7D Sharp Enough For Me

Haven't been able to do much shooting with the 7D lately. Back problems have severely limited my mobility to the extent that my only photography has been accomplished by sneaking hunch-backed into the back yard and ambushing the critters that live there. Needless to say, no keepers worthy of National Geographic have been captured. But I have experimented enough with the 7D to conclude that although the images are softer than what I'm used to coming off the sensor, a little sharpening will bring them up to snuff.

These are representative of what I've been getting. RAW opened in DPP (but not edited), transferred to Photoshop as TIFs, processed in ACR to taste, and exported to JPGs. Noise reduction settings were 50 and 100. Sharpening was at 50.

7D, 500mm w/1.4x, ISO 400, AI Servo

7D, 500mm w/1.4x, ISO 1600, AI Servo

I Think The 7D Is A Keeper

In the last episode of Photographer Without A Clue, our hero was griping about softness in his 7D images. He had visited the soccer pitch at St. Thomas University for a playoff game, and returned with four gigs of disappointment. In this episode we discover that only some of the softness was because of the 7D; the majority of it was in the photographer's head and in the microadjust focus setting for his 500mm lens.

To keep a long story mercifully short, most of my problems were caused by an unfamiliarity with Digital Photo Professional, the Canon-supplied conversion software. I've always used PhotoShop and it's Adobe Camera RAW plugin to convert and process my images. I tried DPP after buying my Canon 2n, but found it klutzy and slow to use, without any quality benefit that I could see. But since the 7D is new and Adobe hasn't finalized an ACR conversion update, I had no choice but to use DPP. I'll spare you the details of the brain spasm I suffered, but it mostly involved the way DPP redraws and presents images after cropping and enlarging, and a severe noise reduction setting when I didn't want one at all.

Once I discovered and corrected my DPP ineptitude, the images looked much, much better. But they still weren't as crisp as the Mark III images I also shot during the game. My first thought was that the micro adjust was out of whack. I checked it the day before and set it at +5 using the ruler and target method. I did it indoors at a distance of about 12-14 feet. When I rechecked after the game, my results were the same.

The next day was nice, so I went outside and redid the test, but this time at a distance of about 50 feet. My results were +0. My Mark III is at +5.

I'll do this all again when I have more time, but it's looking like either my 500 is focusing differently at different distances or the 7D is misreading the data from the lens or there is enough of a lighting difference between my indoor tests and the great outdoors to to throw off the focusing.

The images I've captured since have been sharp. They still look soft coming off the sensor, but respond very well to sharpening and make a nice print.

Today I messed around with MRAW, one of the two smaller RAW settings available on the 7D. Here's what I know about the inner mysteries of MRAW: nothing. I have no idea how it works. I tried Googling the cyberuniverse, but didn't find anything. A couple of posts on photo forums also yielded nothing. I suspect it involves combining and averaging of pixel data. It's probably the same or similar to the lossless RAW compression Nikon offers. I used that all the time on my D300, because it reduced the giant file size by about a third and I never could see any substantive quality difference.

I don't know if there's a quality drop off from Canon's RAW to MRAW, because this was my first experience with it. It knocked about 10 megs off the file size, which is a nice feature, since it reduces file writing times and increases the capacity of the card. RAW files captured in the same situation as those below averaged about 25 megs.(!) The MRAW files weighed in at a still hefty 15 megs. The question of whether I'd want to use MRAW regularly will have to wait for another test, but I can't bark about the quality of these initial test images. Below are are two MRAW full frame samples and crops from each.

So, overall, I'm growing to really like the 7D. I was going to trade it for a lens or two, but now I think I'll keep it.

7D, MRAW, 500 w/1.4x, ISO 1600.

7D & Soccer

Took the 7D over to St. Thomas yesterday to see what it could do in a demanding AI servo situation: soccer. Unfortunately, poor light and a shortage of time cut the experiment short, and I didn't learn much. The RAW images are huge: 22.5 megs on average, which is both good and bad. Bad in that they fill up a card and the buffer in no time. Good in that the big files make for big images that will almost always be reduced in size for printing. And that's a very good thing because images are quite soft coming off the sensor and need huge amounts of sharpening to make them presentable. This naturally aggravates the noise situation to a ugly degree, but the reduction in size alleviates quite o bit of the problem. Still, the very soft RAW images are troubling.

