⇍ May 6th, 2007 ⇏
Last week I got an email from Jenny offering me free tickets to the Photographic & Digital Imaging Show, which is "Canada's Largest Photographic Show", held twice a year, organized by Henry's.
Since Angela was working hard on her thesis, I decided to jump at the chance to get out of her hair and spend the day in Toronto. Kris and Jen were supposed to join me on this adventure, but Kris came down with a cold at the last minute so they backed out. So, on Saturday morning I headed into the big city.
My first stop was Jenny's house, where we spent some time chatting about various things over some strained extra pulp orange juice. Zoe took the opportunity to show off her digital camera, which seems to be of very sturdy construction.
With my four free tickets in hand, my next stop was the International Centre in Mississauga. My first goal upon arrival was to find some lucky individuals to give the three extra tickets to. I found a spot by the ticket counter and waited for the next customer. After a few minutes, a beautiful young girl approached the counter to purchase tickets for her and the guy she was with, so I offered her two tickets. For a brief moment I thought she was going to spray bear repellant in my face, but when she realized she could save twenty bucks, she became less defensive and thanked me for the tickets. Meanwhile, a man had come to the counter, spotted our transaction, and had a look on his face like he had discovered some sort of free ticket vending machine. Luckily I still had one extra ticket so I quickly handed it to him and got in line to have my camera equipment tagged.
Once inside, I did a quick lap around the hall to get my bearings. It was pretty big, with a lot of different vendors, three large seminar rooms, a restaurant, and two stages where photographers and vendors were giving demonstations. I decided to start by taking in some free seminars.
In my first seminar I learned the difference between "hunting" and "fishing", and listened to stories from an experienced photographer. The next two seminars I attended where put on by Henry's School of Imaging. They were basically half hour overviews of some of the three hour courses that Henry's offers at their school in Toronto. I learned some interesting "facts", including this gem from one of the instructors: "If you have a wide angle lens, you might experience chromatic abrasion[sic], which means that horizontal and vertical lines will not be parallel."
Hah! Sigh. Oh well... to be fair, the seminars were actually somewhat instructive if you really didn't have any prior experience with photography or Photoshop. Judging by the "oohs" and "aahs" coming from the audience whenever the "clone" tool was used, I'm guessing most people were suitably impressed with the 'leet skillz of the instructors.
So, after some Photoshop seminars I headed out into the fray to check out all of the gear, and find out what was happening on stage. I checked out a short demonstration of a Wacom tablet, and got to try using Photoshop with the fancy Cintiq tablet. Oh man... if only I had a few grand to throw away. Maybe I should add it to my Christmas list. ;)
I spent most of my time in the Canon booth, along with the hordes of other Canonites who were trying to fondle the new 1D Mark III. Meanwhile, I gave into temptation and decided to look through the viewfinder of the 5D. Sigh. Sooooo nice. I did eventually notice the Mark III had been left unattended, so I spent a minute putting it into continuous drive mode and watching/listening to the amazing 10fps shutter speed.
While I was there I also asked to borrow the 24mm 1.4L lens that they had on display. I'm pretty much set for lenses, but if I was going to get another lens, it would probably be something very similar to this. I like the field of view of the old 35mm fixed focal length film cameras, and I would love a wider aperture for low light and shallow depth of field situations. If only I had an extra $1500 kicking around. Oh well. I took a few random test shots and then handed it back. Strangely enough, there aren't too many interesting things to photograph at shows like this.
Although, the Olympus booth actually had an ice sculpture in front of it. To market their new Stylus 770 digital camera, they decided to freeze two of them inside solid blocks of ice, and then have someone carve an ice sculpture around them. When I first arrived, the sculpture was just being started, and by the end of the day it was done, and everyone gathered around to marvel at the "freezeproof" cameras.
OK, this has been a long story, but now we have reached the end of "Mike's Saturday Toronto Adventure". Thanks to Jenny for getting tickets for me. I wouldn't have even known about the show otherwise.
Oh yes, the picture. Obviously this is a collage of some pictures I took at the show. Clockwise from the top left, we have:
Technical details, clockwise from top left:
Did you by chance take a look through the 1D3 viewfinder?-- Aravind at 2:22am, Friday May 11, 2007 EST
Yes, I did... it was slightly smaller viewfinder than the 1Ds Mark II that was beside it, but still pretty huge. There sure are a lot of AF points in that thing.-- Michael at 10:15am, Friday May 11, 2007 EST
Cool. Canon supposedly redesigned the viewfinder on the 1D3. By chance were you wearing glasses when you looked through the viewfinders? I love the 5D viewfinder but I find the 1-series ones are more friendly to glasses wearers, was wondering if you found that as well.-- Aravind at 6:14pm, Friday May 11, 2007 EST
I was wearing glasses... I didn't notice any problems with the viewfinder on either the 5D or the 1D3. I don't really remember looking at the shooting info in the 5D viewfinder. I definitely looked at it in the 1D3 and I could see it quite clearly, as well as the entire image.-- Michael at 10:30pm, Sunday May 13, 2007 EST
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