I for one was, and I guess am, terrified of dentists. Pretty much anything to do with my teeth was enough to raise my heart rate just thinking about it. I think it started in my childhood. It seemed like every time I went to the dentist as a kid, I had cavities. I don’t know why that is, I must have genetically weak enamel or something. Even when I was brushing and trying to be good, still more cavities and the drilling and filling that went with them. Add to that 3 years of orthodontic work and a bit of oral surgery to go with it, as well as the extraction of 4 impacted wisdom teeth and what it adds up to in my mind is a scene from one of the SAW movies.

Well what this led to is avoidance. And avoidance is not a healthy thing to do. Some of you may think what follows is too much information, but i’m going to be open and honest on this one so bear with me. In the past 13 years of living in NYC I had gone to the dentist only twice, and to two different dentists. First one was back in 2000 or so for a cleaning and a filling at an office overlooking Rockefeller Plaza. A pretty bad experience overall. Guy was bad with a needle and overall made me feel crappy. Then in 2007 I was on a trip with my family and pulled out a filling with a piece of gum, which I rarely if ever chew. For the record I haven’t touched the stuff since. Well by the time I went in a couple months later to get it fixed, the guy had to drill away even more, getting dangerously close to having to get a root canal. Apparently I had a couple more little things he wanted to do but I just never went back. His offices were old and a little scary and he sang along with Simon and Garfunkel songs while he worked. He also told me stories of his father working as a dentist on the islands of the pacific in the Army during WWII. Apparently he has to run his drill with a foot pump. Nice guy in any other situation, but disconcerting to a phobic.

Now at this point many of you are saying, “Oh come off it, I’ve had root canal and lots of fillings, and I’m not crazy like you are, so get over yourself”. And that’s true if my mind were being rational about it. But fear is very often not about rationality, it’s about irrationality. It literally is about fear of fear itself. And while you might not be scared of the dentist, I’m sure there’s something that scares you just as badly. Public speaking scares the bejesus out of a lot of people but I kind of like it. I’m ok with snakes and spiders but cockroaches make me skeevy. I’ve got a friend who’s terrified of wet paper. Another for whom standing on a chair is unthinkable. We’ve all got our issue to be sure. And I’m beginning to think that they are a proxy for all of the things that make us scared or uncomfortable in our lives. For artists a lot of the fear is wrapped up in self-image. Standing up for yourself or your work, fear of failure, being scared that another idea will never come (that one is easy, it will). All of this is what makes art hard. It’s a personal pursuit and praise or attacks on the things you make are therefore taken personally. Sometimes it’s like trying to tease apart a rat’s nest of wires from behind a home theater. It’s all such a jumble that you can’t tell where one thing ends or begins. I’m not quite to the end yet myself, but I’m making progress.

To finish my own story, there was a tooth on the upper right side of my mouth that was sensitive lately and I knew that I’d eventually have to go to the dentist to get it checked out. I brush twice a day and whatnot and I know my teeth aren’t falling out of my head or anything, but still the idea of going to the dentist was terrifying to me. I’d been trying to eat away at the fear slowly by working my way up to it and mentally desensitizing myself over time. Well a couple of weeks ago Heather and I were watching Band of Brothers all the way through of the first time. Very heavy stuff but very well done if you haven’t seen them yet, do so. And while watching reenactments of men getting their legs blown off and crying for their mommies I had the realization that my going to the dentist really wasn’t anything in the grand scheme of things.

So I started doing some research. Did you know there are dentists in New York City who will put you out with general anesthesia with an IV in order to work on your teeth? That pulled me back from the brink of fear because I thought, “Hell, I’m not THAT bad”. Back in the real world I did a google search to get the number for the guy I went to last time in Columbus Circle and the first link that showed up was a Zoc Doc page for him, so I clicked through and while they had his info there, they also had a list of other dentists in the area, one of whom was a young woman with nothing but 5 star ratings. I had only ever had older men dentists so I thought I’d give it a try. It was now or never and so I just made the appointment before I lost my nerve.

