Quick Hit Monday: A Geek Peek At Perspective Control Lenses, Light Meters, and Canon’s New 100mm Macro Lens

Good Morning Everybody,

I had the honor to photograph a beautiful bride, handsome groom and participate in great wedding this past weekend.  We had an early start – 10:30 a.m. – which put us in a very challenging lighting situation for all the outdoor shots.  Couple the high noon, bright sun with the fact that most of the trees had lost their leaves leaving little foliage to use as a background.

Ahhh, but the bride and groom sure were thrilled with the images I was able to allow them to peek at on the back of my camera. You’ll have to tune back in on Wednesday and I’ll give you a peek at how we handled the situation.

This was also the first wedding where I was able to give the Canon 7D a try as a wedding camera.  It was a joy to use.  I brought all the images with me so I’ll report later on my favorite wedding shooting features of the camera.

I will tell you, shooting the video on the 7D is a “piece of cake”.  That’s mostly because of the still/video button set up on the camera.  I could easily grab a focus, switch to video, and hit RECORD in a matter of seconds. 

The secret of shooting the video with a digital DSLR is to NOT think of it as a video camera, but instead as a tool just to capture short clips of the action.  Once you get you head around that type of functionality, life gets pretty simple when shooting video with the camera.  Again, more information later.

You know, when you leave a wedding and even the guests are commenting on what a good job you did, as my assistant Marc said, “It sure does make you feel good.”  Like I said, we had a great shoot on Saturday. 

Now on with Quick Hit Monday…

Perspective Control Lens – Geek Peek #1

When checking email early yesterday morning before heading for the airport, I opened B&H’s newsletter to see what was new.

They had a short and sweet video peek at Canon’s new Canon's TS-E 17mm/f4L Tilt-Shift perspective control lens.  Here is the link right here. This lens basically turns your DSLR into a view finder camera. The “moves“ this lens makes are pretty amazing yielding results you thought were only possible in Photoshop. The video only about 3 minutes long but it still gives a nice geek peek at this very interesting lens.

BTW, they've got a nice peek at Canon’s new 7D right here.

Light Meters – Geek Peek #2

Those of you who have seen my DWUC tour know that I am not a big fan of light meters mainly since I think the cameras available to us do a great job in assisting the photographer in nailing the exposure.  In fact, since going digital in 2000 I don’t even own a light meter.

But, if you disagree with me, or just want to see what all the fuss is about, there is a great article at Lighting Essentials.com right here. The article really goes into a lot of detail on when and how to use a light meter.  It is also well illustrated with examples along the way. If you are a “clip and save” type of blog reader, this article is a good candidate for your lighting reference library.

Hybrid Image Stabilization – What The Heck Is It – Geek Peek #3

Canon recently announced their new 100mm F2.8 Macro lens.  I own the old version and was always “bummed” that macro lens didn’t have image stabilization.  Looking through a macro lens focused closely on your subject exhibited the same kind of camera shake so noticeable with long lenses.  It was only natural that the feature be built into macro lenses.

I’m a BIG macro fan so I can’t wait to get my hands on this lens. I’m particularly intrigued by the new “Hybrid” image stabilization technology.  Canon is claiming that with the new technology, you can hand hold the lens at a shutter speed 4 STOPS slower that you could with a non-stabilized lens.  Folks, that sounds pretty slow to me and I’m excited to give this lens a try.

Anyway, on an early Sunday morning cruise over to 1001 Noisy Cameras, I found a reference to a hands on post about how this lens and this technology works in the real world.  I’m sending you to 1001’s link right here.  You can click through from there. It’s a very interesting geek read.

Hey gang, that’s it for me today.  We start the last 6 cities of my Digital WakeUp Call tour tonight.  I still can’t believe it – north Atlanta evening, Birmingham tomorrow, then Memphis, and Nashville on Thursday to wrap the week. Next Monday is Las Vegas, and finally on to Honolulu on Wednesday. Once again, here is the link to register. If we don’t see you tonight in Atlanta, I hope to see you at one of our other stops before we wrap. –David

p.s. Don’t forget – We had a change of venue for tonight and we are at the Grand Hyatt in Buckhead [link] this evening for the program.  See ya’ there!  -David