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Nikon D800/D4 troubles, and Nikon's response
Canon's fix for the 5D mk III light leak issue is a bit of black tape.
Olympus E-M5 review by DP Review
Adobe Lightroom 4.1 Rc2: Still buggy according to many users.
Nikon D800 VS Canon 5D Mark III: DXO verdict is out, Canboys hide themselves in shame.
Olympus OM-D E-M5 Field review by Michael Gakuran
Nikon D800 Review by Nasim Mansurov
Adobe Photoshop CS6 compatibility: Windows XP yes(!), Windows Vista no, Apple 64 bit only.
Patrick Butler reviews the Canon 5D Mark III and shoots a wedding with it.
Canon 5D Mark III review roundup part 1
Oscar nomination for a movie filmed with a Canon 5D MkII
The documentary "Hell and back again", shot by Danfung Dennis caused quite a stir in the Dslr (and not) shooting circles. This marks the very first time a film shot with a dslr gets an Academy Award nomination. A brief synopsis of the film:
"An embedded journalist follows the experiences of a wounded combat soldier as he tries to readjust to civilian life. As his Marine platoon in Afghanistan takes part in the 2009 counterinsurgency, Sgt. Nathan Harris suffers a serious leg wound and begins his slow transition from active soldier to injured veteran."
And a short description of the whole process by Dennis Danfung himself:The Canon 5D Mark II is capable of unprecedented image quality, but since it is a stills camera, there are several limitations that I had to address before using this camera in a warzone.The first problem is with audio. I used a Sennheiser ME- 66 shotgun mic and G2 wireless system running into a Beachtek DXA-2s (I’ve since upgraded to a Juicedlink CX-231 with the DN-101) which converts professional XLR mics into a minijack suitable for the 5D. I built custom aluminum ‘wings’ to hold this audio setup.The second problem is stabilization. The design of the Canon 5D Mark II makes hand held video shooting difficult. I mounted my whole system onto a Glidecam 2000 HD with custom rubber pads on the mount and a foam ear plug to suppress the vibration of the lens. The rig is very heavy and it took about two months to get my arm strong enough to shoot extended shots. I cut up a Glidecam Body Pod to make it fit with my body armor and used it to rest my arm when I was not shooting.To achieve a cinematic look when shooting in bright daylight, I shot at f2.8 at 1/60th or slower, which requires a drastic amount of reduction of light that hits the sensor. I used a Singh Ray Variable ND filter. While the filter can reduce the amount of light by 2 to 8 stops, I had serious problems with uneven coverage, so part of my frame would be darker than others. I have tried Fader ND filters, but also have the same problem.Another issue is that all focus must be done manually after recording begins. The only way to address this was a lot of practice racking focus. I was not able to rack focus when running, so I often had to try to stay the same distance from my subject to keep them in focus.The most frustrating problem was that the camera would overheat after about 15 minutes of continuous shooting in 120 degree heat. I had no option other than to turn it off and let it cool. I did not have a spare body.The final serious problem is that the files straight out of the camera are difficult to edit with. I use a 2.93 GHz Macbook Pro 17in, 256gb SSD HD, 4 GB RAM and convert the files into Apple Prores 422 LT using Compressor (the program often crashes when handling many files, but the quality is better than with mpeg streamclip). I use a 8TB Sonnet D400QR5 set at RAID 5 to store the 45 hours of footage and Prores files.I carried six extra batteries and five 16 GB Sandisk Extreme IV cards.(Maybe) Related articles
Canon 5D Mark 2 review by Ken Rockwell
P.S The new, Serious and more business conscious Ken Rockwell appears to have changed the wording, the context, heck, everything in his review of this camera. It is no longer "less responsive than his kids toys", and not worse of all Nikon DSLRs ever made. It (the Canon EOS 5D Mark II) is now better than any Nikon at almost everything, and overall, one of the best cameras ever made. Go figure. Quote of his old review, and our comment at the bottom of this post.
Canon 5D Mark III/X latest rumors roundup
Canon may slowly lose its edge, market share, brand luster etc, but there's one thing that hasn't changed, and is highly characteristic of the company: it doesn't leak. At least, not uncontrollably, as opposed to all of its major rivals who lately seem to have lost the ball. We've got raw files from Nikon's latest and 'bestest' circulating in the wild, all the while there's a supposed NDA in place to disallow just that, we found out almost everything about Olympus E-M5 before it was officially announced, and so on.
Canon EOS Error Messages: An explanation and understanding, by Rudy Winston.
This article goes way beyond the dreaded 'error 99' that has plagues countless EOS shooters:
"EOS digital SLRs began by displaying a series of possible Error Codes, depending on the nature of a detected problem. In early years, these
