Overview

Before digital, the 50mm lens was the standard. Moreover, it’s generally said the image produced is similar to what’s seen by the human eye. This made it a starting point from almost all photographers since it was easy to visualize the photograph before wasting film.

Digital has changed all of this; the introduction of crop sensors changes the lens’s field of view and increases the apparent focal length. Even then, the lens’s low cost still makes it a popular choice among many photographers especially those looking for a fast lens.

Canon’s EF 50mm f/1.8 II is the second generation of Canon’s EF-mount 50mm f/1.8 lenses, though its design inherits a legacy that dates to the late 1800s. Its f/1.8 aperture makes for good low light performance and shallow depth of field as well. Did I mention it’s also the cheapest lens in Canon’s catalog?

Build and Construction

Optically the EF 50mm f/1.8 II has 6 element 5 groups and appears to be a double Gauss or modified double Gauss design. The double Gauss lens design dates back to the late 1800’s and is simple, well understood, and very refined. This lens’s optical design starts from a solid foundation. Further, its slow speed, for 50mm primes at least, tends to yield better sharpness and less distortion.

It’s not only the optical design that makes the EF 50mm f/1.8 II inexpensive, Canon has cut out every possible feature from its construction.

The body and lens mount are plastic. I actually wouldn’t be surprised if the only things that were plastic in this lens were the glass elements and the electrical system. The build does make the lens incredibly light, 4.6oz (190g), though I’m not sure that makes much of a difference. That said, somewhat surprisingly the lens doesn’t feel nearly as flimsy as it sounds.

Unlike its predecessor, the mark II there is no distance scale. Though it’s nice to have distance scales, they are becoming increasingly useless on auto focus. Especially as features, like aperture depth of field marks, are omitted from designs.

The EF 50mm f/1.8 II also uses a cheaper micro-motor focus motor instead of a micro-USM or ring-USM focusing motor. The motor choice, however, doesn’t really affect autofocus speed, even with the lens’s overall linear extension design[i] there simply isn’t enough mass to be an issue. The micro-motor and gearbox is certainly louder than a ring-USM based motor but not really enough to be an issue or a distraction.

The lens lacks full-time autofocus, so when manually focusing the lens the autofocus system must be disengaging with AF/MF switch to MF. Failing to do so can damage the autofocus gearbox. Additionally the focus ring rotates when the lens focuses, so care is needed to avoid turning it or preventing it from turning when auto-focusing as well.

In an effort to further cut costs, the EF 50mm f/1.8 II doesn’t have a built in provision for a lens hood. However, the front element is recessed removing some of the need for a lens hood. That said, Canon does provide an optional snap -on lens hood in the form of the ES-62 kit. Another alternative is to mount a screw in lens hood on the filter threads.

Speaking of filter threads, the EF 50mm f/1.8 II’s has 52mm filter threads. However, because of the lens and hood design using them for anything other than a polarizer or special effect filters will increase the lens’s susceptibility to lens flare.

Performance

The EF 50mm f/1.8 II tests well in optical tests for its price. This is born out in real world use; the images tend to be acceptably sharp even when wide open though the corners are always a bit weak even stopped down. Vignetting is never completely removed on a full frame camera, even stopped down, showing about a 1/3^rd stop in the extreme corners. On a crop camera, there’s no appreciable vignetting at all, even wide open.

The biggest potential problem with this lens is the autofocus system. My experience is that it’s spotty at best, and performance is variable depending on many factors.

The copies I’ve handed have had problems repeatedly focusing on a consistent point, even in carefully controlled situations where there was nothing else to focus on and no camera motion. What will happen is the lens will front or back focus depending on the direction it’s focusing in. Even with AF micro adjustments, the problem persists, though you can typically get one direction or the other to be accurate, just not both.

What’s in the Box

What Canon ships with the lens is underwhelming at best. The retail box nets you the lens, a rear cap, a front cap, and a warranty card. As I said, there’s no lens hood shipped with the lens, that’s a $30 extra. Nor is there a pouch or case included.

Uses

On a full-frame digital or film camera the EF 50mm f/1.8 II is a normal lens, meaning it produces images that tend to have the same perspective as something view by the naked eye. It sees uses in journalism and anywhere where accurately portraying the environment is necessary. It’s also an acceptable lens for full body portraits.

On a Canon crop body the EF 50mm f/1.8 II becomes a short telephoto lens, with an angle of view similar to that of an 80mm lens on a full frame camera. This is at the short end of focal lengths commonly used for head and head and shoulder portraits. However, it also can make the lens difficult to work with for more general types of photography when in small rooms.

Additionally, the EF 50mm f/1.8 II is the cheapest fast lens Canon makes. This results in it being frequently recommended as a lowlight lens for beginner photographers to complement their 18-55mm kit lenses.

Verdict

Why the 50mm f/1.8 II remains popular is beyond me. Actually, not really, it’s cheap and fast, and most people fall over when they find out how expensive a good lens is. Even its half-stop faster better-built cousin, the EF 50mm f/1.4 USM, is more than 3 times as expensive.

The EF 50mm f/1.8 II is commonly recommended for most entry level photographers as a low light lens to pair with their Kit 18-55. This is something I don’t agree with; mostly due to the potential for autofocus issues and the tighter field of view.

When I bought my copy of this lens they were running for about $65, at that price, even with any issues, it’s hard not to pass on. At the time of this writing, the lens is retailing for $100 or more. At that price, I have a hard time recommending the lens at all.

While I’m not suggesting everybody needs $1000 L glass, there are better alternatives in the sub $500 range, unfortunately, just not in the $100 range.

One of this is Tamron’s well-regarded SP AF 17-50mm f/2.8 XR Di II. It offers virtually the same range as the kit 18-55 lenses with between a ½ and 2 stop fast aperture. Another alternative is Sigma’s 30mm f/1.4 EX DC HSM; it retains the normal field of view, adds a half stop faster aperture, and adds a ring-type ultrasonic motor for silent full time manual focusing. The final alternative is Canon’s own 50mm f/1.4 USM; virtually identical to the f/1.8 mark 2 but with a half-stop faster aperture and silent full-time manual with an Ultrasonic motor.

Personally, I don’t think skimping on lens quality is a good way to go. The inexpensive lenses don’t tend to hold up as well, more frequently have issues, and don’t retain the value in resale should you want to sell them.

Between the potential problems, and the availability of more flexible alternatives I say pass on Canon’s EF 50mm f/1.8 II.

Our suggestion: Save your pennies and get something better.

