Single-Serving Photo

The Internet is all a-flutter about this announcement Greg Yaitanes made via Twitter that the House, M.D. season finale (airing next month on FOX) was shot entirely with a Canon EOS-5D Mark II. This makes the 5D Mark II the first video-capable digital SLR camera to ever have been used to film a “prime time” television episode.

Yaitanes, who is a co-executive producer and director of House, M.D., said that they chose the 5D Mark II because they wanted to be able to fit the camera into “tight spaces,” they used mostly Canon prime lenses as well as the 24-70 and 70-200 zooms, and that no brackets or stabilization tools were used. I can’t wait to see how the episode looks!

The video was recorded onto large CF cards (Yaitanes said “18gb,” but I think he meant 16 GB), which afforded only 22 minutes of shooting before tossing in a new card.

You can read PetaPixel’s summary of the Q&A that has taken place so far via Twitter for more luscious details, and read engadget’s coverage as well as Gizmodo’s coverage. If you ladies and gents who are technology-inclined don’t already check out those two blogs on a regular basis, you may want to add them to your news reader of choice.

Yes, you heard me. Free as in “no charge.”

Over the course of two years, BBC-produced Wildlife Magazine published a 12-part series on photographing the locations and creatures of nature written by talented photographers and including spectacular images. Until now, you would’ve had to find the 12 specific issues of Wildlife in order to read these tips, and for the effort it probably wouldn’t have been worth it. I, for one, am a lazy person, having grown up in the age of the Internet where any and all useful information is a click away, so rummaging through magazine back-issues is right out.

Fortunately for people like me, Wildlife has released all 12 “Photo Masterclass” articles in PDF format on their website for free download. Regrettably, the PDF files are print-restricted, so you can only view them on a computer. If you have GoodReader on your iPhone or iPod Touch, however, you can take these lessons with you wherever you go. (GoodReader is how I take every single Canon and Nikon DSLR manual with me on my workshops I’ll write more about that later on).

To view and download all of the Photo Masterclass articles, visit the Photo Masterclass page on BBC Wildlife.

[Edit: It appears that they have taken down articles 11 and 12; they no longer appear on the site. Unfortunately I don’t have local copies of the articles to share with everyone, so they may be lost forever.]

You already know that I teach photography workshops, right? My buddy Chris and I have been teaching workshops for almost four years now, and although things were pretty slow in 2009, we are pushing ahead with a packed workshop schedule for 2010.

When you come on a workshop with Chris and I, you get to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with a total of 20 years of photography experience, heckle us with questions, meet people, and generally have a good time. Two instructors, awesome locations, and, here’s the sweet part… I’m giving you a discount.

Because you are still reading my humble blog after months of silence and because I value your loyalty and participation, I am offering you a great deal on my workshops this year. If you register for any workshop before March 1st, I’ll give you 10% off the price, just by mentioning this blog article when you sign up.

I’ll tell you what else. Just because I’m in such a good mood and excited to teach this year, if you want to register for more than one, I’ll give you 20% off of each of them. All you have to do is mention that I said so in the comments when you’re signing up on my website.

Look at this great lineup of workshops we have coming up this year!

I hope you have a couple of days to spend with us, I promise that our workshops will push your skills to the next level!

I generally post articles when I have something very useful to say, which is why my posts have been so sporadic. There are a myriad of sources for photography industry news and I always feel I am doing my readers a disservice by parroting every new equipment release or software upgrade here.

This time, though, a piece of “news” hit my screen that I had to share, and I hope that by reading it here you will receive the whole story and not just 1/3 of it as some people did when they got the information from digg, reddit, or similar.

We’re talking about megapixels, and we’re talking about marketing, and we’re talking about lies. Lies perpetrated by the manufacturers of point-and-shoot cameras with tiny little CCD sensors who keep increasing the megapixel count and marketing it like it’s the end-all be-all of imaging performance.

Not so! Read on… (more…)

Well, here it is, folks. As reported by Digital Photography Review, Rob Galbraith DPI, Engadget, and undoubtedly more, Canon has officially released the EOS-1D Mark IV, the latest digital SLR in their 1-series (“pro”) line.

I find it somewhat amusing that they chose to throw on the EF 50mm f/1.4 for their promo shoot; a lens that, for me, spontaneously stopped auto-focusing after only a couple years of use and that exhibits pretty significant vignetting. Nevertheless, the EOS-1D Mark IV is a fairly intense camera body, with its 10 frame per second burst mode, and ISO settings up to 102,400. You should be able to lay your hands on one here in the States for a mere $4,999.

Personally, I don’t think I’ll be purchasing a 1D Mark IV, if only because it has an APS-H sensor with a 1.3x crop factor and I am utterly spoiled by my 5D’s full-frame sensor. It is worth noting, also, that for the $4,999 that a brand new 1D Mark IV is going to cost you, you can pretty readily find a pre-owned 1Ds Mark III, which is 21 megapixels of full-frame goodness.