I wanted the new autofocus gear rather than older, less-expensive stuff. At the time I was very much taken with Nikon's glass, due to their general reputation and in particular the work of John Shaw, I didn't think much of Minolta's Maxxum line due to what I thought of as their focus (ahem!) on bells and whistles at the expense of the basics, and I hated the Canon EOS due to a vacation with a girlfriend who had a 650. She hadn't brought along the manual and I couldn't figure out how to use it except in point-and-shoot mode, and it was just as frustrating to me as my little Nikon. (Worse, as I knew the SLR could let you prioritize shutter speed, but neither of us knew how.) Had I my dad's Minolta I would have easily been able to get the pictures I wanted, yet the Canon stymied me. (And with a film camera, on vacation, you can't just screw around with it and see whether or not it's working the way you want, especially if there is already film in it.)
So I went SLR shopping, with a heavy Nikon bias. Well, it was funny, but having read all the literature during the shopping process it turns out that I was very impressed with the engineering in the Canon line. Not only was it somewhat less expensive than Nikon, the optics had a very good reputation and the autofocus system simply kicked ass. (Their per-lens dedicated motors made for comparatively fast and quiet operation.) Once you knew how it worked it was just as easy to use as anything else; I was hooked! I ended up buying the newly-released Canon EOS 620 and a 50mm f/1.8 lens at the local camera store (Huppins), and have never regretted the decision.
I ended up giving EOS cameras (used ones, as I recall) to all the other members of my immediate family as Christmas gifts, over time, so that they'd have good cameras and so that we could share lenses and accessories, if required.
When family members started getting married I volunteered to take candid photographs as wedding gifts. I picked up a Mamiya C330 TLR and a Sunpak 622 Super flash, along with a Quantum Turbo battery to power the flashes. This gear worked very well, in conjunction with the Canon. Medium format (in this case 6×6) is stunning!
In time I bought an EOS RT, with the fixed pellicle mirror, because it had no mirror vibration, was tres cool, and could be extremely quiet. (I never really used it much, though, and it ultimately represented a waste of money.) Once the EOS 1N came out, with a mirror pre-fire function, I upgraded to it from the 620. Also over time I bought numerous SLR lenses, good ones.
When digital came along I tested the waters with a used Olympus D300L, arguably the first 'pro-sumer' digital camera. It was much like that Nikon I'd started with, but digital. It was perfectly suited for taking photos for the web, but did not have removable media. It held about a film roll's worth of photos before you had to offload them through the serial port, a process that did not always go smoothly.
After a miserable session of trying to take macro photos with the Olympus, using a 50mm SLR lens reversed in front of it, handheld, as a macro adapter, I decided to jump into the digital SLR world by way of a Digital Rebel that a co-worker was selling. I did not want a crop-sensor camera, but the full-frame cameras were much too expensive to justify and the continued inability to use all my SLR glass for digital was growing increasngly frustrating. With the Rebel I could again use all my lenses, including the 50mm and 100mm macro lenses, while I waited for the prices of full-frame bodies to drop into my budget range.
My main approach is to take a lot of shots of the pre-concert rehearsal, wandering in and around the orchestra, then move to the edges and into the crowd during the concert. The only problem with that is that the orchestra (and any soloists) aren't usually fully dressed, or even necessarily all there, in the close-in shots.
Anyway, since then I've been charging and 'using' the Turbo to try to exercise the cobwebs away. It seems to have recovered somewhat, but it probably needs new lead-acid cells installed. (Last I heard this was around $100 to have Quantum do, probably less than half that to do it myself, assuming I can find suitable cells.) Today I put it all away, cleaning the lenses and such. I cleaned the 20–35/2.8 zoom which has desperately needed it for awhile; the big glass was OK. I removed and bagged the alkaline batteries from the flashes in the camera bags, and stowed everything. The batteries in the bag's pencil flashlight had leaked, so it took some time to disassemble and clean it and get it working again. At least you can disassemble and clean a Mag-lite. I wiped the pictures from the camera's CF card, they've already been transferred to CD and given to Jill.
I got some good pictures anyway, but I had a lot of exposure problems, and some focus problems. A fair number of composition and shake failures too, because the camera/lens/flash combination was so big and heavy. It got fatiguing to hold. I consider the exercise to be a qualified success nonetheless.
The camera was mostly complete, and came with two Pelican cases (for CF cards) and two batteries, along with the original box and packing materials. (It's missing the software that should have come with it.) There is a two-battery charger, and a power supply for use in-studio.