Focus tracking? I don't know. Much more shooting is required. I used single point with helpers engaged. Sometimes it's hard to tell if the focus is off or the image is just naturally soft.

Canon 7D, 500mm on a monopod, ISO 1250. Processed in Digital Photo Professional with sharpening settings at max in RGB and +5 in RAW. No noise reduction.

Michelle Bachmann Is An Idiot, Chapter 10,469

Another embarassing day for human beings in general and Minnesota in
particular, courtesy of Michelle Bachmann (Cretin-MN).

Dungeon Ball With The Mark III

There was a time when I spent a couple nights a week in high school gyms, shooting sports in lighting conditions that would make a medieval dungeon proud. Pushing Tri-X to ISO 1600 was my usual practice, but even then I was about a stop underexposed in most gyms. Last week I returned to a gym for the first time in decades to take some shots of my niece Emily in a 7-8th grade basketball game.

I found that one thing hasn't changed: the lighting in high school gyms is still abysmal. One thing has: technology makes it feasible to shoot at ISO 12,800 and beyond. Nothing special about the pics, other than the stratospheric (to me, anyway) ISO setting. Emily is #44. Mark III, 135L, ISO 12,800.

Zach, Apple Man To The Core

Nephew Zach loves his apples. Even when the skin gets between his teeth and cheek and requires serious lip gymnastics to remove it.

Canon Mark III, 135L @f/2, ISO 3200.

Springsteen Photos--Not

The criminal conspiracy to sneak a camera into the Boss concert fizzled. We were sitting in Johnny's Tavern across the street from the Kansas City Sprint Center, waiting for the doors to open, a 7D and 70-200 lens hidden under a false bottom in my wife's purse, when word came that someone in Springsteen's family had died and the show was canceled. Turned out to be his 36-year-old cousin, the assistant tour manager, who was found dead in his hotel room. Bummers all around, especially for my 68- and 70-years-young sisters, who were going to see their first big time rock and roll show.

A Thought

I bought my first slr in 1970, a Praktica Nova 1B. If you had told me at the moment I stood there holding that cutting edge miracle of technological advancement -- it had a light meter built in!!! -- that 39 years later I would own an slr that didn't need film, shot 9 frames a second, focused by itself, exposed automatically, let me view the pictures I took instantly, and gave me usable prints at ASA/ISO 6400, well, I would've assumed that in 39 years I'd be dead and in heaven.

We Got Your Resolution Right Here

More playing with the Canon 7D and it's 18 megapixel sensor. I was following the standard formula the other night (new camera + dark outside + urge to take a picture of something or anything = cat photo) and snapped this ISO 1600 image of Doug the Camera Hating Cat. It showed me that three things the 7D has, is resolution.

White Throat With 7D

Been playing around with a Canon 7D, a new 1.6 crop camera released recently. It's an impressive piece of gear. Here are a couple of shots of a white throated sparrow chowing down some sunflower seeds in our backyard this morning. These are uncropped frames. Click on them to see 800 pixel versions.

Canon 7D, 500mm with 1.4x, fill flash, ISO 1600, process in Canon Digital Photo Professional, sharpening at 5, noise reduction at 3 and 20.

Before The Deluge, Sandhills

Sandhills at Crex Meadows on a dreary day. Panned them through the car window using a beanbag.

1D Mark III, 500 w/2x, ISO 1600, IS Mode 2.

My New Favorite Girl Friend

Madge the bathing beauty. How could a guy not fall in love with that face? I am putty in her hands.

Canon 1D 2n, 85/1.8, ISO 1000.

Man, I Ain't Ready For This

Is it just me, or is it too danged early for this stuff?

Mark III Silliness

My Mark III came home today from a trip to Canon Service, where the peripheral focus points were aligned to factory specs. With any luck I will now be among those Mark III owners who can trust their cameras to focus where we point them. Time will tell.

Before I took the leap into the Great Canon Focusing Adventure known as Mark III ownership, I cruised about the Web looking for opinions on whether it was safe to buy one. I found a couple zillion of `em, which didn't surprise me because if opinions were gold, the Internet would have a value in excess of the national debt. And the last time I had guts enough to check, that's a number with more digits than Pi. What did startle me was the number of people claiming that not only was the Mark III fixed, but that there never was anything wrong with it.