Well I went to that checkup last week and the first of 4 follow-up procedures yesterday. Yes, 4 appointments, there’s that many things that need to get done to get my teeth into shape, but nothing major. Just a few small cavities and an old filling that is causing trouble. It adds up to thousands of dollars worth of pain on my credit card but it serves me right for ignoring it for so long. Was I scared going for the checkup? Yep. Terrified. Couldn’t sleep the night before. Was I scared yesterday before I went under the drill? Yep. But the Dr gave me some Xanax to take before I got there. My pulse was still racing, but I will say that it was the best dental experience I’ve ever had. I didn’t even feel the needle go in and the Bose noise-reduction headphones they handed me helped a bit too. No way to get too upset while listening to Tony Bennett and Bill Evans. A must have record in my opinion.

For those in NYC who are looking for someone new. Dr Julie Hassid has been amazing and you can tell her I told you so.

So the point of me telling you all this little tale is to say that phobias can be overcome. Will I require drugs to go see the dentist in the future? Yes probably the next few times, but maybe I’ll get to the point where I won’t need the crutch. The main advance is that my fear is not a singularity anymore. It’s not a black hole which I do anything not to look into. It’s not an absolute, instinctual, reflexive “NO!” anymore. Going to the dentist is still not something I look forward to doing, but I can overcome that fear and do it. And if that’s the case with my paralyzing fear, now I’m kind of looking for that next thing to tackle. Maybe it’ll be heights.

Screw that, I’m staying on the ground.

Well now it’s actually happened. Kodak filed for bankruptcy protection this morning. The once juggernaut of the industry is now a very sick old man trying to sell it’s crown jewel patents to make some cash to stay alive just a little bit longer. It’s quite sad really, for Kodak the company, what’s left of its employees, and photographers everywhere. No word yet on if and how this will effect film production, but let’s all be honest here, film is going away and is not going to make an economical resurgence.

People point to the strength of the vinyl record business as proof that a niche product can re-emerge and thrive, but it’s a false comparison. I know a little bit about the record business actually as my father’s owned record stores and I myself have a degree in music and its production from Berklee College in Boston. Yes, there are more records sold now than at any time in the last decade. However it’s still only few percentage points of total music sold and there is evidence that the trend line has flattened out. This means basically that most of the people who are interested in buying a record player and phono preamp and records have already done so. Don’t get me wrong, I think this is super if that’s what you’re into (personally I’d prefer everything on SACD if I could get it, but that’s another story) And it’s also great for the small short run record plants around the country that were shuttered up in the 90′s. Those pressing machines are very mechanical and virtually indestructible, basically just a hydraulic piston, so I’m not surprised that a little oil and elbow grease brings them back to profitable life. Plus the vinyl blanks (basically just a 1″ think slab of vinyl about 6″ in diameter) are about as simple as can be.

The same is not true of film which is a very complex manufacturing process. It’s chemical, it relies by definition on very strict environmental and procedural controls. Even at its best it can vary greatly from batch to batch of the same stock. All of this means that it’s very much a product which thrives on volume production. The more you make, the cheaper you make it and thus the cheaper you can sell it. The prices of all films that I use have gone up a fair amount over the past few years. And that’s just the films I can still get unlike the Polaroid 55 and Scala which I can’t. When I started out in this field about 10 years ago the film counter at B&H here in NYC was 40 feet long, now it’s barely 10. Likewise there were at least 4 rows of darkroom equipment, now it’s less than 1 all the way in the back right next to the bathrooms.

And there is one of the big problems. Film is a two step process. There’s buying the film and then there’s getting it processed. There are still a few pro labs in the city but the prices have gone up and the lead times have grown. Used to be that you could get a roll of E6 medium format slides back in a couple hours, now to do it same day is an extra rush fee. Luckily I’ve still got a place in my neighborhood that will run my C-41 roll through the machine in 10 minutes for $4. But it used to be $2 only back in 2007 and Connie is giving me a deal because she likes me. Her costs for chemicals have doubled. CVS still has a photo lab, but the quality is crappy and I doubt it will be there in a year anyway. And I live in New York City!, can you imagine what it must be like to get film processed in East Haverton, LA?

