Canon Powershot G11 Compact Lives Again

My Canon G11 has had more than its fair share of use and abuse, typically going places that my prized DSLR kit doesn't go for fear of damage.  So it didn't surprise me when the screen turned everything orange after being in my rucksack on a particularly cold ski trip (it might've been the temperature or when I crashed out!).  It was still usable and I stuck with it.

Latterly though the big jog wheel on the back was beginning to play up, often needing to go round several times before it registered any movement and often the setting I was adjusting went the wrong way.  The wheel is used for many functions from scrolling between images in playback mode, to setting Shutter, Aperture and Exposure mode.  For me it was kind of a critical problem.

So it was looking like to would be time to bin it and buy a replacement.  But here's the thing, I've kind of got attached to it.  I've taken some great shots with it, shots that have scored highly in competition, (most recently a Highly Commended in Photoplus magazine), and images that I'm personally pleased with.  I also know how to get a good shot out of it and have often gone out with it when my friends have taken their DSLR's (Recent trip to Canary Wharf comes to mind).

So what to do.  I got the idea to "Google" the jog wheel issue to see if it was a common problem and whether anyone was doing repairs (and if so how much).  Well I wasn't disappointed.  I found a video on Youtube (watch it here) that showed a workaround AND a fix that takes no time at all to do (and works great).

That set me thinking, so I had another "Google" this time for screen replacement, and sure enough I found another video on Youtube (Watch it here) that shows how to do it.  I found a new screen for £25, and fitted it myself (a bit fiddly but not too bad) and I'm pleased to report the G11 is working perfectly.

Fully functional Canon Powershot G11 with shiny new screen fitted.

It never ceases to amaze me what an amazing resource the Internet is.  It also amazed me that I nearly dumped an expensive piece of kit for fear of high repair costs.  A lesson has been learned.


My thanks to Digitalkamera Reparatur for the screen repair info (lots of other repair guides there too) and Hungrygary for the jog wheel fix.

The New Canon 7D MkII

A good friend of mine has been fortunate enough to come into some money that he can direct to new photography equipment.  His current camera is a Canon 5D mkII and as he's primarily a wildlife photographer he also has a canon 300mm f2.8 lens with teleconverters.  Whats interesting (and difficult) is deciding on where to spend his cash.  He's leaned towards a 5D Mk III, and some longer glass and then veered towards a 1DX.  Naturally this dilemma has been well explored down the pub.

But it did set me thinking about what features are important to me (since that's what I'd base my purchase on) and what I'd like to see in the next Canon 7D revision as the 7D seems to be the best fit for me at the moment.

• I'm ok with the APS C sensor so I wouldn't want to see the 7D move to full frame.
  
• More Megapixels would be great, personally I'm not convinced by Canon's trend to smaller better pixels, give me around 30mb and I'd be happy.
  
• I would like to see lower noise levels at higher ISO, and higher total ISO..
  
• GPS built in would be great, now I've started using a separate GPS tagger, I've come to love the feature.
  
• A flip out screen, this would be a real boon for field macro work and other non straight shots, I love this feature on my G11 point and shoot.
  
• A couple more frames per second would be good, but the current model is not too shabby.

And that's about it really, of course one can ponder things like in camera images stabilisation, but that's unlikely.  Overall its not a big list, which goes to show what a good camera the 7D is, and how closely it meets my needs.

Fingers crossed for the 7D MkII.

What do you think? are there any features you'd like to see? Are 1DX pixels better?

The making of the Dangling Spider

Freshly spurred on by a recent afternoon spent taking pictures of Spiders with other members of our local camera club I wanted to try and take things up a notch.  I had in mind a macro picture of a Spider dangling from a single gossamer thread against an all black backdrop, looking like it had descended at night and was only lit by the moon.

Hmm, ok where to start! I managed to find a Spider that would do the job, one of those fat ones in the garden with a white cross on its back, they seem to make a web almost on demand and with a small stick you an carefully catch the web and lift it, and the Spider into the air.

But how to light it (remember its at night) , how to focus on it (its macro so shallow DOF) and how to freeze it so it is sharp when it will be moving, as may its appendages be.

I came up with a solution, and made a video showing how it was done, its only a couple of minutes long and I hope you like it (literally "like" it :-) ).

One of the resulting images

You can view more images here just search on "spider"

The Photo Trigger was supplied by High Speed Photography UK and the "spare pair of hands" are from Amazon, amazing value at less than £5 each, I use them loads.

Cheers Peter.

Reflecting on the trip - learning points

Our trip to Scotland was great fun, and while it seems churlish to moan about the weather (blue skies every day temperature just below 30C), as photographers it did cause us a few issues.  Whereas I had hoped for leaden skies, summits shrouded in mist and cloud, etc etc we had the odd puffy blue cloud instead.  Unfortunately, this meant that during the day we had very flat high contrast scenery with little detail, making for lacklustre shots.  Evenings produced some lovely vistas though.

