Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM Lens Sample Image and Stuff

Anelisa, oh Anelisa…

I wrote a few weeks ago about a new book on lighting titled “Direction & Quality of Light” by Van Niekerk and I told you all to order it if you know what’s good for you. I’d be a total fucking hypocrite if I didn’t go ahead and order one for myself after telling you to do so. So here’s proof that I did get my own copy. Because it’s fucking good. And not only that, but I ordered my SIGNED copy directly from the vampire slayer himself.

Signed baby, signed.

Those of you paying close attention to the pictures will notice how I strategically placed the book between some of our test gear lying here in my office. I figured Van Niekerk would really appreciate his book surrounded by top quality state of the art Canon gear after everything he had to say about our poor quality control (of which incidentally he’s right). And you have to admit, the Canon logo does look cool next to his signature.

The pictures were shot using the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM Lens. A lot of morons write to me every week about this lens not having IS, despite the fact that this lens is so sharp it could crack your monitor viewing images at 100% as we discussed on this blog before. Just take a look at the 100% crop below.

100% crop, click to enlarge

There’s more to image quality than just IS. So you retards complaining to me had better recognize and stop spamming my goddamn inbox and wasting my bandwidth and hard drive space.

And in case you were wondering, as far as I know, Van Niekerk has no clue who ordered this book and who he signed it for. But I’ll tell you this though, all the pictures of gorgeous women I’m seeing in the book are indeed making me do certain things in new ways, if you know what I mean.

In other news, I’ve been playing for a while now with some of our upcoming bodies. Been having mixed feelings about a lot of things going on here right now. For one, I can’t seem to convince Tokyo about the fucking megapixels they keep stuffing on the new sensors. Then there’s the marketing teams who come up with all kinds of retarded feature sets for new bodies. Who the fuck uses a goddamn 9 point AF system these days? Honestly? Nikon just released the D7100 with a frikkin’ 51 point AF system at $1200! Only 15 cross type points and not very sensitive, admittedly, but at least people have more options compared to our ancient 9 point system, which even made it into the $2000 6D and totally fucked it up. Apparently Tokyo is of the opinion that everyone using a 6D composes pictures with the subject right in the fucking center of the frame every time. People write in asking me which camera to choose and I always recommend the D600 instead of our own 6D. Because that’s how I am and that’s how you guys know me; I’m honest. I hate to bullshit people.

But more on that in another post. I need to spend some time now with a preproduction model of the new 7D.

New book: Direction and Quality of Light

Direction & Quality of Light

I don’t often do this but I have to promote this latest book by Van Niekerk titled “Direction & Quality of Light.” I personally own two of his earlier books and I’ve learned a lot from them. Yes, yes, I know what you’re gonna say, I may be the Canon Camera Guru on the Interwebs, but I must admit that even I can learn new stuff from others all the time. It’s what keeps us all growing, isn’t it? Keeping ourselves open to new information and learning from the experiences of others. And I can tell you, I’ve been following Van Niekerk’s blog posts for a few years now, and when it comes to the direction and quality of light, he knows his stuff.

Van Niekerk – In theaters soon.

If not for the information in the book, I can assure you that you’ll want to get it just to look at the beautiful women he’s shot. And you know, just sayin’, but if the wife and/or girlfriend want to know why you lock yourself up with this book in the bathroom everyday for so long, you can always claim that you’re learning about the direction and quality of light. Longtime readers and followers on Twitter may also remember that I have a thing for Anelisa, the model that’s on the cover of this latest book. Trust me on this: sweet dreams are made of Anelisa.

What I also like about Niekerk, is that he’s one of the few photographers who openly complains about Canon. And as you can no doubt imagine, anyone who openly and publicly bashes Canon for valid reasons immediately earns my respect. Cuz I gotta be honest with you guys, but this entire fucking industry is full of pussies. If the few non-pussies hadn’t spoken up 4 years ago, then today Canon would still not have a DSLR available on the market that’s able to autofocus properly.

Just take a look at this post on Niekerk’s blog, where he discusses the many issues he had with Canon in the past.

Canon Quality Control Sucked

This photo explains some of the reason why I felt I had to go back to using Nikon. The photo was taken towards the end of 2008, and shows my repair slips for the nearly 4 yrs that I had been using Canon.

- this pile of papers doesn’t include any duplicates.

- this pile of papers doesn’t include my attempts to get a sharp 16-35mm (v2) lens. It took a 5th copy to get one that even started to match Canon’s hype about the new lens!  Honestly, the Nikon 14-24mm f2.8 absolutely wipes the floor with the Canon optic. The Nikon 14-24mm f2.8 is also a main reason I went back to Nikon. Canon simply has nothing that even matches this lens in optical quality.

- I also had to make two attempts at getting the 4th copy of the Canon 16-35mm f2.8 II calibrated to an acceptable level.

- This doesn’t include the initial Canon 24-105mm f/4 that was soft and I returned .. wait for it .. even before these lenses were recalled for the flare problem.

- What this list also doesn’t include are the two repairs slips for 2 of my 3 Canon 1Dmk3 camera bodies that had to have the submirror assembly fixed. (I bought the 3rd body after all the AF issues were apparently ironed out.)

- Neither do these repair lists include the one 1D mk3 that I sent in subsequently for poor AF and frequent error 99 lock-ups.

You have to read the full post for all the details to really understand how fucked up this really is. And don’t even get me started on the 1D Mark III debacle.

Now let me be quick to also point out that a lot has changed at Canon in recent years. Ever since late 2011 shit appears to have gone back to normal after Canon Inc. re-hired the quality control department and put them back to work. Seeing how quality control is a major issue these days at Nikon, it would also not surprise me if Canon Inc. hired some people away from Nikon’s QA department too. However, had it not been for people like Van Niekerk, who have the balls to actually publicly complain about Canon’s fuckups, instead of continuing to kiss ass, we would have still been in deep shit here. Because as I’m sure you can understand, as an executive here at Canon USA I can’t convince upper management of anything if I can’t provide them with customer complaints and enough data to prove we’re in fact truly in deep shit. So I always welcome any and all such complaints. I encourage all of you, yes even you ass-kissing pussies, to stop letting Canon take you from behind like a cheap whore, and instead to grow a pair of hairy balls and really tell them how you feel.

In any case, just get Van Niekerk’s book if you know what’s good for you.