How many photographers that want to shoot film are prepared to do all their own processing? Let’s be honest, most of these chemicals are pretty noxious. Kodachrome was a 6 step process from what I recall and the constituent chemicals were so nasty, complex, and expensive that Kodak just stopped making them a couple years ago. Mass outrage on the web and in media, but I didn’t see any other company come in and offer to buy the patents to make Kodachrome. It’s just not profitable, and that’s what it all comes down to.  Don’t get me wrong, I like film too. I love the look of old 50′s Kodachrome especially when it’s by Saul Leiter. But I’m just being rational.  I’m sure there will remain a few boutique companies who make batches of film and chemicals for the die-hards. Places like Photographers’ Formulary, but it’s going to be very very niche.

Also, I think that people’s love of records has as much to do with a reaction to the fast paced “everything at your fingertips” nature of the modern world as it does the sound. People like the idea of slowing life down. Listening to one album at a time, having to flip the record after 20 minutes, just like their parents did when they were kids.  The same is true in the wizbang automatic world of modern cameras to be sure, but I don’t think all the way back to film is what people are looking for. I think they’re the market who is so interested in the recent crop of cameras with physical manual controls and retro styling. All the convenience of digital with the styling of your grandfather’s Leica.  Which I’m all for by the way. That new Fuji X Pro 1 while having a terrible name is a pretty sexy piece of kit.  Expensive for what you’re getting at around $2400 for a body and lens, but very attractive.  If I had it to do I’d still go for an M9 though. If only it was half the price and still used a thumb lever to cock the shutter. Oh well <sigh>

And finally, film was designed for printing, something that not too many people do very often anymore (Though I think they should). Scanning film yourself is a massively time consuming and frustrating affair, not to mention the post scan dust cleaning and color correction.  Sending them out is easier, but still takes a while and is expensive if you want it done right.

I’m not a big fan of making my digital pictures look like they were taken on film however.  Leave sloppy edges for when you actually shoot film. And don’t get me started on the Hipstamatic revolution. Ya, let’s take my nice 5MP nearly perfect reproduction of the scene and make it into a 600px grainy, out-of-focus, color shifted mess. Silly if you ask me.  That said, I do add a bit of grain to low ISO photographs from my 5D2. It’s like the whole thing is a little too perfect. Requires a little dither to look organic and ‘right’. So go out and shoot some film while you still can, because someday soon it’s not going to be an viable option.

First things first, this is beta 1 people, which means that it installs separate from earlier versions of Lightroom and uses it’s own library. Don’t be an idiot and go messing around with your real data here, it’s too early for that. Duplicate some raw files and import them to play with. I for one have only installed it on the Air to play around. You have been warned.

Ok, so new features I like:

The Develop Module has been moved around a bit and has a new 2012 engine underneath. Gone is the ‘brightness’ slider which I never used much anyway and they’ve added new ‘Whites’ and ‘Blacks’ sliders which lets you move the white and black points respectively. These two along with the remaining ‘Highlights’ and ‘Shadows’ sliders giving you finer control over the bottom and top end of the luminance range. You end up being able to control the curve at both ends better. More like a parametric EQ for pictures. Very cool.

They’ve also added a few options to the adjustment brush tool. Now you can paint in noise reduction, moire removal, mess with local shadows and highlights. And perhaps my favorite of the bunch, local color temp and tint. So when you’ve had to shoot in mixed lighting for some reason and need to have part of the picture as tungsten and another as daylight for instance. The only thing I don’t like about it is that it’s a relative thing, so paint in +/- 100 temp instead of having it be a normal kelvin scale. Very neat idea though and something I’ve wished for before.

