This makes absolutely no sense, (well, actually it does, but in impossible ways; I'll get to that) ...but Canon apparently leaked official specs of a 50D. Successor to the 40D, of course, and arriving just ONE year after the 40D, which is half a year early considering historic trends.

Above the 40D, it has 15 megapixels, AF fine tuning, TWO different sizes of "sRAW", (one a very useful 7 megapixels...) Oh, and did I mention, ISO 100-12800? And also, some sort of high-res 3" LCD. Oh and Digic IV. Last but not least, (on the laugh scale, that is) ...in-body IS? Didn't Canon say this would NEVER come?

Okay, three things. First, this is probably too good to be true. It sounds like someone just took the 40D, added the specs that the Nikon D300 has that make 40D users jealous, plus a couple nearly-impossible specs for good measure. The 15 megapixels crammed into a 1.6x sensor, combined with the 12800 ISO, ...well it just makes me roll my eyes! Also, it is just highly unlikely that they are coming out so quickly with such potentially ground-breaking features like Digic IV and two sRAW sizes. If they had these features in the pipeline, they should have shown up in the cameras released just a year ago...

Alright, secondly, let's just pretend the 50D is indeed true and coming. The first thing that comes to mind is, OUCH 40D users! Just one year ago you jumped on a $1300-$1400 waiting list for the 40D, and already we're getting the 50D at (I assume) the same price... I'd be hating Canon as a company right about now, if I were a Canon shooter. (But like I said, I think the rumor is total BS...) But, let's pretend some more, and let the 50D explain the 40D's recent, sudden price drop. Hmm. It could indeed be that Canon's 40D sales weren't nearly what they expected, thus pushing them to "move" the remaining 40D's and scurry to basically make a "better 40D" and call it a 50D... Hey, it happened before with the 30D. (Bare minimum upgrade from the 20D, hardly anyone who owned the 20D upgraded to the 30D...)

Thirdly, back to it being impossible, or at least being a historic bone-headed move by Canon: The 5D is now 3 years old, and DESPERATELY in need of an upgrade, especially with the D700 on the market now. Seriously Canon, the 5D has an AF mechanism somewhere between the 20D and the 30D. That's ancient! (Read Becker's [b] school blog to hear a real pro's HONEST opinion on the 5D AF, especially if you're considering buying one now that they're "so cheap"...) So anyway. Canon WILL update the 5D, in my opinion. They have to. While the 40D, in my opinion, competes perfectly fine with the D300. It's got all the features that count- on-par image quality, faster speed, and on-par autofocus. For hundreds less. I don't know the 40D sales numbers, but I've always considered the 40D to be a stellar camera with HUGE value, if not more value than the D300 even...

Anyway, like I said I doubt this whole 50D thing is true. But apparently the "leak" came from Canon's own website, so who knows! I guess if Canon is already preparing a 50D web page in secret, the actual announcement must be very near. We'll know for sure by Photokina!

=Matt=

I've totally lost track of which color I'm supposed to use for which headline post, so forget it! I'm just gonna do whatever...

The beastly Sigma 50 1.4 just got reviewed on DPReview. Basically, this sigma lens is easily more than twice as big / heavy as all the other 50mm 1.4 lenses, and roughly twice as expensive at $500.

What it IS is the same size as the Canon 50 1.2, but half the price and (hopefully) equal the image quality at f/1.4...

Well, is it? Ehh, well, umm, err, yeah, you know I had high hopes for this lens... But...

It DOES indeed outperform the Canon and Nikon 50mm 1.4 lenses, as far s sharpness is concerned. But contrast wide-open is, well, flat. I'd say sharpness is on par with the Canon 50 1.2, but contrast is not.

Flare is almost nill when the sun is IN the frame, (none of those annoying little green spheres) and quite well-controlled when the sun is just outside the frame. On par with the Canon 50 1.2 I'd say.

Bokeh is gorgeous. Best combination of bokeh & sharpness on the market considering the aspherical lens element, I'd say... (aspherical elements help sharpness etc. but can harm bokeh...)

On full-frame, the lens totally out-resolves even the 21 megapixel 1Ds mk3, dead center, but the extreme corners are crap. Great corners on DX, though, and corners aren't really important with a lens like this anyway. (And the sample images look pretty darn good, despite the numbers...)

But there's one thing that saddens me- The autofocus speed does not "beat" the Canon 50 1.4, nor the 1.8. I was really hoping that it could be lightning fast, but I guess with all that glass it just doesn't have the muscle. Maybe on the Nikon bodies it can perform better? Who knows...

