...got to see just how weather-proof the 5D Mark II is: McMurray Girls' Soccer this evening (Varsity, 12-nil, JV, 8-nil, and I'm not making that up) took place under one of Puget Sound's famous drowning mists.
Virtually nothing showed on the doppler radar but the air was simply filled with multitudes of tiny droplets and everything became soaked in minutes.
I didn't have my rain cover 'cause nothing had shown up on the radar as I was leaving home, but I was able to get a towel out of my trunk at half time.
Worst problem was my glasses, which I took off and left in the trunk at the half.
The 5D Mark II functioned flawlessly, as far as I can tell.
I blew it off with a can of compressed air when I got home and chased little droplets out of various crevices and dried it off with a towel.
I think I'll let it sit overnight before I open any of its little hatches...
...or maybe not.
Showing posts with label 5D Mark II. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 5D Mark II. Show all posts
Monday, November 30, 2009
Friday, November 20, 2009
Working on...
...VISC Raptors v Storm BU-12 soccer.
These were shot at night down at McMurray, which does have field lighting, but which does not have any sort of field lighting that a camera can work with, or so you would think.
The lights are only out at the edges of the entire field complex (which has room for one baseball and one softball field, and two soccer fields all at once, and then only on two opposite sides, making for a very hard, directional light that does let people be out there at night, but which provides almost nothing a photographer could really work with.
:-/
First of all, the lights are a really weird color which even the unaided human eye can sense.
I took a wild guess and set my new EOS 5D Mark II's White Balance to "fluorescent", which is 4000K, and which supposedly matches "standard" metal halide lighting.
("Fluorescent" works very well over on the Vashon High School football/soccer/lacrosse field for night sports photography).
Then I needed to deal with the fact that there's simply not much light out there, no matter what it's color. The 5D Mark II was set at ISO 6400 (!), manual exposure (M) of 200th second at f5.6,
Right away during RAW conversion "fluorescent" or 4000K was clearly too yellow, although at that the colors were still off, anyway.
So I did a little tinkering and settled on a manual Color Temperature setting of 3500K as being "good enough" for RAW conversion.
To deal with the lack of light I settled on doing an Exposure Compensation of +1.6 and the resulting photos were at least acceptable to look at and see if there was any soccer action worthy of having been photographed...
So here's a small (600 pixel by 400 pixel at 180ppi jpeg, with no digital noise reduction applied whatsoever:
Remember, folks, this was shot at ISO 6400!
The EOS 5D Mark II is becoming more impressive the more I use it!
These were shot at night down at McMurray, which does have field lighting, but which does not have any sort of field lighting that a camera can work with, or so you would think.
The lights are only out at the edges of the entire field complex (which has room for one baseball and one softball field, and two soccer fields all at once, and then only on two opposite sides, making for a very hard, directional light that does let people be out there at night, but which provides almost nothing a photographer could really work with.
:-/
First of all, the lights are a really weird color which even the unaided human eye can sense.
I took a wild guess and set my new EOS 5D Mark II's White Balance to "fluorescent", which is 4000K, and which supposedly matches "standard" metal halide lighting.
("Fluorescent" works very well over on the Vashon High School football/soccer/lacrosse field for night sports photography).
Then I needed to deal with the fact that there's simply not much light out there, no matter what it's color. The 5D Mark II was set at ISO 6400 (!), manual exposure (M) of 200th second at f5.6,
Right away during RAW conversion "fluorescent" or 4000K was clearly too yellow, although at that the colors were still off, anyway.
So I did a little tinkering and settled on a manual Color Temperature setting of 3500K as being "good enough" for RAW conversion.
To deal with the lack of light I settled on doing an Exposure Compensation of +1.6 and the resulting photos were at least acceptable to look at and see if there was any soccer action worthy of having been photographed...
So here's a small (600 pixel by 400 pixel at 180ppi jpeg, with no digital noise reduction applied whatsoever:
Remember, folks, this was shot at ISO 6400!
The EOS 5D Mark II is becoming more impressive the more I use it!
Monday, November 16, 2009
Wow!
Just got my first look at the Turkey Trot photos, shot at ISO 3200, and it is absolutely astonishing how noise-free these photos are.
For all practical purposes, viewed at 100% into the embedded jpeg in an unconverted RAW 3861x2574 image, 250th second at f5.6, there is simply nothing that I would call "grain" or "noise".
Nothing.
Here's a random crop into the middle of one random photo, shot at ISO 3200, that's been converted straight-up as shot: no sharpening, no noise reduction, no exposure compensation, just a 100%, 567 pixel by 318 pixel crop right out of the resulting 3861x2574 180ppi tiff, saved as a jpeg, quality level 10:
And for some sort of reference, here's the full size uncropped tiff, just saved as an 800 pixel by 533 pixel jpeg at 180ppi and quality 10:
Can't wait to do the Nutcracker in the Vashon High School Theater in about four weeks!
For all practical purposes, viewed at 100% into the embedded jpeg in an unconverted RAW 3861x2574 image, 250th second at f5.6, there is simply nothing that I would call "grain" or "noise".
Nothing.
