EF 24-70mm f2.8L II USM

EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM

This is the one I’d probably consider getting. The fast f/2.8 aperture helps AF systems perform to their best ability and typically three times greater precision. The new lens is better optically, smaller and lighter and should be more durable too. The key will be price, it’s pretty expensive at full list prices right now and even with 20% or so taken off once things reach normal levels of demand and supply it’s still a step up in price from the outgoing model and the EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM that so many use with their EOS 5D Mark II cameras. However as the main lens that you’d use everyday I think there’s a place for it in my bag – right next to the gaping hole in my pocket

EF 24mm f2.8 IS USM

EF 24mm f/2.8 IS USM

I’m sure this will be a stellar performing lens and great to use with both full-frame and crop sensor cameras, even if future cameras have more resolution than current models. If the lure of early morning or evening light and landscapes are your discipline this is possibly the lens for you. Will be sharp, small, lightweight – ideal for carrying out in the field. But if you work like this then are you using a tripod, and so IS wouldn’t be necessary. IS won’t fix blurry grass blowing in the wind [subject movement] anymore than a tripod will. I’d be tempted by an EF 24mm f/1.4L II USM or even the TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II as alternatives – neither is smaller, lighter or cheaper. Maybe an old EF 24mm f/1.4L USM would interest photojournalists with it’s ‘built-in creative vignette’.

EF 28mm f2.8 IS USM

EF 28mm f/2.8 IS USM

Of the three this is the lens with the most distance between itself and other models in the range. The old EF 28mm f2.8 is not in the same league in any terms. The EF 28mm f/1.8 USM is cheaper, plus it makes a good 45mm f/1.8 USM on an APS-C crop camera, where the crop camera uses the better central part of the lens for best optical performance. If I was in the market for one of these and landscape was my plan, then an EF 17-40mm f/4L USM would be my choice.

So for me, the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM is a possible candidate in the future, but for my work then I think the wide-angle IS prime lenses will remain off my wishlist for the timebeing. If you want some more thoughts on the lenses and the alternatives I recently wrote an article on EOS Network about some other Canon lenses that you might consider over these three new lenses so hop on over and have a read.

Having seen some images from an EOS-1D Mark IV and the latest EF 400m f.2.8L IS II USM with the EF Extender 1.4x III and EF Extender 2x III then the ‘Mk III’ extenders are next on my shopping list to go with the EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM and also my favourite EF 135mm f/2L USM. Drop me a note in the comments if you are looking to buy a Canon EF Extender 1.4x II?

Personally I’m hoping to get my hands on the new lenses at the upcoming Focus on Imaging show in Birmingham. I really hope that these lenses make it to market faster than the last set of telephoto primes did!

1. Find and run Automator

To start Automator use the Spotlight search on your mac and type Automator in the search box, it’s the top hit application on my computer and will likely be so for you too.

When Automator starts you are prompted to choose a template for your workflow, I use the default Workflow.

2. Build the workflow steps

You will be presented with a display similar to the one below, and will then need to create the steps in the workflow / application. This is simply a matter of dragging the necessary steps to the pane on the right.

The simplest version of the workflow uses three steps.

1. Get the files that you have selected
2. Copy them to a folder, so that your originals are not resized. I use a folder called 600px in my Pictures folder
3. Scale the copied files

The files and folders category has the first two steps you will need and the Photos section will have the resize step. Once you have completed dragging the steps across to the right side you should end up with a workflow that looks like this one below.

From this make sure to set the folder where the images will be copied to and resized, and also set the size you want images to be resized to. The scale images is quite simple and will actually resize images to be “600px” on their longest edge which might make them not always 600 pixels wide. Also the scale images will upsize any images where the longest edge is less than 600 pixels wide.

3. Save the application to the desktop

Now it’s a simple matter to save the workflow you created as an application on the desktop of your computer. To use the application, simply select one or more images in the finder and drag them on to the 600px application you have saved on the desktop. Then your resized images will be found in the 600px folder you told the application to copy the files to.

I use a couple of versions of this simple workflow on my desktop to deal with different sizes for blogs & presentations but they are all fast and simple to use.

Advanced resize

The simple three step application above works fine, but I use an enhanced version with more steps, to rename the files and also append an sRGB colour profile to them aswell, so my version has three extra steps as shown in bold below.

