I fixed my 50mm 1.4 USM lens

There I was in paradise…Playa Del Carmen. It was late in the afternoon and I was changing lenses from the 50mm to the 24-70 to catch a wide angle shot of the beach. I missed the bag and dropped the lens unto the sand from about waist level, can’t recall exactly. The hood split in two so I figured that it absorbed the shock and spared the lens itself from damage. Nice theory…for about a day when I finally mounted it for a group shot. The manual focus ring felt rough and I attributed that to sand getting under it. The sand on that beach was so fine…I still have tons of it embedded in the fabric of my gear bag.

EF 50mm 1.4 USM

Aside from the ring issue, I noticed a terrible screeching sound as the AF moved the lens module in and out. Add to that injury it would get stuck at the infinity mark and would have to be manually adjusted to free it loose. After a few hours of using it like that the AF ceased working at all, effectively leaving me with a manual focus-only lens. Considering how much Canon wanted to charge for a fix I was happy to keep using it as is, despite my lack of ability with manual focusing. I got much better over 6 months. Along the way though I tried a few copies of the Sigma 50mm 1.4 EX DG lens…which was pretty good but had spotty focusing. They are sharper than the Canon wide open but after F/2 the Canon starts shinging brighter, better colors, contrast and sharpness. It’s edge to edge better at f/2.8 onwards, where the Sigma needs another stop to catch up. I also tried the 50mm 1.2L..too much money for only a slight improvement. Eventually I talked myself into sticking with the Canon.

Attached to my 1D body

I ordered a knock-off hood from an eBay seller at a very low cost. It stays on the lens permanently. I’ve only taken it off for the fix I’m about to describe.

After searching for weeks on the internet I found a site describing how the author fixed his 50mm 1.4’s AF issue. Click here: http://www.fotomozaic.ro/artikel.php?idstory=225&s=1

Following the instructions to the letter, I took my unit apart right down to the circuit board and got all the fine sand out, or as much as I could. Some are still ground into the oil in the gears and nothing short of a full replacement of the internals will solve that. The main relief came in gently bending the cut-out tracks that make the AF work. After bending them ever so slightly back into spec, I reassembled the whole thing and cleaned the elements with a micro fibre cloth to get rid of my greasy fingerprints.

Popped the lens unto my camera body and fired it up…boooyyyaaaaaaaaaahhhhh. It works, albeit not as good or even as quietly as before the accident. It now fosuses to infinity and is still sharp, sharp, sharp. Prior to the fix I couldn’t trust it wide open at 1.4. By default it’s usually stopped down to f/2 to be safe. Now it seems reasonably sharp, but very accurate. I nailed the focus on subjects 10ft and beyond without a problem.

I used it right after the fix in the studio:

Studio shot

And on a recent trip to Picton, Ontario:

At the beach in Picton, Ontario

Now it’s attached 90% of the time to one of my camera bodies as before the accident…DIY baby.

Studio Day

A quick shoot last Thursday with a couple of friends and our regular models Christine & Lesly. This time we threw in some clothing from designer Jordan de Ruiter for Sui Generis, a twenty-something talented gal from “Up North”.

Jordan de Ruiter

Makeup was done by Ms. Juliya Adamenko.

Juliya preps Christine

We messed around with the lighting setups quite a bit in two separate stations: Three Light ( AB800 W/Gridded Beauty Dish, AB400 Hairlight and AB400 W/Small softbox as fill), and AB400 in B.A.S on station 2. A large softbox lit with an Alien Bee usually does the trick for me for simple images.

Lesly

After Lesly finished her set, I got her to throw on her jeans and pose up on that old day bed couch in the studio. I lit her with an AB400 and a big ass softbox at about 1/2 power. By the way, I want to thank my buddy Danny for turning me unto some new triggers from Yong Nuo. Those bad boys work just as good as my Pocket Wizards at a fraction of the price. A big sigh of relief because I was going to replace a pair lost after a shoot in July. I’ve since found one unit under the seat of my car, but that still leaves me a transceiver shy. By comparison the Yongnuo set cost $60 taxes in and work at ridiculous distances. They tripped the lights every single time with no issue. Unlike other generic units, I managed 1/250th of a second shutter speeds, totally killing ambient light on a few shots. I’m sure they can be pushed higher though…this shot was done at F/8, 1/320th of a second. I must have turned the shutter dial up by accident because I initially set it to 1/250th. My 1D has an electronic shutter which maxes out at 1/500th so that probably sealed the deal. Why Canon did away with that feature I’ll never know…so handy for strobist projects.