They’ve also added per channel curves adjustments for color correction adn such. Basically, you can do more of your work in Lightroom before or without taking it into Photoshop.

There are new additions to the DNG spec too, including a new lossy compression option. Almost all of the advantages of RAW while using much less disk space. They suggest it for outtakes that you want to keep around but don’t need to be obsessive about. You can also now lower the resolution of a RAW file without losing the ability to mess with the data later. Another way to save space.

Another neat addition is the ability to email a file straight from Lightroom without having to export it and then attach it in gmail or whatever. Soft-proofing in the Print module has also been added, I tend to get good results from stock profiles and a well calibrated monitor, but I’m sure some people will be quite happy with that one.

Oh and the video features are huge. Playing video for one, and having the ability to use most of the Develop module controls on them. Setting in and out points, etc. I don’t mess with video much and if I did, I’d be doing it in Premiere or FCP, so I’m not sure how useful this stuff actually is.

All that stuff is super, now the additions which made me groan:

There’s a new Maps module which will grab GPS data from your pictures and let you find photos by location. This is obviously a cool use of the metadata for people with tagged photos, but most cameras don’t have GPS, so now there’s a whole new module up top that I will never use just like the current Web module. If you’re going to keep adding these Adobe, have some check boxes in the preferences to turn them off.

Another new module is Books, which lets you layout and upload a Blurb book straight from Lightroom. This is also very neat and I wish I had it when I made the 365 Portraits book a few years ago, but alas. Some people are complaining that it’s only Blurb. I’m sure Adobe made a deal and in my experience it’s a good choice. Blurb does a pretty good job all things considered. Also a module I wouldn’t mind having the ability to turn off most of the time.

Oh and one omission which has been driving me nuts lately. Many of my .psd (PhotoShopDocument) files end up getting too big, especially with the no flate plugin, over the max of 2GB so I have to save them as .psb  (PhotoShopBig) format.  However, despite the fact that .psb is an adobe creation Lightroom doesn’t see them so they don’t show up in the library.  I just have to remember “Oh, I had to make this a .psb, I guess I have to go find it in Finder).  Annoying. I’ve put a post on the beta forums but no answer yet.

So there you have it, I’m sure there’s more in there I haven’t discovered yet.  Good start so far. The interface is a little buggy right now, a number of times I’ve had to click a pic a few times before it shows up in the main Develop window for instance, but I’m sure they’re on it. Let me know what you think below.

21: Minx

Pretty basic setup. Three speedlights. One up and to the right of Charity as something like a key light. Another slightly behind to her left and the last next to the camera for fill. Overall not too difficult to shoot a pretty lady lounging on a couch. Slight crop and light shaping in post.

22: Birthday

One of my favorite in the series.  My friend Kecia on the evening of her birthday sitting and blowing out candles on a toy birthday cake with my adorable nephew Bert. Not the kind of thing you can make an 18 month old do. Luckily he was interested enough to sit down and play with Kecia for the 30 seconds it took to get the shot. Composited together a shot of him and one of her in the end.

23: Escape

24: Late

As I was down with my family for the holidays in DC, I had a couple volunteers to help me out while I was down there including Adrianne. Who climbed up the chimney of an abandoned picnic house in the woods down the trail of a park near her house. Felt very fairy tale so I thought it would be fun to have her trying to escape her captors and then climbing too high.  One speedlight through a diffuser as I recall, camera left aiming up.

My sister and her husband Kevin, who you might remember as the crazy man with the knife in the shot from December 2nd. Since it was Christmas Eve and their 2nd wedding anniversary, I cast them as the wife waiting for her husband who’s late for the party.  One speedlight through an umbrella.  Composite of two shots to get the expressions right.

25: Together

Christmas Day.  Perfect time to do an homage to the Rockwell painting of the family at the table. It was dark out by the time we ate though, so light is from a speedlight bouncing off the wall camera left to mimic window light.

