Update...

Well, after many good intentions on blogging during my recent Utah trip, circumstances never really allowed for it.

My purchase of a Roam Mobility SIM card for my iPad didn't help much since the majority of the time, I got "No Service" and the few times I did, it was at abysmally slow Edge data speeds. Had I been on my own, I would have made a point to blog when I had WiFi, but I did not want my friend Bill getting impatient while waiting for me to blog...

In any case it was a successful trip, having visited many new spots in Nevada and Utah that I hadn't been to before. More photos to come in the next few days! The above photo is of Sipapu Bridge in Natural Bridges National Monument.

Lastly, I have moved my main sublimephoto website to new servers, so service might be a little dodgy for a day or two. Soon I intend on updating the site as well, but as mentioned in the last post, I am drowning in photos and after shooting about 60 GB on the Utah trip, things are not getting any better!

Drowning in photos...

This blog has been quiet for far too long and I thought I had better post something! I am literally drowning in photos, that's how behind I am. Between spring cleaning at home, moving my website to new servers, a new vehicle, testing tons of new cameras and lenses, trade shows at work and more, I am so behind with processing photos that I don't know where to begin! The above photo was taken with a new Canon EOS-5D Mark III and the 17mm TS-E at Granville Island.

Canon Pixma Pro-1: Profiling and art papers...

On my last Pro-1 blog entry I mentioned that I found that downloaded profiles improved on the many that Canon supplied with the printer. Well, I am picky I suppose and while some profiles I've tried do seem outstanding, like the one I downloaded from Moab Paper's website for their amazing Slickrock Metallic Pearl for example, others could use a little help... especially those for some of the fine art papers. So, I've started the process of generating my own profiles by printing out the high-quality + extended-greys targets for my Spyder3 Print calibrator...

Canon Pixma Pro-1: Wow...

I set up my new Canon Pixma Pro-1 printer tonight. So far I am very impressed with the prints I've gotten after setting up this hulking beast of a printer. In a word... WOW.

More Infrared: Pitt Lake

I was out at Pitt Lake yesterday and lucked out with the clouds and sun. This was perfect weather for dramatic light and infrared photos. These were all shot with my IR-converted GF2 camera again...

Panasonic GF2 Infrared Conversion

Today, I finally received my GF2 back from LifePixel, after its infrared conversion. As usual, they did a great job and I would say the assembly of the camera was even better than from the factory, with perfectly aligned body-shell seams. There was just a hint of sun during my lunch break, so I snapped off a quick series of shots near Beau Photo. Hopefully I'll have some sun next weekend, so I can get out and take some more shots with it! Two more photos after the break...

Two New Galleries...

This weekend, I was feeling better since getting my cold a week ago and I managed to get out on both Saturday and today, Sunday. I have some out-of-order gallery postings here, but what the heck. Today, I spent a little time behind the Museum of Anthropology out at UBC. It was crisp, cold and icy, but that made for some interesting shots. The gallery is called Cold Walk at UBC MOA.

A week ago, I went for a walk, exploring some back-alleys with my new Panasonic 14mm pancake lens and my GX1, hence the gallery titled Back-alleys and Pancakes. Dingy and grey it was, but I still found a handful of subjects.

Finally, yesterday I went on quite a long walk in the cold, which actually seemed to do my sinuses good! I shot a whole lot more over about three hours and those shots are not yet processed. Watch for it soon...

What I want to handle, ASAP...

For those who have been following my blog, you'll know that I am quite a fan of the Fujifilm X100. Well, I suppose you can then imagine that I was quite excited when Fujifilm finally announced what they had been hinting at, a full-blown interchangeable lens "version" of the X100. I hope to have an opportunity to handle this camera in person sometime in the next few weeks. If it turns out to be as good as it appears to me at the moment, after reading numerous previews online and watching various detailed demo videos, then I suspect that I will be buying into yet another camera system. At this point, I am pretty sure that I'll be fighting to get an X-Pro1 and all three of its initial prime lenses pictured above, when the system starts shipping in late February. Yes, I am that excited by its potential!

Guess what I handled yesterday?

If you guessed a brand new Nikon D4, you'd be right! Yep, a group of Nikon reps were kind enough to pay a surprise visit to Beau Photo yesterday and I got some hands-on time with their new flagship DSLR. Watch for an upcoming "first impressions" article on the Beau Photo Digital Blog in the next day or so.

In a nutshell? Wow! A very impressive new top-end DSLR body from Nikon...

Happy New Year! ... and my first photo of 2012.

My first shot of 2012 is of my new Panasonic GX1 with its optional LVF2 viewfinder and my new 14mm f/2.5 pancake lens. It was taken with my new red Panasonic GF2! Why red? Well, next week I will be sending the GF2 down to LifePixel in Washington to be converted to a dedicated infrared camera and I figured a red body was fitting and will make it easier, at a glance, to tell which body is the IR one. That, and the fact that Panasonic was out of black GF2 kits that came with the 14mm pancake!

I received both these cameras just before Christmas and have been shooting with the GX1 quite extensively for the last week. Watch for an upcoming review in the February Beau Photo newsletter and on the Beau Photo Digital Blogs, but suffice to say for now that I am very impressed. In fact, I would say its image quality on stills is slightly better even than my GH2, although I do miss the multi-aspect-ratio sensor. How is it better? Well I am judging the colour to be slightly more accurate and the dynamic range to be a little better. Also, while high ISO noise levels are similar, I feel that the GX1 offers a slightly tighter "grain" pattern with a little less blotchiness and less pattern artifacts like banding, when compared to the GH2. Again, these improvements are very minor so I would not hesitate to grab either camera in any given situation.