Thomas Fitzgerald Photography

The much requested, often rumoured, previously promised firmware upgrade for the 5D Mark II is now available from the Canon website. From the release notes:

Firmware Version 2.0.3 incorporates five enhancements to the movie function and a fix to the manual sensor cleaning function of the EOS 5D Mark II camera.

Adds or changes the following movie frame rates.

NTSC:
1920×1080 : 30 fps (changed – actual 29.97 fps)
1920×1080 : 24 fps (added – actual 23.976 fps)
640×480 : 30 fps (changed – actual 29.97 fps)
PAL:
1920×1080 : 25 fps (added – actual 25.0 fps)
1920×1080 : 24 fps (added – actual 23.976 fps)
640×480 : 25 fps (added – actual 25.0 fps)

Adds a function for manually adjusting the sound recording level (64 levels).
Adds a histogram display (brightness or RGB) for shooting movies in manual exposure.
Adds shutter-priority AE mode (Tv) and aperture-priority AE (Av) mode to the exposure modes for shooting movies.
Changes the audio sampling frequency from 44.1 KHz to 48 KHz.
Fixes a phenomenon where communication between the camera and the attached lens is sometimes interrupted after manual sensor cleaning. (This phenomenon only affects units with Firmware Version 1.2.4.)

According to Philip Bloom, the update also ups the bit rate of video from 38mbits to around 44mbits. I’ll upgrade mine later today and give it a try if I get a chance. It will be great to have 25fps being from a PAL country.

Following up on my comments from the other day about the new Canon Rebel / 550D, DXO labs have run their tests on a pre-production model and the results are…..well, I think they speak for themselves:

“Yeah, but it’s got 18 megapixels maaaannnnn, that’s all that matters”

[UPDATE]
Just a quick point. I picked the D90 because it’s a camera that I know. Bear in mind that the D90 is two years old. I’m not trying to make this a Canon / Nikon thing. I own 3 DSLRs and two of them are Canons. I know test results aren’t everything either, but they do seem to match up with people’s experiences of other Cameras on there so I would give them a reasonable amount of credit.

Apple has finally launched Aperture 3. It’s been two years since the last version came out and this is a much needed upgrade. Apple certainly hasn’t been resting on its laurels however as this is a huge upgrade with over 200 new features. I’ve outlined some of my favourite new features over on my technology blog. I’ve just ordered my copy so as soon as I have it I’ll give it a proper try out. You can check out the full list of new features on Apple’s website, and I suggest you check out some of the cool “Aperture in Action” videos too.

I just don’t understand what the people at Canon are thinking any more. I really don’t. I’ve been a long time Canon user, and a long time fan, but I really do think they’ve lost the plot when it comes to product development. Today, I see in my RSS reader they’ve launched yet another Rebel. The Eos 550D (or Rebel T2i. ) is the latest in a long line of entry level DSLRs from Canon. My first ever DSLR was one of these. In fact it was the first Digital Rebel, or the EOS 300D as it was called over here in Europe. It was a great little camera and a breakthrough at the time. Lately Canon have been churning them out every year. To be honest it’s not really a segment of the market that interests me much any more. Having said that I am shocked by the 55OD

Why? Canon have chosen to put a 18 Megapixel Cropped APS-C sized sensor into this latest rebel. But wait, I hear you say, that’s brilliant. Already some over enthusiastic Canon fans are calling it a “Very Powerful Entry Level” camera. And, I suppose in some ways it would appear so, or at least it would if resolution was everything. But it isn’t. The 550D is an entry level camera. At the level of customer this is aimed at, 18 megapixels is completely and utterly pointless. No consumer level lens is ever going to be able to resolve the detail of that amount of pixels in such a small space. The only way to ever get sharp Images from this is to go out an buy L series lenses from Canon, the majority of which cost more than the price of this Camera. I’m sure people will tell me that the extra resolution will be great for cropping and zooming, but that’s bull, because you can’t crop in if the Image isn’t sharp to begin with. The other excuse you frequently hear is that the extra resolution will make up for lack of pixel level sharpness. But this is also bull. If your image is soft at 18 megapixels it’s still soft. It’s just soft in extra detail.

Instead of improving the quality of a lower resolution sensor, instead of creating cameras that suit its target market Canon, has chosen to compete on paper, on spec lists, and that’s a real shame. What’s even more of a shame is that it will probably work for them. People will think that they’re getting a bargain because they’re getting such a high resolution sensor for such a low price, but they’re going to have to spend far more to actually make use of it. In the end, people who are entering the world of Photography and want to learn are being done a great disservice by cameras like this. Already we’re starting to see bad habits and misinformation permeate the consciousness of the internet when it comes to Photography, perpetrated by fans of these high resolution cameras to make up for their gear’s shortcomings. Eager enthusiasts are being told that their pictures are supposed to be slightly soft, and that checking them at 100% for sharpness makes them a bad photographer. What’s next? Chromatic Aberration is a good thing? That unsightly purple fringing is “art”? Every time Canon crams more pixels into their sensors they lower the quality of the resulting image, and in the rush to embrace higher resolution, up and coming photographers are loosing out on the necessary skill to take technically critical images.

