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posts by Derek

About Derek

Our resident web guru, Derek graduated from Ball State with a BFA in Visual Communications. When not in the office slaying CSS dragons, jousting social media windmills, or working on the blog, he's also a fine artist, working in oil paints and photography. He's an Olympus shooter, and swears by his trusty tank of an E-3.


Canon EOS 5D Mark III Firmware Hits 1.12, Fixes Things

One of the lucky few to get your hands on Canon’s new beast, the 5D mark III? Well then, you’ll be happy to know Canon today has launched a new firmware, 1.12, which fixes some things you may or may not have encountered:

  1. Supports a new accessory, GPS receiver GP-E2.
  2. Fixes a phenomenon where a pink cast may develop over the image when the shutter is completely pressed with the camera’s power turned off (by the auto power off setting).
  3. Fixes a phenomenon where the camera operation stops after one shot when shooting in High Dynamic Range (HDR) mode.
  4. Fixes a phenomenon where the Shooting Date/Time in the EXIF data of the image shows a later time than the actual shooting time.
  5. Fixes the time zone for the Samoa Islands.
  6. Corrects errors in the Finnish menu screen.

Wouldn’t you love to have been the engineer who had to figure out #2? Anyway, you can download it now from Canon USA’s page, just select your OS and version. Except you OSX Lion people, in Canon’s infinite wisdom they’ve only listed the firmware under Snow Leopard, so look there instead.



Nikon Announces Service Advisory For Certain EN-EL15 Batteries

Just a friendly notice here, but Nikon is doing a recall for certain EN-EL15 battery packs. In rare cases (only 7 reported world-wide), the batteries may do the whole typical overheat and rupture thing that plagues batteries from time to time (ask Sony and Dell). The EN-EL15 is, of course, the battery pack for the D800, D800E, D7000, and Nikon 1 V1, so, if you have any of those models, you should pull out your battery and check the serial number on it. About halfway through, you should see a letter representing the lot. If that letter is E or F, you should see about following Nikon’s instructions on what to do next.

More information, a diagram illustrating how to determine if your battery is affected, and more over on Nikon USA’s site.



No DSLR? Like Us On Facebook And We Might Give You One Free

Speaking of Canon, if you haven’t noticed it yet, we’re running a contest over on our Facebook where you can enter to win a Canon EOS Rebel T3i kit, on us. Yup. Free. Well, free in exchange for your virtual affection. So, if you’re in the market for a DSLR you didn’t have to buy, trot on over to our FB page (you’ll need to use a desktop browser, because FB’s mobile site is a piece of @#*! and doesn’t actually support the things they need us to use to run the contest, we’re sorry about that). Like us f you don’t already, and then it’ll take you less than a minute to enter. But hurry, all entries need to happen before the of Thursday this week. Tick-tock.



EOS 5D Mark III Puts Canon In DXO Mark’s Top Ten

 

While we wait on Canon to get back to us about it’s going to do about the pesky light leak, how about some shop talk about the EOS 5D Mark III’s technical prowess under the hood? Luckily, that’s exactly what DXO is giving us the ability to do, with another of their infamously objective sensor test barrages. The final word? The EOS 5D Mark III ranks highest of any Canon sensor to date, with 24 bits of color, 11.7 stops of ISO range, and capture details uncompromised by ISO all the way up until 2293. Not a bad show, we think you’ll agree. Now, it’s just back to waiting to see what happens with more of the new Canon king getting sent out…

Check out the full DXO break-down via the link.

Results By DXO Labs



Nikon Announces New Entry Level DSLR: D3200

Another day, another entry in the nonstop march of device obsolescence. Today we have the D3200 from Nikon, which displaces their D3100 as the go-to entry-level DSLR. Unlike the D3100, however, this new entry isn’t just a minor spec update to keep things fresh for another year. oh no. This time we see a massive 71% increase in resolution, jumping from 14.2 megapixels all the way up to 24.2 megapixels. And, despite that bump in resolution, it also milks out an extra frame a second, pushing the number up to four. Sure, the rest of the spec sheet looks pretty similar: ISO 100-6400 native, 1080p HD recording, a 3″ LCD with 921,000 dots, a DX-crop sensor, a guide mode for those of you just starting out, manual controls plus a plethora of scene modes, a lack of built-in autofocus motor (you’ll need to use lenses marked “AF-S” if you want to autofocus with this camera), and optional connectivity for a wifi transmitter and GPS. But, can’t we agree that the jump in megapixels is somewhat notable for a camera that comes in at $699.95, including an 18-5mm VR lens? You bet.