Everywhere I looked I found posts hyper critical of Rob Galbraith and any other Mark III user who experienced the weirdly erratic AI servo behavior. Canon fan boys were out in force, defending the honor of their favorite camera company by ridiculing anyone who said that something was wrong with the Mark III. Very few of the fans were actually involved with shooting the Mark III in the situations where seasoned pros were having problems, but that didn't stop them posting their silly pontifications.

This is my favorite image sample from a Mark III owner proving that the Mark III does not have a focusing problem and never did. I found it on the fredmiranda.com Canon gear forum. This guy took a picture of his thumb on a hot day, thereby proving beyond a reasonable doubt -- with geometric logic! -- that the Mark III would track and focus properly on an athlete running toward the camera at high speed. I'm not kidding.

A Criminal Conspiracy Is Afoot

I've decided to commit a crime. Well, maybe not a real crime. It's probably just a transgression against societal order, an intrusion across the boundary between stuff they tell me I can do and stuff they tell me I can't do. The details of possible consequences are a little vague, but I'm aware of the old saying among politicians that if you can't do the time, don't do the crime, and I'm gonna do it. What I do know for sure is that it'll be a violation of the rules as clearly stated on the legally binding contractual obligation incurred when I forked over my cash for the privilege explained thereon.

I don't want to blow the caper by alerting the authorities, so I'll be stingy with details, but the impending crime/violation involves a Coach purse with false bottom, a Canon 5D and 135mm lens, 1.4x and 2x teleconverters, a willing accomplice, and Bruce Springsteen.

Stay tuned. If my accomplice spousal unit posts here in search of bail donations, you'll know it turned out to be a crime after all.

When You Gotta Go, The Sandhills Will Come

Couldn't resist the siren song of croaking sandhill cranes, and headed back to Crex Meadows Sunday. My goal was to get some shots of the big guys landing and taking off, so I set up a blind on the edge of the sanctuary at a spot where I've seen a lot of activity recently, poured myself a cup of coffee from the thermos, and waited.

And waited. For 3.5 hours. Never clicked a shutter. Sandhills were all around, but they never landed within range. Not sure what the problem was, maybe the strong gusting winds that caused my camo to flap violently and continuously. To a crane, the noisy movement might be the equivalent of a neon arrow, blinking and pointing at the lurking human. All I know is that in a spot where I've seen dozens and dozens of cranes come and go in an hour, I didn't get one visitor. Frustrating. And discomforting, what with all that coffee I'd consumed. So, with bladder aching, I packed up and headed down the road.

Quarter mile later, I stopped, stuck the lens out of the window, and took this picture. Guess it's true what they say, that good things come to those who really, really have to pee.

Canon 1D mark IIn, 500mm w/2x (1000mm), ISO 1000.

2n Testing At Crex

Spent most of Saturday wandering Crex Meadows testing out the focus on my repaired 2n. After a stint in New Jersey with Canon technicians, it seems back to its old, accurate self. The explanatory note from Canon was cryptic, saying only that focus was adjusted and "the part" was replaced. No hint as to what that part was.

Anything at a distance was soft due to the haze (such as the sandhill cranes below). No keepers, but overall I was happy with the focus performance. Bottom image is cropped from the one just above it. All of these with the 500 and 2x cheater. Image quality was pretty good with only the 500, but I never got close enough to anything to use it to good effect.

Dear Canon: Don't Let This Happen to Me

Lennie Glibnick, Mark III owner, discussing his camera's AI servo focusing.

Mark III In Sun & Shade

Here are a couple of examples of what I'm seeing with the Mark III in the sunshine and in the shade. Here's a full frame and crop from a sequence taken on a bright day with AI servo. None in the series are better than this. The Mark III simply never focused on the target, which was the walker's head.


And here's a pretty routine capture in deep shade using AI servo. First the full frame, then the crop. Focus point was on the sparrow's head. FYI: this was at ISO 3200.

Tis The Season To Be Scruffy

Several molting cardinals were hanging around the backyard today. I captured these between trips to the sunflower feeders.

1D Mark III, 500 and 2x cheater, ISO 1600, 1/250 @ f8.