I’ve been using Lightroom 3 in one form or another almost continuously since the second beta release and the final release since the day it was announced. That said, I don’t think I’m going to write a full review of Lightroom 3. It really can be summed up as, “Lightroom 3′s is a lot like Lightroom 2, except for the addition of new behind the scenes features; namely the ability to correct for lens distortions (both geometric and perspective)”. There’s not a whole lot more to it.

In short, spending the time to carefully step though the program’s features, and functionality to put together a review would be largely pointless and look at lot like the review of the first beta. Never mind that a review isn’t going to get you the most out of the software anyway, and there are already several excellent books available that will do that much better than I can in a few thousand words.

That said, at the end of my last Lightroom 3 Beta 2 post, I made a few comments on what I’d like to see in Lightroom 3. Moreover It seems Adobe has broken a few things that worked in the beta.

The Good

Lightroom 3 did bring us lens corrections, I wanted this even though I didn’t think I’d use it, and now we have it. It’s funny in some ways that the availability of a tool will influence your use of the tool. Prior to Lightroom 3 I virtually never made corrections for perspective errors. Having to bring the photo into Photoshop tweak the perspective, then return to Lightroom, all the while creating a new, huge, 16-bit TIFF or PSD for the fixed image drove me nuts. With easy access to perspective corrections, I almost always fix perspective issues.

Moreover, the new lens correction is just too sweet to not use. No more vignetting (I never realized how badly some lenses vignette before), no more barrel and pincushion distortion, and no more futzing around trying to fix chromatic aberrations by hand on some images but not others. Needless to say, it’s probably one of my favorite new features.

The Bad (Okay, it’s not really that bad)

Let’s see, where to start.

How about with the new lens corrections again, namely access to user created profiles. They’re user creatable, easy to do, and Adobe has a community submission mechanism. Moreover Adobe has created a online community for submitting user generated profiles, unfortunately they aren’t accessible to Lightroom 3 users yet, only Photoshop CS5 users and then from inside though CS5. Nor is there a web interface, which would at least let us non-CS5 users download and install them manually.

Adobe’s position is that they ran out of time to add this functionality. Seriously? Not even enough time to hack together a website that presented profiles to download? Wow.

Missing from the Windows 7 taskbar menu is the recent catalogs list. See Update

Its minor but it’s an annoyance. The release version breaks the recent files section in Window 7’s taskbar context-menu. I should probably prefix this with I have Lightroom pinned to the taskbar on my machine. Being able to right-click on the icon and jump into any of my recently used catalogs (not that I have that many) was a nice feature. If memory serves, this worked in Lightroom 2, it also worked in the beta for Lightroom 3, it’s gone now.

Update: I just got around to installing Lightroom 3 on my laptop to see how it fared when the computer sucked (yes, my laptop sucked). Lo and behold, the recent items list showed up just fine when I right clicked on the pinned task-bar entry. So I uninstalled and reinstalled it on my desktop and there are now recent catalogs in the list. That was definitely a problem on my machine and not a problem with Lightroom 3.

I find performance varies quite a bit as well. Some things are quite snappy, maybe even faster than Lightroom 2, other things, not so much. One of my hopes was that Adobe would manage to get Lightroom to offload some of the processing to the GPU (remember, changes in develop have to be re-rendered continuously one way or another since Lightroom doesn’t blend pixels). The result of this is that some things, especially the adjustment brush, spot removal, and graduated filter tools can become quite sluggish.

Additionally I’ve run into problems with the previews and preview cache. However, these may have been my own doing. At times, the system would be sluggish even though the catalog was optimized and passed the integrity tests. Turns out somehow my preview cache (the <Catalog Name> Previews.lrdata folder) had been corrupted. Blowing it away and rebuilding standard previews—that only took 11 hours for 22,000 images—seems to have fixed that.

That specific problem aside, you still can’t scroll through the catalog (even with fully rendered previews) stop and have all the thumbnails sharp without waiting a moment.

There are a couple of other odd rather annoying quirks that Adobe didn’t fix either, though they’ve been around longer than just Lightroom 3.

For example when using the grid view on a second display, it doesn’t behave the same way as it does when on the main display (at least in Windows). First, it won’t respond to the scroll wheel to scroll by pages or at all. To scroll you either need to drag the scroll bar or hover over it and scroll with the wheel.

Secondly when you select multiple images in the gird you can’t preform an action on all of them in all cases. For example, selecting 6 images and hitting X to mark them as rejects works fine with the grid on the main display, but only flags the highlighted/active image when the grid is on the second display.

I’ve had no end of issues with merging catalogs with existing images and new virtual copies.

The Ugly

First off, I’ve had no end of issues with merging catalogs with existing images and new virtual copies. Even if the catalogs were both from Lightroom 3, I would get fatal errors trying to merge the two. This started out with my attempt at merging a converted Lightroom 2 catalog with my Lightroom 3 beta catalog. Namely since I couldn’t convert the LR 2 catalog in the beta, I was forced to re-import raw files into LR3 Beta if I wanted to play with processing them with the new engine.

Eventually, I managed to load enough files to play with that in the end it was more prudent to try and merge the catalogs than throw the work away or try and move it by hand. The odd part, I had tried merging catalogs in LR3 Beta 2 and Lightroom 2 and they both handled them the same way. Identical images (by path and name) were detected, and the develop settings were made into separate virtual copies. Importing a catalog with 4 versions (1 real + 3 virtual copies) of a given image into a catalog with 2 more versions (1 real + 1 virtual copy) would result in 6 versions of the image (1 read + 5 virtual copies).

Needless to say, it didn’t work; maybe it’s a bug, maybe it’s a “feature”. In the end, I decided to cut my losses, keep a copy of the old catalog around in case I needed to reference an image, and move all of my files via import (after an export with keywords) into the new catalog.

Lightroom 3 recognizes Camera RAW 5.7 as fully compatible, so it doesn’t render a TIFF/PSD and you loose all your lens corrections.

Lightroom, CameraRAW and Photoshop

I’m not sure if this is just bad or ugly but it is amazingly annoying. What I’m talking about is Adobe’s habit of abandoning development of previous generations of their software. In this case, its Camera RAW support for older versions of Photoshop when the new version comes out.

The latest, and probably last, version of Camera RAW for Photoshop CS4 is 5.7. What 5.7 lacks, likely among other things, is the lens correction features in Lightroom 3 and Camera RAW 6. However, Lightroom 3 recognizes Camera RAW 5.7 is being fully compatible, in other words it doesn’t prompt about rendering a TIFF/PSD and opening that.

