michael.gregory

<p>Ikelite</p>

<p>My wife and I did a trip a few years back much like what you plan. Our secret was the local Tourist Information Bureaus. virtually every little town has them. They are staffed by local volunteers who know pretty much everything there is to know about local travel and accommodations. If you plan to hire a car and drive around be sure to make use of this resource when you stop for lunch in beautiful quaint little villages. We found them much more reliable than internet search engines or local cell service in remote locations. They can be found by looking for a sign with a script "i".</p>

<p>You may need to send your lens to a factory service center and have it professionally cleaned and adjusted.</p>

<p>Foxy2</p><div></div>

<p><img src="https://www.flickr.com/photos/michaellgregory/14826945839/" alt="" /><br>

Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge, Smyrna Delaware.</p>

<p> I use Cam Ranger with my 1DX, 7D, and 5D Mk II. It works a treat and gives a nice live view image on the Ipad as well as extending the multi exposure capabilities for HDR photography beyond the limitations of the camera and focusing on any point of the image I designate whether the camera has a focus point there or not. </p>

<p><img src=" alt="" /></p>

<p>Step 1: Remove card from camera.<br>

Step 2: Power on camera without card.<br>

Step 3: Insert card in camera.<br>

Step 4: Format Card in Camera.<br>

Step 5: Power off camera.<br>

Step 6: Power on Camera.<br>

If camera power up ok: Assume card is ok and the issue was that the data transfer operations overwrote a memory location to a state that when read at camera power up caused the camera to not power up. Continue to use card as though nothing had ever happened.<br>

If camera fails to power up: Mark card as no good for use in the camera, and continue to use it in devices where it functions normally.</p>

<p> You are comparing two different things, (apples to oranges). The 61 points autofocus system is not like the 19 points system in the 7D. If you wish to make them comparable you have to compare those autofocus modes which are identical, (single point, augmented single point, (5 to 5 not 5 to 9),...). <br>

Even though the dual Digic 5 processors are supposedly more powerful than the Digic 4 used in the 7D, the algorithm which establishes focus for 61 points in the 1D X is doing a much more complex search and computation than the one in the 7D. <br>

The 1D X has to look at more than 3 times as many points. It should not be surprising that it takes it longer to do so.</p>

 

<p>There are a lot of factors to consider in this, and as usual many are beyond your control. I the weather is good and the seas are calm and the animals are broaching far enough from the boat, Use the 500 I would use the tripod if there is room on the boat to do so, but then it would not be that small would it? I would not advise hanging a sandbag on the railing. It would be my advise to use the lens that you can hand hold. I have done some of this in Hawaii where the water was a bit rough and I used the 100-400 zoom. I wished for the 500 because the law requires that the captain maintain a certain distance from the animals, (the animals however do not always obey the law). If you are physically able to do so I would have the long lens and a shorter one at hand, and so that you can pick up either one. Of course I would take all my lenses then once the conditions on this particular day were understood, mount the best lens I have for them, and stow the rest safely somewhere out of the way The boat crews are usually helpful with this.<br>

Use the fastest shutter speed you can commensurate with the Iso you choose. If you set your shutter for about twice the reciprocal of the lens length or higher in shutter priority mode with iso on auto, you should do well.</p>

<p> There are a lot of factors that contribute to a camera failing to achieve sharp focus when trying to capture a bird in flight. The most important thing is not to get disheartened and give up. The two biggest issues are camera shake and background contrast or complexity.<br>

I believe that it is incorrect to say outright that you should use either manual or auto mode, or to issue a blanket statement that you should use a particular shutter speed. Yes you should be above the reciprocal of the total length of the lens, but consider in choosing your shutter speed how much light you have to work with, how fast your subject is moving and what kind of background you subject is moving against. If you are trying to catch an eagle on the wing and they are passing near over head at fairly close range as they sometimes may do, with a bright clear blue sky behind them and your camera has a focus mode that can track motion when the distance to the subject is varying then you can shoot at low moderate ISO and speeds close to the reciprocal of the lens length.<br>

As each one of these factors changes, speed, background, direction of motion, light, it becomes more difficult for the camera to achieve and maintain sharp focus. It is important to learn with practice how fast your camera achieves focus and how well it can maintain it while tracking under different circumstances. Like so many endeavors, photographing birds in flight takes practice practice practice. There is a lot more skill to it than it looks like, and that skill is achieved with practice. </p>

