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.

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Content © 2010 David Kennedy | Permalink | 2 comments | Reviews: birds, EOS 5D Mark II, EOS 7D, equipment, LensAlign, nature, Reviews, wildlife

Derelict sailboat, Pugh Marina, Racine, Wis. | Canon 5D Mark II and Lensbaby Composer | Exposed 1/80 sec. @ f/4, ISO 200 (-1 1/3 EV)

On Saturday evening my dad and I went down to Pugh Marina in hopes of catching a moonrise.  But as we got to the lake, we saw a heavy haze on the horizon above Lake Michigan, and the hopes for a moonrise dimmed.  However, I took advantage of the fleeting golden-hour light to walk into a normally gated area at the marina that used to be chock full of derelict boats.  Evidently, the marina has been getting rid of them, because the gate was wide open (it actually has been for days–I just finally took the initiative to walk over to it) and only three remain.  I’m 99% certain that if you dropped this boat into the lake it would just sink.

In my last post about the Lensbaby I was hesitant to recommend it.  I will say that, after using the Lensbaby Composer some more, it does have a learning curve and I think the hardest thing to know is when to use which aperture with this lens.  This is especially true as you have to manually insert and remove the aperture “blades” (washers), and since it’s a rental I don’t want to risk carrying them around and losing them!  What I am slowly discovering is that I like this lens with a little more depth of field than it has wide open or even at “f/2.8.”  The image above was captured at f/4, and I think I may try f/5.6 in my next experiment.  Food for thought.

Content © 2010 David Kennedy | Permalink | 2 comments | Reviews: EOS 5D Mark II, equipment, Lensbaby Composer, Reviews

I am currently in the process of properly calibrating the focus on my Canon lenses using the LensAlign system I rented after some recent frustrations with back-focusing while using the Canon 7D and 400mm DO IS lens.  At the same time, I am also experimenting with a Lensbaby Composer that I rented to round out the order. It offers the complete opposite of what I am seeking for my other lenses: fuzziness.  In fact, its effect is akin to a zoom blur, only far more consistent in its results than zooming a telephoto lens while dragging the shutter could ever be!

Mom walking out the front door, Racine, Wis. | Canon 5D Mark II and Lensbaby Composer | Exposed 1/320 sec. @ f/2.8, ISO 1600 (-2/3 EV)

One of the first things I noticed when using this lens is that its color rendition on my 5D Mark II left something to be desired.  I was prepared for and expected to have fun with the highly-selective focus / blurry nature of the Lensbaby, but I did not want wonky color to be a part of the experience.  As I wrote earlier this year, the X-Rite Colorchecker Passport can be an incredibly useful tool when a camera and lens combination is not yielding the kind of color that you expect.  Have two bodies and want similar color?  Profile both of them in the same lighting condition.

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Content © 2010 David Kennedy | Permalink | One comment | Reviews: EOS 5D Mark II, equipment, Lensbaby Composer, Reviews

Flying over Memphis | Panasonic G1 and Olympus 9-18mm f/4-5.6 ED lens; exposed 1/640 sec. @ f/8, ISO 100.

Oh, to have a wide-angle lens for the G1!  Thanks to Olympus and to David Rees, the department chair of the photojournalism sequence at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, I have a 9-18mm f/4-5.6 ED lens for my Micro Four-Thirds format for testing.

This lens is the only alternative to Panasonic’s 7-14mm f/4 wide-angle zoom, which is, unfortunately, ridiculously expensive.  Not that the Olympus zoom is inexpensive.  I’ll have more thoughts as the summer progresses.

Content © 2010 David Kennedy | Permalink | One comment | Updates: equipment, Lumix G1, Olympus 9-18mm, Reviews

American Robin, Peace Park, Columbia, Mo. | Canon 7D and 300mm f/4L lens; exposed 1/200 sec. @ f/4, ISO 1600

I have owned the Canon EOS 7D for a few months now; I purchased one in November 2009.  One of the concerns I had with the 7D, at least initially, was that the files simply did not seem sharp “enough” at higher ISO’s because of the noise degrading the image quality.  And I do believe that, in the case of basketball arenas and other dark situations where, frankly, “exposing to the right” to get a good histogram (and a good exposure) means cranking up the ISO to 4000, the quality certainly does go down.  However, that’s true even of the oft-touted Nikon D3.  And I don’t necessarily give the camera its fairest chance in those situations, because I prefer to use f/4 telephotos.  Why?  They’re smaller, they’re lighter, and they cost less.  They cost less now, and they will cost me less in the future because I won’t need an artificial shoulder or knees like some of my colleagues when we all grow older.