What that means is that lens corrections made in Lightroom disappear when the image is opened in Photoshop.

What I’d really like to see is Adobe release a new Camera RAW for CS4 that fully supports the Lightroom 3.0 release. After that, I don’t care so much as long as they properly flag the Camera RAW versions and build TIFFs/PSDs in Lightroom, but half support like it stands is just bad.

Verdict

While Lightroom 3 is the 3^rd generation of Adobe’s Lightroom software, in some ways you have to treat it like the first release. Some of the changes/breaks in functionality, like the recent files missing in Windows 7, seems a bit strange to me. Moreover, the performance issues can be a bit grating at times, though I don’t remember Lightroom 2.0 being a speed demon either. Finally, there certainly are some odd quirks, though I’m not entirely sure if I’d call them bugs, at times.

That said, while I spent more time talking about problems than positive bits that’s perhaps not an accurate reflection of my opinion of Lightroom 3. Put it this way, there’s nothing remotely bad enough to make me even consider abandoning ship for something else. Lightroom still offers a workflow that’s heads and tails above anything else I’ve seen or tried. In my opinion, Lightroom is still the best mid-range digital asset management and RAW processing package available on Windows and possibly even on the Mac.

That said, there’s always room for improvement. I’d still like to see Adobe add GPU co-processing support to offload some of the heavy lifting when working in the develop module. I’d like to see a Capture 1 style focus mask, and I’d still like to see Dfine style targeted noise reduction. Of course anything that adds processing overhead brings us back to getting more performance out of the computer and GPU acceleration. I’d also like to see a somewhat open server back-end for handling catalogs and libraries in networked environments (though to say more might require a whole post on it’s own).

When I started looking for a backpack to replace the two I already had, I had a simple objective; find a backpack that can carry lots of gear in the most compact especially narrow bag available. My experience has taught me, the biggest factor to making a bag compact is largely depth. In the end this search brought me to ThinkTank Photo’s StreetWalker Pro backpack. In fact, the StreetWalker Pro has become my go to daily use bag.

The StreetWalker Pro is a well thought out package, though it has its faults. However, it’s well made and integrates well with ThinkTank’s other bags and accessories which is a huge plus. The key feature for me, however, is that the StreetWalker Pro is deep enough to carry serious gear in a backpack form without being very wide which keeps me cool.

Why use a backpack instead of some other bag?

I find the backpacks have a huge advantage when it comes to comfort. I can put almost as much in my StreetWalker Pro as I can in a Domke F2. For me, that works out to something like 30 plus pounds. However, unlike the F2, the StreetWalker Pro lets that weight to be carried by both shoulders and hips rather than just one shoulder. Sure there are tradeoffs in terms of access, but this is where circumstance and the StreetWalker Pro’s solid integration with ThinkTank’s belt system factors in.

Lots of gear in a smallish backpack, how can that be?

Looking inside the street walker pro's main compartment show just how deep this bag is relative to it's width. Most 150 or 200mm primes will stand on end easily.

The key to the StreetWalker Pro is depth. The StreetWalker Pro is almost as deep as most good shoulder bags. More importantly, it is significantly deeper than most similarly sized “small” photo backpacks.

More depth, however, isn’t always better. Make the bag too deep and it becomes cumbersome, impractical and wastes space. Get the depth just right, as the StreetWalker Pro does, and you end up with a lot of capacity in a compact package. In practice, I’ve found the ideal depth is around 7-8 inches. The StreetWalker Pro’s interior space is 7” deep. Less than that and many lenses and accessories have to be laid on their sides and smaller lenses can’t be stacked, both wastes of valuable space. More than about 8 inches, and the bag is too deep to fully utilize.

Thanks to nailing an almost ideal depth, the StreetWalker pro is able to be narrower without compromising carrying capacity.

That brings us to my second major criteria, width. Width controls not only how much the bag can hold, but also how cool it is when worn. A narrower backpack means a cooler backpack, because more fresh “cool” air can reach your back. In warm weather climates, like South Florida, I find this to be absolutely critical.

So it’s deep and it’s narrow, and you say it holds a lot, so what can it hold?

ThinkTank says the StreetWalker pro can hold a pro-sized SLR with a 70-200 f/2.8 with the hood in place and several lenses, or a pro-sized SLR with a 400/2.8 and the hood reversed. Though not officially listed, it’s big enough for a 500 f/4 with the hood reversed and no camera attached as well.

Sounds good, but how does it work out in practice?

I frequently stuff a 1D with my 100-400 attached and the hood reversed in the main camera spot. Below that, under a padded divider, a 40D with no lens attached. Along the left side of the bag; an EF 24-70 f/2.8L, an EF-S 10-22 f/3.5-4.5, and a pair of 580Ex II flashes fit nicely. In addition, there’s a smaller divider near that top that makes a spot with enough room for an EF 1.4x II teleconverter and a PocketWizard MiniTT1 trigger.

The StreetWalker Pro loaded almost to capacity, a 70-200 f/2.8 on one body, a second body, 4 lenses and a 1.4x teleconverter in the area above the first body.

That’s all in the main compartment. There’s still room in the lid and exterior pockets for a spare battery or two, a pair of PocketWizard FlexTT5s, a cable release, the lens hood for the ultra-wide, a better beamer, flashcard holder, a circular polarizer, and more.

On the flip side, if one shoots primes and doesn’t carry a 70-200 f/2.8, there are 2 dividers include for the right side of the bag so you can divide that down into useable storage. Further, the depth means that you can usually stack two smaller primes in any of the lens slots.

You said it integrates with other ThinkTank products, which and how well?

The StreetWalker Pro's shoulder harness, with Camera Support Strap points (top), D-rings (middle) and cellphone/card wallet pockets bottom.

Let’s start with waist belts. This is a twofold solution. First, the StreetWalker pro comes with a removable waist belt. Personally, I think this is one of the poorer features; it’s too flexible and tends to slip so it doesn’t take up much of the load. In fact, the first thing I did was remove it and toss it in a drawer.

The solution is to look at ThinkTank’s belt system. This is a twofold advantage. First the Pro Speed Belt, which snaps into a Velcro secured flap, provides a much more comfortable belt than the stock one. It’s padded, stiff enough, and has a much better adjustable buckle that it works much better than the included belt.

Second, ThinkTank’s belt system, a completely modular camera carrying solution that’s worth a look on its own, alleviates many of the access problems that come with backpacks. On top alleviating some of the access problems backpacks have, the belt system adds some extra capacity when the backpack just isn’t enough.

