Jonny Petts was not successful in his attempts to hack the 500D and he has put the project to an end. There will be no 500D firmware hack. At least not from Jonny Petts anyway, but to my knowledge there is nobody else still working on it.

For those of us who were hoping and praying for this to come to fruition, it is a tough blow and to the 500D owners out there still hanging for Manual Controls, I’m sure it is gutting to hear but I hope this will at least will give you some kind of closure.

I think it’s all got a bit difficult, with the advent of the 550D, now the 60D and the inexorable march of technology it seems it’s inevitable that the 500D will remain as it always was, a great but somewhat limited camera that is still capable of some fantastic images in the right hands.

I have extracted the following from Jonny’s most recent message to me and will share it with you here. Don’t hate on the guy though, he did give it his best shot and tried to lead the charge in a task that was immensely challenging, even for the most knowledgable hackers.

Well, from the start I had alot of issues. I had no real experience with these programs, I made small amounts of progress and began to understand what I was doing and so on. I mean, this is why i did not want any payment for it. This was meant to be a little project I could work on and learn from. I mean I am still working it, rarely, but I doubt i will get anywhere. I appreciate all your support and interest, it means a lot to me, you took a big risk in doing so, I have tried my best to produce it, but as you know I am no Trammel Hudson who has this database of knowledgea and has all the resources. I know I’ll get a wave of hate comments for this but i didn’t wish to get peoples hopes up, I just think that the 500D really is for point and shoot with some creativity, but I really think that if you want these manual controls we will need to get the 550d. Which is what I am currently saving up for (that or a 7D). My message to 500d users is to use what you have! I got drawn into hating on Canon for not giving us manual controls, but a photographer recently told me, that it’s the vision you have that makes the shot not the gear, and with the 500d i have found work around for these issues.

I really feel the 500d is a great camera, and I do love it, it produces some great shots but this camera is not for pro’s. It’s for the small time beginners like me, but as i have learnt so much I feel i want these features so I am ready to upgrade.

Sorry mate,

Jonny

So there it is, straight from the man himself with some wise words that ring true no matter what the profession. It’s not so much the tools as the vision of the creative behind it. . .

I’m sorry to all of those that feel they have been misled, it was neither Jonny’s nor my intention to mislead anybody at all. It’s a real shame it hasn’t come off, but don’t let it dishearten you. Go out, shoot great pictures, enjoy what you have and keep smiling!

What better way to break in the new Canon 5DMKII than to take it on a plane/road trip to visit the family down in Tamworth. Two little sisters, one of which who loves watching the footage of herself almost as much as the rest of us do, a bunch of greenery and lots of fun.

The new Canon 5DMKII only arrived on the Friday afternoon and flying out Saturday morning didn’t leave a lot of time for really investigating the new beasty. I’d used one a fair bit on shoots a while back, but since getting a Canon 7D had been using nothing but. I must say, she’s quite the different animal and on first impression, nowhere near as user friendly as my beloved Canon 7D.

Firstly, (and I know I’ve already rabbited on ad nauseam about this on Facebook, but I’m super excited!) I was stoked to see that the Sigma 30mm f1.4 actually worked on the Canon 5DMKII. Not only did it work, but it brought with it a dirty vignette that I’d never seen on the Canon 7D before (Due to the smaller sensor). It was love at first sight. Now I might not be reaching for this lens next time I have a corporate shoot, but in a more relaxed setting (a glorified home movie), this combo kicks some serious goals in my book! To me it’s a nice effect, with a bit of character, that still looks absolutely fantastic in the centre of the frame. All the benefits of a Toy Camera lens without the drawbacks. So yes, very happy there.

The 30mm focal length on the Canon 5DMKII is really nice too. So much so that I am seriously considering saving the pennies for a Canon 35mm f1.4L. I think in the interim though a Canon EF 35mm f2.0 could find it’s way into the camera bag, according to reviews it’s not so bad a lens and f2.0 is a quick enough for most things. As I said, whilst I love that vignette, it’s not going to work for everything.