This past Saturday, I found myself crawling around Peace Park with the 7D and the 300 in order to make this series of a Robin spitting out a berry.  One of the things that pleased me greatly was that, as the light got dimmer and I resorted to higher ISO’s, the detail was held solidly from my ISO 1600 frames.  How well?  Below is a 100% crop of the head and bill detail:

100% Pixel Detail. No noise reduction or sharpening applied.

Note that this is before processing the image with any noise reduction plugins, such as Noiseware or Noise Ninja.  Neither has this sample been sharpened!  Not bad.  Not bad at all…

For outdoors use, the 7D should prove to be a very capable camera indeed.

Content © 2010 David Kennedy | Permalink | Comment! | Reviews: birds, EOS 7D, high ISO, Reviews, wildlife

Missouri women's basketball forward Jessra Johnson, left, fails to prevent Oklahoma's center, Abi Olajuwon, from making a two point shot on Wednesday, 20 Jan. 2010 at Mizzou Arena in Columbia, Mo. Olajuwon wears the same number as her father, Hakeem "The Dream" Olajuwon, from his college career. The Tigers lost 61-62 to the Sooners. | Canon 1D IIn and 50mm f/1.4 lens; exposed 1/1250 sec. @ f/1.4, ISO 800. | Color corrected with X-Rite Color-checker Passport.

The Set-up

Last Wednesday I found myself sitting on the court at Mizzou Arena in Columbia, Mo. with two different camera bodies and three different lenses.  So, what’s the problem?  The 7D and the 1D Mark IIn see colors differently.  Add to the equation that the glass in a lens affects the color rendered in the final photograph.  For newspaper photography, usually captured in JPEG instead of RAW, this is just something you would normally “live with.”

Maybe you’d just take two identical bodies and figure no one will notice the difference once its printed on Charmin, any ways.  But online, the differences can be stark.  Take, for instance, this Columbia Missourian slideshow where I was using my 7D and a 1D Mark III on loan from CPS, but my colleague Chris Dunn was using an older D2Xs body at the football game between MU and Kansas State.  This is an extreme example, but it is amusing to watch Kansas State’s jerseys suddenly jump from purple to blue depending on which camera was used.  Hint: Nikon didn’t figure out what purple “looked” like until the D3 and D300 came out.

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Content © 2010 David Kennedy | Permalink | Comment! | Columbia Missourian, Reviews: basketball, color management, EOS 1D Mark II N, EOS 7D, photojournalism, Reviews, sports, X-Rite Color-checker Passport

Les Bourgeois Winery, Rocheport, Mo. Canon 7D and 16-35mm f/2.8 L II lens @ 16mm; exposed 1/500 sec. @ f/14, ISO 400

A belated Happy Thanksgiving to American readers of this blog.  Here in Columbia, Mo., the weather has been ridiculously warm, with today reaching 71 degrees Fahrenheit.  The past few days have been fairly relaxing–a welcome reprieve from the rest of the semester.  I have mostly been using the 7D to continue my evaluation of the body.

Of particular interest to me was the usefulness of the new built-in wireless transmitter for the Canon speedlite system, shadow noise, and live-view functionality.

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Content © 2009 David Kennedy | Permalink | One comment | Reviews, Updates: Canon, EOS 7D, equipment, Reviews

Fans wave glow sticks on the balcony of the Blue Note at the start of the Bassnectar concert, fashioned to be like a rave party, on Friday, Nov. 20, 2009 in Columbia, Mo. / Canon 7D and 24-70mm f/2.8 L lens @ 24mm; exposed 1/8 sec. @ f/2.8, ISO 4000.

Last Friday I was assigned by Vox Magazine to go to a pseudo rave at a Bassnectar concert held at the Blue Note, a theater-like venue here in Columbia, Mo.  I decided to pack the 1D Mark III and the new 7D, leaving my 5D II on the shelf at home.  While it is a great camera in low light, I was more interested to see how the other two would perform as they are both relative “unknowns” to me.  Risky?  Sure.  But I figured it made sense to have one pro body with me, and my own 1D IIN is terrible in poor lighting conditions.  The only rule imposed on me was “no flash.”  This was going to be ISO 3200+ territory.

More photographs after the jump!

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Read the rest of Bassnectar & the continuing story of the 7D (141 words)

Content © 2009 David Kennedy | Permalink | Comment! | Columbia Missourian, Reviews, Updates: Bassnectar, Canon, concerts, EOS 1D Mark III, EOS 7D, raves, Reviews