Why I love, but hate Canon right now!

Let me first start by saying, that I am not one to usually get involved with the rant about what is going to be the latest and greatest camera to come out on the market.  I must confess however, I do read these rants because I find them quite amusing.  The thing really pisses me off is how much these camera companies are ripping off consumers.  

 

It all started a few days ago when Canon announced their upgrade to the popular advanced compact camera the G10.  I, myself have not even had my camera for a year and all of a sudden…G11!?  I could post a photo here on my blog, but I refuse to give into the advertising of this camera!  I don’t want to sound piggheaded, it sounds like a great camera.  Basically, Canon decided to keep the same camera body, and simply lower the megapixel count.  By keeping the same Digic 4 processor, the new G11, promises better low light, low noise, functionality at higher ISO’s.  That’s the other thing that pisses me off!  I love the G10, but honestly, I don’t use this camera above ISO400.  This is fine by me, because the reason why I bought the camera in the first place was to have  a small, compact camera to take snapshots and for creative “on the go” oppurtunities.  So in my opinion, the camera serves me just fine.  But, why the the hell put these ridiculous ISO 1600’s and 3200’s on a compact, when they are absolutely unusable?  It’s almost as if they put it in there for the spec value only.  Now, don’t get me wrong, Canon has an excellent idea about the megpixel count.  In fact, I have never been impressed my megapixels, and would take a camera that has better low light quality over resolution any day!  In the case of the G10, I want the megapixels though.  I find myself constantly using this camera as a macro camera and always cropping in on certain things.  The 15 megpixels that is has allows me to do that.  That being said, I would not trade in my G10 for a G11 anyday of the week.  Where the frustration comes from my part, is the feeling that Canon is releasing these camera’s, knowing that their performance might be suffering because of higher megapixel count, with full intention of replacing them within the same year!  Again, I might be satisfied with my camera, but I can tell you that a lot of consumers are not going to be happy about this.  The G10 is a $500.00 compact camera.  Now comes the G11 with features some consumers might be attracted to for get this…the same fricken price as the G10 is selling for:  $500.00.  And all within a year’s time.  I don’t want for this rant to sound like I am switching from Canon.  They make an unbelievable product.  I am completely satisfied with my G10, 40D, and Rebel.  In fact, I wish Canon didn’t take the 40D off the market, because with all the portrait and wedding work I have coming up, I want another 40D.  But come on guys?  Put your money into a good product and leave it there.  Don’t try and fix what isn’t broken!  With the way the economy is, hard working people are forking over hard earned $$ and they don’t want to be hearing of their camera being obsolete 6 months after they walk out of the store with it.  It just isn’t a good feeling for any consumer.  Slow down, keep the camera’s you have, and here’s an idea…Maybe put it into some lenses which haven’t been upgrade in the last 10 years?  Now there’s a thought!  

Canon G10 in the studio.

Off To Ossipee!

Friday, I decided to take a day off for a change and head up to our friends Kelley and Dave’s camp.  It was in north Ossipee.  Ossipee is part of the Lakes region of New Hampshire, a popular destination for summer vacations.  Their RV was located on a nice seasonal lot at Danforth Bay.  Danforth Bay has both RV’s and small cottages (they are actually fully furnished houses).  I have been traveling fairly lightly lately as far as camera gear goes when we travel.  Between shooting portraits, weddings, and working on the never ending commercial portfolio, the last thing I have been wanting to do is lug around a heavy DSLR and lens.  I have been lucky to find everything I need in the G10.  I can make simple snapshots into decent images with extreme ease.  I can shoot RAW when I want, and with the 14 megapixels, I know that if I have to crop in later, so be it!  Well, I promised myself and Courtney that I wouldn’t be shooting photos the entire weekend, so I stuck to toying around when she was enjoying a book on the porch.  I wanted to make some motion abstracts, which I haven’t had the oppurtunity to do in a while.  Just when I though my little compact would give me a hard time, it spit out exactly what I was looking for:

here’s another giving her a little twist:

 

Being the sucker for a good closeup, I couldn’t resist:

 

 

 

The next day we decided to drive up to North Conway, home to the outlets, and Cathedral Ledge, a popular rock climbing spot.  We took the lazy way up (car to the top), and were greated by a breath taking view. 

 

Looking over the edge gave me a little vertigo!  What was more impressive was seeing human beings climbing over the top of this shear verticle drop.  If I had to guess I would say that the drop was well over a hundred and fifty feet.

