Adam photographing Landon as he is taking a picture to show dust.

The five different technologies it takes for Adam to do this are: Eye-Fi SDHC card, Verizon USB727 EVDO modem, Cradlepoint CTR-350 Mobile Router, BixNet 5V Li-Ion battery, and a SmugMug/Flickr account. Larry Gonzales and Jeremiah Njoroge from Eye-Fi were on hand to answer questions and explain how the Eye-Fi technology works. From what Adam was showing us, it seems to be a very cool concept especially when the need of getting images on the web as fast as possible is very, very important. Using his Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II shooting wit small JPEG (4 MP equivalent files of about ~1 MB) he was able to burst off a number of shots and have them appear quite quickly in his SmugMug account. Even at the medium setting, the images took no more than a few seconds to appear. Quite impressive. One thing to note is that the Eye-Fi does not support RAW, only JPEGs will be uploaded. The Eye-Fi SDHC is a very impressive invention. I had, at one time, considered getting one for my 1D bodies and after Adam’s demonstration, I’m tempted again.

Wedding photography was mentioned as a good candidate, but I disagree as you probably don’t want your raw, unedited images available; not the best way to make a good impression. I think the better candidate for this technology would be photojournalist who don’t alter their images at all. This certainly offers a whole new level of live blogging: live photobloging. To read more in-depth on this and Adam’s thoughts, check out his blog posting [link to post]. Check out Adam’s live photoblogging session at COBA on his SmugMug [link]. The only complaint I have about this whole setup is that it is expensive. The equipment alone cost about $200 and the Verizon wi-fi plan is $60 a month, so the cost can add up quickly.

Sensor Cleaning

J.C. Dill and Landon were discussing their favorite method of sensor cleaning: Dust-Aid Sensor Cleaner. They swear that these have produced the best results in their continual endevaor for a clean sensor. This is the product they use exclusively for their Canon EOS 1D Mark III, Canon EOS 1D Mark IIn, Canon EOS 5D, and Canon EOS 20Da. The neat thing about the Dust-Aid Sensor cleaner is that it does not use any cleaning solution so thus won’t leave smear marks. I do have to say I am a bit scared of doing my own sensor cleaning, but after their demonstration and seeing the results, I’m sold. The Dust-Aid also seems to be the least scariest of all the other cleaning methods such as the Artic Butterfly and Visible Dust System. It is also the cheapest at ~$27.

Seem really good, I may end up purchasing one of the Dust-Aid to try since both my 1D bodies have collected some noticeable dust and it is starting to take a lot more time to clean out in Adobe Lightroom.

April K. Tse and Shootsac

Canon EOS 40D with Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM in Shootsac.

April brought her Shootsac to show me. An interesting “hip-pack” concept to store/carry your camera and lens without it looking noticeably like a camera/lens bag. The Shootsac is created by wedding photographer extraordinaire Jessica Claire. You can wear it one of two ways: as a purse or around your hip.

It’s designed to carry 3-6 lenses and is quite portable and made of neoprene. It seems you can only carry 3 pro lenses at most or risk breaking the seams or your back from the weight.

I can’t say I’m terribly impressed or would want to get one, but that’s just me. You can also purchase different front flaps so you can change it as often as your mood or outfits. The Shootsac isn’t cheap at $179 and neither are the front flaps costing anywhere from $30-$60 depending on the design.

COBA Pictures

You can see all the pictures from COBA at my SmugMug [link].

Political Photography

Mona T. Brooks had a lot of interesting stories about her recent photojournalism work: photographing the 2008 Democratic National Convention (DNC) and being DNC CEO of the DNC Committee Leah D. Daughtry’s personal photographer.

She discussed about the importance of being “pinned” (very specific press credentials), her run in with the Secret Service, ethics of photographing a sleeping politician (Howard Dean), and her experience overall.

It was pretty cool to hear her story.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II

We had a lot of new people show up at COBA in anticipation of seeing a pre-production 5D Mark II. Unfortunately, one wasn’t available, but we did have an interesting discussion and watched the now infamous Reverie video by Vincent Laforet and the behind the scenes making.

The video is fantastic and I think the 5D Mark II will be a step towards restoring Canon’s damaged reputation.

2008 Photokina Wrapup

A lot of new products were introduced at the 2008 Photokina trade show and so Adam Tow kindly put together a nice slide show showing all the latest released cameras and some previews of what the new Adobe Photoshop CS4 has in store.

COBA Pictures

Canon Professional Services (CPS)

Jim Rose, Canon Pro Markets Rep

First up was Jim Rose from Canon Professional Services (CPS) to discuss about membership: how to sign up, what it entails, and answer questions. It was quite informative. Jim explained that CPS is designed for the “working professionals” by Canon. Membership is free, but you do have to meet the criteria for membership, not everyone can just sign up. The two primary services offered by Canon Professional Services are 1) expedited equipment repair and 2) try before you buy equipment loan. The expedited repair means that any Canon equipment that qualifies as professional level that is sent to a Canon repair facility will take 3-5 days to repair versus 4+ weeks. According to Jim, they currently strive for 72 hours. Impressive. And while the equipment is out for repair, you can request, free of charge, loaner equipment.

