Canon EOS R

EOS R

Where do I start? Well this photo above was my 2nd photo ever taken with the EOS R. My first was as I was handling it and it was a shot of my computer screen. Had those New Camera giddys! Any way…Take a close look at this photo….now look at these settings

Camera EOS R, Lighting- Natural sunlight through window, Shutter – 1/250, Aperture f/5

Lens Canon EF 24-105 IS USM 1:4 L ISO 12,800….yes 12,800. Just look at the quality of that photo at such a high ISO.

There are EOS purist out there that think this camera can not rise to level of “Pro” for various reasons:

“Camera does not have dual memory card capability”  Yes but there is a work around…Sync your camera wirelessly to your mobile device and through Canon Connect have the camera send copies of the photos to it AUTOMATICALLY. Problem solved.

“Camera won’t work well for Sports Photographer due to annoying winking out of viewfinder after shot. You will lose your subject while tracking it” Yes if you have the image preview set to ON it will do that. Set Image Preview to OFF and enjoy the brightest most informative viewfinder on the market. Problem Solved.

” Camera does not have Internal Image Stabilization.” Correct not for stills….BUT it does have Internal Image Stabilization for MOVIES and will work with IS Lenses in a Dual mode or with NON IS lenses. Keeping in mind I don’t use my DSLRs for movies typically however I did use my 80D for movies at a wedding once as a spur of the moment action. This will be a handy feature.

“Camera does not have cross point focus” Yeah but It does have a 30.3 mp full frame CMOS sensor with 5,655 manually selectable focus points…so this is a non-issue as the Dual Pixel CMOS AF system is incredibly fast and can operate at EV -6. Does your “Pro” Camera do that?

Granted I have only had the EOS R for a couple of days and I look forward to mastering it’s capabilities and finding it’s flaws. However too many YouTube warriors are not giving this a chance because they haven’t spent the time to learn about it. This is the future folks…embrace it.

More to come……………..

Look Closely… there is a Cardinal, a Woodpecker and a BlueJay in this snow covered tree. And someone told me this wouldn’t be good for photographing birds…

Female Tennessee BlueBird

EOS R ISO 250, 1/320 sec F/5.6 EF 100-400MM L USM at 400mm

DigitalDiem

This Blog is to explore my moments….my digital moments… hence DigitalDiem….It is my hope that some of my Victories as well as my Failures will benefit the reader.

 

Multi-Tasking – A buzzword/practice that’s not for everyone. Focus is everything.

By now we have all experienced the idea of Multi-Tasking. By itself it sounds like a really cool ability for smart people that have this innate ability to perform multiple tasks at once. Keeping in mind I have been in the construction industry for nearly 42 years. I have only seen a handful of people (2-3) that have been able to pull it off. They are the most stressed people I know as well. Which leads me to believe the idea of ” I have so much to do I have to multi-task to get it all done” leads to some of the highest stress in the world of business.

Every day people multi-task without thinking. They talk on their phone while walking or driving (blue-tooth I hope) These are minor multi-tasking abilities we all possess. But the handling and juggling of 20-30 projects at one time is a totally different story. People that attempt this are setting themselves up for failure. Efficiency is lost because you have to go back and pick up the “crumbs” you dropped along the way. Early on in life, in fact the very first real job I had where I had to punch a clock, the owner of the company had a sign on his office wall and it read “If you don’t have time to do it right the first time, what makes you think you have time to do it over”. After 40 years I still remember it to this day.

Think about it, do one thing, do it well and move on to the next. It’s simple actually. But you have to be willing to say no to people and have the ability to keep to a schedule and remain focused. Over the years I have heard so many excuses revolving around “Multi-Tasking” I didn’t get to place the order for this because I was doing “X” for this other project at the same time. Now we have people in the field without product to work with and we have to stop working on “Project X” go back and order for the other project. It’s inefficient and it is destroying the work place with stress.

Here’s what I do. I handle two contracts worth $25 million. This is for a company that has a “Fleet of facilities” this fleet is approximately 53 facilities. What I do is when the flood gates open, I perform triage on each project.

1. When is the project due to start?
2. Man power required?
3. Estimated delivery for equipment?
4. When is the project due to end.

With this information I can put each project in a schedule. The manpower issue is always tricky because more times than not the customer wants multiple projects going at once. Thankfully I have a project manager that is the absolutely best there is anywhere. Like I said, schedule the first project and move on to the next. Order EQ for the First project and move on to the next, assign manpower to the First Project and Move on to the next. None of this is difficult you just have to stay focused on the task at hand. Too many times a PM is juggling multiple projects, and they lose focus on one if not all. At which time it snowballs out of control. Focus is everything.

