Photography day off

No, not a day to avoid photography but a day of driving/walking/shooting!.

Decided that Friday (just gone) was one of these days. Couldn’t be bothered to turn in to my customers. To be honest it’s been very quiet on site and I could do with the rest. So I took a trip to the source of my water.

Elan Valley, mid Wales. Weather promised to be crap, turned out quite good really. A good mixture of Cloud/Sun/Wind.


Visited all 4 Dams, but went for a walk around the last one. Very nice day because no one was around. I had the whole hill to myself.
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Canon Eos 1D Mark III

Todays news!

Quite a decent upgrade, 10mp from 8.2, 10fps from 8.5. Burst mode 110 jpg 30 raw images. Digic III processing, 3inch screen and Live LCD view.

Retail price should be around the same as current 1D Mark IIn (RRP)price.

Canon have also upgraded the 580 Speedlite to the 580II and a new 16-35mm f/2.8 II.

PMA in vegas is the place to get your hands on the new goods.

Nothing else announced today. Seems the 1D(expensive one)/5D/30D upgrade will be along in September. Though I’d expect the 1D and 30D to be upgraded then. Personally cant see Canon upgrading 3 bodies in one go.

News items stolen from the Canon USA Website.

Canon EF1.4x Extender.

After a month or two with this extender I feel qualified enough to write a small review.

Overall very pleased with this extender. Currently i can only use it with my EF70-200 f/4. It drops a stop down to f/5.6 but it the lens is still very usable at this aperture.

This shot:

was taken in the rain on an Eos 5D EF70-200 f/5.6 1/320 iso 500 Focal length was 280mm.

I’ve found since purchase it tends to stay on my 70-200mm as I find the extra focal length better than losing it at the wider end. It compliments my existing 24-105 f/4 L IS as the wide end is 98mm. It should come in handy when I eventually purchase the 300mm f/4 L IS
Conclusion:

Superb accessory. No noticable loss of quality, a relatively low(ish) cost your get an extra .4 of a lens.

Canon EF15mm f/2.8 Review

Tiny is a word I would first describe the lens. O.k. not as small as the EF50 1.8, but then again what is?.The Lens itself has a solid feel about it. Metal base and hood. Barrel appears to be plastic. A few people on FredMiranda.com have complained about the lens cap or cover in this case. The cap is more like the top off a jam jar to be honest, still it needs to be. Any complicated clamp would make it difficult to use. It’s a simple slide on/off cap. It might wear in time, then I’ll probably complain about it then.So what’s it like then?

At 15mm it’s super wide, 180° viewing angle. So bearing this in mind you now have to think about another aspect of photography. Your body parts. After a brief period of time I’ve discovered how easy it is to get your fingers, arm and legs into a shot with the 15mm.

This lens was one of the first of the original EF lenses when the system was introduced back in 1987. So don’t expect ultra fast USM focusing. In fact the AFD motor takes me back to my old Sigma 28-80. Noisy is the word!

The focusing range is from 0.2 metre to 1 metre (then infinity). So focusing is quite fast. However because of the wide angle, most of the focus points in the centre would be too far and hence it would be focusing on infinity most of the time. So I have found manual focusing on this lens to be much easier. In fact leaving it set to 1 metre and f/8 would give me a range of 0.5m to infinity.

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