And, the D3200 will be available in both black and red, and you can get yourself in on some preorder action here: http://robertscamera.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=d3200



Nikon Announces New FX AF-S 28mm f1.8G Wide-Angle Prime

 

Today Nikon has also announced a new entry to it’s seemingly ever-expanding Nikkor lens line-up. This time it’s a refresh for their 28mm prime, keeping the f1.8 but bumping it up to the modern G (no aperture ring) spec, along with all the other modern Nikon techs you’d expect at this point (nano coating, integrated silent-wave AF-S motor, M/A switch, etc). As always, the name says most of it (“AF-S 28mm f1.8G”), but there’re a few things we can mention for the curious. It’s an FX lens, which means it’ll mount on both FX full-frame systems, and on DX ones (with a field-of-view equivalent to about 42mm in old terms, which is somewhat less exciting a focal length.) It sports a minimum aperture of 16, giving it a 71/3 stop range. It’s got a 67mm filter thread, which should make most people happy, what wit that being a very common size these days. There’s a rounded 7-blade aperture diaphragm in there to round out your bokeh. And otherwise, that’s about all you need to know. You can check out the MTF chart and construction diagrams below, or you can just hop over to our site and get your name in line to get one when they come out:

http://robertscamera.com/photo/lenses/for-slrs-dslrs/primes/wide-angle/af-s-nikkor-28-1-8-g.html



Canon’s 5D Mark III Suffering From Light Leaks, Canon Looking Into Solution

So, this happened over the weekend, while I was busy repainting my bikes rims and not so much sitting in the office, but for those of you who’ve been hearing about the phenomenon where light leaks from the EOS 5D Mark III’s top-deck LCD can cause metering problems for long exposures, Canon would like you to know the following:

To Users of the Canon EOS 5D Mark III Digital SLR Camera

Thank you for using Canon products.

The phenomenon described below has been confirmed when using the Canon EOS 5D Mark III Digital SLR Camera.
Canon is now examining the countermeasures and once the countermeasures are decided, we will post the information on our Web site.

Phenomenon
In extremely dark environments, if the LCD panel illuminates, the displayed exposure value may change as a result of the AE sensor’s detection of light from the LCD panel.

Affected Product
Canon EOS 5D Mark III Digital SLR Camera

Support
Once the preparations are complete, we will be making an announcement on our Web site.

This information is for residents of the United States and Puerto Rico only. If you do not reside in the USA or Puerto Rico, please contact the Canon Customer Support Center in your region.

Please register the EOS 5D Mark III. By registering, we will be able to notify you via email when service updates are available. If you already registered, please ensure you are opted-in to receive the notification.

Thank you,
Customer Support Operations
Canon U.S.A., Inc

Contact Information for Inquiries
Canon Customer Support Center
Phone: 1-800-OK-CANON
1-800-652-2666
TDD: 1-866-251-3752
Email: [email protected]
For additional support options: www.usa.canon.com/support 

In addition to watching Canon’s page, you can keep your eyes on this blog and we’ll let you know more information once we get ahold of it ourselves. Meanwhile, feel free to sound off in the comments if this is something you’ve suffered from yourself or not.



Local Derby Shooter Marc Lebryk Talks D4

Photo by Marc Lebryk

Following up hot on the heels of the last D4 love post, we have one of our favorite local photogs today getting his initial thoughts about Nikon’s new D4 up. As a long-time Nikon shooter for his personal work, and a Canon shooter for his day job, Marc Lebryk is often a pretty good source for balanced thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses of both systems. And, after burning in excess of a thousand frames with a D4 in his first weekend with it, his review seems to stop at nothing short of glowing. But, don’t take our word, go on over to his blog to see his exact thoughts, some high-iso crop samples, one full-size high iso shot from a Derby bout, a video sample, and more.