We have a pile of 8GB CF cards at work that we'd pulled out of some systems due to reliability concerns. (These were the main filesystems on some just-developed network gear, and we'd had some problems on a couple of systems. When a customer is to pay in excess of $250,000 for a piece of gear they expect it to behave itself, so we'd just replaced all the suspect CF's with better ones to be safe. We had experienced no problems with any of these particular CF's, and in my camera they'll be loafing when compared to being a primary Linux filesystem—I anticipate zero problems.) I grabbed a dozen and formatted them, and filled the two Pelican cases. It's probably a lifetime supply, for me.
I used my squeezer script (below) to make a screen-friendly synopsis folder of the results, and burned the whole mess to a CD for Jill.
#!/bin/bash
#
# Usage: skrunch <dir> [<destdir>]
#
# Takes a directory tree full of camera JPEGs and squeezes them to
# screen-viewable size, while leaving the originals in a "fullsize"
# subdirectory (unless an alternate destination is specified). The
# directory structure of the source is maintained in the destination.
# If a destination is supplied, it may NOT be within the source dir!
#
function errexit() {
echo $1
exit 1
}
function skrunchfile() {
IN=$1
OUT=$2
MAXW=800
MAXH=600
echo Processing $IN to $OUT...
set `djpeg $IN | sed -n 2p`
WIDTH=$1
HEIGHT=$2
FACTOR=1
while [ $WIDTH -gt $MAXW -o $HEIGHT -gt $MAXH ]; do
let WIDTH=$WIDTH/2
let HEIGHT=$HEIGHT/2
let FACTOR=$FACTOR*2
done
< $IN djpeg -scale 1/$FACTOR | cjpeg > $OUT
touch -am -r $IN $OUT
}
[ $# == 1 -o $# == 2 ] || errexit "Usage: $0 <dir> [<destdir>]"
DIR=$1
if [ $# == 1 ]; then
DESTDIR=$DIR/smallsize
[ -d $DIR/fullsize ] && errexit "Pre-existing $DIR/fullsize directory, won't continue"
else
DESTDIR=$2
fi
[ -d $DIR ] || errexit "$DIR must be a directory"
[ -d $DESTDIR ] && errexit "Pre-existing $DESTDIR directory, won't continue"
mkdir $DESTDIR || errexit "Can't make $DESTDIR directory"
if [ $# == 1 ]; then
cd $DIR || errexit "Can't cd to $DIR"
find . \( -name smallsize -prune \) -o \( ! -name . -type d -print \) -exec mkdir smallsize/{} \;
find . \( -name smallsize -prune \) -o \( \( -name '*.[Jj][Pp][Gg]' -o -name '*.[Jj][Pp][Ee][Gg]' \) -type f -print \) | while read file; do
skrunchfile $file smallsize/$file
done
mkdir fullsize || errexit "Can't make $DIR/fullsize directory"
find . ! \( -name fullsize -o -name smallsize -o -name . \) -maxdepth 1 -exec mv {} fullsize \;
mv smallsize/* .
rmdir smallsize
else
(cd $DIR && find . \( ! -name . -type d -print \)) | sed s@^@$DESTDIR/@ | xargs mkdir
(cd $DIR && find . \( \( -name '*.[Jj][Pp][Gg]' -o -name '*.[Jj][Pp][Ee][Gg]' \) -type f -print \)) | while read file; do
skrunchfile $DIR/$file $DESTDIR/$file
done
fi
I was most interested in examining the high-voltage plug and how it tied into the innards. The keyway houses a mechanical link to the power switch, so when the high voltage (HV) is plugged in the flash is turned OFF. This is because the power switch is really just the inverter switch and they don't want it to fight with the external power supply. It is apparent that the flash doesn't require battery power to operate, it all runs off the HV. There is a diode from the step-up transformer to the HV feed bus, said bus is switched to the socket when the inverter's turned off. (The HV bus is also diode-isolated from the capacitor so that the capacitor can't discharge back through the power jack.) I watched the voltage on the HV feed bus as it charged up, it went right to the capacitor voltage before it got basically unmeasurable with any normal meter as the inverter turned on and off. What is interesting is that I read that the SB-4 puts out 200 V at 4 mA, which is nowhere near the fully charged voltage. (The keyway side of the HV connector is positive.)
The sync voltage is about 250 V, so one must be careful what one hooks this flash to! Few modern cameras will survive this level of voltage, this flash was designed in an era when the trigger was a mechanical switch on the shutter. (The Canon 1Ds II hot shoe won't tolerate this voltage either, but its PC terminal can.) My main intention was to plug one of the optical slaves into the side of the flash. Wein peanut? I already have a shoe-mount optical slave. (Turns out I also already have a peanut, too.)
