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50mm Duel: Zeiss 50mm 1.7 planar T* vs Canon 50mm 1.4

January 10, 2010 By

I had the opportunity to play with a old Zeiss lens last Tuesday. I only had the lens for a day (actually, a night) and did not have much time to do serious testing so I decided to skip the standard and boring sharpness assessments and move to a topics you will find more interesting: how it performs for video.

About the results: the Zeiss lens is an old model and the newer version should perform significantly better. The reason I was interested in this old lens is that a lot of people are using old Nikon and Zeiss lens to shoot video instead of using original Canon products. Some people do it because they prefer the look produced by these models or simply because they bought them before the release of the 1.1 firmware and stuck with them. Of course, these older model are also significantly cheaper! [Read more...]

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Filed Under: Review, Video Tagged With: , , , ,

New wireless file transmitter. Should we care?

January 7, 2010 By

Canon announced the release of a new file transmitter earlier today. We talked about the earlier version of the product a while ago when reviewing the iPhone application DSLR Remote. At the time, everyone agreed that the WFT was nearly useless for 5DMrkII owners because of its slow transfer speed.

That is why I was quite intrigued to see Canon releasing a newer version of this aging product. You can read the full press release here but here is a summary:

  • uses 811.a,b or G no N! This is a big let down. Sorry Canon but a G network cant handle a trigger happy event shooter! Like with the previous version, the camera uses the CF card as a buffer and send the files over the air as fast as it can. Which is ridiculously slow when you think about the card filling rate of cameras like the 5DMrkII and 1DMrkIV!
  • easier network setup: finally, a lot of people complained about the setup of the previous product. Nice to see improvement in this area.
  • FTP/server mode: allows photographers to connect to the camera with their browser and directly download files from it. Notice that I did not say pictures but files. We we can get video and stills. It also allows the users to control the camera from their browsers. We dont have details about the resolution of the liveview feed but if it is good enough, maybe a laptop could be used as a wireless camera monitor! Then again, lets not get too excited, I am sure the resolution will be 640×480 or lower…
  • EOS utility: similar to server mode but uses ESO utility instead of a browser.
  • Camera linking: allows you to remotely trigger a bunch of camera when you take a picture with the ‘master’ camera. I see this as being of marginal use, unless it can also be used to start/stop movie recording. Then it would be incredibly useful in a multicam setup.
  • USB Host: For me, this is the big thing. A USB connector allows you to plug a GPS or.. a USD hard drive! I can clearly see myself use this with a G-raid Mini and shoot all day while never having to worry about data security and filling my cards! Lets hope the USB plug is sturdy enough so the cable can hold.
  • Presentation stuff: plug-play into some presentation stuff. Seriously, who cares?

And now the price… 700$ Is it worth it? Unless you really need one of its features (like the USB host), I think it is wise to pass.

As most of you know, news products generally mean new firmware coming up soon too! Lets all cross out fingers and whisper 24p/50p!

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Filed Under: News Tagged With: , , , ,

Canon finally updates the 70-200L2.8IS!

January 5, 2010 By

Canon announced a new Canon 70-200L2.8IS lens today. Rumors of this update must have been a hot topic for the last 3-4 years, out lived only by the rumors of the 24-70L2.8IS. While it is not the most useful lens for videographers, it is the central item of most photographers gear list.

This new incarnation benefits from a new IS system for an additional stop of stability (for a total of 4 stops, like the F4IS version), reduces the minimal focus distance by a few inches and improves durability and focus speed. All of this while increasing its weight by about 1% (20mg).

Optical elements have been changed to increase image quality, which is the key point for me. Ever since I saw sample images from the new Nikon 70-200VR2.8, I was jealous and wondering how Canon would react. Of course, no one has seen any sample pics taken with this lens yet so we cant really comment about it. We can only hope they are on par with those from its Nikon nemesis.

Will it be worth an upgrade? I don’t think so but it will surely be a nice acquisition for anyone who does not already own a 70-200IS (either model).

On the minus side, the lens will only be available in April and I guess Canon will take the opportunity to increase the price, as they did with the 24TS-E.

Note: thanks to Scott Bourne at Photofocus for pointing this news out. The press release  is not yet on Canon US /CAN website.

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EOS 5D Mark II Firmware Update Version 1.2.4

December 17, 2009 By

Unless you have a WFT-E4 or are into long repetitive bulb exposures, this update does not change anything for you. It would have been a nice present from Canon to give us the 24p before the holidays, but I guess they are really going to stick to their schedule of 2010 (probably after the 1DMrkIV is out too).

You can get it here.

From the initial reports, it does not seem to include any undocumented features and compatibility with Magic Lantern has to be confirmed.

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Filed Under: News Tagged With: , , ,

Canon 1dMrkIV white paper released

November 12, 2009 By

I know what I am going to be reading on my way home tonight: Canon released the 1DMrkIV white paper. You can download it here.

