Canon R5 - One Year On Review

Yesterday (or actually two days ago now, if I end up finishing writing this post tonight) marked a year since I got an R5 as the successor for my 7D. Its funny how, earlier this evening, I'd been wondering: "Hah... I wonder what day exactly it was that I got my new camera last new year... I'm sure it was around this time of year-ish"

This is a follow-up to my earlier posts a week in, and a few months in. 

Key Points:

* Overall, I ended up filling 2x 256GBmemory cards (give or take) this year with this camera - Which also means, I've quickly burned through half a TB of disk storage (vs under/around 150 GB a year previously)... More on this in a bit

* By and large, it has now ended up becoming my daily driver. While initially it was just to get used to it under different lighting conditions, later the increased image quality + better performance in a wide range of lighting conditions was a major drawcard.

* I've been on two multi-day trips with this camera now, so can say quite a bit more about how it handles for such usage

* In terms of battery life - I've got a total of 3 batteries, though in practice, I've only really needed 2 (with the third coming into its on those occasions where I'm too lazy to charge the one in use (and forgot to charge the other one, which had gone flat a while earlier). For typical cycles, they usually average around 400-600 (centered around 550 ish), though sometimes that figure can be as high as 1100 - 1300. Lowest would've been around 250 - 300 ish.

* The improved light gathering capabilities have really come in handy with the increased major Aurora storms this past year, meaning that I've been able to see + capture Aurorae for the first time in my life

[Darktable Trials] Testing out a New Photo Management / Editing Workflow - Part 1

Over this past week, I've been kicking the tyres on Darktable again -- partly to see if I can now make it work for me, but also partly out of necessity (as my usual workstation + office-space are out of commission currently, but I had a bunch of photos needing editing, and Picasa - which I've been using to date - will eventually bite the dust in a bad way as it's been long deprecated so I wanted to avoid putting it on yet another machine... plus, I kept forgetting to grab the installer from my backup drive when I plugged it in).

Maybe there's a bit of "Stockholm Syndrome" here, but early indications are that with the latest current version (4.8.1 when I went to download it recently), Darktable has resolved a whole bunch of idiosyncrasies that made it an annoying non-started previously, along with offering a bunch of new capabilities that present a good way of achieving some of the "Ultimate Photo Editing" tool points I mentioned previously.

 

Update Notes: 

* 25/11/2024 -  Original Post. May end up tacking on more details in a later revision, in which case these update notes will be updated.

Mirrorless Camera Observations - A Few Months In (Part 2 in Series)

As a followup to Part 1, here are my observations on the mirrorless camera having used it for a few more months (and for long periods instead of my old DSLR).

 

Pros:

Unfortunately, this list is currently still a lot smaller than it should probably be... especially given the price tag on this thing.

1)  As mentioned last time, the overall improved sharpness + richness of colour range the sensor are capturing are a definite improvement. Especially loving being able to use decent / normal-ish shutter-speeds that I want to be using at night, and *still* getting the shots with reasonable quality is something that's been a real benefit of using this at night and/or in marginal lighting conditions

2) As expected, when dealing with sharply varying lighting conditions (e.g. shooting birds in a backlit tree, where taking one step to either side can land you in a patch of bright sunlight + a different exposure), having a digital viewfinder is a real improvement as it allows seeing in real-time the exposure changes. Also, just having this all be via a digital screen vs sun-rays passing through a zoom lens direct to eyeball is a real safety measure that's good to have. Same too the ability to use the viewfinder while recording video. Basically all the expected benefits of shooting with a mirrorless camera (and subsequently having "live view" in the viewfinder) are proving to be as I epected

3) When it works, the auto-focus is good for tracking moving objects - Operative word: "when" it works... More on this later.

4) Having 3 (or actually 4, if counting the one on the new-style lenses) dials able to be used for controlling various settings is a big improvement on only have 2! Particularly as the third one can now be mapped to controlling ISO in manual mode, making that mode actually useful if you want to lock in camera behaviours with the other 2 then use ISO to get the desired exposure (i.e. typically underexposing relative to what the camera's metering things the scene requires)

Cons:

This list is unfortunately still a lot longer than I'd like, with a bunch of these being ever-frustrating things that grind you down everytime you use it. (Nothing puts these into focus as much as just switching back to shooting on old DSLR for a change, and suddenly no longer having to deal with most of this crap)

Mirrorless Camera Observations - First Week Impressions

Recently I bit the bullet and proceeded to get a new camera to supplement my ageing (and also apparently somewhat ailing though still trustworthy) 7D DSLR. After sticking with one camera for over a decade, switching to anything else was always going to come with a learning curve. What I didn't expect though was what some of those learnings would be!