Here's a random crop into the middle of one random photo, shot at ISO 3200, that's been converted straight-up as shot: no sharpening, no noise reduction, no exposure compensation, just a 100%, 567 pixel by 318 pixel crop right out of the resulting 3861x2574 180ppi tiff, saved as a jpeg, quality level 10:
And for some sort of reference, here's the full size uncropped tiff, just saved as an 800 pixel by 533 pixel jpeg at 180ppi and quality 10:
Can't wait to do the Nutcracker in the Vashon High School Theater in about four weeks!
Just shot...
...Turkey Trot 2009 down at Chautauqua in a pouring rain.
Definitely Kata rain cover time :-/
I'll be very interested to get a look at these photos: they are the first shot I've with the new 5D Mark II at ISO 3200.
Heavy cloud cover, so ISO 3200 and Aperture priority exposure of f5.6 produced (for those I noticed) shutter speeds around 250th to 320th second.
Shooting in the rain with center-point focus and focus lock means I look through all the raindrops on my glasses, look through all the rain drops on the Kata rain cover, wait for the red square to light up, and bang.
Definitely Kata rain cover time :-/
I'll be very interested to get a look at these photos: they are the first shot I've with the new 5D Mark II at ISO 3200.
Heavy cloud cover, so ISO 3200 and Aperture priority exposure of f5.6 produced (for those I noticed) shutter speeds around 250th to 320th second.
Shooting in the rain with center-point focus and focus lock means I look through all the raindrops on my glasses, look through all the rain drops on the Kata rain cover, wait for the red square to light up, and bang.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Now up...
Rockbusters Wrestlers 2009, both the wrestler and the team photos..
These came out pretty well, all things considered, that being that they're shot under duress.
Duress being that the coaches want to get this over with as quickly as possible, that I'm working in a small space with 50+ 6- to 11-year-old wrestlers, that there's only enough room for one strobe, and that the floors and lower walls are dark green or a kind of yellow-gold, while the upper walls and the ceilings are yellow-gold (see the Team photos to see what I mean) and the existing lighting are fluorescents that are about nine feet overhead.
Shot with my new EOS 5D Mark II; ISO 200; white balance 5600K to match the single Alien Bees AB800 strobe that was fired into a 60" softbox mounted on a light stand at about chest height; manual exposure at a 60th at f8.0; the strobe is just off my right shoulder and about 10 feet from the subjects for the wrestler shots, and dead-center and back about 18-20 feet for the team shots.
For the wrestler shots the softbox was turned to portrait; for the team shots the softbox was rotated over to landscape and aimed somewhat up at the ceiling.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Just shot...
...Rockbusters Wrestlers with the new Canon EOS 5D Mark II body, and my 24-70mm f2.8L zoom lens.
I'll be looking at the photos in detail tomorrow, but the preview on the Mk II's wider 3.0"/920,000 pixel lcd screen is stunning, to say the least.
The histogram is in color (and can show RGB levels, as well as luminance) and is bright, sharp and clear. Menu-selectable options add display of blown-out highlights, as well as whether the histogram initially shows luminance or RGB levels.
I was using the 5D Mk II with a PocketWizard II Plus wireless transmitter to a second PocketWizard firing a single Alien Bee AB800, which fired into a 60" softbox mounted about chest high on a single light stand.
The single 60" softbox was off my right shoulder, turned to portrait and about 10 feet from the subject, and gave a reasonable amount of relatively soft, well-place light, certainly a big step over on-camera flash (which sucks) but not as good as being able to use two softboxes would have been.
Which would have been impossible: space is a little limited in the wrestling room at the High School to say the least, not to mention that there's roughly 50 little wresters running around at full speed doing warm-ups before their evening's practice, and that I needed to occupy as little of the very tight space as I could.
To do the team shots, I moved the AB800 and the 60" soft box back about 18-20 feet from one wall, turned the softbox itself to landscape and aimed it slightly up at the ceiling, shot from just under its lower left corner, and lit the entire team pretty sucessfully.
We'll see more tomorrow...
I'll be looking at the photos in detail tomorrow, but the preview on the Mk II's wider 3.0"/920,000 pixel lcd screen is stunning, to say the least.
The histogram is in color (and can show RGB levels, as well as luminance) and is bright, sharp and clear. Menu-selectable options add display of blown-out highlights, as well as whether the histogram initially shows luminance or RGB levels.
I was using the 5D Mk II with a PocketWizard II Plus wireless transmitter to a second PocketWizard firing a single Alien Bee AB800, which fired into a 60" softbox mounted about chest high on a single light stand.
The single 60" softbox was off my right shoulder, turned to portrait and about 10 feet from the subject, and gave a reasonable amount of relatively soft, well-place light, certainly a big step over on-camera flash (which sucks) but not as good as being able to use two softboxes would have been.
Which would have been impossible: space is a little limited in the wrestling room at the High School to say the least, not to mention that there's roughly 50 little wresters running around at full speed doing warm-ups before their evening's practice, and that I needed to occupy as little of the very tight space as I could.
To do the team shots, I moved the AB800 and the 60" soft box back about 18-20 feet from one wall, turned the softbox itself to landscape and aimed it slightly up at the ceiling, shot from just under its lower left corner, and lit the entire team pretty sucessfully.
We'll see more tomorrow...
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