It was going to be a simple evening of high school football. Me and a couple of grandchildren at the season opener. I no longer shoot high school football, or most high school sports. There are plenty of photographers who love the low wages, the requirements for fast, expensive lenses, and dark stadiums.

I did take my Canon G9, the one with screws missing and, from what I’ve been told by too many camera technicians is impossible, a dust ball on the sensor.

I was taking it only for protection. My condom against disaster.

As luck would have it, disaster struck. It was a minor disaster. Still, it wasn’t what was planned.

Before the game teams could take the field for pre-game ceremonies and final warmups, a very large and threatening storm front moved across the city prematurely darkening the skies and filling the early night air with lightning.

The crowd was wisely advised to go into the school until the storm passed. Like most news photographers I remained outside ready for lightning strikes or tornadic winds. My Palm Pre browser, viewing the mobile weather.com site, showed me it would be some time before the game would start, if at all.

The problem was I was holding only the G9. It’s a fine camera but the camera’s higher ISO settings and poor shadow performance meant I’d not be too successful getting a lightning photo or emotional crowd shot. I alsodidn’t have a tripod, almost a necessity for a night lightning photo.

I had to prop the G9 on fence posts, light poles, brick corner posts, and the soccer goal. None were sturdy enough for long exposures, especially with my hands as the other steady anchor points.

I changed my work process to exclude lightning photos and concentrate on the roiling clouds as they moved over the stadium. Even then I was limited by the G9′s limited wide angle view the prevented deep verticals. The widest vertical I could get didn’t include a good compositional element with the stadium and the lights at the base. I couldn’t back up any further. I was already shooting through a chain link fence at the edge of the parking lot.

I shot away, G9 at the ready, noisy, slow, too narrow a view, and missing screws.

Even then, the resulting photo wasn’t bad. I was just not happy that it could have been with a D300, 14-24, and a tripod.

Getty Images photographer spent his second tour in two years embedded with British Paratroopers in Afghanistan.

Invited to stay longer than the usual two to three weeks embedded with the military, di Lauro’s account of boredom and sudden fear captures the essence of covering conflict.

Remove all the obvious Canon  praises and his photos and story describe a hard-working photojournalist whose touch of humanity at war requires a personal experience to tell they story.

“I feel as a photojournalist and as a human being, especially as a human being, who was born into an extremely comfortable western world environment that I have to document the life of people who struggle daily to survive being torn apart by useless wars, famine and social issues. For me it’s always an attempt to capture the sacred side of life and its deeper meaning.” … di Lauro

The Canon Learning Center now includes a brief film by Bruce Dorn highlighting the video capability of the 5D Mark II camera in a practical application, a wedding. The video shows Dorn executing the shoot using the 5D with a full complement of fast lenses (EF 35mm f/1.4L USM, EF 50mm f/1.2L USM, EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM, EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM, EF 200mm f/2L USM, EF 400mm f/2.8L IS USM, EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM) and a tripod.

The strongest contributory element in shooting video with the 5d is the lens resource on a full-frame sensor. I’ve complained about my Canon G9′s small sensor and short lens creating depth of field and angle of view for closeups very difficult to work with for stills and video. It’s the same for the 1/3 CCDs of most HD video cameras.

My cameras are set to A for aperture, not auto, to control depth of field for subject isolation. Shooting video with the narrow dof of 35mm full frame format completely changes the shooting environment.

For a photographer with an understanding of composition details and capable of integrating them into a video environment the 5D may be the perfect start to transition into adding a video component to an assignment. In the hands of photographers who are technicians and not storytellers it becomes nothing more than a very sophisticated point and shoot.

Dorn’s video is a great paid ad for Canon. It’s obviously not a real wedding but a well produced video short created to highlight the camera’s capability. There’s nothing wrong with Dorn producing an ad video. It’s part of the marketing game. I was impressed and I’m a Nikon guy.

The result is very impressive and certainly worth an additional line item charge on the wedding invoice.

The September 24th post at photoblo.gs predicted that Canon would be cutting the price on its low-end professional video cameras to clear stock for their replacements, video cameras with FX sensors and interchangeable lenses to match the quality of the Canon 5D MkII.

From the previous post – - -

“Canon will began to offer serious rebates on their line of HD video cameras. Expect the XH A1to have a hefty rebate as Canon clears out existing stock. The XL2, a mini-DV camera with interchangeable lenses, is almost half price marking the end of SD video camera production. Canon’s consumer HD line is increasing in number and usability with hard drives and SD cards for storage.

Canon’s replacement for the XHA1 and XL2 will be a full-frame, full HD camera with interchangeable lenses using CF or SD card storage. Or, buy a hard drive accessory they’ll provide.

Don’t count out Nikon. The D90 is primarily a prosumer camera. The D700 is full frame. Nikon’s done video before. There is a huge consumer market for HD cameras both prosumer and professional.”

I received today an e-mail alert from Amazon that Canon is offering rebates on the XL2 ($3,249 with rebate) and GL2 ($1,509 with rebate) SD cameras. That’s almost half price with rebate and discount for the XL2 which has interchangeable lenses and uses normal Canon glass.

Wired.com explains the recent jump in CMOS technology that enables the 5D MkII and why it is now possible to build a full frame video camera at prosumer price point.

Certainly looks like a good marketing decision. Somewhere, somebody is planning and approving production runs of a new series of fast FX lenses at a variety of price points to satisfy a new market – full frame video.

What do you do with a broken Canon 17-35mm lens? Don’t even think about getting it repaired. That would be too easy.

You can always do what sv20 at Fred Miranda’s site did to his. Tear it apart. He’s either a frustrated reverse-engineer or carries bad memories from his childhood. It made my knees weak and I am a Nikon user.

I like this idea better.

Even my old-time friend Jock Fistick has joined the Canon 5D Mark II bandwagon with this frame from Photokina. Everyone is raving about the camera’s video and color accuracy with a gig from wired.com.

It’s nice to see Jock getting paid to add to the hoopla that appears to have more with competing with Nikon than about creating professional video gear.

Wikipedia: Photokina | Canon
Links: Photokina | Canon | Chillicothe