Equipment Testing

I must admit that these days I take any manufacturer's claims with a grain of salt. In some cases with an entire handful to be quite honest. (I attribute it to being an "old grumpy codger" or at least aspiring to the title.) That is, with the exception of one company: Canon.

As I mentioned in an earlier post I've acquired the latest bit of digital camera kit from Canon, the 40D camera body. Having come up through the ranks with their previous offerings (Digital Rebel/Rebel XT and 20D) I knew what to expect for the most part. I had heard about how "noise-free" the newest DIGIC III chip was supposed to perform and decided to put it through some of the same lengthy exposure times I used when shooting Fuji Velvia slide film just for fun, to see if the reports were exaggerated or not.

Well, I have to say the excitement over this piece of equipment is justified. I set up looking out through a window here in England and used an exposure time of just over 11 minutes. I honestly have to say that for the first time, I'm beginning to see the gap between what digital can reproduce in night photography significantly closing! Compared to similar images coming from a 20D the difference is quite amazing and I fear this means more trips into the cold night air once again.

~James

Boys and Their Toys

"Find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life."

I am incredibly fortunate to have the above line apply to my line of work. I enjoy what I do. I like the travel, the people, the events I document.

I also love one of the benefits: gear, kit, tools... toys.

One of my latest acquisitions is a Canon 40D digital camera body. Back are some of my favorite functions from when I lived in the "F" world (F for film of course) such as spot metering and more frames-per-second but also an innovation for the digital SLR world: live view.

Simply put, I can now see through the lens on a nice bright 3.0 inch screen on the back of the camera which lends itself quite nicely for macro photography when your camera is in an odd position such as when I was photographing the read/write heads of a crashed hard drive. When hooked up to my computer I can even remotely locate the camera while watching what is before the lens on my screen. I can see some fun and exciting bird and (hopefully) wild mammal images in my future.

Love my job, love my job, love my job....

~James