Word of caution: White Papers are marketing materials and should be expected to bend, twist and fold the truth in every angle to promote the product. The best example of this was the Canon 5DMrkII White Paper (pre firmware update) which stated that the 5D allowed the videographer total control over the depth of field. Which was far from reality at the time and caused a lot of frustration.

For “real” information, you should read the product manual or wait for my hands on review.

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Filed Under: News Tagged With: ,

List of 5D Mark II issues

September 24, 2009 By

Since I got my random flipping shutter issue, I have done a lot of Googling to see if other people have had the same issue.  During this process, I discovered a few other issues 5D Mark II owners might have and thought it would be a good idea to list them.

While looking at this list, remember that Canon has sold tons of these camera and most of them have no problems. The web is a big ecochamber where one person complaining can generate more noise than a thousand happy customer.

Random flipping shutter

In live view mode (while not recording) the shutter randomly start flipping. I already talked about it here. My camera is still at Canon for repairs. I will write back on this once I receive their incident report.

Burned sensor

This issue has been identified by extraordinaire photographer Sam Hassas. The guy is well known for framing the sun with his subjects to create big and nice sun flares. Go look at his stuff and see how cool it is. The downside of this technique is that it seems like he burned the sensor in four spot. Since he has been doing this for a while and probably shot thousand of stills framing the sun, there are probably no reason to panic but it is better to be aware of this.

We are still waiting for details but you can follow the thread here.

Black dot

While still present after the 1.1.0 firmware update, this issue is not getting a lot of press anymore. I guess people accepted the limitation and moved on to complain about the lack of 24p. You can read about it here.

24P

Some user have reported that they cannot shoot in 24p, citing this as a major issue. We are still waiting for an update from Canon to see if they aknowledge the problem.

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Filed Under: Photo, Video Tagged With: , ,

Issue with my 5D Mark II

September 8, 2009 By

I know this is totally not related to my previous installation of the Z-Finder(it is just a bad coincidence), but since Sunday morning my 5D has been behaving strangely.

In still mode, everything works fine but when I switch to liveview the shutter starts to flip randomly between 2-10 seconds. If I press the record button, it stops flipping and record normally. The flipping action is exactly the same as if the camera was in burst mode, except no pictures are taken. If I press the AF ON button while it is flipping, it will eventually stop, acquire focus and either stop flipping or not once I release the button.

To fix the issue, I  have tried to: change batteries, use another lens, clean everything, use manual focus and change camera settings. Nothing worked.

I Googled about this without success. Am I the first person experiencing this issue?

I am calling the store today to have it fixed. How much do you want to bet that I wont be able to reproduce the problem once in the store?

Of course this issue appeared the day I was shooting an engagement clip and did not have my spare 5d Mark II with me! GRrr

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Canon 5dMarkII vs 7D reactions

September 1, 2009 By

7d_logo

It has not been 24 hours since the announcement of the Canon 7D and we are already seeing some very strong reactions in the blogosphere. Those who did not purchase a 5D are happy like kids at Christmas while 5D Mark II owners feel betrayed and frustrated to various degrees.

First, if you own a 5D Mark II, it is as good today as it was two days ago. You can still take great pictures and video with it, the release of this newer model did not affect your capabilities to take great shots and make money out of them. If you were pleased with your camera, you should still be. I know this sounds obvious but that is something people tend to forget when a newer model is released.

Now some of my observations… [Read more...]

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Filed Under: News, Photo, Video Tagged With: , ,

70-200f4 vs 70-200f4IS vs 70-200f2.8 vs 70-200f2.8IS

July 15, 2009 By

Tired of always answering the same question in every forum I go to, I have decided to make a blog post about it…

70-200

So you want to get a 70-200 lens but dont know which one to buy? Should it be the 70-200Lf4, the 70-200Lf4 IS, the 70-200f2.8L or the 70-200f2.8L IS ?

To answer these questions, I would ask two others. [Read more...]

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Filed Under: Photo, Review, Video Tagged With: , , , ,

Looking for batteries and popularity of the Canon 5D MarkII

June 22, 2009 By

I don’t know how things are going for you guys but I have been hunting for 5D Mark II batteries for a while. A little bit frustrated, I went to one of the big camera store in Montreal and decided to have a talk with one of the rep to understand what was going on.

After the initial “Canon cant ship them fast enough” predictable explanation, we diverged subject and we talked about the Canon 5D Mark II and its impact on the photographer/videographer market. According to the guy, the bodies are out of stock not as much because a lot of people are ordering them but because people who do order them order a lot of them! He talked about a producer who got 10 bodies to shoot a tv show and it seems like many others are buying them in batch of 2-3.

And guess what? These guys are getting batteries too! For each camera they buy, they get between 4 and 10 batteries! With numbers like these, it is no wonders that we have not been able to grab these batteries. If you are working mostly inside, a better alternative to managing countless batteries is to get the Canon ACK-E6AC.

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