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IPEVO Kaleido 7 Wireless Digital Picture Frame Review

One of the great things about Twitter, is that you never know what opportunities will appear. A company called IPEVO put the call out to photography bloggers via the #photog hashtag which I follow. They were looking for people interested in reviewing their wireless digital photo frame. I eagerly put my hand up and within a week or two, this gorgeous piece of engineering turned up on my doorstep:

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It’s FINALLY Mine! 5D MkII Arrives.

I have incredibly supportive and loving parents. As I have discussed much lately, I have decided to pursue photography seriously as a profession. If I am to do this, I really need to do it with professional equipment. The 350D I have been using for the last three years just isn’t up to scratch, in terms of resolution, sensitivity, speed and feature set.

Even when I bought the 350D I knew that one day I’d upgrade to a full-frame camera, and waited for Canon to eventually release a follow up to the 5D, the first “achievable” full-frame digicam for a new businessperson like myself.

I knew the camera was going to be expensive, so I have been looking into bank loans, which was a frustrating and depressing experience. Fortunately, my loving parents have helped me out, by loaning the money I need. They have confidence in my ability to make a success of my photography, and they want to encourage and help me get there. I love you guys, and once again, as always, your support means so much to me.

Canon 5D MkII

Beautiful isn’t it? And now it’s mine!
Photo: Steve Keys – CC.

5D2 photo examples

I will talk about the 5D2 and what I love about it more in future posts, and I don’t want to clog this one up too much, so keep an eye out for more as I learn how to get the most from this new toy… err, tool! Below are some of the very first photos I have taken with the camera:

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I knew the first photo I would take with the 5D2 would be of our beloved pet Chibi. I didn’t know that he would be so cooperative, and give me such a cute expression the very first time I pressed the shutter release!

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Being a full frame sensor, as opposed to a 1.6x crop that I had on the 350D, I expected to lose some of the reach of my telephoto lenses. What surprised me was how much the 2.6x more pixels would make up for that, and exceed the detail previously captured. This photo of a blood red moon was taken on a night when smoke from the recent horrific bushfires cast a pall over the whole city. The detail visible in this 400mm photo significantly exceeds that which I was previously able to capture. Click here to see the full sized version, a 100% crop of the original photo.

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The above photo is of the “public vote” winner of the Bead Society of Victoria’s “Bead Challenge”, which was displayed late last year at the Bead Expo. I photographed this piece, along with several others for Naomi to use in the BSV’s magazine, Connect. This was the first product photo shoot I did with the 5D2, and I just loved being able to guarantee that I had perfect focus by being able to zoom to 100% on the large screen using Live View. This is going to help a lot in future with product-type photography.

The image below is a 100% crop of the above image, showing the incredible detail captured by the 21Mp sensor.

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Finally, one of the main headline features of the 5D2, is the ability to record full HD video. I’m not sure how I’ll make the most of this feature, but I’m looking forward to experimenting with it. Below is a video I took of our adorable cat Chibi, engaging in his nightly ritual of snuggling in bed with Naomi, something he has done, for about an hour each night, since he was a kitten, eight years ago.

This video was shot in very low light, and the camera performed marvelously, but would be better when mounted on a tripod for stability. The embedded video below is hosted on Facebook, as I couldn’t get any other hosting service to display the high resolution video. Please let me know if you have any problems seeing it.

A couple of days ago I asked my Twitter friends if they had any questions about the 5D2. Rather than make this post any longer, I’ll answer them soon in a separate post. So if anyone reading this wants to ask me about my early experiences with the camera, please leave a comment, and I’ll answer them as best as I can in that post.

Studio story: Progress, a dilema & some luck

The spare room (soon to be studio) hasn’t had as little stuff in it since the day we moved in! It’s surprising how much dust collects in the places you can’t get to :) All that’s left in the small room is the bed, filing cabinet, and a few odds and ends waiting to find new homes. I’m hoping to start painting the walls white next week!

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it yet, but I bought a couple of new bits of photography gear in preparation for the new studio. A collapsible light tent for tabletop product photography and a 3x2m stand to hold a 3x6m white cotton backdrop. It’s huge! And very exciting to have.

The size is a problem, however, in the small room. The big stands can only go so close to the wall. Also, the pole from which the backdrop is suspended comes in 4 parts, so there’s only so much adjustability.

This is the widest I can set up the stand, only two of the four segments in place:

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This is what happens when I put a third segment in. The stands are pushed too far apart and their legs are lifted off the ground. There’s only barely enough clearance for the pole in the room, but not enough for the bases of the stand:

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But wait a moment… If the pole is almost EXACTLY the width of the room, the maybe I don’t need the stands at all! If I can figure out some secure way to mount the pole directly on the wall, without pissing off the landlord too much, I should be able to have a backdrop that perfectly fits the room with no space wasted by stands!

I’ll let you know how I go :)

Twin Lens Toys – Cameras on Loan

I’ve got a new, well old but new to me, toy to play with!

With the dominance of digital photography today, there’s a growing number of photographers going back to film, for various reasons. Whether it’s for the cool retro aspect, the artistic possibilities afforded by film, the features of film that digital has yet to replicate or the desire to return to basics without the help of auto-everything, film is making a comeback.

I’ve been inspired by some of my buddies such as Brian, the_wolf_brigade, and others, I asked my dad if I could borrow his old twin lens reflex camera. With great excitement, I picked up dad’s two cameras (a Yashica-Mat and a Rolleicord) the other day, and with a hint of pride, dad walked me through the features and controls.

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One of the things that excites me about trying this camera is that it takes medium format film. I’m used to shooting on a cropped sensor, approximately 24mm diagonal. These medium format cameras shoot on frames 64mm diagonal. That’s a huge image area, and on a fine grain film, the detail captured will be incredible.

All I need to do now is get some film, and start shooting! I can’t wait :) Look for the results of my experiments in the future, once I’ve shot, developed, printed and scanned the photos.

The setup

Today I thought I’d try a slightly different way of doing the photos. I saw a fantastic video on product lighting at ProPhotoLife, and remembered I had a small sheet of perspex lying around, so I decided to give it a go. I like this technique! It has some real potential. Here’s the setup shot:

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Lens specs – P365 Mar11

A couple of photos showing the specifications on my 50mm and 80-400mm lenses, used as illustrations for one of the Photography 101 lessons on the Digital Photography School blog.

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