Futbol

I took the Mark III over to a St. Thomas soccer game on a bright day recently, primarily to test it's balky AI servo focusing. Results were predictably unpredictable; sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Frustrating, because in every other way this is a dream of a camera.

Anyone Know How To Rob A Bank?

`Cause I need a gazillion bucks to get one of these. The new full frame digital Leica rangefinder. $7,000. Body only, of course.

Mark III High ISO Images

The Canon Mark III has a reputation for very good high ISO performance. I don't know if it's as good as the Nikon D3 and D700, or the Canon 5D II, but it's better than my 5D. Stuck indoors recently with nothing much to do, I decided to play with some high ISO settings to see what I could see. Able assistance was provided by Mr. Softy Bear.

Since noise doesn't bother me much, I was primarily interested in how detail was lost as the ISO went up. I was pleasantly surprised by the results.

All images shoot with a 135L at 2.8 and run through Adobe Camera Raw 4.6. Noise reduction settings were 50 and 100. Sharpening was set at 100. Top image shows the full frame. Click on the bottom two for 1000 pixel wide versions of the ISO 6400 and 12800 images. The room was considerably darker than it appears in the photos.

100% Crop -- ISO 1600

100% Crop -- ISO 3200

100% Crop -- ISO 6400

100% Crop -- ISO 12800
(6400 and one stop underexposed)

Click for 1000 pixel wide version.

Click for 1000 pixel wide version.

The Bachmann Rule?

Question:

Is there a Congressional rule that requires a high pressure stream of stupidity to spew from Michelle Bachmann every time she opens her mouth?

Lunch Walk

My lunch time walk with the Mark III didn't shed any light on my weekend problems. Today it focused perfectly on static objects when set to single point, helpers and AI servo. These are the settings that failed so dismally Saturday and Sunday, but today they worked very well, in the sun and the shade. Quick to acquire focus, accurate and no jittering back and forth when confronted with cluttered backgrounds.

This song sparrow was found deep inside a sumac grove. Focus point was on the eye. I thought the Mark III might have trouble with this shot, because my earlier experience had been that with helper focus points selected the camera would sometimes get confused in AI servo if there was an object just to the side of the target and closer, like this sumac stem. But focus was quick and steady. So I still don't know what went on last weekend.

Canon 1D Mark III, 500mm and 1.4x cheater. ISO 800, monopod.

AI Servo Failure or Operator Malfunction?

(Updates below.)

My IIn is in for repairs, so I thought this might be a good time to roll the dice and see if I could latch onto a quality Mark III body. I recently picked up a low time Mark III that had been back to Canon for all updates and was advertised as free of focus defects. After a couple of bright, sunny days playing with it at Crex Meadows in Wisconsin I've come to the conclusion that it has the worst AI Servo focusing that I've ever seen. My 5D runs rings around it. Heck, I have point and shoots that are far better. I've put a lot of miles on a Mark II and a IIn, and they are in a different league entirely. Use it in one shot mode, and it's a dream. Accurate, fast, beautiful images. But in Ai Servo . . . oh, my. It can't focus dependably on static objects. If the object is pretty close, it can sometimes get a sharp image, but that's just luck -- I can sat and watch the focus jitter back and forth to an astonishing degree. And if the target is moving, it gets worse. It can't focus on targets with busy backgrounds, can't focus on anything in the sky, can't handle even moderate back lit situations. This body makes Rob Galbraith's bodies look like the best focusing cameras in the universe. Yesterday's low point came when it couldn't focus on a pickup truck moving slowly and laterally in front of me. 10 frames with a 500/1.4x and not one of them even close.

It's so bad that I've thought I must be doing something wrong and I've been through the set up menus more times than I can count. I've tried everything and gotten my best results with single point, no helpers, focus point priority. But when I say "best" I'm saying those settings aren't quite as awful as the other settings.

Quite frankly, I'm stunned. I heard all the horror stories and I knew I was taking a chance, but never in my wildest dreams did I expect this. I'm leaning toward keeping it, because AI Servo aside it's a wonderful piece of gear. I'll probably send it in and give Canon another shot at it. But I won't be selling my IIn anytime soon, I can tell you that.