Will I be buying one? Probably not, especially considering the fact that Nikon has some new f/1.4 primes of it's own on the horizon. I'll wait and see what Nikon does; if they try and release a 50 1.2 at $1000+, I'll probably go for this Sigma. If Nikon does a "pro-grade" 50 1.4, (which would be a first) ...then I'll consider it. For now, I'm just going to stick with renting 85mm primes instead...

=Matt=

PS: Oh and we can expect to see the Canon 5D mk2, starting THIS week. Thursday is a historic favorite for Canon...

Those of you who follow my blog will know that I'm no "macs rule, PC's are a joke" kinda photographer... One of the biggest reasons I bought a macbook was just because it LOOKED nice. And I've often said that Thinkpads are pretty decent...

http://www.dpreview.com

Built-in tablet.

17" widescreen display with a built-in calibration system and 72% of the full Adobe RGB color space.

Up to 8 gigs of RAM, 1 gig of graphics RAM.

Intel Core 2 Quad.

Two, count 'em TWO 200 gig hard drives...

Built-in 7 type memory card reader.

USB 2.0, firewire, AND eSATA.

Blu-Ray.

Holy cow. Apple is going to have to ROCK the next Macbook Pro, (or this thinkpad is going to have some SERIOUS flaws) ...because I really, REALLY like this new thinkpad...

=Matt=

[edit] Okay, on the shop.lenovo.com website I priced out the kind of Thinkpad that would actually make it WORTH getting. (Features that the MBP does not offer) ...$4500+!!! Ouch, and a decked-out 17" MBP goes for $3500, and if I go easy on a very decent 15" MBP I can keep it around $3K.

No dice on a "Thinktab" any time soon!

IN OTHER NEWS, my black macbook has developed a buzzing sound. I suspect that it is coming from the hard drive, and I suspect that the sound is a loose spindle or something; the sound can be heard when rocking the computer like a see-saw, but quiets down to almost nothing when it is sitting still. Sounds like a wobbly spindle to me! Needless to say I backed up ALL my data the moment I heard this sound, and I guess I either need to send in this HD, or just get a new one, or something... (Fujitsu, purchased in Feb, identical to the stock Fujitsu HD other than the capacity and RPM's... I don't even remember if this thing has a warranty... It seems I'm looking at about $65 for a new 160 gig 5400 SATA drive, no matter what brand... Not bad, but I think I spend $70-80 on this presumably dying or compromised Fujitsu. Even if I can get it warrantied, I'll need something to work with in the meantime! Anybody have any quick-and-dirty methods of swapping hard drives and having the new drive be fully bootable? (Identical to the previous drive...)

=Matt=

As I slowly master the D300's JPG output, (just passed 50,000 images the other day!) ...I want to post some "SOOC" images as examples of how it is POSSIBLE to get great, proof-ready shots without spending any time in photoshop. Here goes!

I use spot metering and manual exposure for a few reasons. First, to get the best portraits, the best light is usually the tricky kind. A lot of the time, I go for backlighting, and this involves letting a "rim light" blow out. (within reason) I use manual exposure because my background light changes from shot to shot, but I keep my subjects in relatively consistent light. I don't want to have to worry about a shaded or sunny background causing my subject's faces to be too dark / bright from shot to shot, so I just set up the pose, get the exposure for their faces right, and then I'm free to move around and adjust my background. I use spot metering because having 51 focus points and a DX viewfinder (points are spread out more versus FX) allows me to ALWAYS have a focus point over my subject's faces... (Or any similarly lit skin will do...)

Shooting like this gives me consistent results that don't need constant brightening / darkening in Bridge CS3. If the backlighting was quite strong, I may need to brighten their faces with a burn / dodge in PS, but we're still talking about "proofing", so that's not an issue, yet... My goal is only to get images in my camera good enough that I can show clients right away. Of course when a print is ordered, or an image is going into an album, then I can fully retouch it. But by that point, I'm getting paid specifically to retouch the image.

(As opposed to having to optimize the color and brightness of EVERY image before uploading it because you left the camera in auto-WB and full matrix (evaluative) metering, etc etc... Not to mention doing something crazy like offering a COMPLETE set of fully-retouched images for free, and having to retouch each image even though they may never even print it. They probably won't notice a difference just looking at images on their family's un-calibrated monitor... And I won't even get into shooting RAW! I just don't do it anymore when the shooting conditions are this controlled. Unless I REALLY need dynamic range out of an image, or if the WB is constantly changing back and forth...)