There are many vintages of the 283 out there, this is probably more-or-less the original design from the early 70's. Like my Sunpak 622 Super, it's all high-voltage and no batteries are required when using the external HV power plug.
I got out my Heathkit IP-17 regulated high-voltage power supply and used clip leads to attach it to the flash. At 200 V, the supposed rating of the SP-4 power supply, the flash works fine. At the 310 V of the internal inverter, however, my Luna-Pro F flash meter says it puts out 2 stops more light! At 285 V the Ready light will come on. The SP-4 is rated at 4 mA, the IP-17 will put out 150 mA and in fact given the way that its current meter pegs after a flash it might be twice that. The IP-17 has the flash fully charged in 2 seconds.
I believe a safe (isolated) studio power supply for this flash could be constructed from a pair of transformer-style AC wall warts (connected back-to-back) and a diode or three.
I've got to be more careful!
The funny thing about the drop-off was that I mis-remembered the address, and stopped at 2713 instead of 2317. And noticed on the 2713 porch a package addressed to Camera Care at 2317. I told Mr. CC when I got to the correct place and he was very happy that I had discovered what had happened to his missing parts! Apparently the mailman is as dyslexic as I am...
There is no reason to build the camera this way, that fuse could have been in-lined in the power wires from the battery, and made very easy to change. I guess they didn't expect fuse fatigue or transient faults at the lens mount to be a factor in their design, but this oversight has rendered many a fine (though a bit dated) camera into scrap.
My plan is to jumper across the on-board fuse, and put an extra-length loop into the power wires, and fabricate up some kind of fuse externally in the loop. (Just underneath one of the easy-to-remove covers.) If it should happen again, that would make it easy to fix.
If the DC/DC board blows... well, it was scrap to begin with, wasn't it?
The plan proceeded apace. A little loop of fine solder bridged the ex-fuse, and I attached some fresh red and black wires to the board. Re-assembly was very fiddly, in spite of some care taking it apart I was not 100% sure where all the screws went, or in what order. I suspect that I might have swapped some and there's only one spot that looks like it should have a screw but does not. Close enough. Soldering back the flex circuits to the top of the DC/DC board was probably the trickiest bit. I decided to dispense with any additional fusing, because I really don't care that much about this camera and I just wanted to be done. I joined the power wires to the original set inside the handgrip, just the other side of the wall from the original battery position.
After several hours I was done, and the camera was together. I screwed the BG-ED3 on, and inserted both batteries. ...And, it worked! After I set the date & time, and inserted a CF card, the camera seemed to work just fine. Even the pop-up flash. I then ordered a cheap pair of batteries and a USB charger for it, $17.58 with tax and shipping. The camera is still missing the eyecup, and the rear rubber grip panel. I ordered two eyecups, $5.43 with tax and shipping, and a rear rubber strip, $6.53 with tax and shipping. (The special double-sided tape is more money, I'll just use some regular double-sided tape, or perhaps rubber cement.) I ordered a body cap, another $1, for storage purposes.
So, the rough total so far is:
More than I'd really wanted to spend, but not too much for what it is. Everything was cheap enough except the lens, which is the only piece that is not effectively obsolete. In digital cameras 2003 is a lifetime ago, but this thing is still built like the $1,500–2,000 item that it was when new. All I need now is a camera bag to put it all in. I'm having surprising difficulty finding one of these in the thrift stream. (And I refuse to buy new for something like this.)Grip: 7 Body: 16 Lens: 43 Hood: 8 Btry: 18 Eyecup: 5 Pad: 7 Cap: 1 ========== Total $105
I also started a battery recondition cycle on the pack that failed me yesterday.
Don't. Waste. Money. (Likely I already did, as the -II has met all
my needs so far. It did not need replacement. The
Something that is useful is the E1 hand strap that is on the
-II—I love this strap. The -III had no straps at all, and some
quick research showed that the Canon E1 strap is long gone in the
marketplace, replaced by the E2, which is similar but has a tripod
screw on one end. (The hand pad is also a little smaller.) A little
closer look, though, shows that this screw assembly is just tied onto
the strap, and comes off easily—you don't have to use
it. (This strap is also intended for use on cameras that have
optional battery grips, and the quick-release screw allows you to
remove the grip without great effort. However, the 1D cameras don't
need this option.) I have no intention of rendering the -II less
useful by stealing its straps, so I need to procure something for the
-III if they're both to be usable. (A 1Ds II [III] is a better backup
for a 1Ds III [II] than the Rebel. With these two cameras in the
roster the Rebel can go bye-bye.)
