How weatherproof are your camera and lenses?

It’s only a drop of rain

Heavy rain at start of the Gumball 3000

Canon has made statements in it’s press releases about weatherproof seals on many of the mid-range cameras such as the EOS 7D and EOS 5D Mark II. For a long time the gold standard for weatherproofing has been the EOS-1D series models that are designed to stand the rigours of working professionals who can’t go home because of a bit of inclement weather. Have you ever wondered about where the weak points are in your camera?

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Breaking news: Updates from Canon on lens availability

Canon has today released an update on expected availability for the new lenses that have not yet made it to market.

The earthquake in Japan has clearly had an effect on all technology companies that are based out there and Canon are no exception. While the news has been that the Canon factories were themselves not badly hit, the effects on other companies that work with Canon, not to mention the general infrastructure and destruction in the area has meant that there will be delays in many areas.

The products that are affected are:

EF300mm f/2.8L IS II USM – Expected sales start: Late August, 2011
EF400mm f/2.8L IS II USM – Expected sales start: Late August, 2011
EF8-15mm f/4L Fisheye USM – Expected sale start: Late July 2011
EF500mm f/4L IS II USM – Expected sales start: Within 2011
EF600mm f/4L IS II USM – Expected sales start: Within 2011

The last two have no fixed date for sales start yet, with Canon saying the will release more information once the start date is more fixed.

Canon Europe are not quoting any prices, though Canon USA are. The prices quoted in US$ are (in the same order as above:
$6,599
$10,499
$1,399
$9,499
$11,999

If you want to read the press releases, they can be found here:
Canon Europe press release
Canon USA press release

Are you planning on buying any of these lenses and if so, has this delay caused you any problems?

Canon wins four prestigious TIPA awards

Canon has picked up four TIPA awards for it’s products from the 40 awards given out by the Technical Image Press Association. The TIPA jury of European photo editors gathered in Istanbul on the 9th of April to vote on the best of the latest products.

Canon’s winning products were:

Best D-SLR entry level – EOS 600D

EOS 600D

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There are a huge amount of lenses out there…

Just today I saw the announcement that Nikon has produced it’s 60 millionth lens, only a handful of months after Canon announced it had produced 60 million EF lenses. You might think the two companies are neck and neck with this, but then consider that Nikon’s announcement is after more than fifty years of making lenses. Canon’s announcement is for EF lenses, and the EF lenses were only introduced in 1987 some twenty four years ago. That’s a big rate of production for Canon, and is most likely driven by their strong models and market share in the entry class of the market. The count includes kit lenses, so while you might not think the EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 is the best lens it’s probably the one that Canon produces the most of.

The other part of this is that Canon’s decision to switch it’s lens mount to the EF lens mount from it’s older FD mount seems to have been an ideal strategy for the company.

What is Bokeh?

Bee Orchid, Ophyrus apifera, ©David Newton

Bokeh – a strange word that comes from Japanese, and is applied to the quality or feel of the out of focus areas of an image. Most photographers think it’s all to do with the rendition of out of focus highlights, but actually it’s the ‘loveliness’ of the whole out of focus areas of a picture. However it’s the out of focus points of light in an otherwise out of focus background that typically are the ones that stand out like a sore thumb. You may have taken a great portrait with nice separation of your model from the background, but if the points of light that appear in the backround are not smoothly blended the result is a background that competes with the subject.

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Problems using Canon EOS 7D, EOS 60D, EOS 50D and EOS 40D with some old Canon lenses

Canon EOS 60D

Last week Canon released a new FAQ on it’s site. The FAQ informs that there is a known problem when using the EOS 7D, EOS 60D, EOS 50D and EOS 40D cameras with some of their own zoom lenses that were produced between 1990 and 1995.

The eight lenses listed below are known to exhibit the problem.

• EF 35-80mm f/4-5.6
• EF 35-80mm f/4-5.6 II
• EF 35-80mm f/4-5.6 III
• EF 35-80mm f/4-5.6 USM
• EF 35-105mm f/4-5.6
• EF 35-105mm f/4-5.6 USM
• EF 80-200mm f/4.5-5.6 II
• EF 80-200mm f/4.5-5.6 USM

Specifically Canon says the problem when using the lenses with the EOS 7D, EOS 60D, EOS 50D and EOS 40D cameras is that the peripheral AF points do not function as cross-type AF point resulting in vertical and horizontal lines not being simultaneously detected. Vertical or horizontal lines can only be detected separately. This is not going to be something to fix by firmware as it is due to the optical characteristics of the camera’s AF sensor and lens.

You can find the full information on the Canon support site.

Due to the way that third party lens makers need to reverse engineer the Canon lens mount communication this problem also appears to appear in some third party lenses according to the Canon Rumours site. There are four  Tamron lenses that are actually more likely to be a problem as they are current models: 17-50mm f/2.8 VC, 60mm f/2 Macro, 70-200mm f/2.8 and 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5. Since Canon’s FAQ indicates that the Canon lenses that don’t work should have been mentioned in the manual I expect the only option for Tamron would be to change the lens ID of their lenses to ones not affected by the problems.

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