Yesterday, I dropped by the Canon Creative Lab in Mississauga where they were hosting Image Wonderland. This was an event showcasing Canon gear (of course), along with a number of sets with models and high end props (including a vintage Cadillac) where you could try out the gear. I’ve never been to one of these, and honestly did not know what to expect.
I’ve been a Canon fan-girl forever, and we were also encouraged to bring our own cameras and shoot away. Images could also be printed through the onsite Canon Print Shop for free, although this was confined to 4×6 prints for walk-ins, and 11×17 prints if you submitted them ahead of time. And there was a series of talks given by Canon Ambassadors, including Irene Rudnyk, Sal Balaji and Steve Russell.
What did I see and experience at the event? Read on…
I had an interesting experience recently, as all home owners do. I had to hire someone to do some repairs on the house. I also took the opportunity to do some upgrades as well. The specifics don’t matter, but the quality of work does. The company I hired boldly advertised their services as delivered by highly trained, professional technicians. I hear that phrasing a lot, especially from those selling services, including photography, with the latter usually accompanied by the words “award-winning” as well. Of course it started me thinking of a blog topic, What does “professional” actually mean? Read on.
Happy New Year all! Playing with those Christmas gifts? Here’s the story of one of mine.
Any hobby that relies on technology will eventually bring you to a point where you need to contact Technical Support. I’m pretty savvy and can solve most technical things on my own. I frankly prefer to do that, as I learn better that way how to avoid the problem next time.
I had a situation recently though that made it necessary to seek help. I purchased a piece of equipment before Christmas through my favourite telescope shop. The item was made by SkyWatcher, a reputable, well-known and trusted brand. Sadly, the item did not work at all out of the box and despite my best efforts, I could not solve the problem. So I contacted technical support, first at the shop where I purchased it, then through SkyWatcher. Here’s what happened…
Earlier this month, I ventured into that den of iniquity – the largest photo and video trade show in Canada, called Profusion Expo. It is hosted by retail vendor Vistek here in Toronto. It brings together vendors of all the major camera and video brands, and includes a myriad of special presentations from their ambassadors along with the opportunity to put hands on their latest equipment.
The retail marketplace has changed big-time for this market since Covid. Products are not refreshed as often, and when they are, the new releases are not available everywhere for customers to see and touch before buying. Anything I’ve bought in the last few years has been online or as a “pre-order”, sight unseen. One reason for my going to the show this year was to see what I could not see elsewhere. It did not disappoint.
If you check the sales numbers of the top camera manufacturers worldwide over the last 15 years, you will see that sales have dropped by more than 90%. The market for traditional camera sales has clearly bottomed out, with most of us relying on our cellphones now to capture those memorable daytime visual experiences.
In contrast, the market for astrophotography is exploding, particularly in the 30-40 year age groups. Inspired by the Covid-19 pandemic, sales have skyrocketed. While still technically a niche subject, the number of companies now that offer specialized astrophotography equipment, along with the number of companies that will design and build a custom home observatory for you, is growing by leaps and bounds. There are also star parties around the world each year where enthusiasts gather to share experiences and ideas. YouTube searches for astrophotography confirm the growing interest, although there is a strange unexplained dip between 2018 and 2020.
My last blog post talked about a move away from technology to more analogue options, especially for young folk. This bucks that trend bigtime. Why?
I love to learn. Have all my life. And the winter season is a great time to learn new things, since most of us are stuck inside.
I’ve been concentrating on two paths of learning this winter: astrophotography image processing, and architectural image processing. The first deals with doing the utmost to ensure good image quality and colour representation in the tiny objects photographed in the sky. The second deals with adding tone, contrast and artistic adjustments to architecture to turn them into works of art (beyond the work of art that the architect already produced).
Both paths have brought me in touch with several teachers, respected in their fields. But they could not be more different in their teaching styles. One of the challenges I’ve had has been finding a teaching style that gives me the right learning experience for me.
A very Happy New Year, everyone! Hope that you all have the best year ever in 2024!
I had an interesting experience recently. Many of the YouTube channels I follow have a tradition of publishing their predictions for the coming year, as well as their assessment of the best and worst products of the past year.
In one such review (and I won’t name the channel), the reviewer put out a poll to their viewers and asked them to weigh in on the best and worst cameras of 2023.
I’ll just analyse one of the results: the worst camera. The camera voted as the worst camera of the year by that crowd of several hundred (wonder what statisticians would say about that response rate with a subscriber base of 50K…), with 54% agreeing, was the Canon EOS R100. So just above break even. And that was deemed worthy of a dedicated video. Ok, then.
The Canon R100 was released in July 2023 for a retail price of $799.99 CDN, with the included RF-S 18-45 f/4 kit lens. The camera was marketed as an entry level, first interchangeable lens camera, for new content creators and those moving from their cellphones to their first real camera. It was marketed as the replacement for the T-series of DSLR’s and the M-series of early mirrorless cameras (which have since been discontinued). It provides a low cost entry point with some, in my view, admirable features taken from its higher end brothers and sisters.
But the complaints of this particular group included: no flippy screen and no touch screen and no high speed burst rates or high megapixel count. So obviously a piece of crap. Seriously?
