. I teamed up again with Euvie Karijoredjo for the makeup, hair and styling. It is really wonderful to work with people who know exactly what you want before you explain it to them by just looking at a concept image, and Euvie and I seem to have that kind of an understanding.

I have to admit that I was a little nervous on the day of the photoshoot. Everything was planned, I was confident I thought of everything and would be able to pull off what I had in mind, but you’re never sure until you have the final results in front of you. Below are some pictures of the setting as it was during the photoshoot:

The setup

As you can see the setup was fairly simple. White background with extra reflective glass on the floor. I used the glass to get the most realistic and accurate reflection on the floor so I could use that in post production for the reflection on the glass chess board etc. (instead of just vertically mirroring the model and fading it to make a reflection, which doesn’t look good). I used two Canon 580 EX II flashes as the light sources triggered wirelessly by a ST-E2 mounted on the camera. Works really well in-doors but probably not so reliable out-doors. During this photoshoot I used a Canon EOS 40D body with the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L USM lens. Both excellent performers.

Euvie doing the makeup, while looking like a model herself

Hair...

"Wait, wait! Need to fix this before you start."

Edward dropped by at the beginning of the photoshoot for a short while, probably to make sure I was treating the ladies well. I don’t know why I didn’t think of taking some pictures of Edward, otherwise I would have posted one here. Sometimes I take things too serious and forget to have fun.

The photoshoot went well, it lasted for about 5 hours with some breaks in between. I had just about enough time to get what I want, it’s amazing how time flies during photoshoots. After the photoshoot I had to start looking at all the images and select which ones I’d use for the final pictures. For two of the final pictures, I ended up combining 2 to 3 pictures of Pamela just so I could have her pose and expression just right. Then I brought the pictures into 3D Studio Max scenes to combine them with the rest of the digital images.

Your move... (Click on the image for larger view)

Above you can see the first image created for a 2 page spread. The article text is supposed to go on the right side. If you look at the larger version you can see the amount of detail that you can get from a 3D rendering program such as 3D Studio Max. Even the tiniest reflections are rendered accurately in the glass chess pieces.

3D scene setup in 3D Studio Max (click for larger view)

In the screenshot above you can see how the scene for this picture was set up. Rendering this scene with acceptable quality and resolution took almost 24 hours on my computer. So you can imagine the amount of time that went into creating the final image when you have to do test renders, tweaking and additional post production after rendering.

The Queen (Click on the image for larger view)

In the second image above the idea was to have Pamela pose as the white queen. Originally I wanted to put her on a big chess board but during test renders the black and white squares and reflections were a bit too distracting for what I was aiming for and gave the whole a chaotic look. At least in my opinion. So I decided to just replace it with a glass floor giving the whole a much simpler and elegant look. Again the image here is for a 2 page spread, and the text is supposed to go on the left side.

3D scene setup in 3D Studio Max (click for larger view)

The screenshot above shows the scene setup in 3D Studio Max.

The Battlefield (Click on the image for larger view)

And then the final image, visually the most exciting one of all 3 images in my opinion. The idea here was to have Pamela control the white chess pieces on a large battlefield. For the background I chose to use a panoramic picture of Paramaribo (the capital of Suriname) taken just after sunset from the J. A. Wijdenbosch bridge which I had taken a few months ago along with many other shots. The dramatic looking clouds were really as they appear in the picture that day and were not digitally created. By using Paramaribo as the background and setting for this image I thought United’s audience would be able to identify more with the image. Pamela is standing on the top of a Knight, which is standing in the water in the Suriname river. Looking at this picture, I imagine the camera flying in from behind slowly coming closer to Pamela, with her hair moving in the wind – that would make a very dramatic looking scene in any film.

3D scene setup in 3D Studio Max (click for larger view)

The scene setup in 3D Studio Max can be seen in the above image. I think it’s obvious that most of my time went into creating this picture. I tried to get the lighting as realistic as possible and the reflections as accurate as possible.

