Tag Archives: Canon

Extreme Packaging for a Cap

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When I bought my EOS R3s, they had a cap on the hot shoe to weatherproof it. I found the cap was very easily dislodged so I ended up putting some gaffer tape on them to hold them in place. When the R1 and R5 Mk II were released, a new cap was introduced which had a locking mechanism built in. I decided to get a couple of these since they would also fit the R3. They only cost a little over $20 but, when they arrived, I was amazed to see the large box and the high-quality bag that was included for something so simple. How much of the price for the cap was for the box and bag?

This Stabilization is Amazing

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Another episode in the testing of the RF 200-800 for today’s post.  This is more focused on the image stabilization in the lens.  When shooting stills, I have commented on the slightly odd jerking effects visible in the viewfinder.  I think this is most apparent when panning very slowly and I think the camera is trying to work out if you mean to stay still or not.  However, one area which is really effective at showing the capabilities of the stabilization is video.

I have some footage below that is taken with the lens at 800mm and hand held.  No tripod or monopod here.  The rabbit was at the other end of our back yard while the bees were on the lavender plants in our beds.  You can see that the image is remarkably stable.  It is amazing to see it lock on so well.  I have also shot some video of an F-35B in the hover, also at 800mm.  It was interesting to see a lot of movement in the viewfinder for a moment and then it seemed to lock in on what it was doing and then things get really solid.  This tech is most impressive.

The Hummers Are a Quick Test for the New Lens

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One of the things that I knew would be a limitation of the RF 200-800 was the aperture which is a lot smaller than for really expensive lenses (yes, it is also expensive but not in the tens of thousands type of expensive).  In low light, this is going to be an issue and it would be interesting to see how things worked out.  When I got home with it, I was sitting on the deck when some hummingbirds started feeding on the flowers in one of our beds.  This area is in shade a lot of the time so light was limited.  I was rather pleased with the effectiveness of the focus, the sharpness at full zoom and the relatively limited noise related issues from the R3.  This is a combination that looks like it could be quite useful for a wide variety of occasions.  Not the solution for everything but definitely versatile.

Initial Impressions of the RF 200-800

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When Canon announced the RF 200-800 lens, I was mildly interested but not too bothered by it.  However, in an example of how easily a weak mind can be influenced, when I watched some reviews by those that had used the lens, I started to be more curious.  The focal length range was always of interest, but the aperture range had initially put me off.  The reviewers suggested that the excellent ISO performance of modern mirrorless cameras meant this wasn’t an issue.  Also, while not in anyway cheap, the lens was very well priced for the range it offered.

I went to my local shop and placed a deposit for one of the lenses.  This was many months ago.  After that, things got very quiet.  I was beginning to think that I would never see an actual lens.  Then I saw something on a Canon rumor site that said August was likely to be a time when a lot of lenses got delivered.  Whatever the blockage had been, there seemed to be some relief.  The last Tuesday of July (stuff seems to get delivered to stores on Tuesday I guess), I get a phone call telling me that my lens has arrived.  Hurrah!

After work, I headed down to pick it up.  I then headed down to the water in Kenmore – a short distance from the store – to give it a quick go.  I didn’t have a lot of time, but I got a quick feel for some of its quirks.  Initially I was a little unsettled.  The stabilization seemed very effective, but it did make tracking things that were moving slowly a bit jerky as if the stabilization didn’t believe that I actually wanted to be moving.  I worried that this would be an issue.  However, the images seemed to be rather sharp so maybe it knew what it was doing.

When I got home, I did spend a little time looking at the hummingbirds on the bushes.  The light was very low, which should be a problem for a lens with smaller apertures, but it seemed to work very well and the images were surprisingly sharp and clean.  I then took it to its first airshow.  Again, results were really very pleasing.  The 800mm reach was so helpful since the show line was quite distant and I was veery happy with the framing I could get.  The jumpiness in the viewfinder is still something I find rather distracting but it doesn’t seem to be an issue for the images, so I guess the stabilization knows what it is doing.  I also shot some video at 800mm handheld and, while there was initial wobbling, there comes a moment when it seems to get what is going on and then it is rock steady.  Quite bizarre.  I think this lens could be a key part of my shooting going forward.  We shall see as my experience grows with it.

Focus Stacking With The Camera’s Help

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One of the functions that my new camera has built in is a focus stacking function.  I know this is not unique to this camera but it is a first for me so I was keen to play with it.  The mode, when enabled, allows you to set how many shots you want taken and set a scale for how close the focus points will be to each other.  You then pick you initial focus point and set it off and it takes the sequence of shots incrementing the focus slightly between each one.

The resulting stack of images can then be processed in Photoshop to get the focus stacked output.  This is so much nicer than making minor focus adjustments by hand between shots.  The sequence gets created really quickly.  I also was able to do reshoots easily.  On one of the sequences, I had left it on auto ISO so it shot at a really high ISO level.  I could reshoot with the ISO set low (tripod mounting means this was not a problem) in no time at all.  (As an aside, the focus stacking algorithm actually seems to do a good job of reducing noise as well.)

