photography show report - and bonus material!

Andy

today i attended the canon expo in nyc, at the jacob javits convention center. my first stop was an hour-long presentation and talk by renowned portrait and fine art photographer, douglas kirkland. what thrill to see, hear and meet a photogrpher i've always admired. this was a fascinating lecture and presentation - yep - lots about the "good old days" of film photography, but always a parallel to today's digital world (kirkland shoots today with a 1Ds Mark II).

his first photo he talked about is one of my all-time favorites, taken from the air in a jittery single engine plane:



A few things hit home for me during kirkland's talk:

* it's not the camera, it's the photographer. kirkland demonstrated this over and over again. i was reminded of the importance of this, as he would describe the gear (or sometimes, lack of gear) that he'd use on different ahoots. later in the day, he would remark that i only had a dslr and 50mm lens with me, and "where's my bag of lenses?' :lol3

* the importance of interacting with your subjects - and you'll see the results of this below... he's shot many tempermental folks - liz taylor for example - and on one interview, they'd been told: "no photographs!" the interviewer did his thing for one hour, kirkland watching and listening the whole time. at the end, kirkland went up to liz taylor and said "it was fascinating to meet you, i thoroughly enjoyed this past hour. listen - i'm relatively new at look magazine, can you imagine how wonderful it would be if you agreed to let me take your photograph?" of course, she said "yes." and you can see the results on kirkland's website. i later applied this very same technique with douglas and his wife, francoise

there's more, but i'm saving some of the stuff for another report.....

douglas talked alot about the stars and famous people he's shot. it wasn't all easy - he was assigned by look magazine to go to paris, to shoot liz taylor and richard burton. he told us how he was there for a month, before finally the burtons agreed to be photographed .... ahh the tough life of a magazine photographer :rolleyes

and so, meet francoise and douglas kirkland


and this is the shot i was trying to shamelessly copy, amidst the hubbub of the tradeshow floor: (reproduced below, with permission, from kirkland's website, and is property of douglas kirkland. it's the one that took kirkland a month in paris to capture...


i spent some time with the kirklands afterwards, and the very cool news is that douglas agreed to be interviewed by me in late october, for an interviewii'll put up here on dgrin how cool is that?

okay, onto the other stuff now... let me tell you, it was a "canon-gasm!" :lol3



yes, i stopped at the pro camera stand. i held and shot with the canon 5d and new 24-105 f/4L I.S. lens. the camera? feels great! so light, compared to the 1Ds Mark II - the screen? huuuuuge! wow is all i can say. it felt responsive - and fast - fast on the shutter and continuous raw shooting, and fast on the review to lcd. the ergonomics felt great, very similar to the 20d and some of the 1Ds Mark II - very intuitiive i would add, also. several canon reps i spoke with reiterated the "mid-october" delivery date on both items.

when i asked about the rumored 50 f/1.2L, i got a few surprised looks, followed by shaky denials, so that tells me that that lens could still be in the offing (i hope!).

i stopped for a while at the "canon portrait studio" where they had various nyc pros shooting with the new canon 5d, wirelessly tethered to a powermac g5, 30" display, and about a dozen other monitors it was *so* cool. the pro would shoot, and in seconds, it was up on a plasma display. the art-director and editor, was immediately throwing proofs off to a sweet new canon big print printer, and they would pass these prints around the audience. talk about instant gratification! there were smiles of approval all around, let me tell you.

print quality? hoo-boy, it was fantastic - and folks, they weren't editing these shots in photoshop - straight from the camera jpgs. the quality, detail, rresolution, color balance, all of it, it was the real deal. i was very very impressed.









hehehe i couldn't resist this one, it's for our advrider.com friends :lol3



all in all, a great show put on by canon - btw, they had every product on display in the entire canon ditigal imaging stable, it was a very impressive setup.

(all shots 1Ds Mark II jpgs, straight from camera, iso 1600)

enjoy (tradeshow) photography,

marlof

d. r. o. o. l.

Steve Cavigliano

HooooHahhhhh How exciting this must have been So are ya still on for the 5D? The way you made it sound, you'd be crazy to pass it up. At the least for a one month "trial marriage"


Excellent thread and I can't wait to see the interview


Steve

Enough about Canon, what did they serve for lunch :eat

Andy

Steve Cavigliano wrote:

H

Enough about Canon, what did they serve for lunch :eat

i was hoping for lunch with those three gorgeous models - but then i remembered i'm happily married then again, a ride with motorcycle girl would be fun, too

seriously, canon went all-out on this show, spending millions i'm sure but there was no free lunch :cry

i had a little tuna salad whilst posting here at starbucks

mercphoto

Brunettes in leather on big bikes. OMG!!! Makes me want to buy a new camera... (and sadly, I'm not joking!)

Peter Dumont

Well done Andy !
A great piece of journalism I'd say .

Thanks on behalf of all of us and consider yourself hired for the job ! :andy


Bye,
Peter Dumont

Khaos

What a great report.
I'm looking forward to reading that interview.

David_S85

Sure looks like that was a fun day.

Seamus

great report Andy, did you have a look at the mk11n?

Andy

Seamus wrote:

great report Andy, did you have a look at the mk11n?

but you cannot tell any difference from the 1D Mark II (except for the "N" designation at least in my hand....

swcolleen

andy wrote:

but you cannot tell any difference from the 1D Mark II (except for the "N" designation at least in my hand....

Thanks for the post...I am even more excited for tomorrow now when I get to see it all for myself!

Colleen

JohnR

Good report Andy.

When will you do one on a REAL camera system like Nikon?

It's too bad that personally I don't like the ergonomics of the Canon system because they do have some nice lenses and cameras. Can't wait to read the interview!

ian408

Andy, did the LCD look any bigger/better? That'd be the bomb chimping
on the sideline

Ian

Andy

ian408 wrote:

Andy, did the LCD look any bigger/better? That'd be the bomb chimping
on the sideline

Ian

which lcd?

rutt

andy wrote:

i stopped for a while at the "canon portrait studio" where they had various nyc pros shooting with the new canon 5d, wirelessly tethered to a powermac g5, 30" display, and about a dozen other monitors it was *so* cool. the pro would shoot, and in seconds, it was up on a plasma display. the art-director and editor, was immediately throwing proofs off to a sweet new canon big print printer, and they would pass these prints around the audience. talk about instant gratification! there were smiles of approval all around, let me tell you.

print quality? hoo-boy, it was fantastic - and folks, they weren't editing these shots in photoshop - straight from the camera jpgs. the quality, detail, rresolution, color balance, all of it, it was the real deal. i was very very impressed.

With studio lights and a Canon pro camera properly set up, you can do this. The 1 Series cameras have lots of features for customizing sharpening and curves which most of us ignore because we go through a raw conversion step.

ian408

andy wrote:

which lcd?

back of the camera. supposed to be bigger.

ian

Andy

ian408 wrote:

back of the camera. supposed to be bigger.

ian

both the 5d and the 1d2n have the huuge new displays

Nikolai

Awesome, Andy!
Thank you very much for sharing!

How great is that you get interview with D.K., can't wait!

ian408

andy wrote:

both the 5d and the 1d2n have the huuge new displays

I was thinking about that today while I was trying to chimp some stuff. It'd
be interesting to know whether these larger displays are better in the sun.

Thanks Andy!
Ian