But, back to the lighting being consistent- I also like to lock down my white balance. And again, in the spirit of owning a professional camera and NOT just using it in the built-in settings, I took the time to memorize which lighting conditions correspond with which specific kelvin temperatures. Broad daylight, for example, is 5500K. Every amateur photographer should know that. Then as it gets later in the day, the color temperature climbs up towards 6000K, 6500K, etc. So instead of trying to use the sunny WB preset and then dialing it to some arbitrary +/- compensation as the day gets warmer, I simply start at 5500 K and then I can follow the light all the way up to the end of the day without having to guess at when to switch from sunny WB to shady WB. It also has a LOT to do with WHAT the light is landing on and reflecting off of. Late in the summer in So Cal, I have a lot of warm-colored leaves and grass to work with, so this acts as a natural warm-it-up filter. If I can add REAL warmth in-camera, instead of having to do it in photoshop, awesome!

(Note: This is a LOT easier on Nikon cameras because you can directly change the Kelvin WB without going into a menu. I don't know if this method would work as well on other systems, but you can set the "set" button on Canon DSLRs to bring up an oft-used menu item, maybe set that to WB?)

Okay, moving on. If the contrast is high, (stark sunlight and shade) ...I turn on Nikon's "Active D-lighting" and set it to low or normal, depending on how harsh the contrast is. (the higher I set the D-lighting, the more it helps bring the dynamic range together. For this shot D-lighting was set to normal.

I did blow highlights in the red channel, on the tree trunk and some of the rim light on the subjects, but I kept a close watch on these so that it does not ruin a photo.

As far as the rest of the in-camera processing goes, well first of all I used the AWESOME D2X simulation preset, Mode III. Great for outdoors and bright colors... Of course my in-camera sharpening is always set to ZERO, because I have simply found that in-camera sharpening has NEVER been as good as Bridge CS3, let alone Photoshop CS3... Next, well in-camera contrast and brightness are trumped by Active D-lighting when it is turned on. (If I turn D-lighting off, I usually set in-camera contrast to -1 if it's bright out, +/- 0 if it's average, or +1, +2 or +3 if the lighting is really flat... Moving on then, saturation was set to +1, and Hue was set to +/- 0.

So, there you have it. Oh, and a couple other things related to shooting technique- I've been shooting static subjects in AF-S, (single) cause I like to hear the beep, but I've also been getting really good at flipping to AF-C really quick. (continuous)

Alright take care! If there's anything I missed, please do ask further questions!

=Matt=

The Nikon P6000.

13.5 megapixels.

4x 28-112mm (equivalent) ED VR lens.

2.7" LCD

Flash hotshoe.

ISO 64-1600

RAW (NRW, not NEF, *shrug*...)

BUILT-IN GPS!

All for $500.

Pretty cool, but I dunno, I'm still floored by Olympus' P&SLR camera. I guess it will come down to how big the two cameras actually are, and how much the Olympus "Micro 4/3" system costs...

Take care,
=Matt=

PS: Canon 5D mk2. August 26th. You heard it here first!

Olympus just made the biggest announcement of the year. They took the mirror out of a DSLR and called it "Micro Four-Thirds".

Yes, that's right, a baby DSLR. A point & shoot camera but with interchangeable lenses. A pocket-able camera that delivers DSLR quality and control. A 21st century rangefinder street camera. A go-light adventurer's dream come true.

Yes, it will have an electronic viewfinder, and this will never be as good as an optical viewfinder, but even EVF's have advantages. (on-demand magnified manual focus) The only real drawback will be no traditional autofocus, but Olympus has pioneered the "fly by wire" system for years so if anybody can do it, Oly can...

Finally, I will be able to own a P&S-sized camera, but be able to slap on an f/1.4 prime when I need to, a 1:1 macro when I want to, and so on and so forth. In fact I can't imagine owning a high-end P&S camera anymore. How will they be able to compete, when a micro-4/3 camera can offer ultra-wide lenses, fast-apeture lenses, super-telephoto lenses, all with pro-quality, no-compromises sharpness etc...

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0808/08080501microfourthirds.asp

Wow. Nikon's (secret) DX P&S's just got taken to the cleaners! I wonder if Nikon or Canon or anyone else could ever dare compete with this. Nikon and Canon in particular are too busy fighting over the world's TINIEST segment of digital camera sales- full-frame DSLR's.

Olympus just secured their share of a HUGE market... If they make a model with weather-sealing, I'll buy one in a heartbeat!!!

=Matt=

Pentax is one of the four original, old-school camera makers still around, and one of the TWO old-school camera makers still offering compatibility with their old lens mount.

(Nikon, Canon, Pentax and Olympus in the first category, but Canon and Olympus changed their lens mounts. Nikon and Pentax are the only companies still around that offer compatibility all the way back to manual focus. Sony has of course taken over the Minolta lens mount, but Minolta itself has dissolved. Not to mention the fact that Sony has no interest in embracing it's history like Pentax and Nikon do...)