I experimented with how fine a scale to use.  Initially, I was taking way too many shots with very little movement through the image so I coarsened up the scale a bit.  The nice thing was, if it didn’t go all through the range, I could just hit the shutter again and it would keep going.  Photoshop chunked through the processing pretty well.  I was shooting a few things but also experimented with some coins on my desk.  Not the most original subject but one that shows the result well unlike the other things I was shooting.  The software seemed to struggle a little on some of the coin edges so maybe a finer shoot next time or maybe I should just hand blend those bits.

Giving the R3 A Workout At Nellis

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I had given the R3 a couple of trips out before I headed to Nellis.  I had shot it at BFI and at Juanita Bay.  However, my trip to Nellis was the first time it was going to really be given a serious blast with constant shooting and varying conditions.  How would it perform and could it be the camera for me for the next few years?

First, I should point out that I have not yet had a proper investigation of the various functions of the camera and how to configure it.  Consequently, I was not using it in the best way I could but was instead experimenting with it as I went.  So, given that limitation (of me, not necessarily the camera), how did it go?  Overall, things were very impressive.  Let’s start with the simple things.

Battery life was really good.  I shot a little late on the first night, all of the second day and the beginning of the third on one battery.  I had spares with me but the battery life, while maybe not as long as for the 1DXII, was still very good.  It is also a nice thing that I can recharge with a USB-C charger if I need to which means not taking the large battery charger with me.

Autofocus was very impressive.  When things are a long way off, it is still guessing at what to look at and that is something I need to investigate.  However, it seemed to recognize planes very early on and then track them very effectively.  The ability to let it track a target allowed me to worry about composition far more than I used to with center point focus.  I could move planes to the edge of the frame to get a wingman in and still have focus working well.

Exposure was okay.  I have the viewfinder set up to give me the exposure simulation which is handy for understanding what the camera is seeing.  This helped me out once when I have managed to change the ISO to 800 by accident.  Not sure how I did that but I was able to notice it quickly.  However, I am not so sure about how quickly it adjusts as conditions change.  Moving from a cloudy background to blue sky provides a rapid change that the camera needs to accommodate and it sometimes seemed a little slow to work it out.  When shooting raw, your have some latitude to adjust afterwards, of course.

Handling was good.  It felt good in the hands and I am wondering whether I will miss the hand grip I have used in the past.  The controls are good.  The smart controller is neat but it does get adjusted a lot without realizing.  I also am so used to using center focus that I sometimes assume that I have to keep the subject in the same space to keep it in focus, not realizing that I can re-center things with the camera following things.  I did struggle to work out how to chance the card that I was using.  I found a way but it was not as simple as for the 1DXII.

Image stabilization is something that is causing me a lot of trouble.  It isn’t the performance of the stabilization.  That is really impressive.  What I am struggling with is that the stabilization switches on and then stays on.  I can put the camera down for a while and I can still hear the IS motors in the lens whirring away.  Eventually they switch off but this seems like it is really chewing battery life.  I have tweaked a few things to reduce it but, on the 1DXII, the IS would switch off after  about 20 seconds.  Why it this happening?  Again, this may be my failing but I would like to understand why it happens and try to switch it off.

Frame rate is very impressive.  I rarely switched it up to the 30fps setting.  15fps was blasting through the cards at a prodigious rate as it was so no need to make things any worse.  I have the audio shutter turned on so I have something to remind me when I am taking too many shots and to hopefully keep things under control.  However, while the frame rate may notionally be similar to the 1DXII, it consistently hits it which does result in a lot more photos than I was used to.  More culling to come I guess.

Having the ability to connect to my iPad and phone is a real benefit.  I used to just have this with the M6 and I really liked that.  Being able to connect to the R3 gives me a lot of flexibility.  I was able to send a few shots to a friend while out in the field.  I will use this sporadically but it is definitely a good capability to have.

Overall, it was a great experience.  I had two bodies with me but I focused on shooting with the one R3 and the other body, a 1DXII, stayed in the bag almost all of the time.  I had it ready in case but didn’t end up using it.  At no point during the time there did I think about reverting.  I do still have a few tweaks to work out with how to set the camera up but it was a very positive experience.  I think that this camera might be the one for me.

First Experience With The R3

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My 1DXII bodies have been doing sterling work for the last five or so years and continue to be reliable.  In the interim, the camera world has made a shift from SLR technology to mirrorless.  Canon was a slow starter in this space but has since got in to gear.  I am not an early adopter and waited until something came along that really appealed to me.  The R3 body was that thing.  It combines the latest of the mirrorless technology with a body like the 1D series and the associated great battery life.  It was enough to make me take the plunge.