<p>Make sure you activate auto focus by depressing the shutter button half way before trying to select the auto focus point. If the camera has been inactive long enough to go to sleep, the selection wont work till focus is activated.</p>

<p>Well, a drill and a wood screw usually will work.</p>

<p>Paul,</p>

<p> In order to attenuate the flaming and trolling, let's take this offline. You can check some of the stuff I got with the kit in question at http://imagepro.photography.com/Michael_Gregory<br>

And do pop me an e-mail at mlgreg@me.com</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Paul,</p>

<p> I own and frequently use the 5D Mk II with the 17-40, and the 7 D with the 24-70. I know it is not the exact combination you asked about but those are the lenses I have. I carry them over my photo vest which serves as my gadget bag on a dual strap. I am not inconspicuous when I walk around the city, but then I usually do this when covering events. Interestingly enough, people see me and seem to immediately disregard me as though I were part of the scenery. I like this combination very much it allows me to cover the range from fairly wide to short tele by simply picking up that body. So if I am wanting to grab something relatively wide like a large group or a shot with a monument or architectural or panoramic feature I can do it fairly quickly. If I am wanting to grab something a bit more intimate. Or get really close, just grab the 7D. This allows me to stroll the streets of Washington DC not unnoticed, but ignored. and have a super range of possibilities. I don't have anything bad to say about the combination except that it violates some peoples ideas of "the right way" to enjoy my hobby. </p>

<p>Christina,<br>

I own the 7D and the 5D Mk II. I also do a bit of birding, (http://imagepro.photography.com/Michael_Gregory). Of the two I own and use, the full frame sensor is superior in many ways as long as the subject is not moving fast. I love my crop sensor 7D for subjects where I need faster focus and more frames per second. The 5D MK III seems to me to be a hybrid between these two. I sometimes do travel and street photography and when walking about without a specific subject in mind, I find that mounting my widest lens, (17-40), on the 5D Mk II and my 24-70 on the crop sensor body gives me a broad range of composition options. If I were going to start from where you are, I would go with the MK III and keep the 50D as backup, or for a second lens.</p>

<p>David,<br>

It depends on whether you think you need the extra 35 mm of tele reach. I think that if it were me, I would be thinking more along the lines of using a tripod and/or flash and performing manual color balancing in post.</p>

<p>I name the fred!</p>

<p>I take these answers to mean no.</p>

<p>Has anyone tested the 7D after the firmware update to confirm the claimed more images before slowdown?</p>

<p>For the first few years that I used my 5D Mk II it named all of my files downloaded via Adobe Photoshop's File Downloader as IMG_0001, IMG_0002...<br>

Recently it has started calling them _MG_0001, _MG_0002...<br>

I am not ok with this. I liked the old IMG file names. Where are they getting changed so that I can change them back?<br>

I don't think the photo downloader is changing them because my 7D files are IMG_0001...</p>

<p>Tina,<br>

I can not help you with the size thing because I do not have quite enough information. But I can tell you about the B&W effect. The image is not really captured in the picture style you set in the camera. The camera records All of the styles the same way with as much information as it can. There is a second smaller, (much smaller) file imbedded in the actual picture data called metadata or exif data. The exif data records the camera serial number, shutter speed, aperture setting, ISO setting, mode, (manual, P, Tv,...), which lens was used, What time of day it was, and a lot of other important information about the picture, as well as the picture style. That "style" data, (b&W, normal, flat, landscape...), is read by and acted on by the processing software provided by Canon, (DPP). Other processing software like Lightroom and Photoshop do not use the "special" metadata that is specific to each manufactures. They only act on the generic data and metadata.<br>

The reasons for this are twofold. First processing the actual picture data in the camera would use up a lot of camera image processor resources that would slow down the camera and use up a lot more battery to produce a file that would be hard to correct back to original if you changed your mind later or made a mistake and shot in B&W when you meant to shoot in color landscape. So that bit of processing is deferred to the post processing medium, (computer), where the extra time and power wont be critical, and where if you decide to undo the picture style, you can just elect to process differently or with different software. <br>

The Adobe people and other software developers decided not to even try to perform Canon's proprietary process because it would add complexity to the software and likely raise the already high price. They would have to do this for every camera manufacturer and every model and every exif format and would not have any chance whatsoever to ever be able to satisfy a lot of customers. They opted to give you the ability to create numerous custom processes in their software so that every user could get their own preferred results with a single mouse click. It makes a lot of engineering and financial sense.<br>

