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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.

Beaded Art Deco Headpiece – by Naomi

Last night, after many months of on-and-off work, Naomi completed what I think is one of her most beautiful beaded artworks yet, a green, silver and black beaded feather headpiece.

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This piece will be on display in the members showcase at the Bead Society of Victoria Bead Expo, on this weekend in the Kingston City Hall, Moorabbin. If you go, make sure you say hi to Naomi, who will be running a class on loomed beading, and volunteering at the BSV stand.

To take this photo, I simply laid the headpiece on a sheet of white card, and bounced a single flash off our white ceiling. The flash was placed at camera top right. I turned the flash power up to full, so that I could stop down the aperture a bit to get as big a depth of field as possible. I believe I was shooting at f16 or so.

Purple Flower Pendant – P365 Mar04

Last year, I took some macro photos of flowers in Mum’s garden. Ever since Naomi has started doing loom beading, she’s wanted to try and use on of my photos as the basis for a pattern for some beaded jewellery. She chose this photo of a flower for her first attempt.

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Using a Photoshop action that I helped Naomi create, the photo was rezised, reduced to an eight colour palette and “pixelated” to the appropriate detail to match the number of beads Nomi wanted to use. From this plan, Nomi matched the pixel colours as closely as possible with the colours of beads in her “bead catalogues”, and placed an order for the eight colours. When they arrived, she taped some of each below the palette to help her pick them out.

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And here’s the result modeled by Naomi. It looks even better in person.
(The final pendant was actually flipped left/right)

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Naomi was going for a “it looks like something, but can’t quite tell what” look, rather than a geometric pattern or random colours. I think she did an awesome job!

Beaded letter pano – P365 Mar01

You may recall the beaded sign that the members of the Bead Society of Victoria made. When I made that post I promised that I would be taking super-high resolution photos of the beads for other uses. Well I finally got the time to do this today.

I plan to stitch all the letters (each one took about 10 photos to capture and is about 50 megapixels in total) into a single gigantic 500 megapixel panorama. However that will have to wait till I have a bit more time to do all that. For the time being, please enjoy this super high resolution panorama of the letter “O”. Make sure you zoom right in to see the incredible detail.

This piece was made by Noelle Walker.

Click and drag on the image to look around. Click the “+” to zoom in, the “-” to zoom out or use the slider.

The viewport for the panorama must necessarily be small in order to fit it into my blog. I have a version with a larger view window on my web site. Please visit this version for a proper look at this incredible piece of art. I will upload the full panorama when I’ve finished it.

3D bracelet and space ship – P365 Feb24

I had a play around with some 3D photography for the first time in quite a while. This time I also experimented with macro 3D photography. It takes all the challenge of 3D photography, adds it to the even harder challenge of macro photography, for a super difficult challenge! But I think the results are pretty darn cool :)

The first photo is a regular 3D photo of one of Naomi’s beautiful wirework glass bead bracelets. I thought this would make an interesting 3D subject due to the detailed structure of all the beads, plus the interesting reflections and refractions from the glass. The second photo is a macro close up of the same bracelet.

Finally the third photo is a bit of fun with one of my Star Wars Micro Machine toys, shot with macro extension.

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