timeimmortal

…with the EOS 5D Mark II.

…Canon has finally unveiled the successor to the venerable EOS 5D, the world’s first ‘compact’ full frame digital SLR. The EOS 5D Mark II boasts a new 21MP CMOS sensor, an expanded ISO range of 50-25,600 and a wealth of improvements and new features including full 1080p HD movie recording, live view, 3.0″ 920k dot LCD, DIGIC IV processor, increased battery capacity and sensor dust reduction.

HD movie recording? On an SLR?

Well, people have been asking for it. Oh, who am I kidding: people ask me if my puny (but still pretty cool) EOS 350D can “do movies,” which it can’t. “Movie mode” is what consumers are looking for, even if it makes no sense to put it in a semi-pro camera body.

Oh yeah, the downside of all this awesome:

US: $ 2,699, EU: € 2,499, UK: £ 2,299.

*sigh*

But hey…I can dream, right?

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BC Ferries apparently has a new class of boat that they have purchased from a company in Germany. Grace and I got a first-hand look at one of the new ships — the Coastal Renaissance.

This is the front viewport of the ship on its top passenger deck (the open one):

Yeah, not much to see — it would have been better had the sky not been so…you know…gray. Still, I do like the lines and reflection visible in this picture, and even the silvery parts of the gray have their appeal. This was intended to be a bit of an odd shot, and it more or less delivered in that regard.

Edit-wise, it was pretty easy to process this picture; the calibration/Punch preset took care of most of the editing for me, and a bit of noise reduction (I don’t know why, but the EOS 350D always seems to have more noise — above what one would expect for a given ISO setting — in the sky and clouds than in the rest of the image; have other users of other camera systems noticed this, or am I imagining things?) rounded things out. I also tweaked the shadows a bit, in an effort to make the image a bit more contrasty.

Grace suggested that the title of this photo be “Sleeping Treebeard,” and I have to admit that there is a certain Ent-ish quality about this particular tipped-over tree stump.

I think the great joy of almost any forest in British Columbia is just how lush it all is; Alberta forests don’t seem to have quite the same sort of vibrancy to them. There is an immense amount of green in this picture, and the different hues are very intense to a shade.

Edit-wise, this picture was pretty minimally modified. I had the camera’s ISO set fairly high, so noise reduction was the order of the day. Apart from that, this image received the usual calibration/Punch preset combination, and I seem to recall adjusting the Clarity to a negative value, although not heavily so — I wanted only a slight bit of diffusion in the image.

How about another picture of Grace?

Every so often, on walks like this, Grace and I will just goof off with the camera for a few minutes; it’s fun to play, and every so often a few good images will result from the time we take to do so. This is one example of what I mean by that; another picture of my wife that I really quite like, despite my stated dislike of most deliberately posed pictures.

Grace just seems really happy and relaxed in this shot, which I like.

Edit-wise, after applying the calibration/Punch preset, some noise reduction to correct for the fact that I had the camera’s ISO set at 1600, and a lot of highlight recovery to adjust for the fact that much of the background was overexposed, I re-thought the Punch preset’s Clarity setting and set the Clarity to -75, giving the picture a fairly diffuse look that I think works well for pictures of people. It’s not quite soft focus, but it’s still a touch hazy, and it really looks good.

Especially when the subject of the portrait happens to be the beautiful young woman I’m married to!