1. Get the selected finder items
2. Copy them to the 600px folder
3. Rename the file, appending -600px to the filename
4. Rename the file appending the time to the filename to ensure that the filenames should be unique
5. Scale the images
6. Apply the colour profile sRGB to the resized files

It’s easy to make the simple version and then open the application from the desktop and add in the extra steps if you like.

Modelling superstar Dave Clayton is the UK NAPP Evangelist and the photographer model in this picture from a previous post here, please stop by the UK division of the National Association of Photo Professionals (NAPP) site to find out more about NAPP in the UK.

The seminar is booking now at the Kelby Training Live site.

Brent Stirton – Rhino Wars

Congratulations also to Samuel Aranda for his overall win at this years World Press Photo awards.

Congratulations to all the winners, and to see the best pictures in all of the categories make sure to click the button below.

- World Press Photo -

You might well say that Brent is one of the Canon guys, and how pertinent that the Who are the Canon guys? question of just a few days ago also came from South Africa where the Rhino Wars story was photographed.

I was wondering, Nikon has Kelby and McNally, but who are our Canon ambassadors? Apart from yourself of course!

- Gary Vorster @garyvorster

They say flattery gets you everywhere, but this got me thinking; Who are the Canon guys? One of the first guys to come to mind was Syl Arena the author of possibly the most comprehensive Canon flash book ever – The Speedliters Handbook. Since Gary had mentioned ambassadors it also makes good sense to mention Canon Europe’s Ambassadors too. Then with a bit more thinking I recalled Canon USA’s Explorers of Light Program, and then…

New Speedlite videos on Canon Digital Learning Centre

Whilst on the Explorers of Light page I found this new series of videos from Canon USA’s Digital Learning Center. Featuring Explorer of Light Bruce Dorn there’s nine new videos showing the use of Speedlites indoors and out. Some show the use of simple equipment like the EOS 60D, could have been an EOS 600D, and Speedlites 270EX II and 320EX. Others go the whole way with Speedlite 580EX II and also triggering with pocket wizards. These videos were just put on the site a few days ago so you might not have seen them and they are worth a look if you’re trying to work out how to make more of your flash than simply put it on the camera hotshoe and hope.

Click here to see the Speedlite videos

http://www.learn.usa.canon.com/galleries/galleries/tutorials/environmental_portraits_with_speedlites.shtml

EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM

EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM

The standard lens for many professionals has long been the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM, this new model takes from the old and starts the 25th year of EOS with completely redesigned optics to provide outstanding clarity, image quality and added durability. One of the specific improvements is the performance at the 70mm setting where greater detail and less distortion are key characteristics.

Using it’s in-house optical technologies the new lens features two Ultra-low Dispersion (UD) and one Super UD aspheric elements to minimise chromatic aberration and colour blurring. In addition to the Super Spectra coating on each element the front and rear elements have been given the additional Fluorine coating that makes it much easier to remove dirt and fingerprints.

A ring UltraSonic Motor (USM) is used to drive the AF and it works in conjunction with a high performance CPU to deliver accurate, silent and responsive AF. Close focus is 0.38m the same as the old version. A new 9-blade aperture assembly should improve the bokeh over the old model’s 8-blade unit.

As an L-series lens the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM has been created to survive the harsher professional use with revised and strenghtened construction giving better resistance to shake and shock – the achilles heel of the old lens. Of course the lens offer the standard dust and weather sealing, yet all this has been acheived whilst making the lens some 10mm shorter in length.

EF 24mm f/2.8 IS USM & EF 28mm f/2.8 IS USM

EF 24mm f/2.8 IS USM

Canon claims these are the worlds first wide-angle prime lenses to feature optical Image Stabilizer (IS). Aimed at landscape and reportage photography the four stop stabiliser will allow handholding at shutter speeds that are simple ridiculous. The IS system detects panning movement and will switch the IS system in to mode-2 IS automatically. These two lenses both focus closer than the old non-IS versions at 0.2m (24mm lens) and 0.23m (28mm lens) and optical quality is a step up too with an aspherical glass moulded (GMo) lens element correcting aberration throughout the optical system. To improve the bokeh both lenses use a 7-blade aperture unit which yields soft background blur.

More images

Price???

I can’t help but think that the new lenses with IS and improved optical performance are going to be expensive, maybe signifiicantly more than the models they replace, just have to wait and see a little.

Making white walls grey

Light is hitting the wall, making it brighter

This is not that difficult but I have recently had several photographers ask me how to make small bright white spaces darker, so I thought to shoot some pictures in the all white studio that makes the walls somewhat darker. In the picture on the left, the light is hitting the white wall, but since the wall is some distance behind Bethany it’s rendered a darker shade. If the model is close to the wall then the wall is rendered brighter. So in the first instance, moving your subject away from the background will help you make the background darker.