Release the tab from the large Velcro patch and the Pro Speed Belt secures behind the pad at the bottom of the bag.

Other major integration point is ThinkTank’s camera strap system. We all know that carrying a heavy SLR can make one’s neck sore quite quickly. The typical solution is to get a wider padded strap. However, these straps tend not to be as flexible as their thinner counterparts and get in the way when you’re working. ThinkTank’s solution is different, they’ve kept the thin “photojournalist” profile straps but added metal rings to them. Those rings allow the Camera Support Straps to clip in. The Camera Support Straps in turn attach to your backpack shoulder straps.

The StreetWalker Pro’s shoulder straps are designed with this use in mind and have 3 positions where the Camera Support Straps can be attached. In the end with the ThinkTank strap and Camera Support Straps, the weight of your camera is carried by your shoulders though the padded shoulder straps.

Faults everything has them, what are they?

First is the color, the StreetWalker Pro only comes in Photographer Black, the one true color for all photography gear. Black is good for some things, as it keeps those things from showing up in reflections. What it it’s not is a great color for when you’re out in the bright sunny world. In fact, if I spend a lot of time in the sun, the bag gets very hot and so does everything inside of it. I’ve pulled lenses and flashes out of the StreetWalker Pro that are as hot as if they’d been lying out in the sun all day. I’d really like to see a version of the StreetWalker Pro in a lighter color. In fact, if they released a StreetWalker Pro in tan or “foliage” I’d probably replace mine immediately.

Second is the tripod mount. Sure it’s nice to have one. In fact as far as tripod mounts go, this one is one of the better ones. The best part is you can remove the straps so they don’t get caught on anything. The problem is it’s on the back. With a fully loaded bag the tripod puts a lot of pressure on the contents. On top of that, with the depth of the bag, a tripod sticks out behind you. A side mounted tripod system may have worked much better.

The only other fault I have with the bag is that the shoulder straps could have a bit more material at the top so that the pouches and what not are more useable for me.

Summing it up.

The StreetWalker Pro is just about everything I look for in a camera bag. It’s small enough that I can toss a camera and lens, even a big one, in it and go on a hot day and not end up wishing I brought something smaller. It’s also big enough that I can carry enough gear to shoot just about anything on vacation or assignment. Moreover, the way it integrates with ThinkTank’s belt packs when I need added storage or faster access than a backpack can provide.

Unlike the Sibley Guide to Birds (reviewed here) or the National Geographic Complete Birds of North America (also reviewed here), the Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior is anything but a field guide. This book was once described to me as the kind of thing that you’d read in front of a fire at night after a day of birding. While I think that’s maybe a bit too extreme for me, it is a very good reference.

Is this really for Photographers?

This isn’t a photography book, it’s not even a field guide, so the question is, is this even useful for photographers? In short, yes, if you’re a serious bird photographer it’s one of the most accessible ways to better understand your subjects.

Most importantly, understanding your subject better can result in better images with less wasted time and effort. For example, if you’re following a developing nest and don’t know the species incubation times you could end up having to check daily to see if chicks hatched. That intermediate time can probably be better used searching for new subjects or working on projects for other clients.

Secondly, there’s trying to capture the peak of action. Many birds display distinctive behaviors while, often these behaviors are great poses themselves, but also they can be key indicators that the peak action moment eminent. Examples of this are the characteristic “stall” Osprey make before diving on a fish. While most of these behaviors can be recognized after enough time in the field, the Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior can give you a wing up.

Organization and Content

The first 120 pages are dedicated to an overview level discussion of birds, bird biology, and common bird behaviors. Sibley does a very thorough job of introducing these topics in an way that’s accessible to someone who’s not a biologist.

The second part of The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior rest of the book is organized by order (i.e. Pelicans, Eagles, Hawks, etc.). It contains details on 81 (if my count is right) different orders of birds, with each detailed section frequently having more specific details on individual species. The order specific sections are organized similarly to the order of species in The Sibley Guide to Birds, though there are some variations.

Verdict

The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior is a desk reference. It’s not going to help you identify birds any better, though if you’re seriously into bird photography I’d rank it as the 2^nd or 3^rd book to buy, right after you get your field guides. While it’s not something I’d read to relax, it is the first places I look when I start researching new species or when I want to play out photographing a familiar species. That said, the Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior isn’t a substitute for field time.

It didn’t take long after the release of PocketWizards ControlTL remotes for  the world for photographers and LPA design to realize one of the major issue was the amount of electromagnetic noise produced by many of Canon’s Flashes.

Their first solution was the PocketWizard AC5 soft shield. Currently the AC5 soft shields ship with Mini TT5 transceivers. Unfortunately, if you didn’t get one with your TT5 and haven’t already ordered yours, you may have missed the boat; PocketWizard ended the free AC5 program on April 30, 2010. Mine were ordered as part of that AC5 program, and they took their sweet time getting to me (I enrolled on March 27; I received them on June 15, more than 11 weeks).

The AC5 hotshoe filter and the sleeve's metallic inner material.

The AC5 appears on the outside to be a simple black fabric sock and a small hot-shoe base plate. In fact, it’s not quite so simple. The sock is made from 2 layers of material; the outer layer appears to be normal black fabric. The inner layer, however, is a metallic fabric that contains the EM noise produced by the flash.

The sock/shield seems to be well put together; I can’t find any glaring defects in manufacturing or shoddy craftsmanship at least.

Assembly, if you can call it that is simple. Seat the flash in the hot-shoe filter. Secure the filter to your TT5. Make sure the bungee around the filter is such that the inner fabric contacts the copper plate on the bottom of the filter piece, then tighten the strap around the top of the flash head. If you don’t seat the flash/filter on the TT5 before closing up the bungeed fabric, it becomes difficult to operate the screw-type clamp. Further, the rough edges of the screw-clamp will wear against the metallic fabric.

AC5 assembled but not closed with 580Ex II and FlexTT5 pocketwizard.

If you need to maximize the range, reverse the flash head 180° and raise the antenna. LPA Design makes several suggestions on how to improve reception on their website.

The biggest downside to the AC5 is that you can no longer access the controls (well you can push the buttons but can’t see what the settings are since you can’t see the LCD.

With the AC5 in place, the trigger distance was extended to about 300 feet (90 m) for about a 3-fold improvement.

I started my tests firing a single Canon Speedlite 580Ex II into a small palm tree from a MiniTT1 on a EOS 1D Mark 3. With the antenna on the FlexTT5 down, I could reliably trigger the flash out to about 90 feet (28m) on ControlTL channel 1.

