Photo5 Box Arrives (SPOILER) and 5D MkII Announced!

It’s a Canon day today!

This morning my Photo5 Competition box arrived, and I opened it with excitement and curiosity to see what was inside. If you don’t want to find out till you get yours, don’t scroll down ;)

Also, very exciting news for serious amateur photographers, my next camera, the long-awaited Canon EOS 5D MkII was announced! The specs are very exciting, and my spending/saving priorities have now changed as I set my eyes on this goal, an attainable $2700USD.

The features that most interest me:

• 21MP DIGIC IV CMOS sensor
• 50-25,600 ISO
• Full HD video recording
• 3.9fps
• 3″ VGA Live View LCD screen
• Attainable price!

A couple of minor disappointments that I can live with:

• Only 9 Auto Focus points
• Auto Exposure Bracketing only +/- 2 Stops, I was hoping for 3
• No portrait orientation shutter, need the grip for that

You can read the full details including press release here: http://www.dpreview.com/news/0809/08091705canon_5dmarkII.asp

Again, if anyone from Canon is reading and they want to give me one of these babies to put it to the test in a low-light, action packed, colourful, people-oriented event, which is not only attended by, but watched on my blog by a huge number of tech-interested photographers and gadget geeks – please speak to me! :) (contact details in footer) I am of course referring to the Manifest cosplay competition. A detailed review of my experience at the shoot would follow soonafter of course!

Pics!

The excellent new 5D MkII
(photo thanks to dpreview.com)

Photo5 Competition box contents

• A red ribbon
• A white crayon
• Bubble mixture
• A coctail umbrella
• A tealight candle

Can’t wait to see what you all come up with. Actually, I can’t wait to see what I come up with *strokes chin*.

More garden grunge – P365 Mar05

Several weeks back I took some macro photos around the garden, which ended up having a very “grungy” look. A few weeks after that, the blog post was linked to from a Smashing Magazine article titled “Grunge Style In Modern Web Design“.

I thought that maybe there might be interest in some similar photos, so I explored the garden again today, this time with a slightly wider lens.

If you decide to use any of these photos for your project, a small credit and link to my site http://neil.creek.name would be appreciated.

Benchtop zen garden revisited – P365 Feb27

The last time I photographed this little sand garden toy , I only had on camera lighting, and I had to bounce the flash off the ceiling to make it look decent. Now that I can put the flash anywhere I want, I can really show the cool textures and patterns in this fun benchtop zen garden.

A Fork – P365 Feb19

Just a photo I need for a blog post I’ll be making soon ;) A fork, illuminated by one flash from behind, background illuminated by another gelled flash, and a reflection card reflected in the tines to givea bit of texture.

More Household closeups – P365 Feb16

As I did last week, I spent some time wandering around the house looking for some interesting closeups.