First Impressions of the 5D

My lens was delivered about 3 p.m. yesterday and I spent the rest of the day and most of today trying out and experimenting with all the Canon EOS 5D Mark II's functions. The stabilization works extremely well. I took several shots of a car yesterday afternoon, and I don't know whether it was nervousness with the new camera or the unaccustomed weight (it's heavy), but I was shaking badly. I know I would have blurred the pictures with my Nikon, but the Canon overcame my trembling and yielded perfect, sharp, stable images without a trace of blur. Pictures are lighter than I'm used to. The Nikon took consistently dark pictures. I used exposure compensation on the Nikon to lighten them somewhat, and then lightened them further with Photoshop after transfer to my computer, and even after all that they were still on the dark side. However, it's not a problem. The 5D also has exposure compensation so I can darken them if I wish. I'll wait to see more photos in a variety of settings before making a decision. At its maximum resolution, 21.1 megapixels, the 5D produces a file size that averages 8 megabytes! I think I'm going to settle for medium resolution, about 11 megapixels, still higher than the Nikon's maximum resolution. I'll only use the 5D's maximum size if I know in advance I'm going to have an 8x10 or larger print made.

I mastered the Speedlight flash attachment rather quickly. (NOTE: These early impressions of the Speedlite are incomplete. I later ran into problems with it. A full review appears in a November 29, 2009 posting.) After a little experimenting, I was getting consistently perfect exposures, at least around the house. I found I get the best results by setting shutter speed and aperture manually, just as I did on the Nikon. The flash has its own exposure compensation, and I set it to a minus-1/3 f-stop to slightly darken flash photos which were lighter than I preferred.

The 5D is a fairly complicated camera and not as intuitive as the Nikon. The manual is not easy to understand on some of the more complex functions. The camera can shoot a video, but setting up for it was so cumbersome and awkward I almost gave up. However, once the setup is complete, from then on you only have to press three buttons to shoot a video. Another complaint about videos is that it produces a Quicktime movie, a proprietary Apple file type. That was a bad decision. Why not MPEG?

As I mentioned before, it's a heavy camera. I've been getting wrist and hand cramps just shooting around the house and yard the past two days. I don't know how it's going to be in four or five hours of shooting at a car show.

Waiting...

I bought my Canon EOS 5D Mark II last Saturday, lens not included. Along with it I purchased a Canon 580EX II Speedlite, a SanDisk 16GB flash card, a UV filter and a polarizing filter. Obviously, with no lens, there's nothing I can do with all this equipment but admire it. I ordered the Canon 25-105 zoom lens separately from an internet supplier. I got a call from UPS yesterday informing me the lens would be shipped today. It will require a signature. It will be delivered between the hours of 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. Arrrrrrghhhh! Here I am sitting on pins and needles, starting to read the camera manual for the second time, looking out the window every 15 minutes or so for the UPS truck. What suspense! I've got a feeling it will arrive about 6:59 p.m. That's usually the way it goes. I'll keep you posted.

"Copenhagen"

September 3, 2009 — It was back to The Peterborough Players this evening for a performance of Michael Frayne's "Copenhagen." A bare circular stage tilted toward the audience and three chairs are the only props used by three actors in this two-hour play which is a fictionalized account of conversations between scientists Nils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg and Bohr's wife, Margarethe. An enormous amount of dialog is spoken, some scientific, some philosphical, some mundane. I don't know how actors do it. I can't memorize a phone number more than 30 seconds.

The play jumps around in time, but central to everything is a visit by Heisenberg to Bohr's Copenhagen home during the German occupation in 1941. During the visit, the two left the house for a 10-minute walk. What they discusssed is unknown, and both men's memories of the conversation were hazy. During the play, one of the men will often pace around the periphery of the circular stage, possibly a metaphor for electrons orbiting the nucleus of an atom. Heisenberg's famous Uncertainty Principle becomes a metaphor for the uncertainty of memory.

In the end, the two scientists ponder who suffers the greatest burden of guilt. Heisenberg remained in Germany and became a key player in Hitler's race to build the first atomic bomb. But Heisenberg failed, and was never responsible for a single death. Bohr went to America where he contributed to the successful development of the bomb which killed many millions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but forced the Japanese surrender and, for better or worse, launched the nuclear age.