 

Short Summary of Key Points

Pros:

* Between a nice new higher-quality standard lens, and new sensor tech (and being FF this time too), images are a lot sharper in general. Especially when shooting landscape stuff (e.g. treelines against sunsets in particular, but also tiny text on small labels on things in frame) are now often very sharp + clear with this setup, whereas it used to be somewhat hit and miss whether the same applied before with my old standard lens setup

* There are now 3 dials on the body that can be used to adjust various things, along with an additional mappable control-ring on the new-generation lenses. As you'd expect, in Full Manual Mode, these dials have been mapped so that the two that used to be present still control shutter speed + aperture as before, with the new one handling ISO - exactly as I'd been wishing for many years.

* New sensor == Higher ISO levels you can use (and with less obvious grain when that happens)

* Auto-focus available during video recording

* Can use EVF for "through the lens" live-view preview of what you're recording during video recording - which is better for situations where holding at arms length to see the LCD was problematic

* Can also choose to use the LCD screen in  "pop out" mode out the side, with some angling support available

* A whole bunch of new + more advanced autofocus modes + settings to choose from, along with a wider array of focus points that can be used

 

Tan Dun's Water Concerto

I just finished watching a performance of Tan Dun's "Water Concerto" tonight after seeing a clip earlier in the day and being quite intrigued about it.

In short: It's an absolutely fascinating work!

A very interesting mismash of disparate elements put together in interesting ways...

Tan Dun(譚盾) - Water Concerto (水協奏曲) performed by Yi Chen

Coco Review (Spoilers)

Over the weekend, I took Mum and Dad to see Pixar's latest masterpiece - Coco!  (And if you're wondering, yes, the much maligned "Olaf short" was still screened before it that day).

Technically, the film doesn't officially open here in NZ till Boxing Day. However, while checking the cinema times for the weekend (what better way to pass a few hours during the 30+ degree heatwave that's been gripping Christchurch over the past few weeks), I was pleasantly surprised to see that they were showing it various theatres this weekend! It turns out that these were actually special advance screenings (I didn't know that at the time), and that they were only going to be running over that weekend (luckily my gut instict was right on this part... it would've sucked having to wait another 3 or so weeks to get to see this).

Production Notes (From 150YOD Video Project) - Things to Fix in Blender

To followup on my earlier #150YOD video post. I had originally intended to release this a lot earlier (e.g. around September 13th), but various things have been taking up my time over the past few months, delaying the release of this.

 

As has become my habit after completing each Blender project, here are some notes about things (bugs, usability quirks, observations, and general todo's) I ran into that need attention. Though it's mainly a list for myself, hopefully these notes may be of use to other people too.

First Steps with Rust

A few days ago, I suddenly got the urge to download Rust and have a little play around with it. Truth be told, I've been hearing some good things about it, and seeing as they now have a stable version out, I felt it was finally time to give it a little play around.

So far, I've played around with it for about 3 days. There's still a lot I don't know about the thing, but at the same time, I now have a decent feel for some "everyday aspects" of coding in this language.

2017 Kickoff - Holiday Inspirations

We're a week into the new year now, and as most of us return to work from our holidays, I'd like to mention a bunch of interesting stuff I came across in the second half of my holiday (i.e. the stuff that came after alternating between lounging around like a vegetable and running around going to exotic locations for fun). I've gotta say, it's been great having a break!

"Piper" Review - Finding Dory Short

I decided to pull this one out into its own post, as it kind of deserves it IMO...



Birds. Macro Photography. Shallow DOF. Awesome Renders. Entertaining + Creative Animation and Sound Effects. Pixar. Fluff-ball Cuteness Overload!

This is one of the best little shorts I've seen. I really, really, really love it! It's just soo adorable, and features a lot of my favourite things.

