Digital SLR's Movies and bows and arrows.

I had the pleasure of shooting an archery event at the weekend. 'Moscovy Archers' my local club which i was a member for a number of years held a field archery event in the woods not far from were i live.

A great opertunity to use my camera i thought and maybe get to test out its video recording.

DSLR's video looks completely different to your average camcorder.
Camcorders have almost everything in focus all the time and tend to make the image look flat, a camcorder will always look like a video which there is nothing wrong with but it will never look classey, a Digital SLR on the other hand records an image which looks like a traditional 35mm film camera as used by film makers the world over.


There is a big shift at the minute for indi film makers to use DSLR's as the 'look' up until now has been reserved for big films with even bigger budgets! To get anything close in the motion picture camera range would cost you 20K plus!

Then along came a camera called a Canon 5D Mark II with its Full HD 1080p resolution and 24p (fps) frame rate. Digital video was transformed overnight and now they are everywhere, being used for low budget music video's to major TV productions like 'House' which the seanson finale was film exclusively on 5D Mark II's.

So whats all the fuss about?
To try and show the 'look' which you get i have included a 'still' which has been taken from a movie clip i took at the weekend. (I haven't finished putting the movie together yet)

As you can see the subject pop's out of the frame and looks as if it had been taken from a DVD/film. The camera has done such a good job of gathering light it almost looks as if some extra lighting or reflectors had been used but it was all natural light and as it was taken under the tree's there wasn't much of it.

On the technical note this clip was taken at 200mm with the camera set to ISO6400 which is a very high sensitivity and normally reserved as a last resort in dark conditions, however the 5D Mark II is incredibly good at producing detailed images in really very poor light and ISO6400 is really not a problem and even ISO12800 can produce very good prints.

At my next wedding, time permitting i will definately record a few clips.

You can see more images from this shoot by clicking here.

New Camera time!

It's that time again. A bit like buying a new car, which do you go for, the only blessing is camera's only come in black and the make is pretty much desided by your lenses! and you don't part exchange either the old one become another backup.

I had been debating on which body to go for for ages. Do I update my current camera with a Canon 7D, 18MP, great for fast shooting, crop sensor which means your lens act as if they are longer than they actually are (great for sport and wildlife) or do I go for a 5D Mark II, 21MP fullframe sensor and regarded as one of the best wedding camera on the market, fantastic low light image capabilities.

Ultimately it came down to image quality, photography for me is about producing the very best images i can, so for me there was only one real option.

So for 2010 the 5D Mark II it is. Am i please with it? Oh yes, the images it produces are superb and full of detail. Matched to my 24-105L lens it performs superbly, and my 85mm prime is just a dream.

Blast from the past

While searching the net i thought i'd look up my old camera's.

There she is... a picture of the first camera i ever used. The Kodak 25 instamatic! It was a camera like this i shot the Red arrows with in 1976.

After the Kodak we had a 110 filmed camera, the model i can't remember largly due to the fact the image quality was really bad! looked like this though.

My first SLR, 1988. A Praktica B100. I thought this was the best camera in the world when i first bought it. 35mm film was so much better than the old 110! I remember taking some of my shots to college to show one of the leturers... he was less impressed with the image qauilty than me!

A short time later i decided i needed a change so i started saving for my first 'Auto focusing SLR' the trusty Yashica 230-AF. I really wanted a Canon EOS but they were priced out of my reach. I remember working for ages to save up for this one. Optically the lenses were pretty good, the 70-210 lens was very fast focusing and produced great images. 1.7 fps was real slow but the automatic shutter release when something came in focus was a nice touch (trip focus), eat batteries as i recall. I remember buying a 10mtr cable release so i could take pictures of birds at a bird table, it cost a fortune... i think i used it once!

This lead me to the Canon EOS range, namely an EOS100 The view finder wasn't as large as the Yashica but the build quality and feel was so much better and 3fps as well more than made up for it. In the digital age Canon is where i've stayed.