While there are no-name E2 equivalents out there, the reviews of such
are mixed, to say the least. There are also other kinds of hand
straps, but they look like they lock onto your hand, which I don't
want. All I wanted was the friction fit of the E1, which suits me
perfectly. I opted to buy a used Canon E2 strap, which cost me $38
through eBay. It came today, and was complete and looked un-worn,
though it stank of cigarette smoke. I washed it in soapy hot water
and rinsed it out, and dried it. I removed the tripod screw, and what
remained resembled the E1 strap. Using the 1Ds II as a guide, I put
the strap on the 1Ds III camera. It took some fiddling, but
eventually I had something that seemed to work pretty well, and looked
tidy. The smaller pad doesn't seem to be significant.
There still was no neck strap, though. Scraping through my memory, I
recalled that the 1N (film camera) had come with a strap, but I'd used
a padded aftermarket strap instead. I had to dig around a bit to find
the 1N's box in storage, but the original Canon strap (made by Domke)
was still in it. I liberated it, and installed it on the 1Ds III so
that its strapage is very like that of the 1Ds II, with which I've
been very comfortable.
Maybe next time out I'll take the -III instead? (Of course the -II will
be there too, in reserve.)
Recently I caved in, and bought a $675 5D-III, for $730.49 shipped and
taxed through eBay. It came today, I had it delivered to Silverwood
to save $15 in taxes. It came with one battery and its charger,
nothing else. (No cables, manuals, software, etc.) This will do a
better job on video, and is in some ways a better still camera than my
1Ds-II and -III cameras, should I ever wish to use it as such.
I still need to get an AC power supply, for studio use, and choose
(and possibly procure) a lens for it.
I did not really need this, but I find I like the fat-handled cameras.
I also bid on and won an aftermarket AC adapter kit, for $23.73 with
shipping and extortion through eBay.
With this in place I ordered a 'Kastar' dual battery charger and two
batteries for $30.26, a battery eliminator for $29.71, and a AA
battery tray for the BG-11 for $16.89. Never should need the battery
tray, but in a field emergency? Grab 6 AA's and you're online again,
assuming you brought it in the camera bag.
I used it to:
The eight low-resolution files occupy about 1.5GB, which fits on the
2GB thumb drive Jill found. So she can take them to school tomorrow.
The high-resolution files are about 4GB, and the original source
files are about 7.5GB—this stuff is big!
(The cheap 'Jumpshot' CF reader I bought Daniel is from Lexar, and it
turns out that it can only read Lexar-branded cards.
Useless, in other words, and practically worthless.)
One of my two Canon LP-E4 batteries for the 1Ds-III camera went dead.
Charger doesn't even see it now. I was able to photograph the concert
using the other battery, but now I don't have a backup.
Research suggests that one of the three internal cells has gone flat,
and the protection circuit has kicked in. In theory the bad cell can
be replaced, but new aftermarket packs are pretty cheap...
I cracked open the battery pack. (Remove eight screws and two plates,
then pry it open with a wood chisel.) One of the three 18650 cells
was reverse polarity, it is dead-dead-dead. The thermal fuse is still
intact. Game over for this pack. I dug in the junk box and found the
box of Pismo battery packs and loose 18650 cells I'd bought, back when
I was still able to use the Pismo on the web, and found a loose cell
that had 3.9V on it. I can put it into this pack, but making
connections to the battery will be the hard part.
Friday, October 1, 2021
I've been wanting to get an EOS body that would take videos, using my
existing lenses. For studio use, mostly. (Such is the plan anyway.)
Ideally full-frame so that my favorite wide-angle lenses stay
wide-angle, which meant a 5D Mark II (or newer), or 6D, or 1DX. I'd
been waffling among the choices, trying not to spend too much
money. The 5D-II is the oldest choice, and their first video-capable
EOS camera. (Firstest is rarely bestest, but it was generally the
cheapest.) All my other EOS digital cameras use CF cards, which the
6D does not. The 1DX is stupid expensive, as is the 5D-IV. So,
really, the choice was between the 5D-II and the 5D-III—the -II
being significantly cheaper but the -III having better light
sensitivity and more refinement. I kept trying to convince myself to
get the -II, which is currently half the price of the -III, but...
Monday, October 4, 2021
I bought (through eBay) a used BG-E11 battery grip for the -III.
$48.65 with extortion and shipping (from India). (It's missing the AA
battery tray.) If I should wish to use the 5D for video not
in the studio, the doubled battery capacity should be very helpful.