Finding Dory Review (SPOILERS)

I just got back from a fun rainy afternoon watching Finding Dory  :D

CHI2016 - Sketching Papers, and General Discussion of Interesting Research Directions

The annual CHI (Human-Computer Interaction) conference is on this week in San Jose. As one of the "big + important" conferences in Computer Science research, it's always interesting/important to keep an eye on what's happening there to see if there any interesting things come out of it. So, I duly started checking out the accepted papers, before stumbling across the "sketching" section.

My first thought was, "woah... they have a section on interfaces for sketching tools?!", followed quickly by, "I wonder if there's anything of interest there...?" It turns out that there are two papers here, both of which fall quite squarely into the frame of the type and style of research that I love doing most (i.e. the "fun stuff" I'm doing with Grease Pencil + Pose Sculpting/Sketching, vs the empirical work I currently do for my PhD).

So, what were these papers?
1)  "Skuid: Sketching Dynamic Illustrations Using the Principles of 2D Animation"
2)  "Storeoboard: Sketching Stereoscopic Storyboards"

Post-Picasa Replacements - Followup Notes #1

As a followup from yesterday's post/rant about Picasa things, I've started doing some digging around about ways to achieve the "Fill Light" technique, as well as started the process of auditioning potential replacement systems.

This will probably be the first of several post about this topic (though how many there will be I don't know yet), and will just be a way for me to keep track of my notes and findings about what works, what doesn't, and what may potentially be useful information.

Siggraph Asia - Conference Notes 2

Here is the second part of my notes on the Siggraph Asia conference.

Convered: Tech Briefs session + Electronic Theatre

Battle of the Chocolate Milk: Puhoi Valley vs Lewis Road Creamery

In recent months, there's been a battle brewing on the supermarket shelves for supremacy of the premium chocolate milk. The two contenders are:

Lewis Road Creamery - Fresh Chocolate Milk (Whittakers Chocolate)

Puhoi Valley - Real Belgium Chocolate Milk

This weekend, I've finally tried both, together, in the same sitting. Here is my review of how they stack up against each other.

(Full Disclosure: This was already the second bottle of Puhoi Valley (chocolate) we'd gotten, and the first Lewis Road (chocolate). We'd previously tried the Vanilla and Coffee flavours from Lewis Road too.)

Siggraph Asia 2015 - Conference Notes

As promised, this is one of the longer posts where I'll go into a bit more detail about various topics from my trip to Siggraph Asia 2015 in Kobe, Japan. In this post, I'll be talking about the conference itself: highlights, insights, and general impressions.

So, without further ado, let's get on with it!

Siggraph Asia 2015 - Overall Trip Report

Last week, I spent a wonderful week in Kobe, Japan attending Siggraph Asia 2015! I was there to present my first paper at an international conference - "Grease Pencil: Integrating Animated Freehand Drawings into 3D Production Environments", staying at the Portopia Hotel.

The paper can be downloaded from the first link above. Please use the ACM DL version one, since that's the official one which keeps count of the download stats ;)

The conference was held in a mixture of venues around the hotel where I was staying:

• Most conference talks/sessions were held in the International Conference Center building, which was located across the courtyard from the hotel, and accessible via a covered walkway.
• Registration, Posters, and the Exhibition (i.e. trade show) were held across the road at the International Exhibition Hall No. 2
• Keynote #1 and Reception were held in the Portopia Hotel (Portopia Hall, and Grand Banquet room respectively)
• Computer Animation Festival (Production Sessions, Electronic Theatre) were held in the hall on the ground floor of the conference center (entrance off the courtyard)

Apparently this was the largest Siggraph Asia to date, with around 7000 attendees coming for the conference/exhibition. I don't know the actual figures as I don't think they actually released those, but this was the ballpark figure they were claiming in earlier press releases.

Cosmos Laundromat - Episode 1 Online

Congratulations and thanks to the Gooseberry team for the belated (due to timezones) birthday gift this year :)

The Big Year (2011) - Film Review

So, this evening I ended up watching the film - The Big Year - that was playing on TV tonight. This was a comedy film released in 2011 about the three competitive bird watchers competing to see who can sight the most different species in a year.

 Source: IMDB

OneNote - An Experiment

After holding out against getting yet another copy of MsOffice for over a year, I finally ended up installing Office 2013 on my laptop. Along with this came a copy of OneNote - Microsoft's note-taking / scrapbook / braindump app to rival Evernote and co. Over the past few days, I've been giving it a bit of trial run to see if it might find any room in my workflow...