PocketWizard suggests that using channels centered around 345 and 347 MHz will improve range somewhat. Since I had the Speedlite setup, I figured I’d give that a shot too. Unfortunately, using channel 2 (345MHz) the trigger distance decreased, though this could certainly be an artifact of other noise sources in environment I was testing in.

With the AC 5 in place, again with the antenna on the receiver down, the trigger distance increased to about 300 feet (90 m) for about a 3-fold improvement. Not quite what Rob Galbraith got, however, I didn’t have the antenna raised which would have further improved reception.

The PocketWizard AC5 sleve and hot-shoe filter and complete setup with 580Ex II Speedlite and MiniTT5 transceiver.

The AC5 definitely improves the range of when noisy Canon flashes are used with ControlTL PocketWizards. However, for me 90 feet of reliable TTL control is almost more than enough for anything I’ve shot so far or see shooting any time soon. However, the AC5 being mostly fabric is tiny, it doesn’t take long to setup and works well enough that I’ll likely be keeping mine in my bag just in case I need them.

Recommended by the Strboist, David Hobby, as the fundamental book on photographic lighting, need I say more?

Let’s get somethings straight, Light Science and Magic is a textbook. It doesn’t try and inspire you to be creative. It doesn’t have inspiring stories of photographic exploits. It doesn’t even tell you what dials to push or turn to change the settings on your lights.

What it does do, is give the fundamentals of how light behaves and how the things you’re photographing will behave under it.

Light Science and Magic is divided into 10 chapters by subject type. Chapter 1 and 2 provide an overview of light and its effects on the images that one might produce. While they don’t cover a whole lot of technical details, they do provide the foundation that is necessary for the rest of the book.

Chapters 3 through 9 are the meat and potatoes of this book. Unlike many photographic books, Light Science and Magic isn’t about setups but about techniques and physics. That is to say, the book never says, “light this scene by placing a light in such and such a location and setting it to f/5.6 ISO 100”. Rather it provides an understanding of the mechanics of light so that the photographer can make up their own mind about light placement for any given scene.

Light Science and Magic uses clearly drawn diagrams to illistrate each concept as it describes it in the text.

That is, in my opinion, a far more useful approach. Consider for example doing copy work. In this area of photography evenness of light is important. Chapter 3 teaches us about the family of angles produced by light reflecting off a surface. From this we can determine based on our lens, subject, working space, and lighting equipment exactly what the best locations for our lights are instead of simply having someone tell us, “put the lights x feet away and 45° from the axis of the lens”, or something similar.

The final chapter covers some basics of hot-shoe flashes, studio lighting, light modifiers, and some of the basics of balancing ambient light with flash. However, not nearly as long as it possibly could be, and there are entire books written on the subject, it does provide enough information to be a push in the right direction

The book itself is well put together with solid coated pages and good quality printing. As of the 3^rd edition, the images are in color. There are diagrams that explain the concepts covered in each chapter. While they are clear and cleaning illustrated, sometimes I think they feel a lot like uninspired textbook diagrams. In addition to diagrams, there are full color photographs that accompany each concept as well. They are well executed and clearly and unambiguously show what they are meant to.

I found this book to be an invaluable tool in learning the principals for manipulating light and dealing with the way light behaves on a verity of subjects and surfaces. What it doesn’t do is tell you what to do once you understand the behavior of light; it doesn’t lay out any recipes for lighting a given subject or type of subject. Then again, there are books dedicated to lighting and composing subjects for just about every field.

I’ve found Light Science and Magic to be an invaluable tool. Once you understand the behavior of light, you can start designing your own lighting setups with less trial and error. That means spending less time on location tweaking the light and more time making useful images and to me that’s always a good thing.

What is the biggest difference between Lightroom 3 Beta 1 and Lightroom 3 Beta 2?

It’s stable enough that I’m still using it 1-week later.

Not only is Beta 2 stable enough that I’m still using it, I’m actually using it more than Lightroom 2.6 at this point.

Noise Reduction

This is proving to be a tough nut for me to crack. In short, I like it, but it’s not quite that simple. For starters the new color noise reduction stuff rocks. It’s good enough to make a 1D mark 4’s ISO 102,400 almost useable.

That said, getting the most out of noise reduction in LR 3 is more complicated than it was in LR 2. What I have noticed is that I’m favoring using slightly higher luminance settings, lower sharpening and more masking in many of my images. I’m finding this necessary to bring out details while simultaneously keeping the backgrounds smooth and clean. For example, with my 1D Mark 3 I found that I could get away with no luma noise reduction in Lightroom 2, as long as I was shooting at ISO 400 or below. Lightroom 3’s new rendering engine tends to produce more grain even at those lower ISOs, necessitating some NR at a minimum.

New noise reduction (left) versus the old noise reduction (right) at the same settings. Image from a Canon EOS 1D Mark 3 at ISO 2500.

Unfortunately, I haven’t made any prints from Lightroom 3’s output yet, and that may change things somewhat. Specifically, since prints tend to appear to have more detail when there is a small amount of noise in the image.

Publishing

Publishing isn’t new to beta 2, it was there in beta 1, and provides an interesting if only somewhat half implemented (in my opinion) function.

In the default install, you can publish to a hard drive or to Flickr. Lightroom them manages the images and allows you to post and view comments to them without going to your web browser. If you have a Flickr pro account, which allows you to do in-place image replacements, you can also update images with development tweaks if you wish. Images that have been published also show their current comments in Lightroom’s Comment’s panel.

What hasn’t changed from beta 1, and I’m not sure if this is a limitation of Flickr or Lightroom, is the ability for the publish module to find images from Flickr that are in your image library by not published though the publish service. It may not be 100% successful, but I think it could at least make an effort to try and find images based on title, tags, EXIF data, date, etc. and give you the option to have those be added to the publish collection. It might not be 100% successful but at least it would be a start.

As for me, I find I’m trying to use publishing more especially since I’m trying to more regularly put content up on my Flickr feed. My minor quibbles, are just that minor quibbles.

Tone Curve

New to beta 2 is the much requested point tone curve in addition to the parametric tone curve. For me the point curve is certainly a nice feature, but I find in practice it’s limited in two ways. First, it’s small, dramatically smaller than the one in Camera RAW or Photoshop. On top of that, there’s no way to make it larger. This makes it somewhat difficult to make precise adjustments.

The second issue may or may not be an issue depending on your preference. The point curve is a luma curve like the point curve in Adobe Camera RAW and not an RGB curve like the curves tool in Photoshop.