I know this sounds like a terrible rant, and it is. I know a lot of people will disagree with me, and that’s fair enough. Having said that DP Review already has sample images up and some look terrible. They look like the result you would expect from a digital compact. Shame on Canon for abandoning the principles of quality and perfection that many of us grew up respecting them for  in order to find the cheapest way to make sales. This camera will probably be a huge success, but that success will be a great disservice to the name of Photography.

[Updated to fix a few Typos]

(I know this is a touchy subject, and I appreciate a spirited discussion, but please keep it civil. Any rude, personally insulting comments etc will be deleted)

Shortly before Christmas in 2008 I started a little experiment. You see, for the longest time I had been a Canon shooter. I had been solely using Canon cameras since the days of film but I had become increasingly frustrated with my camera of the time and the way Canon was developing its products (rebel after rebel but no mid range replacement). Still, I had a significant investment in Canon lenses and accessories so I didn’t want to jump ship and then regret it. Instead I decided to buy a mid range Nikon and try it out before making any decisions on what to do. You can read about my original thoughts on why I was doing this on this post on my technology blog. It’s now a little over a year since I first got my D90, so how has this little experiment played out? Read on to find out.
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Canon has released an upgrade to it’s professional telephoto lens, the popular 70-200mm f2.8L IS USM adding a “II” to the already lengthy name. The new lens features a new optical design and new coatings to improve performance. It also decreases the minimum focussing distance. It’s scheduled to be released in April but price is not yet set. Expect it to be expensive.

(via Rob Galbraith)

Here are some more photographs taken with the 35mm f1.8. I have processed them and played around with some of them in Photoshop, so this is not strictly a lens test per se, but rather some real(ish) world examples. It’s the Photoshop equivalent of doodling I suppose. Anyway, enjoy!

(Also, I’ve been experimenting with some new techniques for posting images here, so If you think they look over sharpened please let me know. Thanks)

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Fish Tank at ISO 3200 from Thomas Fitzgerald on Vimeo.

I was in my families house on Christmas day and my sister has this amazing fish tank. I had my 5D with me but no tripod and I only had the one lens. Still, I’m really impressed with the way this came out. This was shot entirely hand held at ISO 3200. I was using the 24 to 105 so there was some stabilization. It wasn’t too wobbly, but I did use smoothcam on the first shot in FCP because it was a little too shaky, but the rest is straight out of the camera.

There’s some focus issues, because I was using it in low light with only the bare lcd to focus by. There’s also some diffraction off the glass and some flickering at the start because I didn’t have the shutter speed set to a multiple of 50. It’s not award winning by any stretch but still, it’s iso 3200, and there’s virtually no noise. I’m very impressed. Some of my previous attempts at ISO 3200 were nothing but noise. I guess it depends a lot on the subject matter.

I treated myself to a new Nikon 35mm f1.8 Lens for christmas and I took it out for a quick spin in the City today. I’ll have a full review in a day or two but for now just some quick first impressions and some Images. Overall, it’s a pretty sharp lens. Even at f 1.8 it’s sharp. Unfortunately it has one pretty big weakness. It has some severe fringing when used wide open and some pretty bad chromatic aberration too. The chromatic aberration you can live with as it’s reasonably easily removed in post but there’s not much you can do about the fringing. It’s like what you would expect on cheaper digital compacts. It’s a real shame because it’s a very sharp lens. Anyway, here are a few photos. I’ll post some more tomorrow. (I’m writing this pretty late so no large versions I’m afraid)

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I was going through my web statistics yesterday and I came across a very interesting query someone had entered into Google. The search request was “Are the Canon 5D focus problems real?” This is one of those subjects that causes much controversy on web forums. On the one hand both the 5D and especially the 5D Mark II (which I’ll just refer to as the 5D from now on) have some very strong and ardent fans. Any talk of problems with this camera are quickly derided as “you’re a crap photographer and you don’t know what you’re doing”. On the other hand some very experienced Photographers do stand up and point out that the 5D does have some major issues and focus is a big one of those. The problem is the signal to noise ratio around the debate on this is very low and it’s often very hard to discern facts from fanboyism. I have owned the 5D Mark II for some months now and its predecessor for several years, so to answer the question: “does it have focus problems?”

Unfortunately, yes it does.

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