Canon and Sony News for Oct 2018

This model obviously accepted Canon's request and she managed the assignment very professionally. Parachutes are designed to ease the landing, but in this case, the parachute was more likely to cause a liftoff (followed by a perilous landing). I would have been more comfortable if she had a crash pad beside her, but she stayed on her feet through even the strongest wind gusts.

A 50mm lens does not create the extreme background blur that long telephoto lenses can create, but the 50mm angle of view allows a closer camera position that provides a more intimate look while the f/1.2 aperture still provides a strong background blur that makes the subject stand out. The look is unique in a very positive way.

The extremely wide f/1.2 aperture allows handholding in very low light levels but with a white dress in the sun, even a 1/8000 shutter speed is not always fast enough to avoid blown highlights at f/1.2 and ISO 100. In direct sunlight, a neutral density filter or, as used in this example, a circular polarizer filter on the lens.

When water is on the horizon, I usually want the image framed with the horizon level. Electronic viewfinder levels have greatly improved my original captures in this regard, but with the wind and unstable footing, I still managed to get a small degree of tilt that needed to be corrected in this image.

An ultra-wide aperture lens is generally selected to make use of those ultra-wide apertures. Often, especially with 50mm ultra-wide aperture lenses, the image quality at the widest apertures is not good and often describable as "dreamy". While dreamy can be nice on occasion, it is not usually what I am going for. With this lens, f/1.2 results are very sharp, showing good resolution and contrast. I have not hesitated to use this lens wide open and ... haven't stopped it down very often. The Canon RF 50mm f/1.2L USM Lens is a compelling reason to get a Canon EOS R camera.
 
A larger version of this image is available on Flickr.

This year, milkweed plants started growing randomly throughout the yard, though frequent lawn mowing kept their visibility near nothing. After an especially long period of rain, the yard crop started showing leaves and my observant daughter spotted a monarch laying eggs on them. Prior to the next lawn cutting, she and my wife removed over 40 eggs from the rogue plants.

Most of the eggs were transferred to the being-tolerated flower bed plants and several were raised indoors, which produces perfect specimens for photographic purposes. The ideal time to photograph butterflies is just after they emerge as their wings are in perfect condition and they remain mostly still for a couple of hours. Knowing when that time is coming involves observing the monarch chrysalis color. Newly-formed chrysalises are bright green in color, but they turn very dark just prior to emergence of the butterfly stage.

I saw this opportunity coming and had some gear ready. When your camera is an EOS model with a hot shoe, the set of lighting accessories available, both Canon brand and third party options, is vast. For this image, I used a Canon Macro Ring Lite MR-14EX II Flash for a very even light on the subject. With the dual MR-14EX flash tubes configured for equal power, this flash creates a flat light, often void of shadows. When the subject is as vibrantly-colored as this one, flat lighting works quite well.

The background is a piece of orange paper (I tried a variety of colors) being held with a Delta 1 Grip-It Single Arm with 1" Clamp (extremely useful accessory) and lit with a remotely-controlled Canon Speedlite 600EX-RT Flash. Alternatively, I could have used a white paper and gelled the flash to create the desired color.

The background light being positioned behind the foreground light meant that it did not influence the lighting on the subject and the background being far enough behind the foreground meant that the foreground light did not influence the background brightness.

While I didn't expect the Canon EOS R to have any trouble with Canon's Speedlite system (other EOS models don't), it is always nice to have reassurance, especially for a new camera line. Or, maybe this test was just the excuse I needed to spend a couple of hours photographing the monarch.

At macro focus distances, depth of field becomes very shallow. One of the keys to capturing this image was to align the camera so that the wing was perfectly parallel to the imaging sensor, perpendicular to the center of the lens' image circle. Still, f/16 was needed to obtain the depth of field necessary to keep almost the entire butterfly sharp.
 
A larger version of this image is available on Flickr.

Upon stepping outside, the heavy cloud cover was obvious and occasional light rain followed us. Landscape photographers live for the openings in breaking storm clouds and I stayed with the plan. I was one of the first photographers to arrive at the side of the lake, but I immediately encountered disruption of the plan. The first issue was that a rope now lines the path around the lake, preventing close access to the water. The second issue was that the lake level was extremely low. The restricted access and now-distant, very shallow lake combined to provide a dirt/stone former lake bottom as the image foreground and the lake was now small enough that the reflections were rather unexciting at the proximity available. In addition, the aspen leaves had changed (and many dropped) about a week early this year, courtesy of the drought that also accounted for the drained lake.

