A while ago my daughter’s Canon A60 would not turn on: the dreaded E18 error struck and the barrel was not extending. So with nothing to lose, I took it apart, carefully labelled each of the 33 tiny screws I removed, and killed it. I wasn’t trying to kill it, but I managed to break one of the thin, flat cables in trying to get to the mechanical problem of the jamming barrel.

The root cause, I figured out, was a lack of lubrication between two plastic parts. As the barrel retracted the parts slid over each other and operated a spring-loaded mechanism that kept the shutters apart that cover the lens. Too much friction and the motor couldn’t make it work before the CPU recognized there was a problem and stopped trying. So far so good with all the other Canon equipment in the house.

The photo above isn’t from that particular incident. That’s Sam taking apart a Canon 17-85 that stopped working. I also found some interesting photos of the IS unit of a 70-200 that Ken Phillips took apart to fix.

Flickr has a whole pile of people taking cameras of all sorts apart: here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Tags: Photography, Lenses, Cameras, Canon, Bugs

Tabletop: 1/160s f/2.8 ISO1000 100mm, Canon 30D, Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro

Another lens I rented recently was a 100mm macro. I got this for two reasons. I wanted to get some macro photos, of course, but I also needed a reasonably fast longer lens than the 50mm that was lighter and less obtrusive than the 70-200mm f/2.8. The 100 fits that bill nicely. Having played with an 85mm f/1.8 at WWDC, I knew it would be useful as a walk-around lens. The other week, I took 739 photos with this lens out of 2474 in total, about half macro, and about half not.

Sunflower Bees: 1/200s f/8.0 ISO400 100mm, Canon 30D, Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro


Sheets In The Wind: 1/1250s f/8.0 ISO500 100mm, Canon 30D, Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro

It’s sharp and focusses quickly. The minimum focussing distance is just over a foot, giving about a 1:1 reproduction ratio if you can get close enough to the subject.
Daisy Spider: 1/250s f/10.0 ISO400 100mm, Canon 30D, Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro

Here are a couple more macros:

Purple Flowers: 1/320s f/7.1 ISO400 100mm, Canon 30D, Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro


Drops On A Leaf: 1/500s f/8.0 ISO800 100mm, Canon 30D, Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro

Tags: Canon, Macro, Lenses, Photography

Porch: 1/20s f/8.0 ISO400 10mm 0ev, Canon 30D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm

A week and 2474 photos later, and I have some material to process. One of the lenses I rented was the Canon EF-S 10-22. It's an interesting lens, but takes some getting used to. You've got to have something to fill the expanse of space it can cram onto the sensor.

I used it for 288 of the 2474 photos I took, 146 at 10mm and 59 at 22mm. 196 were less than or equal to 17mm.

I rented from Borrow Lenses, taking advantage of pick up at a San Jose camera store.

Tags: Canon, 30D, Lenses, Photography

The Gallery of Sawn In Half Cameras also includes lenses. Now I know why my 70-200 f/2.8L IS is no darn heavy.

Tags: Photography, Hacking, Lenses

Stripey Hat: 1/160s f/9.0 ISO200 120mm, Canon 30D, Canon 70-200 f/2.8L IS

I'm treating WWDC as a photography opportunity as well as a Cocoa opportunity. I'll be taking a collection of my own lenses, plus two that were leant to me for the week. I don't have a flash (except the one built into the Canon 30D), so I'll be challenged by low light.

The 80mm f/1.8 is equivalent to about 135mm, good for across the room shots of people, and the longest lens I am planning in taking. The 24mm f/1.4L is equivalent to about 38mm and will be good close up. Neither of these have image stabilization, so although they will give me low-light capability, it will be blurry if I can't hold the camera still enough. That's why the 17-55 f2.8 IS may be there as well: it's the widest and has IS. I'll also carry the 50mm f/1.8. It's plastic, very small, light, and inexpensive.

Since I'm commuting each day, I'll be able to switch equipment often, ditching the things I find myself not using. It's possible I'll lug the very heavy 70-200 f/2.8L IS around, but I'll need a very good reason. Other than camera and lenses I'll take nothing special. Maybe a tiny tripod, but otherwise just things like spare cards and a spare battery, download cable and a card reader. I'll be processing the images on my Macbook using Aperture and uploading to SmugMug when I get a chance.

Tags: Photography, WWDC, Lenses, Canon

Birthday Cake: 1/800s f/1.8 ISO800 50mm, Canon 30D, EF 50mm f/1.8, cropped, unadjusted

It appears that the retro photo equipment fetish is in full swing. Fraser Speirs is posting about his experiences with the 50mm f1.8, and commenting about John Gruber, Dan Benjamin, James Duncan Davidson, and Bill Bumgarner.

I have this very inexpensive lens on my Canon 30D (1.6 crop factor), it's really an 80mm lens to me.

How do I find it? It's very light, almost non-existent compared to the other monsters I have. I use it when I need to take pictures in little light and have the freedom to move around, like in the birthday cake example above. The only light is from the candles, and I exposed that at 1/800s. I used a high ISO to get a high shutter speed because I wanted to make sure that the blowing out would not be a blur. I was taking pictures before and after in room light and ISO 800 was good for that too.