Partial Eclipse

Have you ever made plans way in advance and weeks before the plans you realized you goofed? Well I goofed. Last year the wife and I made plans to go on a Caribbean Cruise. We chose Royal Caribbean Allure of the Seas for a second time in so many years. Really beautiful ship. We liked our trip so much last year we booked the ship again only with different destinations. But I digress…. The goof comes in not checking with the Celestial calendar of events first….joking. This one went right past me. I did not realize until about a month before we were to board the ship that the once in a lifetime Celestial event was happening around Nashville TN only 40 miles from my home. Couldn’t make last minute changes. So I decided to deal with it in the best way I knew how…..accept the fact I goofed…I did and I frantically went on a search for a Solar filter for my Canon EF 70-300mm IS USM lens. The only thing I could find at the time was a 4″x4″ Thousand Oaks Optical Mylar Solar Filter. I thought well I am going to make the best of it and I did. I managed to get all of my gear including my Slik Pro400DX with Slik AF1100E ball head aboard ship ready to go. 2nd goof….unless you are using the tripod on the ship to take pictures of a subject on the ship it is useless while moving at 16 knots attempting to take photos of an object in sky… So the tripod stayed neatly packed away the whole trip.

Then comes goof number 3….believing technical information given over the internet about taking photos of the sun during an eclipse. 1. The Autofocus will not work-WRONG 2. Focus your lens to Infinity and tape it there in Manual Focus mode – Nope 3. Tripod is a must you can not hand hold the long exposure needed – Wrongo again. By evidence of the photo above.  I tried ALL 3 of these suggestions and NONE of them worked. So I stopped and went with my 40+ years photography experience. Turned on Autofocus, turned on Image Stabilization, put canon EOS 80D in Manual Exposure mode, Set ISO at 640, Lens at 300mm f5.6, Shutter at 1/1250 and from the 8th deck Of the Allure of the Seas Central Park area, I hand Held the Camera while the ship was making a tad over 16 knots in 3-6 foot seas….and got the photo above. Along with image stabilization My body compensated for any movement of the deck. I took a series of 62 photos all but 4 came out….the first 4 I took using internet suggestions…….. So the moral of the story. Go with your gut. Let the Camera do what it does best and you do what you do best. A combination of Auto Focus and Image Stabilization and Manual Exposure control allowed me to take these photos.

A Menu discovery Canon EOS 80D and the EF S 55-250mm IS STM Kit Lens

To any photographer advanced or amateur, nothing is more satisfying than a clean crisp properly focused and exposed photo. So when you purchase a new piece of equipment and you are so anxious to try it out, you rush outside and blow off a couple of dozen photos. You return to your computer, download and open each file. Only you are disappointed photo after photo. You know you did everything correctly yet still something is off.

Canon EF S 55-250mm IS STM

You go out again and try and still get the image above, and you think man I am really off my game. So you attach another camera body to that lens and you get the same thing. It occurs to you UhOh I have a bad lens. Now I don’t know if any of you have ever tried to return a lens due to the focus being off but it is not easy. Unless of course you are pro-user and the manufacture hates bad press from a well known pro. I have been doing this a lot of years. Though Photography is not my day job, I have always had a camera with me since I was 15. I shoot photos every day. I know a bad lens when I get one.

At any rate, I had just purchased a Canon EOS 80D and I started digging through the menus to see if I had anything out of whack. New to the camera I hadn’t spent the hours required to go through every single function. But I stumbled upon a custom Function “Auto Focus Micro Adjustment.” Before I touched anything I researched and found a PDF file on CanonUSA website regarding this feature. “Canon EOS AF Microadjustment Guidebook”

The following Canon EOS Cameras have this adjustment capability:

50D, 70D, 80D, 7D, 6D, 5D Mark II, 5D Mark III, 5DS, 5DS R, 1D Mark III, 1Ds Mark III, 1D Mark IV, 1D x and 1dX Mark II

As you noticed from the list above none of the Rebel lineup has this capability. The Lens in question is the Canon EF S 50-250mm IS STM. Granted it is a low level kit lens bundled with my 80D  but look at the photo above 70mm 1/125 @ f4.5 ISO 400 about noon on a sunny day. The image is zoomed 150% and cropped for detail. That is unacceptable.

Now, I read the Guidebook I mentioned earlier and set off to adjust the Autofocus for this lens. Each lens is serialized so once you make this adjustment, every time you place the lens on the camera the adjustment is automatically made. After (2) hours and about 30 photos later I was able to accomplish the result below: 70mm 1/165 @f5.6 ISO 400

Victory

More about the how to and tediousness of making this adjustment in a later post. In the mean time Look for Guide Book on CanonUSA website and give it a read. Hint: connect your camera to your computer and remote shoot. You can instantly review adjustments made. I mounted mine on a Slik 400DX tripod with a Slik AF1100E Ball head. Used mirror lockup. More on this later.

A side note. I discovered I had another of the lenses (from another kit I guess) I mounted on the 80D and the T6i and it works just fine…..imagine that. I guess I had a bad lens but not so bad it couldn’t be corrected with the 80D micro-adjustment feature.