My little Canon 50mm f.18 II worked wonderfully on the Canon 5DMKII. Seriously that lens blows me away! I took a photo at f10 on that little beast and it was so tack sharp at 100% it just wasn’t funny. If you haven’t got one of these lenses you are nuts! It’s so good for the price, I can’t see myself justifying the $2K it costs to get the Canon 50mm f1.2L. Even though it’s supposed to be that much of a better lens (well for a start, it’s not all plastic!) I’m not sure it could be that much better. The depth of field is lovely, and when it’s wide open at f1.8 you get some nice vignetting and a little decrease in sharpness towards the edge of the frame. It adds a bit of charm (like a fake chimney).

Now, what was seriously impressive, having come from the Canon 7D, which. let’s be honest, is a rather noisy experience at the best of times, was the low light capabilities of this camera. Now I’m not going to crap on at length about this like every other blog has since the camera was released over a year ago, but I will say this – The Canon 5DMKII looks the way you want your footage to look in low light conditions. It’s still going to be noisy if you push it too far, but it seems it can nicely capture what you can easily see with the naked eye in dim light. Now it might be awesome to have the near night-vision capabilities of the Canon 1DMKIV, but it’s not like you’ll be disappointed if you can’t take a shot of something you can’t see in the first place! For the first time I’m pleased with the quality of the video I shoot when the sun goes down, I can’t say I ever felt that with the Canon 7D.

Now it’s really tempting to start comparing the Canon 5DMKII and the Canon 7D to each other on a minute scale, but I just don’t feel comfortable doing that as yet. I’ve only been using it for a week and I really need to give a red hot crack before I go talking smack about it. I don’t want to give the wrong impression because I haven’t dug deep enough in the custom fuctions or just haven’t shot with it enough yet to make a proper judgement. What I can say, is that I feel the design of the Canon 7D’s body and button layout is far superior to the Canon 5DMKII. More on that in a future blog post. . .

Funnily enough I think I only pulled the Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS USM out of the bag twice on this trip and neither of those shots made it into this edit. The 100-400 didn’t even get a look in.

The song in this clip is by one of my favourite acts of all time, Way Out West. The song is called ‘Just like a man’. Off the album called ‘Don’t Look Now’, this track is just superb. I suggest you check out the entire album if you dig the style. It’s an all time classic electronic release.

It was a lot of fun shooting this footage, my little sister Kendra is a ball to hang out with and it’s always fun capturing funny little moments that go one when we’re hanging out. I know this is not the best footage I’ve ever shot, but this was more about getting a feel for the camera and also just making a nice home movie for the archives. I actually tossed up on whether to put it here on the site, but figured I’d been talking it up so I better actually post it! If you enjoy it even 1/20th as much as I did shooting and editing it (You should have seen the stupid grin whilst cutting in the timeline. I’m a sucker for my little sister) then I’ll be stoked.

More soon. . .

The gorgeous little Kendra.

The Canon 550D - The 7D's little brother!

So it was that Canon announced to a mostly suspecting public that coming soon to store near them would be the latest addition to the Rebel Line, the Canon 550D or Rebel Ti2. This little beauty certainly does look the goods on paper and with it’s free and easy attitude towards video it’s sure to be a hit with all the boys and girls! What’s it’s deal, I hear you ask, well it’s basically a mini 7D. It’s a Digic IV processor, 18MP APS-C Sensor with pretty much the same video modes and frame rates (1080P @ 30, 25 & 24P, 720 @ 50 & 60P, 480 @ 50 & 60P). Am I excited, you betcha!

Let me tell you why. . .

Check out the Press release here for all the information, I’m not going to bother to regurgitate it all for you, but rather add some thoughts to ponder.

