Today, I finally got to pick up my new camera, Canon EOS 1D X. Thanks to the team at Fixation for their great service again – it is always a pleasure doing business with them. At the moment, I know that they are also extremely busy providing support to the Olympics.

I have only had a brief chance to play with the 1DX and shot a few frames at Canary Wharf (see left). My initial impressions are that the camera is extremely fast to focus and a pleasure to hold. Canon have made some great changes with this handling of this camera which seem small on the face of it but are very effective.

I will have set aside some time over the weekend to put the 1DX through its paces and see what it is capable of. That is not going to help with my post processing queue.

After many months waiting, my new fisheye zoom lens is finally in my hand and of course on my camera.  i have managed to take a few shots in the studio, at Brands Hatch and around Canary Wharf.

My initial view of Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye USM is that it has huge creative potential and has really opened my mind to shooting some very unusual images.  This is mostly due to the ultra-wide field of view that it offers – for example standing in any city surround by tall buildings you can get the top of building in all directions around the edge of the image.

I am also find the circular image produced when shooting at 8mm on a full frame camera very pleasing but are definitely best when cropped square.

The image quality is good as you would expect with a L-series lens.  The fisheye nature of the lens means that you have to be careful not to get dust on the front element and it appears to be slightly susceptible to lens flare or colour aberration at the very edges of the image.  On some of my Canary Wharf images, you may notice a very slight blue tinge.

Overall, I am very pleased with this lens and it has been well worth the wait.  I am sure that I am going to use this lens a fair bit but promise not to make everything fisheyed.

On Saturday, we were having lunch at friend’s in Camden and I decided to take my new studio lights with all my camera gear to practice location shooting.  This was the first time that I have used studio lighting outdoors – luckily it was in the privacy of our friend’s back garden, which is a good place to shoot portraits.

As always when you are trying something new, it doesn’t always go to plan and the challenge that I discovered was trying to get two studio flash lights (Bowen Gemini 500R lights) to both fire in sunshine.  It is great to continue to learn which happens to me every time I take pictures.

During the shoot, I also used my new reflector so I had to enlist the help of my wife, Helen, as my new assistant (see right).  Every time that I have previously suggested, she has point blank refused but I think that that has much more to do with not wanting to carry my equipment around.  I don’t blame her for that … it is very heavy!

It is official … the Canon EF 8-15mm f/4 fisheye zoom lens has been delayed and there is no new release date.  I am not surprise especially after the huge earthquake they suffered which has badly affected Canon and Nikon.  Good luck to them getting their lives back to normal but it will take some time.

Here is the official press release in Japanese and translated into English.

It is only just over 2 weeks before I am off to Laos & Cambodia and I am still hoping to have a new Canon EF 8-15 f/4 Fisheye lens for the trip.  It was due to be available in March and might yet just make it before I go but with the tragic events in Japan I am think that it won’t.

Both Canon and Nikon still manufacturer their DSLR bodies and lenses in Japan and have been badly by the earthquake.  I hope that the impact on both Canon & Nikon staff and their operations is too bad.  Let’s hope that both companies are able to get back up and running soon.

I have previously blogged about Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II that I hired over Christmas & New Year but now I have finished post processing the photographs that I took with this great lens.

The Tilt and Shift functions have interesting and quite marked results on the focus plane and depth of field which I found quite difficult to get my head around.  I think that I managed to but I am definitely going to have another go with this lens in the summer when the light will be much brighter.  I will also invest in a special focus screen for my camera to make the manual focusing easier.

The results of my efforts can be found in my Architecture, Cityscapes & Landscapes gallery.

Over New Year, I purchased a Kodak Pulse 10” digital photo frame so some of out photos can be on display in our flat lounge.  I picked this particular model because it can be connected to the Internet via a wireless network and you can invite other to email photos to your digital photo frame.  You can easily upload photos directly from your computer or connect it to Facebook or Kodak Gallery photo albums.  The other great thing is that you can configure the digital photo frame to switch itself on and off at specific times so you don’t even have to worry about it being on (or not).