So you can either select B&/w in photoshop after the images are downloaded, or use Canon DPP. either way you get black and white images. <br>

I'm sorry I don't know why your 20MP jpegs are only 6MP. Personally I shoot in Raw because unless I am going to need to make one whole heck of a lot of images, I would prefer to have all of the information that the instrument, (camera), can give me when I start tweaking them in the computer. I may not use it, but If I did not record it, I can't use it<br>

Adobe camera raw is a wonderful tool. While you can open jpegs with it, It is more powerful when it has raw data.</p>

<p>Tina,<br>

I can not help you with the size thing because I do not have quite enough information. But I can tell you about the B&W effect. The image is not really captured in the picture style you set in the camera. The camera records All of the styles the same way with as much information as it can. There is a second smaller, (much smaller) file imbedded in the actual picture data called metadata or exif data. The exif data records the camera serial number, shutter speed, aperture setting, ISO setting, mode, (manual, P, Tv,...), which lens was used, What time of day it was, and a lot of other important information about the picture, as well as the picture style. That "style" data, (b&W, normal, flat, landscape...), is read by and acted on by the processing software provided by Canon, (DPP). Other processing software like Lightroom and Photoshop do not use the "special" metadata that is specific to each manufactures. They only act on the generic data and metadata.<br>

The reasons for this are twofold. First processing the actual picture data in the camera would use up a lot of camera image processor resources that would slow down the camera and use up a lot more battery to produce a file that would be hard to correct back to original if you changed your mind later or made a mistake and shot in B&W when you meant to shoot in color landscape. So that bit of processing is deferred to the post processing medium, (computer), where the extra time and power wont be critical, and where if you decide to undo the picture style, you can just elect to process differently or with different software. <br>

The Adobe people and other software developers decided not to even try to perform Canon's proprietary process because it would add complexity to the software and likely raise the already high price. They would have to do this for every camera manufacturer and every model and every exif format and would not have any chance whatsoever to ever be able to satisfy a lot of customers. They opted to give you the ability to create numerous custom processes in their software so that every user could get their own preferred results with a single mouse click. It makes a lot of engineering and financial sense.<br>

So you can either select B&/w in photoshop after the images are downloaded, or use Canon DPP. either way you get black and white images. <br>

I'm sorry I don't know why your 20MP jpegs are only 6MP. Personally I shoot in Raw because unless I am going to need to make one whole heck of a lot of images, I would prefer to have all of the information that the instrument, (camera), can give me when I start tweaking them in the computer. I may not use it, but If I did not record it, I can't use it<br>

Adobe camera raw is a wonderful tool. While you can open jpegs with it, It is more powerful when it has raw data.</p>

<p>Donneisha, Your equipment is capable of doing these shots. This photographer makes use of familiar objects, (pocket watches, lockets, clocks, toy boats...), against natural backgrounds with long lenses focused as closely as they will and the aperture open as much as possible, (small f number 2.8 if possible). This photographer also uses some amount of vignette caused either by using a lens hood, the lenses natural tendency or post processing. And there is obviously some post processing to increase some blur, which may require layers which almost certainly means photoshop or GIMP.<br>

Yes you can emulate these with the equipment you have and some effort on your part. Place you subject centre frame. Get as close as you can focus. Ope up the aperture as much as possible. Use a lens hood and post process as required.</p>

<p>Jamie,<br>

In your second post you nailed it. Photographers do not as a rule have a more magical revenue stream than anyone else. Early on they get invested in one or another manufacturers gear. They develop habits in handling the equipment. Most photographers who make their living at it have not other source of revenue and so are loath to threaten their primary source of income to switch to a different brand for a minor incremental improvement in one feature or another. It just does not make economic sense. As Sarah pointed out when the time comes that you make that first big investment you pretty much choose sides for life based on what makes the most sense at that point in time. Forever after you are doomed to listen to this malarkey about how the other guys stuff is better for one nit reason or the other. The noise will not subside. The geese will not be silenced.<br>

My definition of a pro is someone whose primary revenue stream comes out of his cameras as opposed to the duffers who's revenue goes in to them. There are plenty of duffers who's work is as good as or better than the pro's. They just don't bet the farm that they can do that level of work all day every day for the rest of their working lives.<br>

Both sorts are important to the manufacturers and the support industry.</p>