26: Espionage

Youri is a friend of mine from NYC who’s family lives in northern VA, so we met up in town and shot her as a spy stealing from the national archives. It’s got a distinctly Boris and Natasha feel, but it was fun. Shot in the daytime with a speedlight through a diffuser to the right.  A bit of post to darken the whole thing and make it look more like a headlight on her as well as turn on the streetlights.

27: Wrestle

My little redhead friend Mary is always game to take some pictures and had an idea about arm wrestling. Her idea was to be a dame watching two men wrestle, but I thought it would be more fun to have her be one of the contestants. Her mustached friend Tad played a good shill.  Held a speedlight with diffusion panel over the two of them with a lightstand and a reflector underneath. Added a little lens flare and stole smoke from the Capcom shot earlier in the month to complete the mood.

28: Blustery

Crazy windy day gave me the idea of having someone actually picked up by their umbrella.  Had Annie jump off a foot stool and then later comped her into a plate shot taken a few minutes later.  Available light on a cloudy day.  Had to shoot at 1600 ISO to get a fast enough shutter speed to catch her in mid air.

29: Bathe

Zed (the on with the razor) and I talked a few months ago about doing a shot with her washing her girlfriend’s hair in a big old bathtub.  My friend Dave has one which I shot him in during my Drabbles series a couple years ago and he kindly volunteered it again.   There was windowlight but not quite enough of it for the aperture I needed so I ended up bouncing a speedlight off the ceiling which in a white tile room just bounces it everywhere. Wished that I could have backed up and used a slightly longer lens, but the space is quite cramped so I had to go wide and try to minimize the distortion of the size of her leg for instance. Though I think it makes the razor and her hand more interested and 3D.

30: Gaming

My buddy, frequent assistant, and podcast partner Dan is a Words with Friends nut, and plays with a number of people at any one time. So I thought it would be fun having him playing everyone at once in a virtual blackness. Overhead softbox and additional gridded strobe straight onto the game board. Moved the camera in relation to the board and took several shots which I composited together.

31: Boudoir

Eleanor is one of my favorite people. So on the morning of New Year’s Eve I went round to her place and spent an hour shooting her rolling around in a sheet on her bed.  It’s a tough job people, it really is. I wanted the bright sunlight but wasn’t getting enough so I put a monolight out on her fire escape and then laid a big 4×6′ diffuser right outside the right window, effectively mimicking as much sunlight as I wanted.

11:Evergreen

One speedlight with a 36″ shoot-through umbrella camera right.  I wanted to do it all in one shot, but with 4 people you often have to composite together the best of each.  For this one it was three pics.  The men in one and the girls from the other two.  The chaos of tree branches actually makes that composite a little more forgiving.

12: Multiplicity

This shot is almost exactly how it looked in the camera so I didn’t even bother showing you the before.  We shot in Times Square and during a long exposure (1.5 seconds as I recall) my assistant Dan popped the flash 3 times as I panned Pat’s head across the frame.  Not really the kind of picture I’d normally take, but projects like this are for experimentation, so there’s an experiment.

13: Cupcake

Two big soft sources, one on either side of her.  Camera actually in the oven on a timer.  Was a real pain in the neck to setup after each shot and required a lot of post to bring her our in the picture.  Not as successful as it could have been. I realized later that it would have been better if she also had her palms on the glass in panic, or one hand on the window and the other pulling the bottom hem of the apron up to her mouth or other such exaggerated reaction.

14: Newspaperman

Tony Ortega is the Editor of The Village Voice and my idea was to make a homage to Charles Foster Kane complete with snow globe (which I shot and composited in separately). Four speedlights.  One with a 12″ softbox above and to the left to act as a keylight on his face. One bracketed to the window frame to the right as a rim light along his back and head. One snooted down aiming at the bar in the back. And one really low power on camera pointed to bounce off the wall behind me for fill and to trigger the rest of the lights with optical slaves.