The trip also provided an opportunity to observe how four very different photographers interpreted the same situations.  This was not just in technique and equipment chosen, but also in enthusiasm for a subject.  I have to confess to being uninspired enough a couple of times that I didn't bother getting out of the car to take a shot as in my opinion, all I would end up with would be an uninteresting image, rendered so by the very strong midday sun.  To note though, my pals that did make the effort made the best of a bad job and got some nice shots.

One of the highlights of the trip was the opportunity to get close up and personal with a nesting pair of wild Ospreys.  This session provided a lot of food for thought in regard of wildlife photography and equipment.

Iphone photo of Osprey nest top of tree left and
Osprey in tree on the right, the little dot towards the top,
not the dot further up thats a Crow.

The picture on the left was taken from my Iphone to "scene set" and also provide the GPS location for where we were.

So you can see things are pretty small (but not as small as at the nearby RSPB reserve which is really far away!

The birds are sitting in trees on a small island and luckily its easy to get down to the waters edge and set up a tripod and chair.

Cameras trained on the Ospreys

So that's exactly what we did as you can see in the following photo.  We were joined by a couple of other chaps.  Notice how two of us are sitting close, that's me and a buddy that is well into wildlife photography.

It gave us a good opportunity to do a little comparison of the kit we were using and the outcomes.

I was using a Canon 7D, a Sigma 120 - 400mm lens and a no brand 2x converter.  My buddy was using a Canon 5D mk 2, Canon 300mm f2.8l lens and a Canon 2x converter.

If we crudely priced these up then I would guess the 300mm lens alone would far outweigh the cost of my entire setup!  but hey lets not dwell on that!.

So we had the same subject, doing the same things, in the same light from the same spot, the only difference, was kit and photographer.  So how did we fare?  Well in terms of zoom I had the advantage, as I started with 400mm at the long end, with 2x converter giving me 800mm and then a sensor crop factor of 1.6 which meant a massive 1280mm! whereas my buddy had just 600mm.  I also I had the advantage of a far higher frame rate of up to 8 frames per second versus 3.9 of the 5D mkII. 

Of course its not all good, at full zoom, the Sigma 120 - 400 has an aperture of f5.6, add the converter and I lose two "stops" so it becomes f11.  That's pretty dark, and as we were photographing birds I wanted a high shutter speed so had no choice to up the ISO, with all the sensor noise that brings.  Needless to say, my pal didn't need as much ISO though he'd too dropped two stops to f5.6.

The other main difference in this setting is mega-pixels.  7D =18mp and 5D = 21.1mp, so he can throw away 3mp of data in a crop and he'll be at my total image size, if I crop in 3mp I'm down to 15mp and much further and the image could get ragged.

So anyway lets look at the images:

Canon 7D, Sigma 120- 400

This is mine, if you view it full size you'll see its really not sharp.

Exif data:1/1250 @f11 and ISO 400, 800mm











5D mk II, Canon 300 f2,8L

This is the 5D version, really nice and sharp.

Exif data: 1/1600 @ f8, ISO 400, 600mm











So there we have it.  The compromises that manufacturers have to make to bring components down to affordable levels do have an impact when situations become more extreme, like the high zoom levels here.  In more normal situations I'd expect the differences to be less stark.  We were blessed with very good light, if it had been overcast I would have really been in trouble.

Time to start saving!!!!

At Last Sharp Pictures!!

I've often felt that the pictures I've taken on my Canon 7D are not always as sharp as they could be.  Its been noticeable in a number of situations and I've put it down to operator error or wrong settings. 

Its been particlulary annoying when going out with others to do wildlife pictures.  Ok perhaps I can't expect to compete with a Canon 5DS Mk II and a 300mm f2.8 L lens, with my 7D and Sigma 120 - 400mm lens but I'm sure I should be able to get sharp(er) shots more of the time.  The Sigma lens is well regarded and I do get the odd sharp shot but not as often as I should.  In some images I can see that the Auto Focus (AF) point is spot on an animals eye for example but the eye is "soft".

One of the things that was bugging me was that certain shots with the subject close to the ground, showed sharp focus in the foreground going soft on the main subject.  After a bit of judicious Googling, I stumbled on a page from Northlight Images which exactly described my problem and how to fix it.

I'll not replicate here the work on the Northlight website, suffice to say that when I tested my camera/lens combination, the sharp point was indeed in front of the AF point.  Using the 7D's "Micro Adjustment" feature I was able to correct this in the "test" scenario.  I've had a quick go "in the field" and things did seem much much better though low light levels and high ISO's meant things were a little soft all the way through.

Hopefully I'll get out in good light in the next couple of days and see a great improvement.

Watch this space!