Black Tern in flight alongside Hwy. 49, Horicon National Wildlife Refuge, Mayville, Wis. | Canon 7D and 400mm f/4 DO IS lens | Exposed 1/1600 sec. @ f/4, ISO 400 (neutral EV)

A Brief History of “Back-focus”

Last weekend I was at Horicon National Wildlife Refuge and experienced some focus problems with my Canon 7D heretofore non-existent, or so I thought.  Upon reviewing photographs from the 7D from the past several months, I noticed that none of them were actually as sharp as they could have been.  I attributed the softness to the lack of acutance in the files, and while I continue to believe that is an inherent property of cramming 18 megapixels into an APS-C format sensor, there was a real problem in play.

I didn’t want to believe that it could be a question of the camera “back-focusing” (or front-focusing) because I’ve grown to distrust people’s claims that their camera, and not their own inabilities, are to blame for their out-of-focus photographs.  I don’t remember these claims from the film days.  Perhaps I was just oblivious to the complaints, but I tend to believe that the instant feedback of the digital camera is partly to blame for the knee-jerk reaction that anything wrong with the pictures must be camera, not operator, error.

I will not mince words: ever since the Canon 10D and the Nikon D70, there’s been a lot of bitching and moaning in online forums about back-focused images, and I did not believe them.  At all.  Until now.

Now, I will argue that there is definitely operator error to blame in most many cases of complaints about back-focusing.  Last weekend I was convinced that I must have chosen the wrong focus point or didn’t have the AF locked by holding in the rear button–some prefer AF to only be activated by using the back button, I prefer AF to only be turned off if I hold in the back–and allowed AI Servo (Continuous AF for Nikonians) to screw up the focus.  To confirm my assumption, the next day I took test photographs in the garden around my parents house in Racine, Wis. and was shocked to discover that none of them were sharp.  Sure, the wind was to blame in a couple cases, but even when conditions were perfectly still the results were poor, so I rented a LensAlign from Lensrentals.com to investigate whether front or back-focus was to blame.

And what did I find after I unpacked and set up the LensAlign?  The 7D and the 5D Mark II both back-focused with the 400mm DO IS lens.  Well, there goes the neighborhood.  And a lot of preconceived ideas, with it.

Post continues after the jump! Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: birds, EOS 5D Mark II, EOS 7D, equipment, LensAlign, nature, Reviews, wildlife
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Canada Goose on Dike Road, Horicon National Wildlife Refuge, Mayville, Wis. | Canon 7D and 400mm f/4 DO IS lens | Exposed 1/320 sec. @ f/4, ISO 1250

On a Sunday outing to Horicon National Wildlife Refuge, I ran into some of my first real frustrations with the Canon 7D.  While I’ve used it with the 400mm DO lens in the past, I was having tremendous difficulty getting photographs that I thought were in crisp focus.  Now, in all fairness, I’ve never thought that the images from the 7D were as crisp as they could be, even if they were still in sharp focus.  That is that the image acutance, or the contrast between individual pixels, is just not as high as other semi-pro or professional camera bodies, such like the 5D Mark II or 1D Mark III.  I believe this to be a function of Canon’s misguided decision to cram 18 megapixels into an APS-C sensor.  I would have been happy with 10-12 megapixels for a camera like this.  But I digress.

LensAlign Pro

The problem I encountered was not a question of not enough acutance–which would be corrected by sharpening in Lightroom or Photoshop–but many of the photographs were simply not in focus.  Before sending the camera to Canon for a fix, I compared its performance to my 5D Mark II as well as another 7D body from my dad.  The difference?  Night and day.

Tweaking the camera’s autofocus microadjustment panel seems to be the obvious answer.  Today, in an attempt to correct the problem, I tinkered with the 7D’s microadjustment with the 400mm lens and it would seem that the solution likely lies in that menu, but I am ill-equipped to calibrate the lens focus.  Enter LensRentals.com and the Lens Align.  While the professional LensAlign is $180, it’s available from LensRentals for an entire week for only $15.  It should get here Wednesday, and I will have an article reviewing this product and explaining its use after I get my 7D back in order.

