*Top tips thread*

I have been doing a lot of sharpen testing on the 10D by removing the UV or any other filters from the front of the lens. Most of the results favor removing the filter and replacing it with a hood. In testing this procedure it requires that you remove the filter and screw in the hood.

My tip is - when putting the filter back on or when changing filters - turn the filter backwards until you either hear it click or feel it drop down on the lens, Then tighten the filter on in the proper direction. This may seem obvious but it works a lot quicker than turning and turning and scoring the lens threads.

NOTE: this only applies to filters only - not lenses.

Get a spirit level that fits in your hotshoe (Under £10 from jessops, UK).
If your tripod has one already, shoot with your tripod.
It can save quite a bit of photoshop time, and a shoe fit one can even help when you hand hold, as you can move back from the viewfinder a tad to check you are level.

I think just about every thing else I can think of has been covered.

If you want the best color rendition / accuracy - do use the custom white balance setting with a white card.

I originally thought the Auto WB setting worked pretty well on the 10D. I was amazed by the difference when I first tried the custom setting.

I try to always set a custom white balance now.

Procedure -

1. Take your white card out, (don't use the gray side).

2. Turn autofocus off if the lens you have on the camera can't focus really close, (as close as you can reach out in front of the lense). It doesn't necessarily need to be in focus for the shot of the white card. It's just that if auto focus is activated, it won't let you snap the pic of the white card unless it can confirm focus.

3. Hold the white card in front of the lens, (app. 8 inches to a foot) at a slight angle, (1/3) to the light source in both the horizontal and vertical axis. Approximate should be good enough.

4. Shoot a picture of the white card.

5. Turn your auto focus back on so you don't forget it.

6. Go into the menu and select Custom White Balance. The camera will automatically pull up the last shot taken, it will take a second or two. Push the center button in the large dial to select the shot.

7. Now you must set the white balance setting to the Custom setting as well. It's the second icon down in the right row on the top of the 10D, (right under the K or Kelvin setting). If your in auto white balance, press the wb button and turn the large dial two clicks to the left.

You can now shoot pics that will match what you see with your eyes much more closely. Try it, I think you'll like it.

NOTE: Remember to either reset your white balance to auto or a preset or to shoot a new shot of the white card if the lighting changes.

Almost all of my "grey market" import equipment have Mack warranties and I have to send them back to who I bought them from or to Mack for repair. In theory I have been told Canon will still take them anyway, but I like having 3 years of coverage versus 1 year. Even with the warranty they usually cost less then US version, plus I get the 3 year coverage. Have not had to turn any of them in yet to see if the Mack warrenty is worth it or not, but I try to limit those items I get "grey market" to those I can live without for awhile if necessary (like my second 550EX and my 70-200 IS). Otherwise I pay the extra cost for US so I can get faster repair times.

For Trivia: I bought one US and one import 550EX from BH at the same time and I actually like the import one slightly better as it seems to be better on batteries then the US version. There should be no difference, but there seems to be. No matter which is Master and which is slave, I always have to change the batteries out on the US one first (assuming I started with fresh batteries in both). Usually about 30-40 shots earlier, although it does seem to go even faster in the master slot.

Other Trivia: with the exception of my import 550EX and my two newest lenses, all of my warrenties are starting to run out so I will have to start paying for repairs in the future. I dread the thought as I am hard on lenses when using them (they are stored with care).

Here's what I can think of, some from what I always do, some from what I wish I had done:

Set the auto power down to 30 minutes - that way the camera will never power down, unless you forget to turn it off when you put the camera in the bag. When you take the camera out of the bag turn it on and put the strap around your neck. Whenever my camera is out of its bag it is ready to shoot. (I always do this)

As soon as you have the camera on and ready to shoot, if you don't need to shoot right away, spend a few seconds looking at all settings. Check mode dial, I usually set it to P or Av or Tv or M and usually want it on the right one for what I am doing. Chech drive mode, ISO, Focus mode etc. (This is good advice and one day I plan to use it!)

If shooting from a tripod without a remote release set mirror lockup and self timer for the 2 second delayed shooting. More importantly - when you are finished and take the camera off the tripod, set the mirror lockup back to disabled and drive back to 0ne-shot or continuous, BEFORE putting the camera away. (this will save you anxiously worrying about why the camera wont shoot a couple of days later, not that I have ever done that of course!).