Update: Just came in from some more testing, shooting cars coming toward me on a busy street, and the Mark III was splendid. I set the tracking sensitivity to max and enabled the center assist points. Light over my shoulder, bright sun, cars doing 30-40 mph. 90 percent plus keepers. Is this the same Mrk III I used yesterday?

Update, Again: Tracked some airliners coming into MPLS/St. Paul airport. Nailed them with the same setup. This was the same situation it failed dismally at yesterday when tracking sandhill cranes and blue herons moving at similar relative speed to me (center point, only).

Nagging Thought: For the life of me I can't figure out how the same camera could fail 99 percent of the time one day, and post a 99 percent success rate the next. Must be operator malfunction, but I also can't understand how the same operator could screw up so bad one day and then do the job right the next.

Hybrid Grosbeak?

This female grosbeak has been a frequent visitor to our feeders this summer. The bill seems to get darker every time I see it, making me wonder if it might be a hybrid between a rose breasted and a western black headed grosbeak. Prolly not.

1D Mark III, 500 w/short extension tube, fill flash.

Crex Test of Mark III

(Correction below.)

With my 1D Mark IIn in the doctor's waiting room in New Jersey to get a diagnosis of what ails it's focus system, I took my new-to-me Mark III to Crex Meadows yesterday to see if it would take a picture or two. It did, which is why I'm here telling you the story.

From the day the stork dropped it in camera stores around the world, the Mark III has been plagued by 1) focusing issues, especially in bright, warm and/or back lit conditions; and 2) a less than stellar response to said issues by Canon. I came within a key stroke of buying one when it first came out, and boy am I glad to have hesitated. The Mark III has been recalled three times that I'm aware of, and has seen multiple changes in firmware. The photographers I respect most -- photojournalists who shoot under every condition imaginable -- say it's much, much better but still isn't fixed. After sending my IIn for repairs I decided to find out for myself when I found a barely used Mark III in mint condition at a good price. Yesterday, I took it to Crex Meadows for some testing (and to escape the madding crowd). So, IMHO, is the Mark III 100 percent absolutely, positively fixed? No.

In one shot mode with only a single focus point selected, the Mark III grabs accurate focus immediately and locks it down. The resulting image is as sharp as anyone could want. This flycatcher was taken with the 500/1.4x combo . . .


. . . and cropped from this image:


I certainly can't complain about the quality of the resulting image.

But turn on AI servo and the story changes. Here's a stationary, back lit cedar waxwing shot using a single focus point and AI servo. (It's another big crop.)


Ugh. I have about 20 images I shot of the same bird in AI Servo. None of them are better than this.

I flipped over to single shot and got this.


I have about 15 frames in single shot, and all are like this one. (Note: I sharpened the lower image but forgot to sharpen the top one, but no amount of sharpening is going to hide the missed focus.)

In situations where the subject was larger in the frame and not back lit, AI servo worked fine, such as with this preening trumpeter swan. This was also in single shot. My AI Servo images of this swan are distinctly softer.


It also appears that turning on the helper points around the chosen focus point makes things worse in any situation in which AI servo is used. I say "appears" because I didn't shot enough in that configuration to come to a firm conclusion.

More to come when I know it. I'm hoping to get back to Crex Sunday to get some panning and tracking shots of sandhill cranes.

Rainy Day, Rain All Day . . .

Make my house in Woodbury
Slide away.

The recent non-stop downpours are playing hell with local projects. First they turned the Century Avenue reconstruction in a sea of mud, then into a sea, period.

Discovering The Universe

Friday Night Cat Blogging

New camera + too dark outside = cat photography. Here's Doug, the camera hating cat, caught unawares by a Canon Mark III, ISO 3200 6400 (ISO 3200 and one stop underexposed), 135mm, 1/320 @ f2.2.

Nick Versus The Water Fountain

Carlos Cruise

On my way to somewhere else Sunday, I took a slight detour and cruised through Carlos Avery to see what I could see. Turned out to be quite a bit. A mom and her twin fawns were walking casually along the northern edge of the sanctuary. Lesser yellow legs were common in the mud flats, as were black terns and hungry blue herons. All were shot with my ailing Canon 1D2n, which can't focus consistently on any setting other than the 45 spot "ring of fire." I foresee a trip to the repair shop in the immediate future.