Tags: birds, EOS 7D, equipment, problems, wildlife
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Bride and groom and a chimp at the Lakefront, Shoop Park, Racine, Wis. | Canon 7D and 400mm f/4 DO IS lens | Exposed 1/1600 sec. @ f/4, ISO 200.

A Sequence

My dad and I went down to Shoop Park in Racine, Wis. late this afternoon in hopes of getting some photographs of birds in flight.  Indeed, there were some Common Terns and Caspian Terns in addition to the usual mix of Herring and Ring-billed Gulls.

But the most interesting discovery was a couple having their post-wedding portrait taking on an old pier parallel to the one we were standing on.  I made a few pictures of them, and was amused by the interaction between the bride and groom, as well as their photographer who went from paying attention to them to chimping!

Tags: EOS 7D, photojournalism, sequence
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Switronix video remote for 5D Mark II and 7D - Photo copyright Switronix

Preamble

Yesterday, while browsing through my e-mail, I came across as ad that highlighted the use of the Switronix FLEX DSLR remote to trigger the recording of video on either the Canon 5D Mark II or the Canon 7D.  I was puzzled, at first, by why such a device was even necessary, before realizing that it clamps onto some of the shoulder and waist-mount rigs for video cameras that make reaching for the “video start” button on the camera awkward.

The FLEX remote uses a semi-rigid cable to go in front of either camera’s infrared sensor that was designed for use with Canon’s own infrared remote, but those are just for still photos, right?

Wrong.

History

I still have my trusty Canon RC-1, recently discontinued after close to two decades of production.  It was introduced by Canon in 1991 with the EOS Elan (EOS 100 outside of North America), and became a feature of the Elan series (the Elan II and the Elan 7 also used this remote) and some bodies in the Rebel series.

The remote works just like a cable release, but without the cable.  What made it particularly slick was that it gave the photographer the choice of tripping the shutter immediately, or after a two-second delay.  The Elan, like many cameras in its class, didn’t have a built-in two-second delay, only a ten-second count-down timer.  The remote, in effect, added a feature to the camera.  Suddenly, the only reason to have a cable release was for locking the shutter open in a bulb exposure.

Canon RC-1 Infrared Remote Control

I can recall John Shaw commenting incredulously at a seminar held in Milwaukee  in the mid-90′s that Canon made a cool remote control, but for some reason only made it available on one or two consumer cameras, but not on their professional bodies.

When digital cameras came along, in typical Canon fashion, they made this useful tool only available for the lower-end Rebel series.  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Canon?

While it’s still not compatible with the 1D series cameras, Canon finally made the remote control work with the 5D Mark II and the 7D, and incorporated an interesting trick.

A Remote for Video as well as Stills

The RC-1, and its replacement, the RC-6, can be used with either camera for still photography.  Switch the drive mode to the countdown/remote mode (either 10 seconds or two seconds) and click the button on the remote.  But, if you switch to movie mode (Live View with video enabled on the 5D Mark II), its functionality changes.

The standard photo mode trips the shutter for a photo during video recording.  Setting the remote control to the “2″ mark (for a two-second delay) activates (or deactivates) video recording. Cool.

If you don’t own a remote control but have a 5D Mark II or a 7D, I would suggest owning a remote; the video functionality is just the icing on the cake to a versatile and convenient accessory. And don’t worry about the batteries: I’m still in my first set. From 1991.

Tags: EOS 5D Mark II, EOS 7D, video
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MKT Trail (Draft One) from David Kennedy. (Note: video defaults to 1080P playback, so if it loads too slowly, turn HD off)

This morning I showed my Picture Story class what is really my first draft of a video and photographic essay the MKT Nature and Fitness Trail in Columbia, Mo.  The nine-mile trail connects to the state-wide Katy Trail in McBaine, Mo.

