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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.

New Site Goes Live and First Flyer Revealed

I made a life decision a few weeks ago – I want to be a photographer. That may sound obvious to readers of this blog, but for years I have been a web developer who takes photographs. Now I have decided that I’ve had enough of web development, and I’m going to focus my attention on making a living from my photography. Of course, if the right web job comes along for the right money, I won’t turn it down. But this decision was all about changing how I saw myself.

Since making this decision I have been working hard to make it a reality. I have done a complete overhaul of my web site ( http://neil.creek.name ) which had only ever been a half-hearted effort, and have started brainstorming ideas to find work. One of those ideas has come from friends and family who have recently had children. They have often said “We love the photos you take of our children, and I’m sure you could sell your services to other parents we know.” With that thought in mind, Naomi and I have worked on creating my first promotional flyer.

New Web Site

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The new web site is built around a collection of six subject-specific folios of my work. Along with the collections of photos, for the first time I am promoting my services as a photographer for hire, with actual prices, and the facility to submit a quote request. The six folios on show at the moment are: portraits, nature, weddings, costuming, commercial and special effects. I may add other sections in the future, the next one to be added will probably be panoramic photography.

Writing marketing copy has never been something I enjoy, and I find it difficult to try to convince people to part with their money. However I am confident in my skills as a photographer, so I don’t feel that I am offering something that isn’t worth what I am asking.

I have received a lot of help with the site redevelopment, most importantly and most effectively from my darling wife Naomi. She has supported and encouraged me every step of the way, and that has helped me more than anything. The Twitter community have also helped me in various ways for which I am grateful. I am especially grateful to Glenn Murray (twitter: @divinewrite web: http://www.divinewrite.com) for the detailed thoughts he offered on both the “voice” of the copy and on making the site search-friendly. I still have some work to do on the site to polish it up and complete Glenn’s suggestions, but that should be completed in a week or two.

Please take the time to have a look through my new site. Enjoy the folios, send the link to friends, and please consider me if you live near Melbourne, Australia and are in need of a photographer.

Family Photos Flyer

This is the first tangible result of my new self-promotional push. This flyer design will soon be printed and handed in large bundles to everyone we know who knows people with families. Hopefully when the word gets out, the work will come in. I plan to do other flyers in the future, especially for weddings, but I’ll see how this one goes first, and learn from any mistakes we make this time around.

Feel free to download the PDF of the flyer yourself and print it off for yourself or friends, if you know someone who might be interested in my services! Who knows, I might even be able to think of some kind of referrer bonus or something. It’s early days!

Trip to the Hills – Day 1: Stars!

Over the next several days, I’m going to post the photos I took on our recent trip up to the Victorian Alps with the family. It was a fun five days, and I took photos every day, with quite a good variety too, so I hope you enjoy them!

After a long drive across the state, we arrived in the late afternoon. The house we stayed at is built on a farm property, with livestock just on the other side of a small (but electrified!) fence. My nieces were introduced to the neighbours by my parents.

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While dinner was being prepared, I ducked outside to take a dusk photo of the house. I tried a go at HDR, but I’m not really happy with the result, especially the halo on the tree at the left.

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After relaxing for the rest of the day, everyone else turned in for an early night. I didn’t want to waste the opportunity of a dark sky, however. Unfortunately it was a first quarter moon, which did down out the stars somewhat, but this meant that every night the moon would become more of a problem, so astro photography on the first night was a must.

I am especially pleased with this first photo, a fisheye of the galaxy over the house, which I lit by firing the flash several times, walking in front of the house. See below for the technical details. Please view this image at full size to see the stars properly.

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  • Camera: Canon 350D
  • Lens: Sigma 8mm f4 fisheye
  • Settings: 27sec @f4.0 ISO1600
  • Canon 580EX flash fired bare by hand half a dozen times along the front of the house and up the tree during the exposure.
  • Processing: Lightroom 2, mostly to increase contrast, tweak exposure and reduce noise.

Below is a photo of the centre of our galaxy, in the region of the constellation Sagittarius. Below that is a long exposure star trail of a nebula in the same area, taken at full zoom with my 400mm telephoto lens.

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Finally, this is a somewhat unusual photo. Before returning to bed, I noticed the bright star Canopus just rising above the horizon. At this elevation, the light from the star passes through a lot of air to reach our eyes. This is what makes the star twinkle. It’s kinda like the wobbly looking lines at the bottom of a swimming pool. This same air movement also has the effect of splitting the stars spectrum up into a rainbow of colours. A keen eye can see the star shimmering in many colours.

To capture the colourful twinkling, I tried a trick that I first read about many years ago when I was first getting into astronomy. I exposed to make the star nice and bright, then set a long shutter time, and during the exposure, I dragged the camera over the star, leaving behind a colourful trail as the star changed colour. Amazing where you can find colour isn’t it?

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I took a few other photos that night, well lots of others, but most of the same scene, for stacking together later for longer exposure photos. It’ll take me a while to process these, but I’ll post them when I do, if they turn out to be any good.

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