EOS 5D Quirk

For the most part, I am overwhelmingly happy with my 5D. There is one issue, though, that is causing me confusion. I have been playing with long exposures and hoping to do more with star trails and such. Those exposures require sometimes hours of open shutters to really look good. I have tried one for 10 minutes and it looks pretty good, but the star trails aren’t long enough. So, a while back I tried one at 30 minutes and the camera locked up. I thought maybe that since I messed up some settings that I had done something wrong, so just now, I tried it again.

It didn’t work. In fact, it locked up my camera. When I close the shutter after 30 minutes, the red light [which stays on during exposures and data writes to the CF card] stays on for at least another half hour – basically until I pull the battery. I can’t even turn it off with the switch. The LCD flashes how many pictures are left on the CF card, but no other information other than the word “busy” on the screen.

This concerns me and I have no idea how to fix it. I’ve tried searching the ‘net for it, but nothing pops up. Then again, this camera is so new that I may just be the first person to experience this difficulty. I sent Canon an email and maybe they’ll send me a fix.

Has anyone else seen a similar problem to this on this or any other model of camera?

[UPDATE:] Silly me: I enabled a nifty feature. For long exposures, there’s an “auto noise reduction” setting… so, for my 30+ minute exposure, the camera said to itself: “hmmm… there might be too much noise in this shot. I’ll fix it.” and then proceded to expose an equal length “black frame” shot to be used a a “hot pixel” frame of reference for de-noising the original image – thereby causing a 30+ minute lock up in which I could not use my camera. And, of course, that means I lost my picture when I pulled the battery. Oops.

Nevermind…

I ran some hardware diagnostics for many hours without finding anything, but something told me to look at BIOS and drivers for my SATA RAID conroller. This is the device that controlls the 1.2TB of hard drives. I flashed the BIOS to an updated version, installed a new driver and cleared out another application that didn’t work and rebooted.

Then, I initiated a copy of 200GB or so of data [this would have caused the system to restart] and it’s all good so far. No unforseen reboots. So, it wasn’t hardware at all, but BIOS and drivers. This is good. We all love computers that don’t crash, don’t we?

Hardware Issues

This new server I have is great – until I actually started copying data to it. I think there’s something wrong with either the motherboard or the CPU. It’s hard to tell. It simply reboots with a stop error every once in a while – usually under some kind of load. The stop error is generic and nondescriptive. Does anyone know of some good diagnostic tools other than replacing hardware one component at a time?

Finally Settling In?

It looks like we’ll actually be getting local cell phone numbers now. I’ve resisted the change, but there have been too many confusions with locals changing the “1” to a “0” [the area code where I have my number is presently 713, whereas I live now in the 703 area code]. There are also some annoying things that happen when I’m “away” from my “home” area code too long – like the strange dissaperance of my voicemail capabilites, or the massive signal loss from the Katrina era [“No, I wasn’t hit by the hurricane, but my number is in an affected area…”]

They tell me I’ll get better service once I switch, but I’m not sure I believe them. One thing I do know, though, is that I will most likely pay less in mobile taxes than I did with a Houston number. This would be most heartening.

Laura or I will be sending out a note to those who should have our new numbers when we get them switched over.

Lens Distortion No More?

I have just learned about a wonderful new tool in Photoshop CS2 that is a life saver – or, to be more accurate, a picture saver. I’ve noticed dark corners in almost all of my pictures with my “bad” lens and in a lot of my super-wide pictures as well. What I have learned is that vignetting, as this is called, is a normal thing even for the most expensive of zoom lenses. Fixed length “prime” lenses do not suffer these problems nearly as much. This can be avoided [mainly minimized] by utilizing an F-stop value that is in the center of the lens’ range instead of one of the maximum or minimum values. I, of course, like to go to extremes, so this vignetting shows up in my work.

So – how does one fix it? In Photoshop there is a nifty tool to correct lens distortion – including vignetting. So – the pitures I took of my friend’s daughter now look ten times better since I’m able to smooth the exposure to the edge of the frame. They no longer look like I’m taking a picture through a tube.

It doesn’t do away with lens distortion, but really allows me to deal with what I have. It doesn’t compensate for the slow focus problem, but it will make some of my darkened pictures look a bit better. Actually, a lot better. I was quite surprised how much difference a little de-vignetting makes.

New Lens?

After spending a weekend attempting to photograph an energetic three year old, I have decided that my over 10-year-old lens is not suitable for that job. It looks as if I will need to buy a new lens. The old one is so slow to focus that the child usually moves out of focus before the lens gets there. So – blurry pictures. I think kid photography is somewhat more dificult than sports photography.

So – I’ve been looking at zoom lenses in the 70-200mm range. My current lens is a Tamron 28-200mm, but I have other lenses to cover that “lower” range: an excellent quality Sigma 17-35mm wide angle lens, a “cheapie” Canon 35-80mm which came with my old Rebel and has better clarity than my Tamron 28-200mm.

In my searches, one lens stands out: the Canon 70-200mm F/4 “L” USM lens. This lens is one of Canon’s “L” series lenses. The “L” really means their top-end professional line [and that ususally means $$$]. I looked at the 70-200 F/2.8, but that one costs over a $1000 more than this one – which seems to be the entry point for the high-end professional lenses. I even looked at an equivalent 28-200mm “L” lens, but that one was over $2000, so it got scratched off the list [I’ve even read some reviews about it that give it a “mediocre” rating – not something I’d pay two grand for]. Some of these “L” lenses cost over $6000 [Ouch! I hope I don’t need that one any time soon!] but this one is actually affordable at less than $600. Sure: it’s simple and doesn’t have as many bells and whistles as the others [like image stabilization], but it’s a workhorse and the picture quality is astounding.

Looks like I have something else to save up for!

Trillions Of Bytes

2012-01-08 23:29:28

It certainly feels like Spring today, what with 65 degree temperatures. What a wonderful day for a ride – which is exactly what I did. I’m totally stoked about riding home, too! [but then, I usually am… did I tell you I love to go home to my wife?]

I finished building the new data server with the two replacement drives that came on Wednesday. It took quite a while to rebuild the large data storage array – but that’s because it’s 1.2TB. That’s right: 1.2 terabytes… or 1,200GB or 1,200,000MB or 1,200,000,000KB or 1,200,000,000,000 bytes. That kind of space only a few years ago would have taken up a whole room with storage racks from floor to ceiling – and I certainly wouldn’t have been able to afford it. And this is all on 5 hard drives – that’s it. In a tower-sized computer case. Yes, it’s larger than average, but all this space fits in a box the size of 3 CD ROM drives. Unbelievable. And those drives are not even the largest available today! I chose them becasue they were big enough and cheap. There are 500GB drives available today and that would be 2.5TB! Wow.

That’s a lot of space. Should last us a few years.

Next steps: data migration. I’ve started this already [it seems to not even make a dent in the available space – 30GB moved so far is less than 3% of the total space where before it was almost half my drive] but the big migration is yet to come. And, we’re going to be cleaning up the directory structure as well as eliminating any duplication.

Should be fun… heh.

Spring?

When does Spring arrive? Soon, I hope.

I used to love Winter – now, I think fondly of warm sunshine and breezes. I think Winter had become an unknown Utopia – a distant ideal for me when I lived in hot, humid Houston. Now, it’s a reality. I’m still cold.

Of course, that doesn’t stop me from riding in the freezing cold. I enjoy the ride more that I dislike being cold. There are days, though…

However, all-in-all, I think I’d still rather be too cold than too hot.

I have noticed some flowers springing up in our yard and the tulips we planted are now sprouting. I hope to get some good pictures of them soon.