When you get home transfer all images from all cards to your PC and format the cards. Charge all batteries. Put a card and a battery back into the camera and put the camera back in its bag. Put all other cards and batteries back into the camera bag. If you grab your camera bag and go shooting its good if everything you need is actually in the bag and ready to use. (I always do this and it does make life easy)

2 Batteries is the minimum requirement. (I have 2 Canons and there are 2 Power-2000 ones on order)

2 CF cards is the minimum requirement. (I have 2 512s)

If you don't own a wide enough lens for the landscape you are looking at, set the mode to M and set your aperture and shutter speed and take a series of shots panning and make sure there is some overlap between each shot. You can stitch together a panorama later. (I want a 70-200IS first then after that I'll consider getting a 17-40L)

If you drive to places to shoot, consider a charger that can use 12V, it couldn't hurt to put that in the car (I have 2 on order). If you have 2 fully charged batteries you probably wont need to recharge, but Murphy's law can be a **** sometimes.

RAM is cheap, your computer should have at least 512MB if running WinXP, I find 1GB RAM is nice. Remember that photoshop will open the 2048 x 3072 JPGs into an 18MB file (worse if RAW -> 16bit) per picture. (sometimes I have quite a few pictures open in photoshop at the same time)

Backup those image files! HDDs can crash! (if the files are too big and you don't own a DVD-Writer or anything else suitable, I'm sure your files will be fine, HDDs never fail for people that have important files that they haven't backed up, it just couldn't happen, could it?)

That's all I can think of right now, I hope some of it is helpful to some of you.

Are you covered?

I am a homeowner and the Farmer's Dude said, "No problem up to about 10k since we talked. We DID talk, didn't we?". Don't trust this. You pay the premium, you make the rules.

One: Verify your coverage for: Theft, Loss, Fell off the tripod, I was too drunk to remember, and Other Acts of God. (He gets blamed with all of our stupid problems but Insurance Companies just LOVE his name!) You get the picture.

Two: Document. If you don't have receipts; it didn't happen.

Three: Photograph! We are, after all, the photo folks. Keep a cd with photos of all your gear in a safe place. Your exif will prove camera model, lens type, date, etc., etc.

Four: Renter? There is special coverage for you but it is not automatic in many cases as it is for homeowners. It is, however, very affordable.

Moral: See where you stand. Stuff happens to the nicest people, and you are the nicest I know!


ALSO: Put one of those diode lights that cost $1.50 or so and deliver 500 hours of light on your camera strap for the LCD on late nights, like Haloween.

They also help when you need to run into the bush for a quick pee stop, and let you see what the hell you stumbled over.

Chris.

Pack beyound your camera gear. As obvious as it sounds, if you're shooting on location, your camera bag will most likely be the only bag you take with you, so make sure you pack it right.

My camera bag contains (besides the obvious camera gear):

* Pocket knife / multi-tool
* Small two AA batteries flash light
* chargers for canon BP-511 and NiMH AA
* small first aid kit (aspirin, tylenol, band aid, etc.)
* rain poncho (they're small and invaluable when you need one)
* Power bar (2) and a can of Red Bull (1)
* a pack of PEC-PADS
* small can of compressed air (not really air, but you all know what I mean)
* a small roll of gaffer tape

I shoot mostly outside, and this stuff has saved my behind more than once. Well worth the extra weight.

I have a couple of tips to contribute here.

1. Always have a backup everything if possible. One night before the Indy 500 I went with another photographer to get film and he was also in need of a battery. At the store there were two batteries for our similar cameras, (10S). He ended up getting both of them. I said my battery was fine and I had a back up anyway. The next day it is 11 am and the parade laps are coming around. Guess what? Yep my battery ran out. No problem tho, I get in the bag and find....no battery. Fortunately my buddy had both of the ones he bought the night before. I was saved. I had used my backup battery earlier in the month and just plain forgot about using it.
Since going digital and having rechargeable batteries a similar situation happened. I went to Best Buys and bought a cheap back up battery. Charged it up and the next day at the track the Canon battery started to go. Inserted the cheap battery and it was dead in about 30 minutes and 10 shots into it. That battery was defective. I returned it and the next one worked fine. Now just in case, I have my Canon battery plus 2 cheap backups.

2. If you are ever contacted by a high school photography club, by all means go and talk to the kids. They love having someone come in who is "in the business". Just don't make a mistake like I did. One kid asked about the weight of my camera along with my Canon 100-200 lense. I said it wasn't too bad but after all day at the track it did get a little heavy. So I thought about passing around the camera with lense attached. Much to my horror about the 3rd person to look at it put it up to her eye and began twisting the barrel. It is an AF lense and you aren't supposed to twist it. Well it did damage the lense. Now it will only focus at 100.
I didn't make a big deal out of it because I should have warned them not to twist it. But as the Canon tech at the 500 told me in May after he worked on it for about an hour, "nice paper weight".

