I finally finished grades, I caught up on a few housekeeping things I needed to take care of, and I finally had a chance to do some fun shooting with the Canon 5D Mk II. While I haven’t shot enough with it yet to give you a real, unbiased opinion, I will say that I ultimately enjoy it over it’s predecessor, and the display rocks! It really is probably the most color-accurate, sharpest LCDs I have ever used. It is light years ahead of the 1D Mk III and 1Ds Mk III in terms of display, and Canon now has a display that can compete with Nikon’s.

Now, you wonder why I am raving about the display. Isn’t the significant aspect of photography about the image, not the technology behind it? Isn’t it bad to rely on the LCD as a crutch for exposure and focus? Yes, and yes, but no matter how much of a purist you are, you can’t deny the fact that technology does improve drastically over time, and in doing so, it actually helps us out every once in a while. I can just imagine what the introduction of the modern vehicle as we know it did to die-hard equestrians when it eventually replaced the horse…both mechanisms of travel got you to the same place, one just got you there faster, and once roads were built, more efficiently. It’s the same thing with the outstanding displays on cameras nowadays compared to old displays. Yes, they both show the image you took, one just does it better. As a teacher, I don’t encourage “chimping” all the time, but you can definitely check your focus better, and the larger display actually helps us notice artifacts in an image we may have not noticed with previous versions. It’s a tool to use, just like the camera itself. In no way is it to replace a photographer’s eye, in no way at all!

The past few days have really presented some large, dense skies, and seeing skies that thick in West Texas gets you down some, knowing that you may not have a nice sky or sunset to photograph, especially when you have a new camera that you are dying to just shoot! That’s why artificial light was created! Ha, well, not really, but somewhat. I decided to run out to the small town of Smyer (like the title states, I still haven’t actually been there, and to be honest, I’m not completely sure it’s actually there). The cotton’s out of the fields, winter is setting in, and there really isn’t a great, powerlineless horizon to shoot out that way, but there are a couple old, abandoned houses!

Ah, I know, old, abandoned houses, relics of the Great Depression as these two might just be, may seem cliche, but they do offer great subjects to work on applications of Speedlites and gels. I’m currently working on a project that pays tribute to some of America’s most under-valued people, and these houses are representative of what would happen to the memory of these people if just forgotten, so maybe that’s the connection I have in photographing the “cliche.”

To be honest, this first house on one evening this week became a little creepier when I found a rather large doll outside near the path leading to the door.

All shots were made with two Canon Speedlites gelled with CTO. This is a great combination with the blue the sky and clouds were throwing off.

I also switched the white balance over to Tungsten for a few shots to really blue the sky up. When doing this, remember to keep the flashes gelled with CTO, unless you are going for everything a little blue.

I even had a chance to step up into a shot (photo by Amanda Waters).

So, what can I say about the 5D Mk II. It shoots a super huge file, the display kicks butt, the controls are all Canon, all the way, and I’m looking forward to more use, especially on the video end. More to come…