Friday, November 28, 2008

Photo of my younger son

My younger son

Just a photo of my younger son made a few months ago. I was browsing un-processed RAW files when noticed this one...



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Monday, November 24, 2008

EOS Discovery days

Last Friday I went to Canon's "EOS Discovery Days" in Brussels. Thanks to Bert Stephani for sharing an invitation, otherwise I would have missed it.

Canon has shown a lot of their photo equipment: all SLR models, many lenses and printers. It was allowed to try everything, unfortunately only at the counter desk (where light was less than ideal). Contrary to my expectations EOS 5D Mark II was still a pre-production unit, so we were not allowed to try it with our own flash cards... Canon Belgium expects to get new 5D in the beginning of December.

I am planning to buy EF 85 mm f1.8 lens so I tried it and a few other... This is not very meaningful shot made with EF 1.8/85 (in fact I could have more testing opportunities in a specialized photo store...).
Just trying EF 85 mm f1.8

The formal part of the event consisted of a few presentations. I've got a bit controversial feeling about the whole event - on one hand it seemed to be aimed at professional photographers i.e. those already familiar with Canon cameras and lenses; on the other hand the presentations were made as if people in the room didn't know about Canon... Anyway, the presentations were nice, particularly the photographs shown :)

Presentations were followed by a workshop by Bert Stephani. I always like when professionals give their practical advice - even if I already know the subject there are always some small things that are very helpful (and that I would hardly think of by myself).

Bert on stage with his model Erika

A nice addition to the even was a book EF LENS WORK III available for all guests for free. Not just a catalog of Canon lens, but a lot of detailed information and nice illustrations and use examples.



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Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Blogger blog backup

I found today that one of the blogs I read regularly was completely screwed up. Hacked or failed - anyway all records and comments were lost. So it made me thinking about backing up my own blog while it isn't too late.

Quick search via google resulted few options, with a free little tool from Codeplex looking like a most complete and easy backup and restore solution.

So far I only used it once for one backup and it worked well. It was very easy to configure; it was fast to make a complete backup of all my posts and comments. I hope I'll never need a restore option but it seems to be equally easy with that tool.

One remark: I still need to make a backup of my blog template myself (manually).



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Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Few quick notes

Belgian photographer Bert Stephani has published in his blog an invitation to Canon Discovery Days in Anderlecht with free workshop that Bert will conduct. The event will be in Dutch and French.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II starts appearing in the shops. B&H has it listed for $2,699.95 with indication that they expect it in the beginning of December. Checking German portal idealo I found several listings for around 2,200 Euro with camera not being available; but there is one entry for 2,400 Eur and two for 2,500 Eur showing the camera is available from stock. So I hope we will soon see the hands-on reviews and tests of Canon EOS 5D Mark II.

For those living in Leuven - note that the city hall services are moving from the center of the city to the new office next to the railway station. They will be open at new address from the 2nd of December.



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