If the 500D had of been this camera, I don’t think I would ever have brought a 7D. . .end of story. . .Now I love my 7D, heaps and heaps and heaps, but I only brought it for the manual video controls, useable 1080P mode and $1000 price difference to the 5D MKII. At the time I was shooting mostly video and considering I really only needed those things, the 5DMKII, despite the luscious full frame sensor, seemed overkill for my purposes. So I jumped at the 7D as soon as it popped it’s head up, but now the 550D is on the horizon I’m looking at my neglected 500D on the shelf and wondering if I could maybe finally get my 7D auto focus looked at by Canon using the 550D as a backup. That my friends is a very alluring thought!

Now having said that, I’m sure there are a couple of things that the 550D will have that will really irk me. Going back to having only pre-set white balances will be agony. I shoot almost exclusively with a manual Kelvin white balance, adjusting it for nearly every shot. This is just me, it’s the way I like to do things. Having this ability for the first time on the D90 was a godsend. Losing it when I moved to the 500D killed me. Getting it back when I got a 7D was like slipping into your favourite old shoes. The prospect of going back to that with a 550D as a back up camera is almost a deal breaker for me. Once you get used to it to Manual Kelvin, it’s nigh impossible to go back.

I’m also left wondering if the noise apparent in the 500D image will be any different with the 550D. The 7D eats the 500D alive in this respect and to be honest, I’m not sure why. I see people making reference to the 2 processors, but I’m not sure how this makes a difference. I thought the two processors were there so you could crunch through 18mp stills at 8FPS. I’m not an expert on that though so I should stop pretending to be!

So am I going to get one? At this stage I’m not sure. . .but to give you an idea my 500D is now sitting on eBay, with I might add, a spectacular marketing video that I shot special for it! All I know is that no matter what happens, it will be missed and remembered dearly. . .the first HDSLR that I ever owned! *sigh*

More soon. . .

A parachute, a stiff breeze, a death defying drop off and the will to conquer it. All in a days play for a paraglider. . .boy does it look fun!

Exquisite cerulean skies played host to a stiff breeze on Sunday. Blowing straight in off the fathomless blue of the pacific, it was smacking straight into Point Cartwright at the perfect speed from the perfect direction. The Paragliders knew it was going to be a perfect day when I rocked up to Point Cartwright on Saturday afternoon to shoot the sunset and caught them packing up. Enrico, a young italian guy with a ready smile was kind enough to take my phone number and let me know when they were heading down the next day.

When I received the call, it was all hands on deck, battlestations, game on, and a couple of other cliché’s I can’t think of right now. I grabbed up the 7D, lenses, a fleccie and the HVX with the shotgun mic and jumped in the car and sped down there (within the speed limit and obeying all the road rules) as quick as I could.

I didn’t go into it with a plan really, I was just trying to get nice shots, enough make a quick cut and hopefully  get a couple of real crackers to keep for the future. I did know that I wanted it to be pretty mellow, relaxing and convey the fun that these guys were having. My god, did it look like fun! I was so jealous watching these guys just soaring across the sky, up and down the point. It’s not cheap though, apparently you’re looking at around $8-10K to get set up. It would want to be fun for that much!

I used the usual lenses for this, the Sigma 30mm f1.4 was great for the handheld stuff. Alot more stable in the hand than the 500D too. Still got to watch that rolling shutter though. The depth of this lens really allows for some nice bokeh effects at decent distances. I really like that about it. You don’t have to cram your subject right up against the camera to get some depth. The shot of the old people watching the paragliders from the seat shows that to good effect. They were quite a distance away and shot wide open @ f1.4.

The Tokina performed wonderfully, as usual (albeit without the autofocus ability) and was great for my wides. I didn’t use it for much else as all the action was pretty far away.

