Posts tagged canon
Grain of sand: 0, Canon SD800 IS: 1
0Our trusty Canon PowerShot SD800 IS locked up the other day in the lens open position and whenever it powered up a “Lens error, restart camera” error message appeared on the LCD screen and the camera would then shut off.
Ends up that there was a single grain of sand that was stuck in between the gears that open/retract the lens. The cover is secured by a few tiny screws so it’s actually pretty easy to open up. Once I got the little bugger out from in between the gears (simply by manually turning the gears by hand), I fired up the camera again and the lens started working again!
Here are some disassembly pics, with the gears that control the opening/retracting of the lens circled in yellow.
Canon 24-70 f/2.8 vs Canon 24-105 f/4 IS
0An oft asked question I hear is: if one is deciding on between the Canon 24-70 f/2.8 and the Canon 24-105 f/4 IS, which one is better?
Well, the answer is: it depends. For me personally ( I own both), I like to use the 24-105 when I travel on vacation and/or am shooting outdoors. I want to pack as light as reasonably possible when traveling, which means limiting the number of lenses I bring with me. I’ll always bring an ultra-wide (my 17-40 f/4) and then the remaining lens choice is between the 24-70 f/2.8, 24-105 f/4 IS, or 70-200 f/2.8 IS. The 24-105 is my choice since it’s in between the 24-70 & the 70-200 as well as being the lightest of the 3.
I’ve learned not to lug the 70-200 along with me unless I know I will specifically be shooting in a situtaion where I will need a long zoom. Years back I brought it with me on a trip to Paris as well as to Thailand — I didn’t use it once in either. I brought it with me to Playa del Carmen (near Cancun, Mexico) and Costa Rica, though, since I was planning on shooting wildlife.
When I shoot indoor events, I use the 24-70 f/2.8 since it is faster glass. Coupling Canon’s f/2.8 and faster lenses to a 1-series body (eg. my 1D MK II) activates more cross-type AF sensors which, if you’ve ever shot in low light, means that you’ll get faster focusing and less hunting. Nothing like waiting for your camera to lock focus in low light, especially when shooting fleeting moments of people.
24-105 Pros:
- Image Stabilization
- longer zoom end (105mm vs 70mm) — there are so many tims when I’ve used the 24-70 and said to myself, “if i only had just a little bit more reachâ€
- lighter weight vs. the 24-70
24-105 Cons:
- slower focusing in low light situations due to f/4 (at least on 1-series bodies – not sure if the non-â€pro†bodies are the same way)
- vignettes & barrel distorts at the wider focal lengths more than the 24-70, but you might not notice unless comparing side-by-side, though it can be automatically corrected in post-processing using something like the superb PTLens application
- darker viewfinder image vs. the 24-70
24-70 Pros:
- faster glass, which means better/faster focusing in low light
- brighter viewfinder image
24-70 Cons:
- on a 20d/30d/5d feels a bit lopsided due to it’s extra weight unless you have the optional battery grip.
- heavy
- no Image Stabilization
San Jose Grand Prix
0Trying to capture a sense of speed, excitement, and power of motorsports in a photo is one of my photographic passions. Sadly in 2006, I’ve only covered one motorsports event: the US Sports Car Invitational (Rolex/USTCC) race at Laguna Seca back in early May (coverage here), so I was well overdue. The SJGP is doubly exciting because my work is situated along the front straight of the street course. As much of a pain in the rear it was getting in and out of the parking garage due to all the street closures prior to the race, it was well worth the pain to have race cars barrelling down near 200 mph down the streets you drive on day to day.
I ended up shooting roughly 1200 photos on Sunday, the majority of which with the following body+lens combinations:
- 1D MK II with the 70-200 f/2.8 IS L and 24-105 f/4 IS L (mainly for panning shots)
- 20d with the 300 f/4 IS L plus the 1.4x teleconverter on occasion. (mainly for the super telephoto shots and the close ups)
- I also used the 17-40 f/4.0 L a few times on both bodies but the 24-105 was wide enough for most situations (other than the shots inside the McEnery Convention Center).
After a shoot, I’ll usually go through and take a couple passes through them to progressively weed out the worst photos. I do this in BreezeBrowser since it’s quick loading and doesn’t need to spend cycles needing to generate previews like Capture One does. First pass is typically spent deleting the obviously blurry ones. This time it amounted to a tad over 500 photos. Yikes. I don’t recall my sharp to unsharp ratio being that bad before, though it was only my 2nd time shooting with the slower focusing 20d in addition to the 1D MK II. I didn’t pay attention to which camera was used for each blurry photo I deleted, but perhaps that had something to do with it.
I was left with about 600 photos which I still needed to sift through and then do another pass and sort into categories: drifting, Atlantic, Champ Car, paddock, etc. All said and done, i ended up with 307 photos that I ended up processing all the way through, and just under 300 were published here.
