Month: September 2008

Canon EOS 5D Mark II Finally Released

Long, long overdue, Canon has announced it’s follow up successor to the aging Canon EOS 5D with the new Canon EOS 5D Mark II. It’s certainly exciting considering that Nikon has been one (two, three) upping Canon consistently the past year or so. What are the specs? Continue reading Canon EOS 5D Mark II Finally Released

Canon L Series Lenses

This was a free two hour class offered by Canon and Keeble & Shuchat with Jennifer Wu about Canon’s L lenses by Jim Rose and nature photography tips from Jennifer. I originally heard about this from Jim when he came to COBA to discuss about CPS membership. As an added treat, Canon brought twenty four L lenses, including the Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS USM and the Canon EF 800mm f/5.6L IS USM, and five bodies (three 1D Mark IIIs, one 1Ds Mark III, one Canon XSi, and a Canon EOS 5D) for everyone to try. Also Jim brought a pre-production Canon EOS 50D with the new Canon EF 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS zoom lens. Continue reading Canon L Series Lenses

Today’s Useful Links

Here’s today’s bookmarks of useful links for future reference.

Konstruktors.com – Tabbed Wigets WordPress Plugin

Konstruktors.com has created a very cool plugin, Tabbed Widged, that utilizes Moo tools to easily implement various types of tabbed browsing such as tabs or according style. Very customizable and easy to implement. Download from the WordPress Extended.

OP111.net – WordPress Child Themes, A Pictorial How To

OP111.net has created a write up, How to make a “child theme” for WordPress, on how to use the hardly discussed child themes feature of WordPress. This is the very same concept that powers the ever popular Sandbox theme. The beauty of using child themes is that you use a framework to develop your website off of, thereby saving you time and energy of not having to recreate the theme files from scratch each time and you modify the theme with only the use of CSS.

Yoast.com – Meta Robots WordPress Plugin

This is a very cool and useful plugin, Meta Robots WordPress Plugin. What this does is add a menu in your Post/Page menu that allows you to set four modes: index, follow; index, nofollow; noindex, follow; and noindex, nofollow on each page or post.

Viper007Bond.com – Regenerate Thumbnails

I’m not sure why this isn’t built into the core of WordPress 2.5/2.6, but the Regenerate Thumbnails WordPress plugin is a very important plugin that address the issue where if you forget or change the thumbnail and medium sizes under the Miscellaneous menu, you can now regenerate all the thumbnail and medium size thumbnails to your new size.

Just Received My Canon Lens Hood

I had picked up a Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM because the price was right and it’s a decent carry around lens, the only problem is that it tends to susceptible to flaring. Unfortunately Canon doesn’t include a lens hood (which helps prevents flares without having to change your physical location) with the consumer/prosumer lenses such as the 28-135mm. Having a lens hood helps protect the front element (having a front filter helps also) from damage in the unlikely event of accidental dropping. Fortunately the lens hood, Canon EW-78B II, isn’t terribly expensive, about ~$20-$30 on Amazon.com.

I was able to find it for a sweet deal, $18.05, on Amazon.com being sold by one of their affiliates: Cameta Camera. With $6.99 for shipping via USPS, the total came to $25.04. I’m quite impressed with the service of Cameta Camera. They shipped my order the next day and within four days I had my lens hood. The only gripe I have is that the packaging they used isn’t very good. They just stuck the Canon lens hood in a standard USPS envelope so the box got a little smashed. Fortunately the hood wasn’t damaged, but I wished they took the extra precaution of putting it into a small box.

So I have a lens hood now for the 28-135mm, fits perfectly, was cheap (for a Canon OEM product), and got it fast. I’m happy.

Canon’s Destined Evolution, A New 5D?

Canon is definitely teasing us good, check this out on their website. Is this the new 5D Mark II we’ve been waiting for?

Although it’s a bit suspicious because on the Canon UK site, we get to see a bit more of the supposed “new” SLR and it looks very similar to the 1D/1Ds lines due to lack of the mode changing dial on the top right.

I can’t imagine a new 1D/1Ds in the horizon just yet…

Today’s Links of Interest

I keep visiting all these cool websites, each with useful techniques or tips and tricks or even just a cool design, and I bookmark them, but I never visit them again. I then look in my bookmarks to look for something specific and find I have a gabillion bookmarks that make no sense to me because they’re all just website names. I remember why I bookmarked the sites when I bookmarked them, but months and sometimes years later, I can’t recall for the life of me why I bookmarked that site. Continue reading Today’s Links of Interest