(I find it interesting that the BG-ED3 grip for the 10D would be
better for tripod video in the field, because you can replace the
batteries individually while using it. So, in theory, you
could be charging and swapping batteries while you filmed. The BG-E11
has a tray that must be removed, taking out both batteries at once and
leaving the camera without power. Not really an issue for still
photography, but for video potentially a problem.)
Monday, November 15, 2021
I picked up the BG-11 battery grip at the post office, it had arrived
last Friday. It has a very musty smell, and it rocks slightly when
attached, enough to cause the battery cover safety switch to turn the
camera off. A small wad of paper on the other side, between camera
and grip, prevents this rocking. Deformation? A missing rubber
bumper? Canon is not sloppy enough for it to just be bad design.
Friday, November 19, 2021
The AA battery tray for the BG-11 came.
Saturday, November 20, 2021
The two batteries and the charger came. Cheap, cheap stuff.
But it seems to work.
Tuesday, March 15, 2022
I finally used the 5D, to record Jill's elementary band/orchestra
concert. (She's student-teaching at Horizon Middle School.) I set it
on a tripod, and used the 28–80mm f/2.8–4L lens from the
still camera to tightly frame the performance. It seemed to record
fine. Observations:
Wednesday, March 16, 2022
Googling showed that Final Cut and After Effects, common but expensive
video processing packages, will both do image stabilization. But, so
will iMovie, which we already have! I tried it, and the result was
like magic. The program is rather infuriating to use, as it seems to
have abandoned the document/file paradigm, but it is capable
of doing the work. It seems to use all the CPU cores (though not the
additional hyperthreads) while saving files, which is good.
I noticed during processing that where the white baton crosses over a
dark line in the medium background (a joint between shell panels)
there is a little discontinuity, a 'jag', in the baton image. This is
highly weird, and is in the data as it came from the camera and has
nothing to do with iMovie. In no way does a little fiberglass baton
have a movable kink in it. This resembles a 'rolling shutter' motion
artifact, but it happens even when the baton is essentially
stationary. A glaring failure of the camera's compression algorithms,
I'd say, though it is possible that it's the player instead.
Saturday, March 19, 2022
I ordered an older SanDisk Extreme Firewire CF reader, $30 off of
eBay. It comes with both -400 and -800 cables, so we'll see if it
reads this stuff faster or not.
Thursday, March 24, 2022
The $30 (eBay) open-box SanDisk Firewire-800 CF reader came today, all
was as expected. (Both cables, etc.) It's definitely faster, which
makes a difference when copying 7.5GB of data (for example). Timing
results of my three CF readers, all to /tmp on MacPro3:
Theorizing that the HD might have been a limiting factor, I
implemented an 8GB RAMdisk and copied to that too:
Reader Intfc. Time
Lexar
RW018CUSB
253 min
Lexar
RW019BFW
-40010 min
SanDisk
SDDRX4-CFFW
-8004.5 min
It took about the same 4.5 minutes, hitting a peak transfer of about
26MB/s. Not detectably faster, so it's still Firewire that is setting
the pace. (The USB reader runs along at a 'blistering' 2.2MB/s, not
very impressive. The old FW-400 reader manages about 11.5MB/s, quite
a bit better than USB.)
# diskutil erasevolume HFS+ RD8GB $(hdiutil attach -nomount ram://16777216)
# time rsync -Pav /Volumes/EOS_DIGITAL/DCIM/100EOS5D /Volumes/RD8GB/
Saturday, December 3, 2022
Tried out the thrift-shop photo light stands I bought some time ago,
for symphony personnel portraiture. It actually worked well, but you
need a third light behind the subject to get rid of the shadows on the
backdrop. Also, need to tape the stands down so that they don't get
kicked over and smash the light bulbs! (Also special daylight
balanced CF bulbs, from the thrift stream. Fortunately replacements
are not that expensive.) I think I probably need to just buy a formal
kit, since my stands are missing the reflecting umbrellas.
Saturday, December 2, 2023
I checked my collection of studio photo accessories, and with the last
procurement of three more light stands, with umbrellae, high- and
low-wattage CF lamps, and a backdrop stand (sans backdrop), I think I
have more than enough gear (once I get a backdrop) to do a very nice
job of symphony portraiture. But, not for this concert, next time.
(Too-short notice.)
Friday, December 15, 2023
A few days ago I ordered an aftermarket (Powerextra LP-E4, $23 via
Amazon) battery, just in case repairs don't go well, and a used
RS-80N3 (Canon, $11.57 via eBay) remote release cable. They came.
The battery takes a charge, and the remote release has a considerably
nicer locking connector than the (compatible) cheap aftermarket timer
release that came with the 5D-III.