The Go To

Funny how a buzz-phrase arrives into your vocabulary. You never invent the thing, but one day you find yourself uttering it and you really can't be certain where it came from.

Some blame social media, some blame America, and some blame slang...forgetting that such useful words as "quiz " have come from British slang. And "je ne sais quoi " is obviously French but I don't know what it is...

Well, if you are bothered by slang or buzz, ignore the term "go to" in reference to the Canon 24-105mm f:4 L IS USM lens and substitute "really competent and useful". Be sure to dot the "t's" and cross the "i's" as well and don't dare put an apostrophe wrong...*

If you are a Canon DSLR camera user - whether it be the smaller-frame types like the new 80D or the full frame cameras like the new D1X MkII - you can make friends with this lens and it will be to your advantage. The lens is well made, and has a very smooth focusing action and zoom** ring. It will mount on any of the EOS cameras that have a red dot on the mount - and they all do - and is considered by many to be the best choice for a general-purpose lens. Still shooters as well as video makers....brace yourselves...go to it.

What do the figures mean?

24mm on a small-frame Canon camera is the generally moderate wide angle view of a 35mm lens on an old film camera. Not too wide but enough to get a 4-6 person group of sober people in a party picture. That equates to 2 drunks, by the way. They spread out more.

If you mount it on a full-frame camera at this setting you get the angle of view of a...a...24mm lens...well, you saw that coming. 24mm is the wide-angle view just before 21mm when is all goes pear-shaped. Literally. Do not place friends out at the edge of a group photo with an extreme wide angle lens unless you are Angus McBride***. It is mostly useful for landscape and interior shots and will require careful levelling of the camera body or a heck of a lot of post processing work.

105mm for the small-frame shooter is 157.5mm. Just about a good large-animal at the game park or light plane at the airport length. A little long for a head and shoulders portrait but good for single stage shots. On a full-frame camera it is the classic head and shoulders portrait length and has the perspective that people want to see in their pictures. Barry Manilow and Barbra Streisand might need 210mm but we'll let that go.

And anything in between is available right there with a twist of the wrist. f4 is a doddle with modern DSLR cameras that run up past 6400 ISO and you can go shoot in dim light with confidence.

Now for the best part...24-105 f4 L lenses are not fashionable. They do not get the gushing fan-boy posts on the internet from the Wenzitcoming Brigade. They have been here for years, doing a superb job, and now are at a price that means that are very much the go-to-because-it-is-a-good-price lens. Camera Electronic have them, and you can get one for your new or old Canon EOS camera and in many cases leave the rest of the glass on the shelf at home.

Come in and play at the shop or order on from the online section of the business. Canon warrant them for 2 years.

* Because zer vill be conseqvences...

** Zoom is also a buzz phrase. " variable focal length " for the cultured, impressive, and pedantic if you will...

*** Google Mc Bride's efforts for the Osprey series of military uniform books and see what I mean.

" I Drop These Cameras All The Time..."

If there were ever a phrase in the language more likely to cause me to love and admire Andrew Ritchie and the Canon EOS 1Dx Mk II, I have yet to hear it. He let us into this secret last night at the Northbridge Hotel while addressing the audience at the product launch.

Leaving his pictures aside...and they were very good pictures...his candid admission that the rough and tumble of his world - the newspaper photography game - is a tough one on cameras was a telling point for the brand. The Canon EOS 1D cameras of various marks are built to withstand all the rough treatment that they are likely to encounter. He knows it and he prefers them. He drops 'em all the time...

The evening was much the same as many product launches - a brief address from one of the CE owners - Saul - a talk about some of the new technical points of the equipment by the manufacturer's representative - Sheryl - and then a show and tell by a photographer who has had a chance to use the camera - Andrew. The audience was, in the "Casablanca" sense,  the usual suspects...but in this case they were the suspects for a different crime. Specifically for paid professional work that demands high speed and durability.

Andrew had been given use one of only two of the new EOS 1Dx Mk II cameras in the country and had to find suitable subjects that would test it out. He selected water sports, low light environmental portraiture, and his curly spaniel in the park with a green tennis ball. We can report that in all cases the camera and the Canon lenses that he selected to work with produced saleable, printable, publishable, hangable images. And the dog is gorgeous.

The camera is apparently a lot easier to use than previous evocations - they have taken a leaf from the more humble cameras and incorporated touch-screen technology to allow people to select what the AF system is going to do. It also has the ability to do a lot more than before, including tracking useful subjects even when interrupted by intruders into the frame. The viewfinder is a lot brighter than before.

The thing can shoot JPEG images as fast as it can get electricity - any where from 12 to 16 frames per second depending on the type of battery. And it can keep on shooting until the card fills up... the buffer has enough capacity for this. Even if you are firing off raw images it will go to 178 before needing a rest and sip of Gatorade. This means you get a picture of the spaniel and the ball in 178 frames of the tennis ball holds up..If you need to alter the raw file in-camera and then send it off fast to an editor ( or to Facebook...) you can do this as well.

ISO performance seemed good. He was shooting at ISO 2000 but of course the device will go into the 5-figure mark if you want it to.

From what I could hear, there will be an April delivery date for the new camera, but I could also hear the wholesale and retail people saying that you would be very wise to get a deposit in for the camera right now...there may be a rush and a delay in the supply otherwise.

Nota bene: The audiences at these beanfests do vary according to the sort of equipment that is on show. Of course camera people are always interested in cameras and lighting people are always interested in lighting, etc, but it is notable to observe the degree of concentration evinced and the sorts of questions that come forth from this crowd. These people are serious photographers and know what they need from their cameras. Their questions were sensible and to the point, and anyone listening to them and to the answers was benefitted.

Boom Boom Two - Picks From The Pamphlet

The management has returned from the Canon luncheon with a prize - a specification pamphlet from the new Canon EOS cameras. In addition to the features we mentioned earlier today, it would appear that there are some other goodies on the EOS 5Dr and EOS 5Ds:

1. An intelligent viewfinder that lets you make changes to settings with the thing to your eye.

2. Multiple exposure capability.

3. A 150,000 pixel RGB measuring sensor with IR sensitivity means you get a correct exposure even if the light source flickers.

4. Time lapse movie mode with the EOS 5Ds

More info as it trickles in...

Boom Boom - Two Big New Canons Rolling Into Battery

Today is the launch day for two new Canon cameras - as I write this, senior figures from Camera Electronic ( and others ) are being feted by the Canon company - eating lark's tongue paté and sipping  rare champagne like as not - while we struggle here at the shop counter with a dry crust of bread and a sip of pond water. Cough, cough. It is good to see that priorities are preserved...

Coming away from that, the new cameras are called the Canon EOD 5Ds and the Canon EOS 5Dr. Not surprisingly, the bodies are closely related - but there is a vital difference.

The basic specs are wild:

50.6 Megapixels off the new sensor.

5FPS high-speed shooting.

61-point AF selection.

New Mirror Vibration Control system to make long exposures sharper.

100-6400 ISO with extension to 12800ISO on demand.

The difference in the two bodies revolves around the provision in the EOS 5Ds of a low-pass filter to deal with the tendency of sensors to create moiré patterns when they encounter man-made repeating patterns like fabrics and grids. This filter is deliberately absent from the EOS 5Dr to allow it to have a sharper result - as long as it sees the random patterning of landscape and nature,

Something for everyone, but Boy, are you going to need to work cleanly and with the best lenses to make use of that much resolution. Choose Canon lenses for this.

Don't know when we will get them, but as soon as we find out, we'll let you know.