Christine

This shot of Christine was done with an AB800 in a beauty dish at F/8, 1/125th of a second shutter speed. The light was positioned directly above her at about 3/4 power.

Christine W/AB400 in a big ass softbox

This one is my setup with the B.A.S. and AB400. Sure I could have dropped in a fill or harlight, but the fade to black adds a little drama to the image IMO.

Lesly in the 3 light setup. AB800 above, AB400 as fill, and out of frame AB400 hairlight.

Just as with the Yongnuo triggers….many ways to skin a cat with lights. By the way, before I get an email asking about gear; all were shot with my 50mm or 70-200 glass. I prefer the 50mm on FF bodies when working in close quarters like this studio. The 24-70 barely left the bag and I only popped a few shots off before switching to the prime. I can’t dial down these lights low enough to shoot anywhere close to wide open but it’s sharp edge to edge from f/2.8 onwards.

Absynthetika got shot

I’ve logged an incredible amount of time in the studio this year. On average spending one day a week shooting just about everything I could get in front of the lights. Nothing beats shooting on location and I wanted the last outdoor gig to be extra cool. My original plan was a victorian themed concept using the derelict properties on the Pickering Airport Lands. Timing and weather sorta tamed that but we still had fun and came away with amazing shots.

Wardrobe was provided by local designers, Angela and Megan of Absythetika who were willing to help out. Their stuff is pretty awesome and we were grateful to have them on-board. Sherry-Ann of SAJ Beauty did the makeup honors, from the back seat of Ed’s car no less, while her husband waited in his car under layers of blankets.

Shooters were a cool bunch that I’ve met over the past year. Special thanks to:

• Georgette: http://www.flickr.com/people/georgie_grrl/
• Edwin: http://www.flickr.com/people/salsavaders/
• Gina: http://www.flickr.com/people/ziggy478/
• Steve: http://www.flickr.com/people/23194800@N04/
• Joel: http://www.flickr.com/people/jterron/

So the plot went something like this:

7:30 AM: Tracy leans over and asks if I’m getting out of bed. We google the weather on the laptop and I know we are in for a little rain and chill. I pack the gearbag while she heads out for coffee…I rocked a Chai Latte.

8:30 AM: Our bunch set out for the Pickering Airport Lands near Claremont.We roll in about 9AM and as expected for late October, the weather was a bit nipply. Everyone was trying hard to stay warm and motivated…that is except for me. I love cool weather but I probably should have worn some pants. Seeing me in shorts made it seem colder I think.

Mach Pelah Cemetary

 

Edwin and Steve shooting with the Ranger

Steve

Georgette

Worse for the models though. They had to stand around in corsets and thin dresses while we took light readings and worked out exposures.

Megan fits a corset on Lesly

Christine shivering while we get the lights ready

If your thinking about shooting out there on one of the abandoned homesteads…think again. The federal security officers patrol the area very aggressively. The gentleman that kept watch over us was pretty nice and allowed us a bit of leeway but don’t expect to get too close to the old barns and houses. Years of neglect combined with the theft of antique wood leaves the structure unstable. When it gets bad enough the feds go out a raze them. Also the locals don’t really like outsiders wandering around too much as we found out.

Things took a little longer than we had planned but it was worth the wait.

Mach Pelah Cemetary

Megan fits a corset on Lesly

Christine shivering while we get the lights ready

Steve

Georgette

Edwin and Steve shooting with the Ranger

Lightroom 3 Beta

Still messing with this thing in my spare time and I definitely love the enhancements so far. Dunno what they have done to the engine but my files are definitely looking “crisper” than they do in LR 2.5. It’s running a bit faster on my pc. I notice it during importing and rendering previews at 1:1.

I tried another file from a recent shoot to see if I could get complete end-imaging processed only in LR.

SOOC

This shot of Kat was done at F/8 @ 1/125th shutter speed. If you look at her eyes you can see that I totally blew the main light setup. I thought the AB800 and beauty dish was a bit too high but it worked anyway. Serendipity.