Officially, Pentax has stated that they are developing a full-frame body. It will not be available this year, however, so Nikon is going to have three (or four, but I'm not gonna speculate, just stay tuned!) full-frame cameras by then, Canon will have two, (or three, but that's less likely now) and Sony will have one.

Also however, apparently the Pentax K200D and K20D have not been as popular as Pentax would have liked among consumers. Which is really a shame, because honestly in my opinion the K200D is THE best "beginner" camera on the market, by far, and the K20D is the best high-res APS-C body on the market, cramming almost 15 megapixels into a 1.5x crop while still delivering a CLEAN ISO 3200.

Reports were that people didn't buy the K200D that much because it was priced considerably higher than other consumer DSLR's from Canon / Nikon / Olympus, but honestly, it is for VERY good reason, and I think the features that Pentax offers are some that we will never, NEVER see in a Canon or Nikon "low-end" body. (pro-series 11-point AF, weather sealing, in-body stabilization!!!!) Heck, even the 2nd-tier camera bodies like the Canon 40D and Nikon D80 don't have features like this! (And they cost hundreds MORE than the K200D!!!)

Then of course the K20D is also world's best high-res crop-sensor camera out there. Again, it is far above the other cameras in it's price range in quite a few respects. Again, pro-series 11-point AF, pro construction, weather-sealing, in-body stabilization, and all the pro-grade features that you don't find in any other camera at that price level.

Personally, I've stopped recommending Nikon and Canon for 2008. I think they have not necessarily "dropped the ball", but that Pentax, Sony and Olympus have simply gotten desperate for market share and are REALLY innovating with the features they offer in their low-end bodies. I highly recommend that people check out the Pentax K200D, (especially if you are an outdoor shooter) or the Olympus E-420 / E-520... (especially if you are interested in the lightest / smallest possible setup) I don't exactly recommend Sony because they are going down a path with live view that KILLS the optical viewfinder, and I believe we should keep our viewfinders big and bright...

Take care, and buy a Pentax / Olympus, all you beginners out there!
=Matt=

There is something big going on at Nikon. I can't say, but if you hunt you can find the same sources and possibilities.

The fact is that the D700, in all it's glory, is only the beginning of the show. The main event is yet to come...

All other cameras, of all types, from all other manufacturers, are about to get OWNED, in one way or another.

Just sit tight...

=Matt=

PS: Nikon just announced a buffer upgrade for the D3 today, BTW. Double the buffer, so you can shoot up to thirty six 14-bit lossless RAW files. At 9 FPS, that's 4 solid seconds of machine-gun fire. And most sports shooters shoot JPG anyway; the buffer puts JPGs up at around 120. And by then the dynamic buffer is dumping images so it's basically bottomless. Yowza! (But like I said, the SHOCKER is yet to come!)

Seriously, is there ANYTHING more frustrating like trying to get your POP and SMTP stuff set up correctly for a bunch of different email addresses?

I love the convenience of being able to just have one application collect all my email addresses. I love having my address book on my computer, iTouch... (and someday my iPhone)

But I absolutely cannot stand the retardedness that is POP / SMTP. I mean seriously, could it work any worse? Is it just that Mac Mail is a piece of crap? Or is it an issue with servers and things?

I really don't know a thing when it comes to trouble-shooting my email. All I know is that for some stupid reason I can NOT set all my outgoing smtp servers to their respective email addresses; for some reason it ONLY works if I have ALL my email addresses use just ONE smtp. And every now and then, in fact on a regular basis, it just STOPS WORKING. I can recieve emails fine, but can't send them. Not from any address, not to any address.

I have an @ juno.com email address that uses authsmtp, an @ mydomain.com email hosted through yahoo so I have smtp.bizmail.yahoo, an email @blueshoephoto for my work with eric which has NEVER had it's own working SMTP, and a RTS gaming team email that uses dgdnnet.ipower as it's SMTP.

Tell me my friends, is there a better way? Do I dump this mac and use MS Outlook? Do I get Entourage? Do I get gmail? I have a gmail account, I just never used it because I'm too lazy to try and switch main email addresses for the 2nd / 3rd time in my life...

AFQEW@%#%WSDF!!%#^RQRQRQRQWER~~!!!!!1!!!!!

=Matt=

Okay, that was fun. The theory is, with a bunch of these little 5.8 deals, we'll avoid the big, bad 8.0 or something... Hope that's the case!

Anyway, Adobe just finalized their Lightroom 2.0 program. You should try it out, it's got a lot of improvements, namely the localized (brush) tools, for burning / dodging, and a couple other things.

(I REALLY hope they include this feature in Bridge CS4, cause I still can't acclimate my brain to the way Lightroom works...)

Take care,
=Matt=