Archive for the ‘Video’ Category
Testing the Canon 70-200/2.8 L USM
Canon 50D with 70-200/2.8 L USM
People say “I’m too poor to buy cheap stuff” and there’s a whole lot to be said about that. This is my first L lens and now I know why people sing Canon’s praises when it comes to this wonderful glass. Yeah L lenses cost a lot… but they are absolutely worth it. For anyone even remotely serious about photography, an L lens is a very good step in the right direction.
Toward the end of summer I’m planning a trip to Nordkap, Norway. There’s gonna be a whole lot of nature photography, low flying birds, possibly whales if I manage to fit a whale safari in, moose, deer and loads of open vistas. I have a wide lens for the vistas but I was lacking a telephoto zoom. The 70-200/2.8 fit right in. I decided against the IS version mostly due to the cost and the very positive reviews of the non-IS. I’m probably going to get a 1.4X extender to go with it just to add some more range.
The gist of this is that the USM motor focuses lightning-fast, the images coume out crisp, the colors are clear and maybe on the saturated side of things (at least on my screen), there’s the least possible hint of chromatic abberation even in the most high-contrast of areas and the f 2.8 aperture makes things smooth and bokehlicious. Oh and it ships with a pretty decent lens pouch and a collar for mounting it on a tripod.
I’ve had the lens for 3 days now and I put together a video with some test shots, watch it in HD. I’m not sure if it’s Imovie or Vimeo  but for some reason I haven’t been able to get rid of the pixelation on some images in the video. The images are unedited, I just imported them into LR and the exported as 100% quality .jpg.
Canon 70-200/2.8 L USM from Mileta Nikoletic on Vimeo.
Update:
What can I say… This thing is actually comparable to a prime lens. I get less chromatic aberration than with my 50/1.4 which is pretty unusual for a zoom. The range is also pretty good, Canon must have found a range vs. optical quality sweetspot here. The AF is stunningly fast and after switching to my Sigma 18-200 mm the difference in pretty much everything was very noticeable. The  build quality is the first thing that struck me, the 70-200/2.8L is built like a tank… really. Probably the single best piece of photography gear i have ever bought.
Playing with strobes – el cheapo style
I’ve been reading the Strobist blog lately and going through the heaps of strobist groups on flickr. The quality and creativity of some of these images is pretty astounding.
So I decided to play around with off-camera flash. Lack of equipment was an issue to start off with. I had to get the speedlite off the camera. There are many ways to do that, and I won’t go into that here (the Strobist blog is where to look that up). I  decided to go with the el-cheapo solution (hotshoe adapter and pc cable) since I’m still learning, I’ll eventually upgrade to radio triggers. For about 300SEK/30€ I managed to get an adapter and 5m of  cable… yeah…that’s a lot of cable when you’re trying to work and not tripping over it was a bit of a challenge. Right there I began to see the advantages of radio triggers. You can run multiple strobes with this setup using splitter-cables but that involves even more mess.
The flash was run in manual mode and correct exposure was achieved through a now pretty much standard trial and error method. To go with the whole water theme used a blue gel. I tried several positions for the strobe. What worked best for the shots of drops was to lay the flash down almost parallel to the table but point it up just a little bit to give more light to the contours of the glass. The fill light was provided by the on-camera flash dialed 2 stops down. I’ve also tried reflecting the light off the sheet of glass that my subject was on with some pretty decent results. The wine glass was shot with the strobe dialed down to 1/32 and placed right of the glass, directly under it and looking up.  The setup is in the video. On a sidenote, I really need a better video camera, the LG Viewty, even though it shoots 120fps video just isn’t enough.
Here are some images:
Things to think about:
A smooth non-reflective background is key. The cardboard I used had too much of a texture and I had to pull the blacks all the way town in LR for the black background to look smooth and black. Next time I’m gonna try a black sheet, sure it has a texture but I don’t think it’ll reflect as much.
Timing, at least for water drops, is everything. Maybe I’m just  uncoordinated but using a straw as a way to drip water into a glass is tedious and inaccurate. Next time I’ll try a pipette.
This is a trivial one…wash the glass properly. The clone/heal tools work wonders but not using them saves time.
As I was failing to time my shots properly I began to think about some kind of sound trigger, where the camera would be left in complete darkness with the shutter open and the flash would only trigger when say a drop hit the water. That however is  a story for another post, when I’ve had time to figure out how to build one of these triggers.
Two straps are better than one…
There’s a lot to be said for photo shoulder-bags. They’re compact, the gear is easily accessible and they can easily be made to look like regular messenger bags (yeah…I have to give Crumpler some love). The downside is that those chiropractor bills can really add up. I’ve mostly used shoulder-bags apart from one little Lowepro backpack I never really liked much because not even my 350D would fit in there with the grip attached. The more gear I accumulate the more I realise I’m literally gonna break my back if I don’t get a serious backpack.
Enter Lowepro Flipside 400 AW. I mentioned this backpack in my previous post but I wanted to do a more substantial review of it. I got the 400 because I wanted a future-proof bag, one that’ll take longer lenses when I eventually get them. I also needed a bag for a trip to Norway later this year that will probably involve a lot of walking. I needed a bag that would fit 2 DSLR bodies with grips, a 70-200, an 18-200, a 70-300, a 50 and a speedlite along with chargers, cables, cleaning gear and other bits. The ability to lug a tripod and have a weather-proof solution for carrying my gear was also a priority. This backpack does it all and on top of that getting to your gear doesn’t mean having to take it off and lay it on the ground. Like I mentioned earlier, you take the shoulder-straps off, swing the bag around to your front and it’ll happily hang from your waist by the waist-strap. The side that goes towards your back opens, giving you access to the gear and a stable platform to change lenses/swap cards or batteries on. Like most other photo bags it has tons of pockets so I’m sure i’ll be finding new places to stuff my gear into pretty much every day. The best thing about this bag though is how evenly it distributes the weight of your gear over your shoulders. The straps and the back are well padded and comfortable to wear.
The one thing it doesn’t do is carry a laptop, granted it’ll probably fit a 10″ notebook in the front compartment. I thought this would be a negative thing at first but then again, how often do I need my camera gear and a laptop  at the same time? The only other bag that I found that would carry approximately the same amount of gear and a laptop is the Lowepro Computrekker, however that’s a conventional backpack and you can’t get to your gear without putting it on the ground.
The price is pretty reasonable for a bag that does this much, give or take a little, the Flipside 400 AW would set you back €100. It comes in black or black and green.
Here’s the official Lowepro Flipside 400 video courtesy of Youtube:
Kaknästornet
Kaknästornet is a 155m tall telecom tower in Stockholm with a pretty good cafe and restaurant. Since they decided to enclose the viewing platform in something resembling chicken wire photography from there was pretty impossible, at least with a DSLR.  This is one time i wish i had a compact camera so I could squeeze the little lens through the wire. The wire was so thick that even the wide aperture trick was pretty useless. I decided instead to record a little video, this time on my phone (LG Viewty). Surprisingly the quality’s almost better than what I get from my compact camera. Note to self : I still need to get  decent video gear. Anyway, here’s the video:
Kaknästornet – View over Stockholm from Mileta Nikoletic on Vimeo.
What’s in the bag?
In a rare attack of vanity i decided to post a very low quality video (excuse my lack of video hardware). Here you get to see what i currently keep in my photo bag.
Gear Bag (sudden attack of vanity) from Mileta Nikoletic on Vimeo.
