PixelatedImage Blog

A quick note to say hi, let you know I am back from Bangladesh and starting this morning will be knee-deep in post-production for the client. So here I am. Long trip, and I came close to losing my mind completely about a third of the way from Seoul to Vancouver when I woke from a brief nap thinking, Man I sure did sleep a long time, we must be almost there by now. Only to be faced with a monitor that said TIME REMAINING: 7:30.

I took my 5D Mk II to the field with me and coming back to sift through 3000 really big files is a little daunting, especially as I only have 3 days in which to do it. BUT, the client will benefit from larger, deeper files with lower noise, so I just have to work smarter. Anyways, I’m getting to the point and here it is: I love my Mk2 more now than the day I married brought it home. Not that we need reasons when true love is on the line, but here’s a few that really struck me. Shooting 3000+ frames in 5 days makes a few things jump out at you.

Live View. Honestly, I thought I’d never use it, but I used it often to help with framing low shots and showing my producer what I was framing and where I wanted things. Super helpful.

Auto ISO. Another feature that I didn’t buy the Mk2 for. Heck, I didn’t even know it had it until I brought it home and Matt Brandon mentioned it. I used this a lot. Not all the time, but frequently enough to become comfortable with it. My main issue was not knowing where the camera would make the compromises – would it give me unnecessarily high ISOs just to maintain unnecessarily high shutter speeds? In the end it was about right all the time.

LP-E6 Batteries. These last much longer than the old BP-511A batts. More than that, the ability to look at exactly how much power remains in each battery is excellent. I love it.

Custom Settings. Again, not something I thought I’d use, but having a couple extra settings that are available at the turn of a dial is nice.

Custom Menu. I liked the old menu on the 5D – the Mk2 puts all the stuff I use in several different places making it all a little more fiddly. So being able to put the stuff I use most – like Quality, LCD Brightness, Format – all in one place is a time saver.

Weather and Dust Seals + Sensor Cleaning. I worked with one body on this trip when I normally work with two. So there was alot of lens changes in the dust. With the exception of one particle, the sensor’s still clean. That’s pretty cool.

Image Quality. What can I say, these are wonderful image files. I love them. They’re big and they slowed my workflow at day’s end but I started bringing the MacBook with me to the field and downloading the morning images at lunch and the afternoon images on the drive back to the hotel. My MacBook’s maxed out for RAM and the new MacBooks won’t take Firewire (what the heck where they thinking?!), so it looks like I am reluctantly moving back to a 15″ MacBook Pro and I have all kinds of things to say about that. But it’s not the fault of the Mk2.

Anyways, tomorrow I will do the draw for the Lensbaby Composer, and the next day I’ll probably announce the March giveaway. I say probably to hedge my bets in case the Jetlag fogs my brain and I forget. If you haven’t got in on the Lensbaby Composer Giveaway, now’s the last chance. If you haven’t seen Gavin Gough’s review of the Composer it’s well worth the peek – extremely interesting and so thorough it either points to a seriously anal retentive personality or that Gavin’s got way more time on his hands out there in Thailand. Either way, pretty cool. Well done, Gavin.