I know the Lightroom and Camera RAW teams like to leap frog each other in features sometimes, the clarity tool comes to mind, this would have been a case where it would have been nice to see Lightroom jump ahead again, at least assuming that the DNG spec provides a way to do per-color curves.

Catalog Backups

One nice thing, though it’s quite minor, is that Adobe has moved when catalog backups are done. Now you are prompted when leaving the program as opposed to when starting it. To me this is a nice usability tweak, since I frequently want to get into the software quickly but I’m not so concerned with how fast it goes away when I’m done. Therefore, I won’t skip doing a backup simply because I needed to get to something fast.

Problems

I’ve encountered shockingly few problems in Lightroom 3 Beta 2 at least with the program itself. Of course, Adobe notes in the release notes, which Beta 2 is very close to the finished product. However, that doesn’t mean I haven’t run into issues, most notably with my Wacom tablet and the latest Windows 7 64-bit drivers. I think this is likely to be more of an issue with the Wacom drivers, and I’m currently working with Wacom to determine the exact cause, since the issues only show up in Lightroom for me (though not just in Lightroom 3 beta 2) I thought I’d mention it here.

The two issues are, on my dual monitor machine a pen confined to a single display behaves oddly when the active application is Lightroom. The second issue is that occasionally the tablet driver will crash necessitating a reboot.

Now I want to reiterate the point again, Lightroom 3 is still beta software, those of us testing it are going to be subject to random, sometimes bizarre, problems. In my opinion, it’s in our best interest to try and report as much of this information to the software companies so they can continue to improve their products. However, as I’ve said repeatedly when talking about Lightroom 3’s betas, this software really shouldn’t be used in production environments. Let the user beware, so to speak.

What I Wish Was There

Targeted Noise Reduction

One feature I really would like to see is something I saw implemented in a plugin called Define 2 from Nik Software. What Define 2 does is let you change the noise reduction levels in a way similar to Lightroom’s adjustment brush works, but differently.

Mostly I find myself wanting something like this because a lot of what I shoot has smooth out of focus backgrounds with a sharp subject. With Lightroom’s overall control, I have to try and balance the noise reduction requirements of the background (where I don’t have any detail I care about) with the need to preserve detail in the subject. This usually means using slightly less NR than I’d like to on the background and masking it to prevent what’s left from being sharpened.

If I could mask out the background and tell Lightroom to use noise reduction settings that are different from the images general noise reduction that would be really handy.

Distortion and Perspective Correction

This is becoming more and more important for me, and I think this is important to most serious photographers (professional or amateur). Lightroom currently can remove lateral chromatic aberrations and vignetting but can’t do anything for pincushion or barrel distortion or perspective errors. It would be very nice to not have to litter my drive with a ton of much larger TIFFs that can’t be deleted the way cached copies could be.

Focus Mask

Phase One introduced this in version 5 of their capture and RAW processing package, Capture 1. It was so interesting that I had to pull the demo just to check it out, and while I wasn’t completely blown away by it, it sometimes said areas were in focus when they clearly weren’t; it sometimes was handy to use.

Unfortunately, I found Capture 1’s interface so clunky and hard to use that there was no way I was going to move away from Lightroom for something like a focus mask.

As an aside, I’d really like to see this feature in cameras on the rear LCD so you can quickly tell what is in focus and what isn’t.

Other Stuff

I’m not entirely impressed with video support yet, though I guess at least being able to store and manage video files the same way as stills is better than nothing.

Tethered capture is also something that I was mildly optimistic over, after seeing it in the feature list. What I’m not thrilled with is the implementation so far. No control over the aperture or shutter speed, well at least I can’t figure out how to make Lightroom control the camera.

For me this is a rather annoying limitation since I can do this though Canon’s EOS Utility and just have Lightroom monitor and import form a folder directly. Additionally, if I have live view enabled on my Canon bodies, I can, through the EOS Utility software, drop into live view mode and adjust the focus without ever leaving my computer.

For me I consider the ability to adjust camera settings and focus (though live-view) to be essential parts of a tethered shooting setup. Therefore, while Lightroom’s tethered shooting is better than doing it the old way, it’s not as good as I think it should be.

Conclusions

I’m still only a week into using Lightroom 3 beta 2, but, so far, I really like what I see. I still wouldn’t recommend people run out and download the beta just because it’s still beta software, but Lightroom 3 promises to be a very nice package when adobe finally releases it.

When will Adobe release Lightroom 3? That I don’t know, but I can say for sure, there will be something out before beta 2 expires in June.

Last October (has it really been that long) Adobe released the first public beta of Lightroom 3. I previewed it here. My conclusion at the time was that due to the lack of features, Lightroom 3 beta was too raw to be useful. I even found it difficult to play with as an experimental software package; but there was certainly a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. The beta showed a tantalizing look at a new rendering engine for Lightroom 3; one that pulled more fine detail out of images, couple that with a more advanced noise reduction system and you had a product that was hamstrung largely by its early beta status.

The new noise reduction algorithms do an excellent job cleaning up even ISO 1600 images from the Canon EOS 40D.

Beta 2 brings several new features and performance enhancements. Starting with improved performance and the completion of the new noise reduction system (both luma and chroma noise reduction is supported in the new RAW engine). Additionally, Lightroom 3 beta 2 supports previewing video files, though the support isn’t nearly as broad as I would have hoped, more on this later.

One other new feature since beta 1, is the ability to do tethered shooting directly from Lightroom with Canon and Nikon cameras. However, unlike Canon’s remote control app you can’t control any of the camera settings from inside Lightroom. The only available control is the shutter release. However, the UI is slim and it integrates well with Lightroom, so it’s not totally useless. Also, again since this is beta software, the camera control features may find their way into the final version.

Squashed Bugs and Performance

Beta 2 certainly doesn’t feel as beta as beta 1 did. In fact, it’s pretty snappy; at least as snappy as Lightroom 2 is on my machine. Many of the major bugs appear to be fixed as well. The import bug that dogged me in Beta 1 has been fixed. I’ve had no problems bringing files in from my hard drive.

Speaking of importing files, beta 2 still doesn’t have a mechanism for converting your Lightroom 2 catalog. This means if you’re a LR 2 user you have to re-import all your images into LR2, though obviously this is an in-place import, before you can start looking at and processing them. Unfortunately that means you also lose any adjustments you’ve made in Lightroom 2 so you have to reprocess a lot of things. I certainly expect the production release of Lightroom 3 to support migrating one’s catalog.