Now the 75-300, I know it’s not a great lens. Heck, it isn’t even a good lens, but I am consistently surprised at the image quality of the video it captures. It was fantastic this day, all though it did get a little bit of it’s wind wobble, I had it moving so much it didn’t seem to bother it a lot. Manually tracking focus on these guys as they were moving was pretty hard but with practise you quickly get better. It’s not ideal, but hey, what else can you do. . .Get me a follow focus! That’s what I can do! (All in good time, Christian! )

The 50mm 1.8 II worked nicely for some hand held stuff, but it didn’t make the cut here. There is still quite a bit of footage left over, it just didn’t seem to work with the track and the feel I was going for. With a higher energy cut, it would get some airtime, but here it just wouldn’t have worked.

The 7D was a joy to shoot with! It didn’t overheat at all, even though it was going pretty much flat out with it for the two hours I was there and I was in full Queensland sun. I’ll write more about the camera in a later post.

I want to thank all the guys who helped out, let me poke camera’s in their faces and were genuinely nice, decent and great to be around. Enrico, George, Ryan, thanks a bunch guys and I hope we get to shoot again real soon. Next stop, the hinterland!

More soon. . .

So straight out of the box and it all seems great. I start shooting video flat out, not even really stopping to seriously take some stills. I checked the flash sync speed and made sure it worked with my trigger and strobes, but that was about it.

So on Sunday afternoon, figuring I actually should test the stills side of things before I went out and did a shoot with it the next day, I put on the Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 and set up in the lounge room. The camera was already on full autofocus, I looked through the viewfinder, half depressed the shutter, heard the lens whirr, lock focus and the camera confirm with a beep. I snapped off a shot. . . .blurry. . . .and another. . .blurry. . .and another. . .blurry. . .

I thought that was weird and so changed the mode to single spot, thinking maybe it was just confused. That seemed to work, but upon closer inspection it wasn’t. looking closely, the images were still unacceptably soft for my purposes. I can’t supply my clients soft images, nor can I afford (or should I have to. . .) to be stuffing around with manual focus every time I take a shot. Video yes, stills, no. I was seriously concerned.

I tried a couple of other lenses. . .same thing. . .blurry, soft, you name it. . .My ideal, dream camera, there in my hands, being an absolute dog!

I searched high and low on the next and found lots of people, just like me, who had 7D’s behaving badly. I tried micro adjusting my lenses but to no avail. So I rang Camera’s Direct who agreed that there must be some kind of problem and they agreed to send me out another unit.

Fast forward to present moment, I have since received another  7D body from Camera’s Direct which exhibited the same problem, so I sent it back. I believe I have a defective unit as there are some people out there singing the praises of this camera and it’s autofocus system from the highest mountains (forums). I have heard from others who have suffered the same issues that a new body is the go, with a serial number far, far from what I have right now.

I hope this is the answer and I hope Camera’s Direct don’t get sick of me before I end up with a 7D that works as it should. . .

I am an unhappy camper. . .:(

TESTING, TESTING!!! 1,2,3!

Disclaimer: This is straight out of the camera! It includes unaltered wind generated lens shake, automatic highlight tone priority visibly changing the exposure (lesson learnt!), messy pans and all. It is not meant to be a showcase of my best work, it is only to show the results of my first afternoon shooting this camera. There are some shots in there that I would never include in a final edit for upload, but have here because a camera test should be just that, a warts and all look at what it looks like. There is a time and a place for icky-sticky sugar coated depth of field wack off material, but this isn’t it.

Just quickly, as I’ll cover this in more detail once I’ve really got to know the camera better, my first impressions are these. It’s lovely to shoot with, coming from the 500D there is no comparison as to how much easier it is to get the shot you want with the settings you need. Image quality is as expected, great! Aliasing, hell yeah. It’s very noticeable in some scenes and not very nice at all. Is it going to pose a huge problem for me? No, it’s not, but it’s just not nice, ya know?! Low Light? Seems to handle it very well, I could have pushed it harder, but didn’t. . .I will today.

The way that 75-300 of mine shakes in the wind, you can see the image goes a bit jello-ish. It’s not nice, I suppose a more solid lens could fix that. Well, I hope so. I imagine a Matte box in that kind of wind would be out of the question. We’ll have to see when I get a matte box.

