Beach Shoot Accessory

Beach shoots are a pain, they normally require lugging equipment from the car parked some distance away, and then there's the sand issue, and how to stop it getting into your camera, bags etc.

Meet my latest photography accessory, the Beach Rolly.  Yes I know it's a silly name, but its made by a German company so we'll humour them a bit.  ;-)  It's a great bit of kit, I was able to load it up with my stuff and easily pull it down to the beach.   With the added advantage of not having to put my camera bags directly onto the sand, its probably the best accessory I've bought in a long while.

 

Black Rapid Strap System

So it's got a slightly silly name, but the Black Rapid strap system has solved a problem that I've wrestled with for years.  How do you comfortably and easily carry around 2 cameras while shooting things like weddings & other events?

I saw the Black Rapid RS-7 product demonstrated at Focus a few days ago, I tried it out for size and liked it so much that I bought one immediately.

If you want the technical blurb you'll need to visit the Black Rapid website, essentially its a rather expensive strap attached to a bolt, which then attaches to the tripod mount on the camera, but to quote another company, "it does what it says on the tin".  It just works.

Having used it in "anger" at the funeral I photographed on Friday I'm impressed.  It worked perfectly.  I shall be using it lots in the future!

My favourite lens gets updated

It's been a long time coming but finally Canon have announced a new version of my favourite lens.

The EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM is no more and has been replaced by the EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM.

What's different?  Well certainly not enough to make me upgrade.

According to the Canon USA website the internal elements have been redesigned incorporating a fluorite element and a fifth UD element.  They say "The use of the fluorite element and five UD elements helps to minimize secondary chromatic aberrations and produce better image quality with improved contrast and resolution through the entire zoom range; the end result is an optically precise lens worthy of becoming the leader of Canon's L-series lenses."

Other improvements are that you can focus 20cm closer (to 1.2 metres over 1.4 metres as it was before) and its 20 grams heavier, weighing in at a hefty 1490g.  The magnesium alloy barrel design features is stronger, the new bayonet mount on the front of the lens includes a locking mechanism to help the supplied lens hood stay securely in place.  Also there is a wider focusing ring, and the thickness of the switches has been reduced.

As I'm often shooting in low light, the most important improvement to me is in its Image Stabilisation, the new lens now compensates for upto 4 steps, 1 more than the previous version.

Expect to see the news lens on the shelves sometime after April 2010.