Adam Tow

They also offer a try before you buy where you can request any professional Canon SLR and/or L lenses for free of charge for a two week period. Jim stressed that CPS’s try-before-you-buy program is intended for trial only, not continuous free loaning. CPS keeps tracks of your rental requests and will begin to wonder if every month you keep requesting the same lens or camera.

The application review process takes approximately 4 weeks and CPS rules have recently changed requiring annual renewal. There are two requirements that people are (or not) aware of: must be a professional that derives at least 51% of their income from photography and must own some pro equipment listed on the CPS application. Both those requirements aren’t as stringent as you would believe. For example, the 51% income number is an arbitrary number that Canon selected for no particular reason. CPS recognizes that not every legitimate professional actually derives 51% of their income from photography. Jim gave us an example of a sports photographer he knows: by day, a BMW mechanic and on the weekends, a published sports photographer. Obviously the guy doesn’t derive 51% of his income from photography, but he is a professional as far as Canon Professional Services is concerned.

Another thing I found out from Jim is that Canon no longer does calibrations on misfocusing cameras and lenses, but rather resets the camera(s) and lens(es) to their default values because it seems to work better. Another unknown advantage of CPS that helps them ensure expedited repairs is that you put a credit card on file and a maximum repair amount and when you send your equipment for repair, they will do any and all repairs up to your maximum specified amount. This saves CPS from having to call you back and forth to authorize repairs and increase the time it takes to get the repairs done.

CPS in the U.S. currently does not have a website, they are working on it. Also another thing Jim was telling us is that CPS is working on reorganizing CPS as a worldwide service rather than a regional service. Currently, if you are a US CPS member and you need to use Europe CPS, it doesn’t work as smoothly as it should, but that is changing. Also having CPS does not mean you get discounts or any thing special other than expedited repairs and the trial loan program. Don’t join expecting a discount on repairs.

For those who are looking for further information, you can read the CPS Loan Program FAQ here. The membership application for CPS can be downloaded here.

Also Jim Rose mentioned that Canon and Keeble & Shuchat are having a class on September 12 featuring Jim Rose discussing about “L” series lenses and Jennifer Wu discussing about “Nature’s Elusive Beauty”. Admission is free, so sign up quickly. I’ll be there.

As an added bonus, on Saturday September 13, Jim Rose, Jennifer Wu and another instructor will be doing a workshop shooting on the coast between Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz. Jim Rose will be providing:

A variety of “L” series lenses will be available including super wide angle, tilt/shift, macro, super telephoto and zooms

The cost is $49 per person with a limit of 15 participants. I’m so there.

Here is Jim Rose’s contact info: jrose@cusa.canon.com, telephone is 408-468-2332. Canon U.S.A., Inc. 3300 North First Street, San Jose, CA 95134. Main line is 408-468-2000.

Art Shows by ShutterBudd

Jeff from ShutterBudd was kind enough to come by and talk about what ShutterBudd is and the Art Shows they are sponsoring. ShutterBudd is a social networking photography site that is a place for everyone to display their artwork. It’s very similar to Flickr, but expands upon it by offering users articles on photography, user websites, in-depth gear bios (with whose using what and ratings, etc.), a forum, and so much more. They have a nicely designed website, easy to navigate.

So they are sponsoring a number of art shows at two venues: Sweet Corner and zpizza and the theme is “Life in the Bay”. These art shows are a great concept especially for up and coming photographers:

Have you ever gone into a local cafe or restaurant, seen beautiful art on the walls and wondered how you could get your photographs in a public place? ShutterBudd can help you get your work out to the general public by sponsoring art displays at local cafes and restaurants. We’ll take care of all the work to get the images framed and work with the business owners on the actual display. All you will need to do is submit an image that you think fits with the theme.

The images have to be submitted in black & white and can be uploaded or submitted via print. If your photograph is selected to be displayed, you have to take care of the printing, but ShutterBudd will handle the mounting and framing.

ShutterBudd is an interesting concept, definitely keep an eye out for them. I think they’ll do some great things.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2

I had briefly used Adobe Photoshop Lightroom beta when it was first introduced, but never quite liked it compared to Apple Aperture. Now with Lightroom 2 and after what Chris Pederson (creator of Phoxle white balance card) and Mark Jaremko demonstrated, I am seriously considering giving Lightroom another go.

There are some really neat tools built in such as advanced vignetting controls, blown highlight sensors, and much, much more.

One thing that happened was Mark’s catalog file somehow got corrupted and he had to restore to a previous version. One of the members in our group mentioned that if you have catalog corruption, email Adobe and they have a person who will repair the catalog for you. Pretty cool.

It was quite a long discussion and I don’t want to regurgitate everything because I forgot most of it, but it’s a very cool software.

COBA Monthly Picture Contest

The theme for this month’s picture contest was angles. See the gallery for the winner. The winner gets a complimentary 1 year professional SmugMug account.