15: Twisted

The original idea was to do something with refraction through the water in a fishtank, but it didn’t gel, so Craig and I went outside and I shot him walking in both directions in order to composite the top and botton half of him together. Lit by a 46″ umbrella on a Profoto AcuteB

16: Reformation

Neal is a recovering heroin addict who I shot for my drabbles series a few years ago. He is in a better place than he was before and I wanted to play with the idea of baptism and redemption. So I shot him in his bathroom with the crazy shower curtain. Two speedlights, one inside the tub and another handheld above with the diffuser panel down. Then in his hall an artist neighbor had drawn a ghost on the mirror, so I took some pictures and composited Neal into the mirror as if the camera was looking through his eyes.

17: Princess

Lux is the editor of Fleshbot.com and she and I had talked a year ago about taking a picture like this. The original idea was to shoot her from above laying on a pile of writhing bodies, but it’s surprisingly difficult to get that many volunteers and then also next to impossible to get her laying across them with any grace. So instead I used the naked bodies to frame the shot along the edges and made it less raunchy and more glamorous. Two big octabanks, one top right the other bottom left. The subjects were laying down on a slightly satiny curtain I picked up at the corner store on the way. Shot from above in a friends loft which was perfect for the concept.

18: Rescue

Emily, the girl lifting the car, is tiny so I though it would be fun to exaggerate the fact by having her doing something superhuman like lifting a car. I didn’t have access to the car’s jack and it was too cold out to get that involved anyway, so I instead composited a shot of her, one of the car shot at a lower angle so I could make it look lifted, and one of me on the ground as the victim of a horrible accident. The AcuteB shot through an umbrella to soften it was used in all three shots. Also comped in a prettier sunset.

19: Keys

Relatively simple one. Shot Abby outside her apartment door, one speedlight from above with a green gel through a diffuser to match the fluorescent lighting in the hallway.

20: Kick

To have Aga kicking me onto the tracks we shot her in the studio kicking up a storm. Then took some pictures from my chest’s perspective and leg/arms flying forward. Then we headed to the subway and shot the from of the train as well as some pictures of the platform that I could comp together into a space. Lighting in the studio was one strobe with just reflector camera left to mimic the headlight of the oncoming train and another strobe with umbrella above and camera right to fill in shadows and give overall illumination.

01: Birth

Subjects acting out the birth in the back of their SUV in a parking garage. Megan had the baby at a hospital a few days later, by the way, and both are healthy. 3 speedlights. One coming in the sunroof  through a diffuser to mimic the cars interior dome lighting. One on the platform camera right shooting through a crumpled up diffusion panel from a softlighter and one light with an umbrella to the right of James and a reflector to the left just out of shot. In the end I made a composite of the best shot of each of them.

02: Horror

03: Bookin’

Gary shot in the studio. Two strobes, one softbox above and in front as well as a second umbrellaed strobe behind the camera at low power to fill in the shadows a little bit. Grain and trees/sunset were separate shots taken in Prospect Park earlier in the day.

04: Theft

Composite of 3 separate shots. One of Heather and the pan shot with one hard strobe with grid and a reflector to fill.  Another of Derek climbing in the window with softboxed strobe out on the fire escape and same gridded strobe indoors. Final shot of statue on podium with overhead gridded spot.

05: Mirror

An attempt to play off a painting I saw at the Met. Main shot  of girl and mirror was shot with a 48″ octabox camera right facing her back. I then shot the frame in the adjacent room with the same setup shooting through the door to give enough light. Two shots composited.

06: Party

Nothing fancy on this one. Friend’s apartment for dinner and that’s what it looked like. Lindsay put on a party dress, Chris handed her a drink. Lit with a speedlight bounced off the ceiling camera left.

07: Dance

Two shot composite of course. Went to Eran’s house and shot the 7′ tall room from 3.5′ up. Two speedlights in 16″ softboxes a couple feet off the floor aiming at the ceiling. Went back to my place and shot Eran dancing with the same lighting setup coming from above. Marmo was stuck to the ceiling with glue, just kidding.