Keeping the light away from the wall, makes it darker

To get much darker background you either need more distance or to control the direction of your lights so thay you avoid putting too much light on the wall. Depending on the light modifiers you can make the walls go completely black or shades of grey, even graduated grey if you like.

Flash, slow shutter speed and camera movement

I found that this is a technique that I only seem to use with my Speedlites – I don’t know why – so I wanted to make pictures with a combination of flash and slow shutter speeds plus deliberate camera movement. The modelling lights from the studio flash providing an additional light source for the duration of the exposure making the results different from those obtainable with Speedlites.

Camera panned during 0.6s exposure

Camera panned the other way

Making lens flare

Red and green gelled lights aimed across the lens to make flare

This might seem like a strange thing to do, since most of the time I’m in search of sharp contrasty images, but a bit of lens flare can make some pictures and it’s an effect that is actually quite hard to add in photoshop after the image is taken. The combination of colouration and softness that you can make happen with “determined effort” is something to experiment with.

Lights out of frame creating the softening & lens flare

Lens flare is caused by reflections of light from outside the frame being bouced of the lens elements and the image sensor. Typically using the correct lens hood will eliminate flare, but in this case I actually wanted to create some so I removed the hood from the lens and fired additional lights towards the camera and across the lens.

Silhouettes in blue

Gelled, but no grid

It seems crazy, you get great looking models and a studio full of kit and then you completely silhouette  the models and make the studio a shade of whatever gel you can find to put over the lights. In this case a blue gel was used, and the light is placed directly behind the model and aimed at the wall which is around 2 metres behind the model. You can use a grid on the light to narrow the beam of light and make a hotspot on the wall to further centre the subject. Some results have a character all of their own.

Grid added to light

So to the picture at the top of the post, that’s my mate Dave Clayton working on an idea of his own with model Bethany and some love heart sweets. It just so happened I had been shooting with the same lights earlier and remembered the trigger was on the same channel as the light above Dave’s head. I know for sure my picture is markedly different from anything Dave had captured using the same light. A change of position of the photographer often has a dramatic change in the image.

Larger images from this post

FY2011

• Gross profit ratio 48.8%, up from 48.1% in 2010
• Operating profit ration 10.6%, up from 10.5% in 2010

The results show that net sales for 2011 were 4% down on 2010, but this is including the effects from the Japanese earthquake and the floods in Thailand. Canon shows estimates for the results if these events hadn’t happened and it shows yet again more growth and profit. Somehow Canon has weathered the natural disasters well and the implementation of production reforms and technologies has improved the gross profit ratio particularly. Looking forward to 2012 Canon sees continued economic growth of the emerging markets (China & India), but the recovery of developed countries will take time. Canon plans to accelerate the launch of new products and services whilst enhancing it’s sales power with the goal of sales and profit growth that would overcome the appreciation of the Japanese Yen.

Digital SLR remains vital for consumer business

Canon’s business can be split in two three business areas; office, consumer and industrial. Cameras & ink-jet printers form the major element of the consumer business and in 2011 DSLR products account for 71% of the consumer business value with a projection that this will rise to 74% of the consumer business in 2012. The demand for DSLR cameras continued to show healthy growth across global markets, though demand for compact cameras was sluggish in the main developed markets. Whilst the quake and floods affected supplies Canon increased sales of key models like the EOS 600D, EOS 60D and EOS 5D Mark II. Continued growth in DSLR is forecast for 2012, though compact digital camera business looks to be flat in the developed countries.

Studying the depth of the reports I found that despite the tough conditions of 2011 the expenditure on R&D increased slightly to 8.7% of net sales, though this is possibly a factor more of the net sales dropping in value. For 2012 R&D expenditure remains at the 8.5% level, so let’s hope they spend the money on some great new camera developements in this 25th year of EOS .

More on Canon’s Investor Relations site.

The video of the session was also uploaded to youtube! Enjoy the video, it lasts 59 minutes and 37 seconds, plus I’m trying to be deliberate in my delivery knowing that for most of the people in the room, and online, English is not their first language…

Videos were shot with a combination of EOS 5D Mark II and EOS 7D to give two angles whilst interviewing, making the video more interesting than a straight to camera peice shot with only one camera. To travel light we opted to simply put the cameras on monopods and try not to sway too much!