Processed in Lightroom 3 Beta

Kat has pretty good skin to begin with so I didn’t have to do much in the way of repair and smoothing. After correcting the WB and exposure tweaks I edged in a Clarity setting of -55 to defocus the skin a bit. Black was set at +10 and Vibrance at +25. My usual sharpening was too much in the Beta so I reduced it to Amount: +72, Radius: 1.5, Detail: 20, Masking: 70. That’s it. The file snapped up nicely with about 10 minutes of effort.

Later on I went back and tried out the adjustment brush features…”Red Lips” which is just +saturation dialed in, Brighten Eyes, Iris…yada yada. They work pretty well. It’s still a Beta so there were a few glitches here and there but nothing more than I’m used to with Adobe products. My Bridge software crashed at least twice during use until the recent version came out.

Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta – Kat gets retouched

Adobe released their Beta version of Lightroom 3 and I downloaded a copy to try out. I wanted to see if they actually listened to end users when we send in those feedback forms.

Kat Stan gets retouched in Lightroom

I had a small photoshoot the other day and forgot to format the CF card I was using. Since I already have it backed up and catalogued on my main computer in Lightroom 2.5, it’s a perfect time to test the new beta with the images.

The program has steadily gotten better since I first tried it a year and a half ago at the suggestion of a friend. So much that I use it for about 90% of my image management and post processing. As you know, I love my Photoshop CS4 for fine detail work. Running both programs side by side requires a lot of PC horsepower and RAM. I’m not whining about that though, fast is good but it’s a pain to go back and forth like that when all I want to do is basic skin repair, smoothing and sharpening. So in order of beefs, these are the specific things I don’t like about version 2.5:

• A) Importing is slooooooooowwww
• B) The adjustment brush fuctions are slooooooooowwww
• C) The sharpening tool is still far behind PS CS4
• D) Noise Reduction sucks, PS CS4 is better, Nik is awesome, and expensive
• E) No ability for a proper watermark
• F) No special filters for cool effects

Guess what…..got my wish list all across the board. It’s still too early to say how the new version performs as I’ve only done a few files with it. It’s still a beta version afterall BUT so far it’s rockin’. I noticed the speed improvement right away and the color management and noise reduction features are impressive. My RAW files look nearly equal in Digital Photo Professional and Lightroom 3 Beta now. The retouched file was done completely in Lightroom and I’m pleased with the results.

Kat retouched in Lightroom 3 Beta

Not perfect in terms of a retouch but with more time I could have pushed the file much further without resorting to Photoshop. The Sharpening tool is the biggest shocker. It actually works now and when combined with aggressive noise reduction the result was awesome.

Image shot with EF 50mm 1.4 USM at ISO100, F/9 and 1/125th shutter. Lighting gear was a combination of AB400 and AB800 strobes.

Kat & Julia get Shot

Originally Kat was supposed to bring a chain to wrap around her wardrobe for the shot. Unfortuately it ended up in Muskoka in her father’s truck. So she wrote ” I can bring a whip”…ya like I was gonna say no to that.

Ed, my buddy, mentioned that there was an old couch in the studio, Naturally I was expecting something less than suitable. Along the lines of that old ratty couch some people keep in their basement because it’s too much trouble to haul to the dump. Nope. Got there and after a little dusting and buffing, it turned into the perfect setting for this photo.

Kat brought along her friend Julia. With awesome features it would have been criminal not to shoot her as well. We managed to talk her into it and the results were stunning. She’s an absolute natural in front of the camera.

These were lit with an assortment of Alien Bee lights. Fill was an AB400 in a softbox, camera left about 45 degrees. Main, even though I didn’t love it in this application, was an AB800 in a beauty dish and grid. We later added another AB400 with barn-doors for a hairlight.

I’ve been making an effort to use a wider variety of lenses in my shoots lately. Most days I shoot the EF 70-200 F4L or EF 70-200 F/2.8 IS USM L and Sigma 24-70 F/2.8 on two bodies. Those pretty much cover everything in an event type situation. My personal fav is the 70-200 F4. It’s sharp wide open and has excellent color and contrast. People whine…but with the new high ISO bodies, F4 never holds me back.