In the hand it feels great, on screen it looks great, I couldn’t get achieve maximum flash sync speed of 1/250 with my ebay CTR-301p radio triggers, most I could get was 1/200, disappointing but it’s not going to kill me.

Slow motion is nice, unfortunately the aliasing is more noticeable at 720P. That sucks! Despite what some other bloggers have said, you can watch back video shot at 50P/60P in slow motion in camera. You just have to select the slow motion playback icon. Simple really!

Anyway, take a look, let me know what you think. I’m heading out to do a serious test now and hope to have something actually worth watching up soon.

A brand spanking Sigma 30mm f1.4 EX DC. I gave it a quick run down the beach just now and am really impressed with the quality. Fantastic image and build quality for around $600. I think I’m in love!

I’ll be shooting a bunch in the coming days so I’ll definitely whack some footage up when I get a chance.

On the 7D front. . .I heard yesterday we are looking at 7-10 days until we get our grubby little mits on our 7D’s!!! To say I am frothing would be a significant understatement. . .Hurry up Canon!!!!

Anyway, I was talking to the dealer just yesterday about the release date, which is currently slated as nothing more definite than mid-October. A couple of things he said interested me, the first being that of the 20 units they have coming in, 15 have already been pre-sold. That’s quite high considering punters haven’t even used this camera yet. Remember that we are also still around a month out from the release date. Or are we?

That was the second thing he said. Apparently at this stage, it looks as though we could have our 7D’s by the end of the month! He didn’t want to say anything too definite, but seemed quite convinced it would happen.

Now that would be worth rejoicing over! A tale worthy of being told to your children’s children! Well possibly not that good, but certainly exciting for those of us frothing on the 7D.

Anyway, that’s about it for now. . .until next time. . .

Turns out it’s spec’d to sit in between the Canon 5D MKII and the 50D. It’s still an APS-C sized sensor with a probably 1.6X crop factor, but it trumps even the revered Canon 5D MKII when it comes to options!

But I digress, here’s the juicy bit for us video lovers. . .

Full 1080P at 24P, 25P and 30P! No more crappy workarounds, useless frame rates or slow conversions! This is fantastic news!

Not only that, but there’s a 720P mode that does 50P and 60P. Basically we’ll be able to shoot slow motion in camera by way of conforming that 50/60P to 25/30P. This is something that I am still lugging my HVX around for, the occasional slow motion shot and to record some audio.

Speaking of recording audio, there is also to be a external stereo microphone input! Hopefully with some gain control available in the menu’s to assist with keeping noise to a minimum.

It seems there is also going to be an SD mode and 480P but there’s not a lot of use for that where I come from, but hey, it’s nice to have.

As you would expect, also full manual control over the aperture, shutter speed and ISO.

This camera may still be rocking an APS-C sensor, but there is much talk over improved Signal to Noise Ratios and also pixel sensitivity, so it will be interesting to see how the 7D holds up against the 5D MKII in low light. Obviously the full frame 5D MKII is going to have a distinct advantage, but I can’t wait to do some tests. . .

Release is expected end of September, but I’m ready! Bring it on Canon! Just show me the pre-order button!

Coming round the mountain when she comes!

But what’s got me excited is the spec list below. I’ll be getting my filthy little mits on one of these as soon as I can, surely a fantastic upgrade to my interim solution 500D.

EOS 7D Specs

-18mp
- dual digic 4
- 8 fps
- 19 af points
- ISO 100-6400 (L & H1 & H2)
- 63 metering zones
- 100% viewfinder
- Horizon Help Viewfinder
- 3″ VGA LCD
- FullHD Video

No word yet as to whether it is going to have manual controls for the video, but you would imagine that it being such a serious stills machine aimed at the pro/semi-professional photographer that it would have them included.

The official announcement is scheduled for tomorrow! Happy days!