Tag Archives: body

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A Somewhat Humorous Yosemite Story

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When I’m out photographing I cart around the typical pile of stuff – the big, squarish bag of camera bodies and lenses and accessories, the tripod, the works. And when I photograph in popular places I make it a habit to offer to take photographs of folks with their P&S cameras. You know the scene – the family traveled hundreds or thousands of miles to get to some beautiful place, but one member of the family is missing from every photo since someone has to hold the camera. (The embarrassing thing is that sometimes I don’t understand how to operate these little cameras, but that is a story for another post.)

Put the two together and some surprising and odd conversations can ensue. Last Saturday I was in the Happy Isles area of Yosemite Valley looking for dogwood trees in bloom when I saw a mother about to snap a photo of (I presume) her daughter, so I asked if they would like me to use their camera to take a picture of the two of them together. I put down my bag and left the camera on the tripod and made the photograph. The woman inspected the photo, seemed to approve, then looked at me and my stuff and asked, “Hey, you aren’t Mr. Adams, are you?”

Sometimes it is so hard to avoid saying the wrong thing in reply, but I think I more or less succeeded… ;-)

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Canon Spring 2009 Rebates

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Canon is running its annual spring rebate program between now and July 11, 2009. A number of DSLR bodies (with lens kits), lenses, and flash units are included. Canon has wisely switched from the old mail-in rebate system (which created a lot of problems when buyers encountered problems obtaining their rebate checks) to a much better “instant rebate” system under which the price reduction is given at the time of sale. Since most of these products are rarely if ever offered at sale prices, if you are ready to make a purchase and can time it for the “rebate season,” some good discounts are available.

The following list of rebate items links to B&H Photo|Video. If you choose to purchase through these links to B&H your purchase helps support this web site. (You get the same regular B&H prices.) Thanks in advance!

Be sure to download and read the rebate terms. Not all Canon products are eligible and there are specific conditions and dates that you must observe. (Note that I could not find B&H links to a few of the items listed on the rebate forms.)

Camera Bodies

EOS 50D Kit + EF-S 18–200mm f/3.5–5.6 IS – $300″>EOS 50D EF-S 18–200mm IS Kit – $300
EOS 50D EF 28–135mm IS Kit + EF-S 18–200mm f/3.5–5.6 IS – $300
EOS 50D Kit + EF 70–300mm f/4–5.6 IS USM – $150
EOS 50D EF 28–135mm IS Kit + EF 70–300mm f/4–5.6 IS USM – $150
EOS Rebel XSi EF-S 18–55mm IS Kit (B) + EF-S 55–250mm f/4–5.6 IS – $200
EOS Rebel XS EF-S 18–55mm IS Kit (B) + EF 75–300mm f/4.5–5.6 III – $100

(Canon Rebate Form for DSLR Bodies)

Lenses

EF 200mm f/2L IS USM – $500
EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM – $130
EF 70–200mm f/2.8L IS USM – $200
EF 100–400mm f/4.5–5.6L IS USM – $100
EF 16–35mm f/2.8L II USM – $100
EF 50mm f/1.2L USM – $100
EF 24–70mm f/2.8L USM – $80
EF 70–200mm f/4L IS USM – $75
EF 17–40mm f/4L USM – $50
EF 70–200mm f/4L USM – $40
EF 100mm f/2.8 MACRO USM – $35
EF 28–200mm f/3.5–5.6 USM – $30
EF 28–105mm f/3.5–4.5 II USM – $20

EF-S 17–55mm f/2.8 IS USM – $70
EF-S 10–22mm f/3.5–4.5 USM – $50
EF-S 17–85mm f/4–5.6 IS USM – $50
EF-S 60mm f/2.8 MACRO USM – $30
EF-S 18–55mm f/3.5–5.6 IS – $15

(Canon Rebate Form for Lenses)

Flash Units

SPEEDLITE 580EX II – $50
SPEEDLITE 430EX II – $30
SPEEDLITE 220EX – $30
MACRO TWIN LITE MT-24EX – $70
MACRO RING LITE MR-14EX – $50

(Canon Rebate Form for Flash Units)

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Welcome to Visitors from the 5dmk2 Blog

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I noticed a spike in visits this morning that I’ve traced back to a reference in a post at the 5DMk2 blog at 1001 Noisy Cameras to yesterday’s post here about Live View on the 5DII. Thanks for the link, and welcome to visitors entering my blog world through the 1001 Noisy Cameras doorway. (And for those who arrived via a different route, if you are interested in the 5D2 and related topics, you should wander on over to the 5DMK2 blog once you finish up here.)

The two points I wrote about yesterday (the benefits of live view for depth of field preview and for shooting with very dark ND filters) are not the only benefits of the live view feature. For example, I earlier wrote about its value when doing night photography, and quite a few of my recent wildflower photos took advantage of it. Before long I hope to write up a more complete article outlining the range of uses for live view.

If this is your first visit to my blog, take a look around. I post a daily photograph (recent work has come from Death Valley and a number of central California locations) and the occasional opinion or news piece. You can subscribe via RSS (link near the top of the page) and members are welcome to post discussion messages.

(Shortly after posting this I got a message from B&H photo saying that they again have the Canon EOS 5D Mark II in stock, and unlike some other dealers they sell it with no markups at the list price of $2669.95.)

Commentary, Equipment, Technique

Canon EOS 5D Mark II: Two More Reasons to Love Live View

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Yesterday I was at Point Lobos shooting a variety of wildlife, nature, and landscape subject. As I worked I found myself using the live view feature of my Canon EOS 5D Mark II very frequently – partly for reasons I’ve written about before, but largely for two reasons that I’d like to briefly mention.

Much better depth of field preview – Everyone knows about the small depth of field preview button on the body near the lens. Since the lens is open to the widest aperture when you focus you cannot tell what your depth of field will be until you push this button to stop down to the aperture that you’ll use for your shot. There are two problems with this technique: you cannot judge sharpness critically enough across the frame in the viewfinder and the viewfinder becomes incredibly dim if you stop down to small apertures like f/16. Put those two problems together and the usefulness of the preview button is diminished. However, when you use live view the camera automatically adjusts when you press the preview button and the image is still plenty bright to see on the LCD. Even better, you can zoom in to 5x or 10x magnification to carefully check sharpness. All in all, this makes DOF preview a much more useful feature when live view is used.

You can compose a photograph when using neutral density filters to extend exposure – At one point this weekend I was using a 9-stop neutral density filter to make exposures of the surf with durations in the 10-20 second range. My usual practice is to compose the shot and, if necessary, manually focus without the filter attached. Once the shot is set up I attach the filter. Unfortunately, the filter renders the scene virtually invisible through the viewfinder. Recomposing or manually focusing requires removing the filter, making adjustments, and then reattaching the filter. I discovered yesterday that live view mode can display the image in the LCD even with my 9-stop ND filter in place, allowing me to make changes to the composition/framing or adjust focus without removing the filter

(Shortly after posting this I got a message from B&H photo saying that they again have the Canon EOS 5D Mark II back in stock, and unlike some other dealers they sell it with no markups at the list price of $2669.95.)