Lightroom 2 and Lightroom 3 in Parallel

Beta 2 still cannot import or convert a Lightroom 2 catalog. In short, beta 2 starts fresh. I don’t care for this situation as such, as I’d like to be able to go back and look at old images in a new Lightroom, so to speak. You can import your images in place into the new Lightroom 3 catalog; however, doing this poses some problems with respect to synchronizing edits between the old and new engines, or at least bringing forward your edits from Lightroom 2. In short, you can’t.

The best solution I’ve come up with for dealing with this situation is to work with the new catalog, either with no previous images or by importing your existing images in place. Then when Adobe releases a version of Lightroom 3 that supports converting catalogs, converting your old Lightroom 2 catalog and merging it (again in place) with your new Lightroom 3 catalog. Fortunately, Lightroom will deals with situations where the two catalogs have had images processed differently by creating virtual copies for each of the two methods so you won’t lose any new edits and you’ll finally have your old edits brought into the new catalog.

Doing this works well enough with multiple Lightroom 3 catalogs, so it should work just as well with a Lightroom 2 catalog that’s been converted too.

The other option is to write all your edits to the DNG or XMP files in Lightroom 2

before you import them into, or resync the folder after they’ve been imported, Lightroom 3 beta. However, this process won’t bring over virtual copies so it’s not entirely useful either.

Noise Reduction and Rendering

The new rendering engine really brings out fine details.

I was thoroughly impressed by the image quality that Beta 1’s new engine produced, beta 2 certainly doesn’t disappoint. Moreover, the addition of a fully function noise reduction engine makes beta 2 quite powerful and actually useful. The noise reduction algorithms are actually quite good as well. It certainly gives some new life to ISO 1600 and 3200.

Video Management

As much as I’d like to, I still don’t have the capabilities to shoot video yet. However, video is clearly becoming an increasingly important aspect of photography. Adobe is trying to make Lightroom 3 more capable of handling video, however, the current effort in beta 2 falls a little bit short.

What you can do is import video off a card and view a preview of the first frame in the filmstrip, grid or loupe views. However, you can’t yet watch anything in beta 2; when you click a video in loupe view it starts the default video player (in my case Windows Media Player) instead of just playing the video inside the Lightroom interface.

What I can’t find is anyway to do anything after that. There’s no obvious, though it’s entirely possible since I don’t have Premier, to have Lightroom send a video clip to a proper video editing program.

In many ways, Lightroom treats video as Flickr does, as extended stills. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with that philosophy, though for now it seems like photographers doing serious video work will still have to keep their video workflow separate from their still workflow.

Of course, this is all still beta software, and video is new to beta 2, so that’s not to say any of this might not change in the time between now and release. One thing I would really like to see is video clips being plaid inside the loupe view in Lightroom and not being kicked out to another video player.

Preliminary Conclusions

I’ve only been playing with Lightroom beta 2 for a couple of hours now; however, I find it to be much more useable than beta 1 was. As such, I think this time, I may actually be able to put it thought its paces and really test it out. It’s not perfect and being that it’s still beta software, I wouldn’t suggest relying on it for production work. Though it certainly seems good enough to hack around in some.

One other thing to keep in mind however, Lightroom 3 Beta uses Camera RAW 5.7, which isn’t available yet (even in beta form). This means any work you want to take into Photoshop from beta 2 has to be rendered out as a TIFF or PSD before it can be worked on, at least if you want to take advantage of the new noise reduction and rendering engine.

Lightroom 3 Beta 2 can be downloaded from Adobe labs.

The Flipside 200 Shown with removable waist belt and removable internal pocket.

Lowepro has been in the camera bag business for over 40 years at this point. In that time, they’ve attempted to push the boundaries and produce innovative products. In this case, we’re going to look at their smallest Flipside series backpack.

The idea behind the Flipside bags is, in my opinion, pretty novel. In an attempt to hinder a would be thief’s ability to open your bag and remove a camera or lens without you knowing Lowepro has relocated the entry point from the front (outside) of the bag to the side against your back. This makes it virtually impossible for someone to access the zippers while you’re wearing the bag.

The Flipside 200 continues the security-minded theme with a trim sleek exterior. There is only a single small zipper pocket and expandable water bottle holder on the bag.

A Tour of the Exterior

The exterior of the Flipside 200 is sleek and sparse to say the least. The aerodynamically curved top features a good sized and sturdy handle that runs front to back along the curve instead of side-to-side like most backpacks have. In addition, a loop that can be used to hang the bag for storage is also provided.

The front of the bag features a hidden pop-out pocket and the corresponding quick release strap to secure a small tripod or monopod, and when I say small, I do mean small. My 3-section Manfrotto monopod is longer than the bag. As for a tripod, a Gitzo Traveler might be small and light enough to be comfortable. Fortunately, the quick release strap for securing a tripod only attaches by sliding though a loop built into the backpack. Therefore, it can be easily removed if you’re not carrying a camera support so you don’t have extra cords going all over the place.

The left side of the bag has a stretchy mesh pocket big enough to hold a small water bottle or other small piece of equipment. I frequently used this to carry the plastic arms for my Better Beamer flash extender.

Side storage pocket.

There is also a pocket on the right side; this time it’s zippered and a bit meatier. Again, it’s designed with the reverse entry in mind and opens towards the back of the bag. This pocket has a verity of built in pockets and pockets including:

• 2- Velcro closing media card pockets that are big enough to hold 2 compact flash cards each or 2 AA batteries each.
• 2- Pen/pencil pockets,
• 2- Full width pockets big enough for business cards or small filters.

In addition, the pocket has a mesh liner on the bottom to keep things from falling out and a short hook tethered quick snap hook for attaching a key ring.

The backside of the bag features the main entrance to the inside; this is closed with a pair of zippers with cord pulls that are protected under a fabric weather seal. The bag is also well padded with a breathable mesh backing.

The straps are contoured for comfort and slightly padded with the same breathable mesh covering. The straps have loops that can be used to attach a small memory card case and an adjustable sternum strap, which has a built in elastic section so it can stretch a small amount while you’re carrying the bag. Finally, where the shoulder straps attach to the bag there are buckles for mounting the provided waist belt.

Inside the Bag

Inside the Flipside 200 with the removable extra pocket in place.

Inside of the Flipside 200, there isn’t much in the way of extras. The main compartment is padded and covered in the typical soft camera bag fabric that won’t scratch lenses and is suitable for attaching the hook side of the dividers.

The inside of the back, which is the “lid” for the bag, has a single thin pocket on it. It’s big enough that you could conceivably put a filter in its case in this pocket. It also is big enough to fit the Fresnel lens from a Better Beamer.