Now I have 3 batteries, two telephoto lenses, a back up film camera just in case. 3 cf cards, 2 sharpies, 2 pens, 2 rolls of film, a cooler with at least 3 bottles of frozen water and a couple of beers for the end of the day. After the season is over I let my son shoot the film up.

3. On your first frame, whether film or digital, take a picture of a 3x5 card with your name, address and phone number on it. Just in case you drop one and somebody honest finds it. I also have my name and phone number on the outside of the cf card. While at Kentucky Speedway this summer, I found a 256 cf card laying on the ground. I didn't want to just turn it in for a track photo guy to keep it so I kept an ear out for anyone who lost one. Sure enough on race day in the photographers meeting room while eating my lunch, I over heard a guy talking about how he lost a cf card the day before in the pits. I went up and asked what kind of cf card it was, he said it was a Lexar 256 and he had just bought it on Friday. I pulled it out of my vest and he was so damn happy. He was doing contract work for one of the racing teams and it had a ton of pit action pics on it. It would have been a lot easier if he had his name on it or in the first frame.

I didn't see this tip yet, so...

I cut a piece of post-it and stick it to the bottom of my CF card cases to make an 'up' and 'down' side.
If the card is face up, it is empty. Face down, it's full.

boB

If you have small children at home always, ALWAYS, ALWAYS put your camera bag up where they can't reach it.

Picked up my daughter from pre-school on Tuesday. She was famished. Dropped my bag & purse at the door, sat her down, made lunch. Played. Watched Leap videos. I had to go potty.

I am not the kind of woman that spends an hour in front of the mirror anytime I pass one. I went in, did my business, washed my hands and went back downstairs.

There was my beautiful, inquisitive, very fast child with my 10D on her neck, every other lens out of the bag and de-capped strewn about the living room and my 550 EX on top of the dog (still can't figure that one out... she's a big dog, though if it helps your mind's eye... Great Dane/Yellow Lab mix).

"Mommy! I'm taking pictures!!!"

the shakes started

the shallow breathing started

I'm not sure but I think I felt a pain in my left shoulder and my liver turned upside down at the same time.

Nothing was broken, but every lens had a nice greasy three-year-old's finger print or two on both ends.

I spent at least 30 minutes cleaning and inspecting, all because I was too rushed and neglected to put up my bag where she couldn't reach it.

I was very lucky. Nothing was broken nor scratched. It could have been much worse.

- T.

ps: the child is still alive and intensely interested in photography.

There are already so many tips here, I didn't read them all, so maybe I'm repeating things, but.....:

1. If you have a 10D (and probably it works on the 300D / Digital Rebel as well), set preview to "On (Info)", so that after you've shot, the camera shows the image as well as the histogram on the LCD. That way, you can quickly have a look at the histogram to check exposure. Remember that the photo displayed on the LCD itself does not show exposure, color and sharpness very accurately.

2. The Lenses section of the Canon Camera Museum has depth-of-field tables for most of the lenses. On the info page of a lens, there is a link "Depth-of-Field Data" in the lower right corner. These can be very handy if you want to estimate what will be sharp. I've printed the tables for my lenses and put the prints in my camera bag.

...as an add on to this, if you set the preview time to more than a few seconds, you have time to do all the above and if the image is trash you have time (before the preview/info disappears) to press the Delete button and confirm to delete it. Can save some time later in processing/downloading stuff you know you are going to delete.

Cheers

Ian

Your list struck such a responsive chord, I tried to recall all of the reasons for the "aw sh--" I've uttered the next day for not having followed a similar procedure with my 300D. This forced me to add a few items to your list after "Put camera in "P" mode":

- Drive in Single Shot mode
- Focus point in center
- Exposure bracketing to "0"
- White balance to Auto
- (Turn it off.)
- Put fresh battery in
- Set all lenses on AF

Thank you for stimulating this thought process. I have been bitten too many times in the past for not following a check list.
fc

When using a rental lens or someone else's lens, make sure the AF is on. I took a series of three irreplaceable photos for my church using a rented 14 mm 2.8L. I didn't see any focus squares lighting up, but I figured that the cam would not fire unless it had a focus lock. Since I wear progressive bifocals, I'm not worried when things aren't tack-sharp to my eyes.

Later, on the PC screen, could not figure out why the pics were so soft (out of focus.) I knew I was using a low shutter speed, but I nearly collapsed when I saw that the lens was set to MF and had been for several dozen shots. Luckily, the great DOF of the lens saved many shots.

Director of Technical Information of Canon, Chuck Westfall in another forum provide a tip in reply to ETTL problem in another forum "Rob Galbraith":

http://www.robgalbrait​h.com …iew=&sb=5&o=&fp​art=2&vc=1