This is in rough form, unfortunately, because the past couple of weeks have been consumed by my proposed project to fulfill the requirements of the M.A. program here at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.  Before I begin work on that project, which will take me back to Lake Michigan, I will be working to improve this essay.  Foremost, I plan to speak with Brett Dufur, author of The Complete Katy Trail Guidebook, as well as Columbia’s former mayor, Darwin Hindman, who was a champion of projects like the MKT Trail and Stephens Lake Park.

That said, if you have any other suggestions for people to talk to whose voice would strengthen this piece, I am all ears, so to speak!

Tags: EOS 5D Mark II, EOS 7D, MKT Trail, nature, video
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Panning blur, MKT Trail, Columbia, Mo. | Canon 7D and 100mm f/2.8 Macro lens; exposed 1/6 sec. @ f/8, ISO 400.

Yesterday, while gathering some video and making images of the “real” nature offered to the people of Columbia along the MKT Trail (vis-a-vis the artificial nature at Stephens Lake Park), I made an unintentional panning blur.  Hand-held.  And it didn’t suck.  As Artie Morris would say, “you gotta love it!”

Normally, the trick to and panning blur is to have the camera on a tripod and to slowly pan downwards.  This is hard to do on a ball head, but easy to do if you have  a big lens mounted on a Wimberley or other gimbal-style head, or if you’re using a video head.

Usually, the hardest part is going slowly enough on the pan that you get the effect that you want, but not so slow that it just looks out of focus!  Start with a shutter speed of 1/15 second and slow down from there.  In this example, my exposure compensation in aperture priority brought me to 1/6 sec. before I even realized it–I just heard the slow shutter and cursed under my breath.  Only when I looked at it did I jump for joy.  Then I tried making more blurs, and they all failed!  Again, you gotta love it.

Tags: EOS 7D, MKT Trail, nature, panning blurs, pictorial
Posted in MKT Trail | 2 Comments »

Stephens Lake Park: A Green Oasis on Broadway from David Kennedy on Vimeo.

Well, just when you think you’re finished with something, people remind you that you aren’t.  Yesterday, while I was choking on the seeds in some home-made bread, my picture story class attempted to watch the last draft of my essay on Stephens Lake Park.  I say that they attempted to do so because, as much as I love my hosting provider (BlueHost), I don’t have access to a streaming server, and the process of loading the minute and a half video took close to ten minutes.  Yikes.

A lot of people in my program have been posting their final videos on the hosting service Vimeo.  For a while, I didn’t understand why: the video is great, yes, but there are ads for Vimeo all over it, and the only way to watch the videos in High Definition is on their Web site–it cannot be embedded.  No one told me an account where you don’t have to deal with any of its (few) shortcomings was available for only $60 for a year!

In any event, I received some very good feedback, particularly from David Rees, Calin Ilea, Lillian Kelly, and Vivian Esparza.  While I’m fine with other people introducing textual information into their documentary presentations using “text slides”–black slides with white text–I’m usually trying to avoid it for my own work.  However, with some healthy dialogue and also a touch of arm twisting, I was convinced that the introductory sequences of the video needed to be changed.  I think that this is, finally, “it” for the Stephens Lake Park piece.

Tags: Broadway Project, EOS 5D Mark II, EOS 7D, Stephens Lake Park, video
Posted in Broadway Project | 2 Comments »

While I was “officially” finished with my contribution to the class’ Broadway project on Wednesday when I turned into my professor, David Rees, a disc with my “second draft” of the video, I was still not quite satisfied with it. The timing of a few things was still off.

On Thursday, I posted a third version of the video, and received some more feedback from it both in person and through a comment on the post, and took those into consideration. I was also unhappy with the color of certain clips in the video, and adjusted those within Adobe Premiere. Finally, I went back to Stephens Lake Park for one more “walk around,” which was also my last opportunity to experiment with the Canon 35mm f/1.4L lens. The result is a little tighter, with better matching between audio and visual components.

I consider this a finished piece, but am still more than happy to hear comments and suggestions.

Tags: Broadway Project, Canon 35mm 1.4L, EOS 5D Mark II, EOS 7D, Stephens Lake Park, video
Posted in Broadway Project, Picture Story | 4 Comments »