If you are looking for a digital photo frame, then I would recommend you look at the Kodak Pulse.

Over Christmas and New Year I hired a Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II lens from LensesForHire who had a great offer on.  This is a fantastic lens but not at all easy to use especially if you have got used to modern Digital SLRs.  I have never used a Tilt Shift lens before and it is just amazing the effect that it can have on an image.  The Shift aspect is much easier to deal with out the Tilt aspect affects the Depth of Field in some unusual ways that I didn’t fully expect.

The picture (left) is an example of the images I managed to take.

It was strange to use a lens that is a fully manual and modern DSLRs are not best equipped for manual focusing.  Before I hire this lens again (and I will), I am going to invest in a different Canon Focus Screen which will make manual focusing easier.  Old film SLRs had better focus screens than the standard ones on DSLR. 

I am really impressed with the service provide by LensesForHire and I would highly recommend using them.  They have wide range of both Canon and Nikon lenses, provide excellent hire prices which include a full week’s usage of the lens.  If you are think of buying a new lens then I would suggest that you hire it from LensesForHire to try it out before buying it.

Recently, I have been experimenting with geotagging my photographs.  First of all I need to be able to log the GPS data but unfortunately I have not been able to find a sensibly pricing option for Canon.  In the end, I opted for a standalone GPS logger from AMOD, AGL3080 GPS Photo Tracker.  This of course means that I have to adapt my workflow to synchronise the GPS data to the photo image files.

There are a number of software choices for getting the GPS data into the image file metadata but I really don’t want to complicate my workflow any further than necessary.  My post processing and library management is focused around Adobe’s Lightroom so ideally a GPS plugin to Lightroom would be ideal.  As luck as it, Jeffrey Friedl has written a good plugin to achieve this, Jeffrey’s "GPS-Support" Geoencoding Plugin for Lightroom.

It has taken me a little while to figure out how to use this plugin effectively so I will try to share me experiences over a few blogs on Geotagging.  Assuming that you have downloaded Jeffrey’s plugin, there are two other pieces of software you will problem want … (i) GPSBabel to convert the GPS logs into the required format – don’t worry you only have to tell Jeffrey’s plugin where this software is installed and (ii) Google Earth (optional – you can see where you took your photos).

So you have Jeffrey’s plugin and GPSBabel installed, now what to you do?

Select ALL the photos you want to geotag and then start Jeffrey’s plugin – you will need the Tracklog tab and select the required GPS tracklog file (which you will have downloaded from your GPS logger.  The next step is simple … click the “Geoencode Image” button on the plugin.  This will find the appropriate GPS data for each image and write this to a “Shadow Copy”.  This “Shadow Copy” is not held in the RAW file or associated XMP sidecar (I’ll get to how to make that happen in a future blog).  Now these photographs should have associated GPS coordinates.

Next blog I will cover how to get location data from the GPS coordinates …

Back in June I blogged about my Kiboko camera bag designed by Andy Biggs, which I still think is a fantastic bag!  I have found out that Kiboko is hippopotamus in Swahili which made me laugh – thanks Andy.

The only downside to my Kiboko is that it is too large for a day out when you don’t need to carry all your kit, then it is good to have a smaller bag.

As any photographer will tell you (if they are being honest) camera bags are tricky things and finding the right one seems impossible … too large and they are too heavy; too small and you cannot get everything you need in it.  Sadly, no one has yet invented a Tardis style bag and if they did I guess it might be called the “Doctor Who”.

After much searching, thinking and looking at other photographers’ bags, I decided to invest in a Domke F-2 Original Bag (see insert top right) which is the same day bag as my friend & pro photographer Steve Davey uses.  Now I have been using it for a few months out and about, I am sure that it has been a wise investment … they are not cheap!

It is great with because it can be packed virtually flat in your baggage whilst travelling with all your kit between places.  then when you are out and about for the day, it is capable of holding a pro camera body, four lenses, filters, spare batteries, and a small bottle of water.  It definitely served me well in Cairo and the various other days out since August.

If you are looking for a good day bag then I would definitely suggest checking out the Domke F-2 Original Bag.