08: Capcom

I wanted to recreate a scene from the Apollo era. Shot Chris on black background with overhead softbox and an umbrella on either side to give him some rim lighting. Shot smoking cigarette separately and brought it in in post. Headset comped in from archival photograph. Background desks and ceiling build from scratch in Photoshop.

09:Vivisection

Brinkworth and I met up at the lab and shot her with a taped up scalpel and a little fake blood. One speedlight with diffuser panel held up camera right while I was  taking the pictures. Later comped in found public domain shot of dissected cadaver arm.

10: Bounce

Shot Cisco on the roof jumping off of a chair. Then brought up a couple of yoga balls which we then moved around and shot in different locations. Composited and colored the balls in post. Added Cisco in bouncing about.

As I’ve said above, as a photographic tool, it’s great.  The image quality is terrific, usually limited by the lenses you put in front of the sensor. I’ve made big 30×48″ prints that look fantastic even up close. Battery life is fantastic as well.  I don’t shoot a ton each day, but if I’m going away for a week’s trip, I don’t even bother bringing the charger and I’m rarely less than half full when I get back. Maybe there’s room for even a little more dynamic range in the next revision, but then I’m just complaining to complain.

That said there are things that drive me nuts every time I pick it up. First is sound and speed of the mirror.  I know it’s a big chunk of glass and this is not a 1D body, but honestly, every time I press the shutter I expect pin, rod, or spring to come loose and pop out of the viewfinder. Not solid in the slightest.  It wasn’t when I got it and it’s not now. There’s also a pretty big viewfinder blackout where the mirror is out of position.  Honestly, these two little things go a LONG way to making a camera feel more professional.  Everytime I pick up a 1D or Nikon D3 I’m reminded of where the extra three thousand bucks must be going.  And I had a 1Ds3 which I sold to get the 5D2. Very similar sensor, smaller size and weight, better screen, 1/3rd the price. It’s a no brainer, but I still miss the feel of the big brother.

It’s a little thing, but the fact that you can only do 3 shot +/- 2 stop bracketing is sad.  Nikon cameras will do up to 7 shots at +/- 3 stops from what I understand.  And this is software guys, it’s not like it’s a whole lot of engineering work to do.  Give a programmer the morning to write the code and the afternoon to get the bugs out and then roll it into the next build of the firmware.

I find that tethered shooting is unreliable.  The connection to the computer times out quickly and is hard to get going again.  I’ve seen this both in the Canon software and using Lightroom 3 to do the work.  In this day and age, that should be kids stuff.  I’m not sure which side the problem is on, but it’s annoying nonetheless.

1080p video is great, though I rarely use it.  The 7D however can record at 720p at 60fps which you can then slow to half speed to do some slow motion work, however the 5D can’t do it. I’ve heard it’s a hardware limitation in some way, but annoying because the 5D should be the more powerful camera.

Speaking of the 7D I’ve got to bring up the 5D2′s auto-focus. It’s pretty bad.  It was pretty bad and outdated when the camera came out 3 years ago, hell it was somewhat outdated when it was the AF system on the original 5D 6 years ago.  The less expensive 7D which came out a few months later got an updated AF system which is a little embarrassing.  Canon, couldn’t you have waited a few months and gotten it into the 5D as well?  It’s fine for the most part, but in lower light situations it’s useless. I’m a center focus point single shot user anyway so I rarely use the fancier tech but for the times when I’ve tried it I’ve mostly given up.

I’m sure there are more, but that’s enough for now, I’ll be sure to add to the list if I come up with anything.  That said, there’s not really any camera on the market within my budget that I’d rather use, so for an old camera it’s doing ok.

If anyone is interested in prints of any of them.  Give me a buzz at bill at billwadman dot com and let me know. $50 for 8.5×11″ or $100 for 11×14″, larger sizes available.

And finally, if you’d like to flip through the whole series then I’ve made it easy on you.  Just click the image below and keep clicking next. Enjoy.