I can get my 52mm polarizing filter on this lens that I have tried to use on my Canon S3 (it's very hard to use a polarizer on a camera with an electronic viewfinder since I can't really see the effect). I find that darkening the glare with a polarizer does more than that: it increases the the ambient light by compensating with a slower shutter speed. Compare the image below (no polarizer):

Table No Polarizer: 1/50s f/1.8 ISO100 50mm, Canon 30D, EF 50mm f/1.8

With this one with the polarizer fitted and turned to remove the glare:

Table With Polarizer: 1/15s f/1.8 ISO100 50mm, Canon 30D, EF 50mm f/1.8

The table looks entirely different since the shutter is now three times slower.

The depth of field control is something I am still learning. It's much more pronounced on large images because the difference between sharp and fuzzy is more easy to see. Here is a photo taken in a restaurant, focussing on the table by the window:

Noodle House: 1/1600s f/1.8 ISO400 50mm, Canon 30D, EF 50mm f/1.8, adjusted

One catch with the 50mm f/1.8 is that it has no image stabilization like my other lenses. That means I have to take faster exposures than I would normally and/or hold the camera extra steady. This photo was taken in a dim corridor and I was able to get an image without any shake at 1/160s:

Fall Leaves: 1/160s f/1.8 ISO400 50mm, Canon 30D, EF 50mm f/1.8

I can easily see the difference in sharpness between pictures taken at f/1.8 and other apertures, so if I'm thinking about it, I stop it down for the best image. But I'm usually not thinking in terms of sharpness when I take pictures: I'm concerned more with depth of field or removing movement blur. My other lenses are much more costly and very sharp, so I don't marvel at the sharpness of this lens, though I know some people do. There is plenty to learn.

Tags: Canon, Lenses, Photography, Fetishes, Polarizer, 30D, S3

Dog With Toy: 1/1250s f/1.8 ISO100 50mm, Canon 30D, EF 50mm f/1.8, unadjusted

Gary Voth is telling everyone to ditch the zoom that came with the camera and use a 50mm prime instead.

If you are like most photographers just starting out with a new 35mm SLR, chances are it came with one of those ubiquitous 28-80mm (or similar) "consumer" zooms. In the last 15 years these inexpensive lenses have all but replaced the traditional 50mm prime lens as the starter optic for 35mm photographers. The 50mm lens, once the mainstay of 35mm photography, has been all but forgotten by today's photographers.

I'm going to keep my zooms, but I am learning about the primes as well.

Tags: Photography, Lenses

I recently had the opportunity to play with two 50mm Canon lenses: the very cheap f/1.8, and the more expensive f/1.4 (no chance for the f/1.2 yet). The 50mm f/1.8 is mine. The f/1.4 I borrowed from a reader who was kind enough to lend it to me and give me some shooting tips.

Two things struck me immediately: the very bright viewfinder, and the lack of weight. I'm used to zooms, one a very heavy one, so these small primes feel like they don't exist. Being used to zooms means that I tend to frame my shots from one location. With the prime lens I found myself moving all over the place to get the shot I wanted, and of course my shots all had the same perspective, more expressive of a point of view than of a photo of a thing.

The f/1.4 surprised me with the amount of purple fringing it had when wide open -- I guess that's what the f/1.2L is worth the money for. And the shallow depth of field was interesting to experience and something to learn how to use. I can see how people get addicted to its isolating ability.

Here are some examples shot with the 50mm f/1.4. You can see the purple in this one of water shooting out of a grate. This one was intentionally over-exposed.

Water grate: 1/2500s f/2.5 ISO100 50mm, Canon 30D, EF 50mm f/1.4 unadjusted

I can blur the foreground very nicely with the f/1.4 and leave the store sharply in focus:

Le Boulanger: 1/6400s f/1.4 ISO100 50mm, Canon 30D, EF 50mm f/1.4 unadjusted

And I can pick out just the dog I want to in this confrontation:

Big dog: 1/4000s f/1.6 ISO100 50mm, Canon 30D, EF 50mm f/1.4 unadjusted

Another think I liked about the f/1.4 was that I could leave the ISO set at 100 and still be able to shoot in many situations. With my other lenses (f/2.8 max) I have to boost the ISO when the light gets low, and that's just another control to fiddle with. The f/1.4 has good color too.

The 50mm f/1.8 I have now used more extensively. The focusing is slow and not USM, so is noisy. But it is accurate. More about that lens later.

Tags: Canon, Lenses, Photography

Pixel Peeper looks like a very useful site for researching lenses. It hosts links to images shot with specific lenses and cameras with the EXIF data organized in a database. This allows you to see what kind of shots are possible with a lens and camera combination you are considering. With my 30D I have the EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 and the EF 70-200 f/2.8 L IS.

Tags: DSLR, Lenses, Canon

Now I have the male-male 49 mm ring, I have completed my macro set up. The camera on the right is connected to the 52 mm Lensmate adaptor tube. The smooth ring and the ribbed ring adapt that down to 49 mm male, and the SLR lens on the left screws into that.

Another picture of the same set up:

That's a 50 mm f1.8 lens on the end, an old Olympus kit lens. So how did it perform? I got one good picture in the fading light of the evening (click for full-sized image):

The circle is what you see with the S3 zoomed out. I had the focus on manual, set to infinity. Focusing consists of moving the camera closer or away from the subject. In theory I can zoom in on the above 12x using the camera zoom, but reality is more harsh. As you would expect, the main difficulty is light and depth of field. Most of my shots came out like this, especially when zoomed:

That's a leg. Here is a picture of my monitor screen, hand held:

My next challenge is fixing up a flash diffuser to see how much I can get out of the built-in flash. I plan on making some sort of light pipe with a diffuser on the end, but we'll see what comes out of the design process.

Tags: Canon, S3, Macro, Lenses