 

Not just one, but several climbers were beneath this guy.  What a big responsibility he has!  He tied off to the saftey fence post at the top and belayed the rest of the climbers that followed.

 

Finally, who could pass up this beautiful backdrop?  Portrait time!

 

Keeping the creativity flowing!!!

purse-web-0431, originally uploaded by craig.proulx.

Lately I have found myself creating more images on the fly. I lot of my stuff usually requires the need to setup lights, experiment with camera angles, and occasionally compositing images together. Because, I have been so busy lately with family things, I have been more opt to take along my compact camera. I think I have finally crossed the threshold where I am comfortable not lugging around a 400 pound camera and lens!

There are so many photo opps everywhere! In church, at restaurants. Even everyday things you take with you such as this purse! In fact, we where on our way to a restaurant for lunch, when we stopped to get gas. My lovely girlfriend’s purse was sitting on the floor. I picked it up and angled it by the car window so that some light poured on it. A very simple shot. I fired off a bunch of frames, trying different angles and compositions I liked. I might not have taken 20 minutes to setup for this, like I would in my studio, but it works. Whether or not I use it for anything dosen’t matter. The point is it sparked some creativity when my mind would normally be in lala land thinking of something else. In fact that day which was a weekend I walked away with close to 10 images that I am indeed going to use in my portfolio. They were all taken with a compact camera! I have to thank people like David Hobby and Chase Jarvis for doing things like daily I Phone photos for really inpiring me and showing what can be done with everyday activities!

The next photo was taken while at work at a university. The guy with me thought I was nuts! The very first time I had used this bathroom, I knew I had an image. I could see it, but just had to refine it and figure out how to manipulate it in camera and in post to get what I was seeing. When I was done, I can’t even begin to describe to you how nice it felt to have been productive in an environment which wasn’t a glamourous one! The lesson here: Always bring your compact and take it out when you normally wouldn’t! It might surprise you!

 

G10 takes on Macro!

Corn_web-0335, originally uploaded by craig.proulx.

Just when I thought I had experience everything with this camera, I realized that I had not yet made a closeup image yet. A major part of my photography consist of closeups and what better image to make then a nice summery ear of corn. For this image, I used natural window light coming in from the right. The light was soft as it was early evening. To fill in some shadows on the left side, I used a collapsable silver reflector. The G10 can even manually focus too, although I think I used autofocus for this particular image. I have been busy creating images for my stock/commercial portfolio. I have a lot of concepts which are on the back burner, so hopefully I will be pulling those out soon as well.

–Craig

The Canon G10! More than just a “Point and Shoot!”

CanonG10test-web-0120, originally uploaded by craig.proulx.

I have always wanted to get a decent compact point and shoot camera to pack in my pocket for travel purposes. I was fortunate enough to recently get my hands on the new Canon Powershot G10 and decided what better way to break in the camera then to put it to one of my tests.

First, let me start by saying that the G10 is not your ordinary “point and shoot”. It is a 15 megapixel camera that can shoot RAW and comes with a hotshoe. I decided to shoot a simple, 3 light commercial type shot using a mountain bike. Using an off camera shoe cord mounted to the G10, I fired off a speedlight in a small softbox to my left down at ground level. The speedlight was set to master and using the Canon wireless system, I was able to control a gridded speedlight to my right for some fill light, plus fire off a strobe with double fluorescent color conversion gels behind the bike. I zoomed the flash to give some kick. I also used a piece of white foam core below the softbox to provide a little more fill. With all that in place, I must say the camera did a fine job! With the G10, I was able to shoot at ISO 80 to give me a fairly noise free image. Controlling the master flash (main light) was simple to do from the camera’s menu, as it gives you a fair amount of control over a 580EX.

Don’t mean to sound like a spokesperson for Canon, but if anyone out there wants a compact, point and shoot that has the ergonomics of a DSLR, I highly recommend the G10. Like most point and shoots, the lowest ISO’s are the greatest. Noise is definately there at 400 and above, but for a compact I can handle that. The resolution this camera I am impressed with also. I see no problem printing 8 X 10’s or even larger from the G10. All strobes fired using the Canon wireless system.

I should also add that I will be getting the underwater housing for this and maybe an underwater strobe as well in an effort to capture some marine life when I go to Aruba in December.  I don’t expect many keepers for the first few tries, but I am sure eventually I will get some.

–Craig