I have a few more lenses that in all honesty, do not get much airtime. The newest is the EF 200 F2L IS USM and EF 50 F/1.4 USM. The 200L is a bust. The images are great but it’s limited in quick framing situations. The other downside is toting it around and the endles stream of people who stop me to ask about it. I’ve used it twice and decided it’s days are numbered. The 50mm is great though, small, light and great color and contrast.

Each of these are courtesy of the EF 50mm 1.4 USM at anywhere from F/8 to F/11, ISO 100 and 1/125th per second shutter speed.

Marriage

I tried two times. The first was a straight crash and burn…ended two months into the engagement. Irreconcileable differences (I got cold feet). Number two was better, I made it within a month of tying the knot.

Seems strange to be bundled up with the same person day after day, week after week, month after month. Yet, I managed to shoot roughly 2 weddings and three engagements in the summer alone even though it’s not my thing. Obviously there are people out there willing to go all the way. I have friends who shoot nothing but engagements & weddings. I’m told the average count is much higher than my little 2 gigs.

My married friends say that I’m just in love with the idea of getting hitched, but that I’ll never actually go through with it. They may be right but it’s an awful lot of fun working on wedding day. For a brief moment in time, two people are perfectly in synch. They work for the same common goal, getting married and for that day I can make them do absolutely anything I want. Power rocks.

I’m shooting one more before the season ends….gonna milk it like a Holstein until next Spring.

Zombie Werewolves Attack!

I worked on a budget movie set late last year and apparently, the film actually got made. I missed the screening at U of T last weekend.

Crossing off a photography “must do before I die” was pretty easy with this project. The video lights allowed me to keep the ISO between 400 and 1600. I’m down to three camera bodies now but the 1D is still my go-to. Nail the exposure and it makes beautiful files.

• http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2638443/
• http://www.chrisgreen.org

5 minutes to Drama

Someone sent me an email on Sunday asking how/when/why I take Photoshop liberties with an image. Simply…whenever the mood hits me. Sadly, there is no rhyme or reason to when or why I do it. Once in a while I just like to cut loose, especially when the image is for personal use.

Take this photo for instance…dying for a little BAM!!!

Before

By itself it’s like “meh” ok I took a photo of some people looking back at something..wow. No biggie, right?

Add a little magic spice and throw down some drama!

After adding some BAM!!

I did it dirty:

1) Take one normal (meh) image and correct it for white balance, crop, etc.

2) Edit it in Adobe Photoshop as follows

• use the Elipse select tool to capture the area of the image you want to keep sharp/in focus.
• use the Refine Edge tool at “feather 140″
• invert selection after feathering
• use the Blur tool…specifically Radial Blur set to your desired taste. Like salt and pepper, everyone has their preference.
• Save back to Adobe Lightroom
• process with some funky preset like my own person mix, Orange Haze

Within 5 minutes…dependent on your dexterity and computer resources, you have added the BAM!!

I’m definitely no Photoshop guru, but it’s like sex, I know what buttons to push

I’m off to do some “Day Job” stuff.

Happy Fall my friends!

Take A Hike

I finally got the time to get out to the country for a hike. Thanks so much to my friend Mitch for telling me about the trails near his cottage. Tracy and I took off for a walk while Mitch and company relaxed on the dock.

We came back over four hours later…actually I lost track of time. Good times, but I can always do without those long drives out of the city.

Austin fondles Tracy....she "not so secretly" wants a Golden Retriever

The Mad hiker - My Shaka Zulu face

The trail we connected to wasn’t much to sneeze at. We saw a bit of nature but it was mostly just hiking and dodging cow pies…oh yeah, Tracy nearly killed a poor little frog.

Don't worry...he lived...irie.

I wanted to get an action shot…something along the lines of the little guy jumping out of the water. So I asked her to throw a stick to the right of the frog. The stick lands on the frog and of course I missed the whole thing… We had a good laugh about it but the little guy probably had a heart attack.

I got a shot of a few more critters during the hike. For someone that doesn’t really dig roughing it, Tracy did pretty well keeping up with my pace.

I could say that I don’t do flowers…but that would be a lie. I love the country when Fall starts to creep in. The best colours to make a photo pop.

Sophie take uncle "Mike Mike" for a ride

Isn't she cute

Mitch BB PIN’s me at 3:330PM saying “I’m starting the BBQ” so we head back to find everyone chilling out before the drive back to T.O.