PLEASE UPDATE YOUR SUBSCRIPTION URL!

The new address is http://www.kevwilfoto.com/blog/. Thank you!

Use the coupon code “kevwil_is_on_sale_9168″ for any purchases from my RedBubble site.

I exported a video slideshow out of Lightroom 3 to show the best shots I got from this race.

(It’s probably best to click through to YouTube to watch this. It’s a 720p HD video and the simple WordPress player for YouTube is pretty low-tech and cheesy looking.)

My camera has what’s called “Silent Mode”. I wish my old Nikon had this feature. Seriously! What is it? It’s used when you’re using Live View. Live View is when the mirror in your SLR flips up out of the way and the LCD screen on the back shows what the sensor is seeing, straight through the lens, in real time. The “view” is “live”.

Why do I like Silent Mode? When I would take an image while in Live View on my old Nikon, the mirror would slam down into the original position, crash up in the photo-taking position, the shutter would fire, then the mirror would slam down again, then the mirror would crunch up as it return to Live View mode again. Ker-thunk, ker-thunk, ker-thunk. … Ker-thunk. Very noisy, and tons of vibration. This is not good when you’re doing long exposures in the wind. Anyway, the Canon, when making an image while in Live View, will just fire the shutter. The mirror doesn’t make four round trips just to take 1 shot, in fact it doesn’t move. Quiet and smooth.

So, back to the topic. The 5D mark II has 3 settings for Silent Mode. Mode 1 allows continuous shooting when you are in the continuous drive mode. Mode 2, a.k.a. “stealth mode” I like to call it, will only take one photo when you press the shutter button. Aaaand, it will hold the camera as long as you hold the shutter button down. As best I can tell, this holds the shutter in the “fired” position, and the shutter resets when you release the shutter button. Very cool.

Here’s the trick. The third mode is Disable. I will quote the instructions:

If you use a TS-E lens to make vertical shift movements or use and Extension Tube, be sure to set this to [Disable]. Setting it to [Mode 1] or [Mode 2] will result in incorrect or irregular exposures. When you press the shutter button completely, the shutter will should like it took two shots. However, only one shot will be taken.

So if I put the TS-E on and forget to change the Silent Mode, I could be setting myself up for trouble. Who would have guessed??

I don’t usually read manuals, at least not very thoroughly, but I’m sure glad I did this time!!

Thanks to Induro for their great products and for the added exposure.

I’m selling my Nikon gear and switching to Canon. Most of the expensive stuff has sold, but the Canon gear is just starting to arrive. In the mean time, I had a film camera and a Lensbaby and an urge to photograph something.

What a great way to remember how wonderful Velvia film can be.

I get 120 megapixel scans from my RB67, which makes huge 6cm x 7cm Velvia negatives. The files are 750MB each. Let that sink in for a minute. Twenty frames will consume fifteen gigabytes of space on your CF card and subsequent hard drive. And they are getting this from a 1.3x crop sized sensor? At 9.5 frames per second? There’s no way a CF card can keep up with that. And the noise from all those unbelievably small pixels must be atrocious.

I call meadow muffins on this one. Even if it turns out to be true, it’s crazy.

“It’s a refrain I keep repeating only because I keep re-learning it myself and I can’t be the only one dense enough to need a reminder. Expectations can blind us.”

- David duChemin in Safari, A Monograph

I suspect this applies as well to life in general as much as it does to photography. So wise, this one is.

Wow.