The bag comes with a removable (it attaches with Velcro) zippered pocket that’s big enough to hold a couple of lens hoods, an ST-E2/SU-800 or similar sized parts.

The main compartment is divided vertically by a padded divider that runs from the base of the bag to about three quarters of the way up to the top, leaving enough room for the removable pouch and the camera’s handgrip. Several dividers are also provided to allow the internal space to be configured

Although Lowepro advertises the bag as being big enough for only a mid-size SLR or compact video system and it certainly is though it is a bit tight. I can actually fit a Canon 1D and a 70-200 f/2.8 lens in the main compartment with enough room for another small lens or teleconverter and a 580Ex II flash.

Conclusions

The Lowepro Flipside 200 has been my choice bag for traveling light and birding. It’s big enough to hold almost any dSLR body, even with a battery grip, with a  70-200 f/2.8 or 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 lens attached (with the hood reversed), a flash, a teleconverter or another small lens, a better beamer and some other accessories. Alternatively, if you’re not carrying a 70-200 f/2.8 you can pack 2-3 smaller lenses in the bag instead.

The side pockets provide a place to put keys, pens, media cards or spare batteries. However, like the rest of the bag, space is tight.

The bag does a good job balancing carrying capacity and size, which makes it more comfortable when it’s hot and humid, without being too small for many tasks.

See page 2 for more images of the Flipside 200.

The Canon Ec-S Super Precision Matte focus screen is a user interchangeable focus screen that allows EOS-1 series users to see the shallow depth of field associated with fast lenses in the viewfinder.

User replaceable focus screens provide an easy way to change the functionality of the viewfinder and are a feature of many of Canon’s digital SLRs. Canon produces 3 basic types of focus screen for all of their cameras that support interchangeable focus screens.

• Standard precision matte screens are designed to balance viewfinder brightness and good out-of-focus blurring when used with lenses that have a maximum aperture of f/4 or f/5.6.
• Super precision matte screens are designed to more accurately show depth of field especially when used with lenses with a maximum aperture of f/1.8 to f/2.8.
• Standard precision grid screens are standard precision screens with etched grid lines for composing the image.

Ec-S Features and Requirements

The Ec-S focusing screen is physically compatible with Canon’s EOS-1 series professional SLRs, including the EOS-1D, EOS-1Ds, EOS-1V and EOS-1N series of cameras. However, built in compensation for metering isn’t supported prior to the EOS-1D mark 3 and EOS-1Ds mark 3.

The Ec-S screen is optimized for lenses with maximum apertures between f/1.8 and f/2.8. Outside of that range Canon states the following will happen:

• With lenses faster than f/1.8, the auto focus reticle and spot metering circle may become difficult to see.
• With lenses slower than f/2.8, the screen will appear darker than the standard focusing screen.

Evaluating the Ec-S Screen

The focus screen and installation tool in its case.

In the Package

The Ec-S screen comes in a small box that contains an instruction sheet and a hard plastic case with the Ec-S screen and the tool to change screens.

Installation

1. Place the camera on a flat surface with the lens mount facing up.
2. Use the provided tool to release the catch on the focus screen holder at the top of the mirror box.
3. Remove the old focus screen by grasping the small tab with the provided tool and place it on a clean soft surface, like a Pec-Pad, or in its case.
4. Insert the new screen by holding the small tab and placing it in the holder.
5. Use the provided tool to close the focus screen holder until the latch clicks.

Because the Ec-S screen, like most focus screens, changes the brightness of the viewfinder, the camera must also be configured to meter correctly.

• For the 1D Mk. 4, set Custom Function IV-12 to option 2.
• For the 1D and 1Ds Mk. 3, set Custom Function IV-11 to option 2.
• For the 1D Mk. 2N, set Custom Function 00 to option 2.

There is no setting for the Ec-S screen in EOS-1D Mark 2 or 1Ds Mark 2, therefore they are unable to meter properly with this screen installed.

Focus and Depth of Field

The Ec-s does a very good job at showing the depth of field more accurately. Even with an f/1.8 lens, it’s easy to tell what is in focus. Additionally the viewfinder feels slightly sharper due to the higher resolution screen.

Viewfinder Brightness

Compared to the Ec-C IV, the viewfinder was noticeably darker. My first reaction looking though the viewfinder was, “this isn’t good at all”.

I tired the screen in an environment that better reflected the real world, an average residential interior lit between Ev 5 and EV 8 (7.4 to 60 foot candles) with f/1.8 an f/2.8 lenses. I found the difficulty of using the viewfinder varied between moderate and hard, depending on brightness, subject contrast and maximum aperture.

At EV 5, it was very difficult for me to determine where I was focusing, especially with an f/2.8 lens. I found myself relying on the AF confirmation light, the exact thing I was trying to avoid with the Ec-S. On top of that, the overall experience was frustrating since everything was so dark. Even at EV 8, things were more manageable, at least if the subject had relatively high contrast.

When there isn’t a lot of light to start with, I found the darker viewfinder quickly negated the increase in precision.

Slower Lenses

Changing focus screens is not something I’d want to do in the field. Moreover, it’s not unlikely that a situation might arise where an Ec-S equipped camera would need to be used with a slower lens. In fact, this would be a frequent condition for me, since my long lenses aren’t f/2.8 or faster.

Unfortunately, the results were disappointing. While the viewfinder was slightly sharper, at f/4 it was also 1-2/3 stops dimmer. Indoors, the dark viewfinder made things unworkable quickly. Even if there was enough light to shoot, there often wasn’t enough to compose or focus. At f/8, the slowest aperture that can auto focus on a 1-series body, the viewfinder was very dim even in full daylight.

Conclusions

The Ec-S high precision matte screen is a specialist tool, though I have a hard time figuring out where it fits any more. The Ec-S does do a very good job at what it was designed to do, as long as you’re prepared for a dark viewfinder. In a studio with bright modeling lights or outside in broad daylight with f/2 and faster lenses, the Ec-S is certainly usable. However, if you use f/4 or slower lenses or teleconverter combination, the Ec-S is not a good choice.

Personally, I find it’s simply too dark to be useful for me, even when paired with f/2.8 or faster lenses.

Unfortunately, Canon doesn’t have a good solution for photographers using f/2.8 to f/5.6 lenses that shows focus well at f/2.8 and doesn’t make the viewfinder very dim at f/5.6. With ISO performance increasing with every generation, the ability to use f/2.8 zooms in very dark environments is becoming more of a reality. In those conditions, visualizing focus is still important, but so is a bright viewfinder.