Looking back I’m fairly satisfied with the end results, and I’m hoping everyone else will be too. Given more time, resources and much better equipment I’m sure I would have been able to create better looking images. Often it’s not easy to explain to clients why you need so much time to do something that may seem so simple to them. For these images alone I spent quite some time during the creative process just thinking about ideas, making concepts, and trying different compositions etc. before starting with actual production. And often clients also don’t realize the investments you have to make in the right tools among other things to be able to do the job, all of this resulting in higher costs for the end results.

With these kinds of posts on my blog I’m trying to give people a glimpse into the process that goes behind this kind of work. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. Be sure to get the latest United and check out the interview with Pamela.

Update September 21, 2009: The pictures have been printed a little too dark in the magazine unfortunately. You will see that especially ‘The Queen” is too dark when compared with the version here on my website. This was caused totally out of my control due to a colormanagement issue at the press.

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to do a photoshoot with a real live Rainforest Nymph for one of my clients. It isn’t very often that you get these kinds of opportunities considering the amount of luck that you must have to actually meet a nymph in person. We were talking about ideas for an ad we were working on for the next edition of Moksi Magazine (a magazine in Suriname) when we started talking about the idea of including a rainforest nymph. With no material available, it meant that we would have to go out and shoot one. The problem was that we had a deadline that was only a week away. And you don’t just go out and find yourself a rainforest nymph and ask to take pictures of her. It doesn’t work like that. They don’t show themselves very often and so it takes time, patience and a lot of luck.

So we started preparing for the photoshoot with very little time available, talking about the location, wardrobe, makeup, etc. I gave my ideas and told the client what I needed and they basically took care of it. I love working with such clients. The photoshoot took place at Zanderij I, which is some sort of outdoor recreational resort here in Suriname. We decided that we had to arrive there very early in the morning to be able to work with the early morning light. Sadly, this meant that I had to get up at 3am in the morning to get prepared, something that I really hate doing. Somehow I actually managed to wake up at that time. Not only that, I seemed to have managed to step out of bed too, which, quite frankly, is incredible.

We arrived at the location around 7am. I had the opportunity to work with Euvie Karijoredjo again, who did the makeup, hair and styling. Euvie did a wonderful job once again, and having someone like her on the team really makes a difference. While she was busy preparing the model, I went for a stroll in the area to find some nice locations for making pictures. The view was incredible when we first arrived. The early morning sunlight and the fog created a very nice mood in the forest. I don’t have pictures of when we first arrived, but I do have some taken a bit later. Here are some snaps of the location:

Notice the fog in the air top left

If this was the view outside of my house, I'd probably enjoy waking up early

Tell me you don't feel like walking down this path?

Euvie very busy with the model

Dressing the nymph

For this shoot I used a Canon EOS 40D body (the only good DSLR Canon makes at the moment – 50D has too much noise and banding, 5D2 can’t autofocus reliably, 1D3 has various issues) with the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM lens (which is outstanding). I also used a couple of Canon 580 EX II flashes with Canon’s wireless flash functionality using one 580 EX II on the 40D as the master. The wireless flash functionality worked surprisingly well outdoors, but I had to maintain line of sight between the master and the slaves all the time which is a bit limiting at times. Here are some test shots I took to test the lighting where you can see the position of the flashes during certain shots:

A test shot where you can see the positioning of the lighting

Another test shot with slightly different positions for the lights

"Don't mind the lights, I'm just testing something..."

Time flew during the photoshoot. We started working at around 8am and when I asked later what time it was, it was already 12 ‘o clock. We took a short break and wrapped up at around 1:30pm. I believe I took close to 1000 pictures. Not all are usable ofcourse since there was a lot of experimenting during the photoshoot and many things we tried didn’t work out as well as we thought it would. But we got what we went for and the client is very satisfied, fortunately. Here are some of the results:

Um..yeah.. the butterfly was really there... (click for larger view)

Rainforest Nymph (click for larger view)

Taking a bath (click for larger view)

And a final note: The model was incredible. Very pleasant to work with, and she was constantly posing from 7am to 12pm apparently without getting tired.