This made me wonder about the standards generally used by these reviewers to assess best and worst. At the end of the day, it takes a lot of skill to offer an objective view of a product, particularly when you yourself are an advanced user of typically much more sophisticated products. Tony Northrup, long regarded as one of those with a lot of this skill, called the EOS R100 a “capable” camera. So why such a difference in views?
In this case, I think it boils down to the simple task of crowdsourcing an opinion. The channel in question is known for mining the opinions and research of other people and makes its name by packaging those for delivery and saving you the time of going out to do your own research. It doesn’t really offer unique perspectives – only those published by others. So it’s not surprising that an opinion on best and worst of the year would be sourced the same way.
Apart from that, I wondered why there was this chasm of divergence in views between Northrup and this other channel. I guess it comes down to what you personally mean by best and worst. The biases that you apply to an opinion are the foundation for debate in a democratic society and we relish those. I certainly do. But I also expect to see a factual basis for a particular viewpoint. And maybe even an agreed standard way of assessing something that purports to provide a ranking at the end of the day. That didn’t happen here in the case of the poll. No standard questions were provided, no guidance on what to consider and what to leave out.
Separately, another channel I very much respect (and which also will not be mentioned) conducted a poll of viewers as well to determine the best cameras and lenses for the current year. Not surprisingly, the cameras and lenses that won top prize just happened to be the ones used by the channel owner and the majority of its viewers.
Manufacturers are partly to blame for this divergence in views as well, shaping expectations of the next great thing by plugging speed, capacity, automation and the quality of the results. At the highest price points, that makes sense. But those same expectations now seem to be applied to more budget friendly options, and is the source of most of the “indignation” and complaints found online when a budget product does not deliver what Joe Public feels it should. In this case, it’s a ridiculous list of expectations in a camera that costs less than 10% (with lens) of the highest price models in the same family (without lens). 
In fact, Tony Northrup, in one of his most recent videos, made the case that its time to stop pumping out more megapixels and more speed, and instead make the gear more usable, with things like built-in face recognition security to help prevent thefts, LCD screens you can see in the sunshine, internal storage and reliable wireless transfer of files.
And I guess as a final comment, those same manufacturers (and channels like the one mentioned) are creating an even bigger problem, convincing us (or trying to) that we need those extra features and capabilities just to be functional. In 2015, I purchased a Canon EOS 5D Mark III, which at the time was regarded as one of the best DSLR cameras on the market. It has 20 megapixels, no flippy screen, no touch screen, no high speed burst rate and no tracking of human, animal or insect. I still own the camera and still use it regularly. It gives me the same great quality images I expect from any Canon pro camera. It’s still listed on Canon’s website. But I guess against the standards of the aforementioned channel, it wouldn’t even make the list of has-beens. 
That said, in all fairness, I also own two of the EOS R series cameras: the R5 and the R6 Mark II. Both serve very specific purposes and fill very specific needs. It was NOT the hype that lead me to these purchases.
The bottom line: take reviews and gear rankings with a grain of salt. Understand the basis of the opinion and judge if the person giving the opinion is worth listening to. It wasn’t in this case.
A few days ago, I published a single image that was the result of months of elapsed time (days of actual time) and represents the most effort I have ever put into a single photographic image. The image? The Rosette Nebula, a hydrogen gas cloud in the Milky Way Galaxy, our galaxy. These gas clouds are either stellar nurseries or the remnants of stellar explosions. Either way, they populate the sky with amazingly photogenic objects.
Rosette Nebula
These gas clouds either emit or reflect light. As such, we should be able to photograph them as we would other subjects, right? While all the photographic “rules” apply about exposure, composition, white balance, sharpness and colour saturation, they are multiplied exponentially when dealing with objects that, in this case, are a whopping 5,000 light years from us in distance.
Photography is an interesting hobby/occupation: there is so much to learn to simply take competent photographs. Some (ok, including me) believe that learning the basics is key to eventually being able to express yourself artistically. But some come at it the other way around – using their artistic nature to develop their photographic eye, then learning what is needed to express it digitally, often through trial and error.
I grew up in and worked in very technical arenas – my parents worked in fields where following the rules was paramount and expected, and where training and development were necessary to be able to work in their fields at all. I then spent a career in an engineering company (an electric utility) where “creativity” was not really encouraged and could have devastating consequences.
We live in amazing times. The technological, societal and social changes that have occurred over the past century are mind boggling. I grew up in a small immigrant home, with no air conditioning, no fancy electrical devices (we had a hand-wring washing machine) and no technology of any kind. We got our first colour TV when I was 16.
Today, my life is surrounded by convenience gadgets and entertainment toys of all form and function. I connect more than 20 devices to my home internet network to provide everything from the service to write this post to the automated voice that wakes me in the morning to the electronic keyboard and wonderful online instructor that are teaching me how to play piano. No one born in the mid-20th century could have predicted how far we could come.
Despite those changes, some aspects of our society still could stand with some improvement. Women do not equally participate in all aspects of business, culture and sport. We don’t always get recognition even when we do. Even in my little world of hobbyist photography, the vast majority of people who are accomplished artists and who offer their expertise to others are male. I wanted to bring forward some of those challenges in this post. Maybe some of this applies to you. If so, it would be great to share experiences and advice.
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