Gallery Images

For yesterday’s meeting, our agenda was about a product called AutoMate and Camera Insurance.

AutoMate by The Gadget Works

AutoMate is a really cool hardware and software from The Gadget Works “CEO/CIO/CFO/Janitor” Don French. After spending nearly four years developing AutoMate, he has a great potential tool for photographers. AutoMate are two separate things: a hardware device that is mounted in between the camera and tripod and software that is loaded onto either a laptop or PDA communicating via Bluetooth that allows you to program the hardware and/or trigger manual commands such as firing the shutter or panning horizontally. What AutoMate offers is a much, much simpler way to create extraordinary panoramas like the gigapixel panoramas like Max Lyons. By using a WindowsMobile 6 PDA, you can upload, save, and create “profiles” for the AutoMate hardware to execute. You put in how wide (in degrees) of horizontal panning you want, if you want the images to have any overlap and by how much (in percentages) and then let the machine do all the work of panning horizontally perfectly and vertically while automatically photographing each frame and saving it to the camera’s memory card.

AutoMate isn’t just a panoramic assist, it is also a programmable intervalometer allowing for complex custom programs to create time lapse pictures. One of the cool features of using AutoMate as an intervalometer is that the system sends a wake up pulse at a pre-programmed time that wakes the camera and then fires off the shutter. All the other intervalometer hardware and software require the camera to remain on at all times! Don showed us the intuitive GUI and how easy it is to program custom programs for a variety of uses from panoramic shots to time lapses. AutoMate is relatively easy to setup. There are three sockets: one socket is designed to send a wake up trigger to other items such as strobes (not currently an available option), the middle socket is to trigger the camera’s shutter, and the last socket is to plug in a manual wired remote. AutoMate is powered by four Double AA batteries and also has a DC socket to allow for an external battery source to be plugged into the AutoMate while the main batteries are being changed to save the pre-programmed options. The software is written in VBasic. AutoMate is currently still in beta testing and is open to those interested in being beta testers at a discounted cost of $499. According to Don, after the Gizmodo blog post, he received over 150 beta test request applications in 1 day!

Don demonstrated the AutoMate using his Canon EOS 20D with Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM and it looks and works fantastic! Very, very smooth panning. Don has definitely put a lot of thought and details into this and it shows. Some innovative features is the ability for micro adjustments in case the panning is slightly off. The software looks like there are thousands of combination.

I personally do not do landscape photography, so I’m not that interested in AutoMate, but I do applaud the hard work and the exceptional product that, while still in beta, looks very promising! Thank you for showing us this wonderful product Don! Good luck!

Camera Insurance, A Discussion

The highlight of the night was the discussion on camera insurance. Having camera insurance is important; but having the right insurance is even more important. There are a couple choices depending on what kind of photography you do. If you are a hobbyist or amateur and make no money (not even a cent from time to time), then you can usually add a rider policy onto your home owner or renter’s insurance to cover the cost of damage, lost, or stolen equipment. If you are a hobbyist or amateur who receives money (no matter how little) once in awhile or a professional who is paid, in the eyes of the insurance company, you are considered pro and must get pro insurance, which means higher premiums. One thing that should be mentioned about insuring your photography equipment, especially very expensive equipment, under your home owner’s or renter’s insurance is that you should consider it can be a risk if you make a big claim for loss, stolen, or damage, it can be clause for the insurance company to cancel your entire home owner’s or renter’s policy. $30,000 or less of photography equipment, in my mind, is not worth loosing your home insurance over. Best to get a separate policy just to be on the safe side.

In the meeting, a few people gave examples of what kind of insurance they have relative to what they do. Two professionals have professional insurance, one being Hill & Usher, a company that a lot of professional photographers use. One of the women in our group is insured through State Farm and she recently received a check for the repair cost of a damaged Canon EOS 20D and a hosed Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM from when she accidentally dropped them together on concrete. She said the experience was pain-free, just called them up and explained the situation and they took care of the rest. The one pro who has Hill & Usher let us see his insurance paperwork and contract. His premium is ~$750 annually ($30,000-$50,000 worth of equipment insured) with liability insurance (a big important thing to protect yourself against lawsuits). This being only the base policy, it also comes with rental equipment, pays out for loss profit, etc; seems to be a very good deal for peace of mind. What’s great about photography insurance such as this is that it’s very easy to file and get stuff taken cared of and in a lot of cases, there is no deductible either.

Now for a horror story of why you should never let any insurance lapse. One of the members was detailing back in 2005 when he was shooting a baseball game, somehow someone managed to steal his camera bag (a Domke J-2) from the press area inside which contained several expensive Canon L lenses, lots of compact flash cards, strobes, and other accessories such as backup batteries. Fortunately, he still had his camera body, a Canon EOS 1D, and a Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L USM, which was mounted all on a monopod. Unfortunately he was in-between insurances at this point, and had let the other one lapsed, so $4500 worth of equipment just evaporated!

I’m going to start researching Hill & Usher and price out what it will cost to insure all my equipment under a separate policy and will post details once I’ve got it all figured out.

AutoMate Gallery Images