Alistair Kerr Photography: April 2017

Thursday, 27 April 2017

Hands on with the Canon 5D MkIV

My thanks go to my friend Clint Hughes, who happened to be borrowing a Canon 5D MkIV from Canon UK for testing, he asked if I'd like to check it out, silly question. I set up three flash heads so we could test it in studio conditions. I set the lighting to 'rugged', and started shooting.

The camera handles exactly like my 5D MkIII, as you'd expect, all the buttons and wheels are in the same places, so you can pick it up and you're away, straight to work. After half an hour, or so, I'd got enough images, I'd been changing the lighting after every 8-10 shots, showing Clint, who is a freelance sports photographer, but wants to learn more about lighting techniques, exactly how moving a light even slightly can completely change a portrait.

Next I dropped the images onto the iMac, straight into Photoshop, and set about adjusting the raw files, first thing I noticed was how much bigger they were, 86.1Mb as opposed to the 63.3Mb of the 5D MkIII, but the iMac churned through them easily. I'm impressed, but not enough to invest, let's see what improvements the MkV eventually brings to the table.

My day at The Photography Show 2017 - NEC - Birmingham

The parking ticket seems to go up every year, the show just seems to get better every year, the main stands seemed bigger, the flash lighting stands seemed to have almost non stop 'how to' sessions, which is nice, some people still seem to think bringing all their camera equipment to the show is a good thing, and it seems that having a parade of Star Wars and other sci-fi characters from the Comic Con show next door is still popular (actually I loved that, even got a wave from Chewbacca).

Donuts were definitely a thing this year, mainly because +Scot Baston was having a birthday, and had brought two boxes of Krispy Kreme sugary goodness with him, I found out that I can eat four donuts, but that I regretted it when the sugar rush hit, luckily I eventually drowned the sugar in coffee.

Birthday surprised face

We few, we happy, full of sugar, happy few.

So what did I look at, well the Fuji GFX 50S, what a lovely camera that is, it goes straight to the top of my want list, as well as the beautiful glass to put on it. I had a good look at the Bowens Generator X XMT and XMS flash units, also the Profoto D2, not that I'm looking to buy any new flash at the moment, but it's good to keep a breast of how the new flash technology is developing for when I do.

It was great to catch up with some people I'd either not seem in a long while, like John Willis at the Calumet stand, or +Matt Hart , who working out of the Fuji stand, who I've only managed to chat too online, great to press the flesh and chew the photography cud. The chat and hug from +Tigz Rice , who was demonstrating on the Wacom stand, was very welcome.

The only thing I bought was a Panasonic Lumix TZ80, which I got for my wife to replace the camera she ruined when we were snowboarding in Val Cenis, France in January. Oh and coffee, and lunch at Nando's.

One thing I'm not going to do next year when I got to The Photography Show, is wear new shoes, my feet were killing me by 3 o'clock, lesson learned.

And so I'll leave you with more from ComicCon.