I continued to stay with the plan, remaining standing in my spot, alongside a large number of other photographers, from about 3:30 AM until close to 9:00 AM, waiting for a break in the clouds. That never happened and I finally decided that a decent photo was not likely to happen. The hike I promised the girls was looking like a great option and that became the plan.

After all of the early AM effort, the best scene of the day showed up in front of us while hiking near the far side of the lake. An opening in the clouds allowed sunlight to penetrate, brightly lighting a grove of aspens that were still holding their brilliantly-colored leaves. The key to getting my favorite Maroon Bells image on this trip was just being out in a great location, watching for something good to happen.

The Canon EOS R and RF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM Lens were perfect hiking companions.
 
A larger version of this image is available on Flickr.

This indoor, ambient window light session netted 157 images. Of these images, 10 were 2/3 body portraits, 82 included head and shoulders (or were framed slightly wider) and 64 were headshots with a significant number of those being close to minimum focus distance. All images were captured at f/1.2 for the shallowest, most-AF-challenging depth of field possible and eye detection AF was exclusively in use.

Of the 157 images, ten were focused on eyelashes (usually acceptable, mostly close to the iris), two were focused a similarly-short distance behind the iris and only two images misfocused beyond iris-to-eyelash distance. The other 143 were optimally focused on the iris.

That the camera was being handheld with me in a somewhat squatted position and the subject standing (sometimes leaning against a wall) meant that our movement could easily have caused any of the less-than-perfect results. I remain very pleased with the EOS R's portrait AF capabilities and the RF 50mm f/1.2L is a very impressive lens, perfect for portraits.
 
The Canon EOS R is in stock at B&H | Amazon | Adorama | WEX.

Rent the Canon EOS R from Lensrentals.

A fast frame rate is one such feature. A camera that can capture images in rapid succession is more likely to capture the perfect subject position than a camera that captures images at low frequency. For this feature, the EOS R has a relatively fast frame rate, but only when not tracking and adjusting the focus distance. Not all action involves changing focus distances (such as the wave crashing example in the Canon EOS R review), but if your subject is moving enough to leave the camera's initially-focused depth of field, as is typical for many sports, continuous focusing is required and in that focus mode, the EOS R's 5 fps frame rate is on the slow side of the spectrum.

Another feature required for photographing subjects in motion is maintaining a continuous view of that subject in the viewfinder. Optical viewfinders have a short blackout period for each image captured (while the mirror is raised) and cameras with short blackout specs are more-highly desired than those with long ones. Electronic viewfinders, with few exceptions, have a pause in the EVF video feed as each image is captured and the duration of this pause can hinder a photographer from keeping a subject properly framed. This pause is only a minor issue for subjects moving directly toward or away from the camera, but keeping subjects properly-framed as they are moving from side-to-side or moving erratically becomes a challenge with most EVFs, including the EOS R's.

If the subject focusing distance is changing, especially if it is changing rapidly, autofocus tracking and prediction performance becomes critically important. If the subject is out of focus, the image, regardless of the frame rate it was captured at, is likely going to be deleted.

The Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM Lens and its just-introduced replacement, the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS III USM Lens are ultra-popular sports lenses and I mounted one on the EOS R to photograph a cross country meet with. While this lens is not going to create the focus challenge that, for example, the Canon EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II USM Lens will when compared at the same distance, focusing on a very close and fast-approaching runner at 200mm f/2.8 is quite challenging to an AF system. I thought the EOS R did a great job on this cloudy day that included some light rain earlier in the meet. A high percentage of my images were sharp (when I kept the subject properly framed).

Note that, while the image shared here appears very sharp at this resolution, my 1/1250 shutter speed was not quite fast enough to stop the lateral motion at this distance. Though the image is properly focused, the motion blur degraded image sharpness slightly at full resolution. I was starting a burst capture when the subjects came close to being ideally framed and continued to photograph until they passed by.

Another feature that is often helpful for action photography is the ability to sustain the frame rate for a large number of images. The EOS R's buffer depth, when using a fast memory card, is very good, allowing a relatively long period of action to be captured. While usually not as desirable as a fast frame rate, a large buffer can increase the number of great shots captured in a burst and I can credit the image shared here to that feature.

For those using the shutter release to time their captures or to time the first capture in a high speed frame rate sequence, a short shutter lag is important. The EOS R checks that box and the fast AF makes timing single shots quite successful.

Overall, the EOS R is lacking a few key features to make it the ideal sports and action camera. It is not that camera, but it can certainly do that job if needed. I don't recommend purchasing an EOS R for dedicated sports and action photography, but the EOS R stands ready to fill in for the occasional action needs it encounters. Of course, if your action is not leaving the established depth of field, the EOS R can do 8 frames per second and that rate is quite fast, making it suitable for such needs.