Black Terns

Spent a few hours at Crex Meadows today. Not much happening, bird-wise, but I did find some black terns active on the south edge of the sanctuary. Windy and almost cold + rapidly changing lighting conditions + balky camera that didn't want to focus + rocket propelled targets = less than stellar day. No print keepers were obtained. These are all web specials, heavily cropped and sharpened. Top three are juveniles. Bottom three four are non-breeding adults.

Aliens Conquer GM, Build Me A New Rolling Blind

I think it's safe to assume that aliens have infiltrated General Motors and usurped the positions of high-level decision-makers. That's the only way I can explain what I found when I accidentally wandered onto a Chevrolet new car lot recently on my way to buying a vehicle somewhere else, probably at an import dealer. A Chevy dealer isn't a place I've spent much time in the last 20 years. I'd go to one from time to time, looking for parts for my trusty 1991 G20 van or to get some service, but it never occurred to me to stop in the new car lot and check out the offerings. That's because other than a pickup and Corvette, Chevy just never had anything that I both wanted and was confident would last more than a week before something important fell off. Somewhere between the Citation that lost rear wheels on the highway and the friend who bought a last generation Camaro that spent months in the shop and burned through through three transmissions in the first year, I gave up on anything built by GM and looked elsewhere.

I've been thinking about a new ride since early in the spring, when it dawned on me that I've been driving the same van for 18 years. Talk about being in a rut. A good rut, sure, but still . . . The van has been solid. Reliable as an anvil, comfortable for long cruises, powerful. It's pulled trailers, hauled lumber and engines, served as a mobile bedroom at the race track, been ideal for vacation road trips. And, of course, it has been a terrific rolling blind for photographic missions: a very large percentage of the images on these pages were captured out the driver's window.

The van was proof that Chevy could build something that worked and worked well. But, in traditional GM fashion, it was a 1991 model built with the very best technology 1981 could offer. "GM: always 10 years late to the party" could've been the corporate motto.

Over the years I've pondered selling it, but never could pull the trigger. Heck, it was paid for and always got me where I wanted to go. Early this year, though, when I heard that Congress was considering a cash for clunkers plan that would pay me to take the van off the road if I bought a new car, its fate was sealed. The van is a category 2 light truck in the eyes of the gummint, with a 5.7 liter V8 rated generously by the EPA at 15 miles per gallon. (12 mpg is more like it.) This meant that Uncle Sam would pay me $4,500 for it. Considering the van has a true market value of about $500, it was a no brainer. I went car shopping.

Needing something with good ground clearance, I headed off to view offerings from the usual suspects: Mazda Tribute, Honda CR-V, Toyota RAV4, Nissan Rogue, Subaru Forester. Later I looked at the Ford Escape, a Tribute clone, and decided to buy it because of it's pedigree and the great deals offered by Ford.

But a couple weeks ago a glowing review at Edmunds.com sent me over to the local bowtie purveyor to check out the 2010 Equinox. I'd briefly considered the 2009 Equinox, but moved on because it wasn't cost competitive and came only with a thirsty V-6. What I discovered was that the 2010 Chev Equinox isn't built by your father's Chevy. Heck, it isn't even built by my Chevy. The new Equinox is built by a company seemingly intent on getting it right. And from what I can tell, it did.

In back to back to back road tests with the Nissan Rogue, Ford Escape and Toyota RAV4, the Chevy stood out. It's the quietest of the bunch, interior materials are the best in class, it has great build quality, and is competitively priced. Of course, there are areas where the Equinox lags behind the imports, such as steering feel and cornering performance, but the overall quality knocked me out. So I bought one.

Not without some trepidation, mind you. It used to be an article of faith that buying the first year of any GM model was a guarantee of trouble. The joke was that GM used first model year buyers as beta testers to find out what they'd done wrong. But the Equinox is so impressive, it won me over immediately. It doesn't hurt that much of the key mechanical bits and pieces have been on the road for a couple of years in the new Malibu, which I'm told is just as impressive as the Equinox.

Come Friday, I'll turn in the van. Its fate is set by law: it'll be crushed, which makes me kinda sad. I know I'll miss it. But probably not for long, because I'll be cruising in style in a rolling blind built by the aliens who now control General Motors.