 



Nikon Cleans Up At DXO Mark’s SensorParty

So, you might be aware Nikon has recently released two highly anticipated cameras, the top-pro D4 and the compact pro D800. And as always with new cameras, the pending question have been: can they improve upon the image quality of the last generation? This is especially true in the somewhat controversial D800 with it’s massive resolution which is criticized online for challenging one of the common rules of digital imaging: the smaller your pixel, the more noise you’ll have. Considering it’s predecessor was one of the low-light kings, people have been waiting with some anticipation, we feel, to see how such a drastic change is going to affect the legacy Nikon’s been building in low-light performance.

And now, DXO Mark, makers of analytic sensor evaluation software, have finished their purely empirical analysis of Nikon’s two new sensors. Their conclusions? Nikon has nailed it.

DXO's Results For The Nikon D800

The D800 is a runaway success by their measure, and is now their top-rated sensor of any type. Yup, any type. Even medium format. And in case you skimmed that graphic up there, I invite you to go back and pay attention to that reported 14.4 stops of dynamic range. Now that’s impressive. For you low-lighters out there, ISO performance is rated at the point where image noise begins to compromise detail and resolution. So, the D800 doesn’t quite rule the way the D3s did (it made it up to 3253 ISO in that measure), but it does best the D700, which only made it up to 2303. Not bad for a camera with more megapixels than I have years to my name, right?

And, what about the D4, you ask? Well, it’s apparently no slouch either, and currently sits at the third best sensor they’ve ever reviewed, below only the D800 and Phase One’s IQ 180 back. None too shabby there. High ISO performance here edges really close to the D3s (which remains the highest-rated low-light shooter in their database), falling a mere .15 stops lower in exchange for those extra megapixels.

So, you Nikon folks shouldn’t have any worries about the new generation of cameras left except one: do you need more resolution, or do you need a machine gun that can fire shots fast enough to assemble a zoetrope from the results?

For you Canon folks, we’re still waiting for results on the EOS 5D Mark III, we’ll report back once they’re in. For everyone else, why not go ahead and get on our preorder lists for Nikon’s two new champs, or hit the links below to check out DXO mark’s full reports on them?

D800 Preorder

D4 Preorder

 

DXO Mark Analysis for D800

DXO Mark Analaysis for D4

DXO Mark Sensor Rating Chart



Roberts Is Pleased To Announce Used Photo Pro

Roberts Announces Launch of New Used Camera Division

Indianapolis, Indiana, March 21, 2012 -

Roberts Camera, Indy’s premiere photo store, is very excited to announce their further expansion into the used camera market. Roberts is grossly expanding their inventory by acquiring used photography equipment worldwide.

This equipment is restored to beautiful condition in their downtown Indianapolis store and resold in the downtown location or online, and can be found at robertscamera.com or usedphotopro.com – the new online store for Roberts used equipment.

This used camera inventory will make Roberts extremely competitive in both price and availability. Used equipment is a cost effective way for everyone from professionals to the general market to be able to afford the best of the best! In an industry where new models are launched quite frequently, the used camera market is a great place to find something “old” and “new.” The variety of equipment and economical prices are only two of the reasons to check out this ever-changing supply. Visit robertscamera.com or usedphotopro.com to find the latest in-stock items.

“We are really proud of this new venture,” said Roberts Director of Operations, Corey Reinker. “This expansion is going to allow us to carry a huge supply of used equipment and sell it through multiple channels. Between our Roberts Camera website, the UsedPhotoPro website and other avenues, we are hoping to reach people not only nationwide, but internationally as well. I think people who are on the hunt for used equipment are going to be really impressed with what we have to offer.”

Founded in 1957, Robert’s has become the Midwest’s premiere source for photo, video and electronics equipment. Roberts Camera is family owned and operated. Roberts has two brick and mortar locations serving the greater Indianapolis area: Downtown at 255 S. Meridian Street and in Carmel at 12761 Old Meridian Street.




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