Getting one was a different story.  I ordered one in the fall of 2021.  I wanted to get one first to work with it and make sure it was the thing for me before committing to a pair of them.  Recently, I got the call that my body had finally come in.  I was very excited to try it out.  I then got a call from the store within an hour of the first saying that the second body was on.  I had ordered this much later with the intent of knowing whether I was happy or not before it showed up.  I decided to defer it and see how things went.  I think the credit card was pleased with that decision too!

I have now had a week of playing with it having shot some aviation and some wildlife.  I have not really had a chance to dig deep yet so this is just first impressions.  Overall, it is really impressive.  The ergonomics are familiar after years of shooting with 1D bodies.  However, the controls are more complex and things are not identical so I am taking a while to get comfortable with where everything is.  This will probably take me a while.

Battery life has been very good.  I was expecting it to be worse than the 1DXII but it seems to have stood up to a lot of shooting with tons of life left.  New batteries don’t hurt of course and we shall see how things play out.  The small megapixel bump is fine but it really is barely noticeable compared to the 1DXII.  24Mp versus 20Mp might sound like a big increase but when you look at the linear pixel count it is only a small increase.

Autofocus is amazing and confusing.  Its ability to pick up targets and then track them across any part of the image is fantastic.  It seems to have very good accuracy and I am liking the shots I am getting.  Eye detection on wildlife is spookily good.  However, I don’t yet know how to control the autofocus properly.  There are so many ways to customize things that I have yet to understand.  For example, I haven’t yet worked out how to make it focus on a center spot only like my old setup.  Most of the time, the clever stuff is more useful but there are odd times when you want it to do something simple.  With small subjects or cluttered backgrounds, this can be important.

I also have to get used to pressing the button when I pick up the camera.  I am used to looking through the viewfinder to sight a subject before pushing anything but the viewfinder shuts off after a while and needs to be woken up.  It would be good if that could be done with some motion sensing (maybe it can and I haven’t found it yet).

I have tried the eye control a little.  It seems to work pretty well.  Calibration with my glasses was fine and the contract lenses were okay too but I have put that to one side for now while I leaned to understand a whole bunch of other functions of the camera.  I have also connected it to my phone and iPad which has been a handy thing to do.  I did briefly experience with the automatic focus stacking which seemed to work well and I shall try more of that in due course.  I haven’t tried any video yet at all.

I have had to change my cards and card readers since both of the card types are new to me.  That was a nuisance but not the end of the world.  I actually bought them a while back so I wouldn’t have to worry about it now.  I got the 24-105 lens in the RF mount.  My old 24-105 was a bit beaten up and the image quality was not strong so a replacement seemed like a good idea.  They had been as rare as rocking horse poo but fortunately were in stock when I went in so I got one.  I also have the convertor for my other lenses and they seem to be working extremely well.  The combination with in body stabilization has improved them too and I find some of the tracking of moving subjects in the viewfinder easier than it used to be – something which I attribute to the IBIS.

Overall, I am happy so far.  Definitely some things to work on understanding.  At the time of writing (versus publishing), I am about to go on a trip when I shall shoot a lot of planes.  This will be a big test but the initial experience makes me think it should go well.  The camera tracks the cockpit of planes like the eyes of a bird so I am feeling confident it will be good.  I think the conversion to mirrorless is going to be complete for me based on what I have seen so far but within the next month, I should know whether it will work for me or not.

Lens Envy

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Camera gear is always something that you can find a better and more expensive version of.  However, you really feel like an amateur when you go up against the TV guys.  There were a few camera locations I passed by when shooting at Ridge.  They were using these huge Canon zoom lenses.  They would be a bit of a nuisance to carry around and cost more than I care to think about but you still feel a little envious.

Going Mirrorless

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Being late to the party is something that I make a habit of.  You could also be more optimistic and say that I am not an early adopter.  A number of friends and colleagues have added a mirrorless body to their collection of gear and I have followed suit.  I am perfectly happy with the performance of my SLRs.  This was to add something rather than replace something.  The primary interest was in size and convenience.  There are times when lugging the heavy bodies around is just inconvenient.

I went with an EOS M6.  I did consider going with a different manufacturer but using other equipment I already have was one factor.  Another was that this camera gave me an option I was quite keen on.  It has a screen for use while shooting but it also has an optional viewfinder to slot into the hot shoe.  This was discounted to only $11 when I bought the camera.  I like a viewfinder hit am okay with a screen.  Nancy, on the other hand, does not like screens so the viewfinder can be brought along if required and will make her happier to use the camera.

So far my experience with it has been very good.  Image quality has been fine, the controls are good and let me make adjustments without needing to enter menus.  The flippy screen is really handy and the kit lens fits plenty of needs.  The app that works with it is also pretty handy which gives a few options I wish the SLR could match!  The time lapse functionality is good too.  I have not tested it fully with my range of lenses and will do so at some point.  However, for what I bought it for, it is doing the trick nicely.