(Bill Gallery, on left, and the Creative team on location at Sugarbush Airport, VT)

You can read all the specs in the world, and you can do some test shooting and tryouts, but the fact is, you really don’t get to know a camera until you’re on an assignment with it.  Whether under the pressure of hostile conditions and editors’ deadlines, or the slightly different pressures of an Art Director and client hovering behind you while the models are looking for direction, the little things about a camera, both good and bad, are going to make themselves known pretty quickly on a job. 

You’ve seen some of the videos, now we get a chance to sit down and talk to Bill Gallery about his experience shooting with the 5D Mark II. 
Bill is a veteran “Corporate Reportage” photographer.  Much of his work resembles documentary photography or journalism, within the context of corporate America, some of his early work being the first Annual Reports for Apple Computer in the mid-‘80s.  He shoots fast, spontaneously, with very little in the way of artificial sets, styling or lighting.  He needs to move fast, and he needs to be flexible- both in his composition and in his equipment.  He shoots with two basic lenses- the Canon 24-70 and the 70-200.  For a taste of his work, see www.billgallerycom.

Interview with Bill to come, here're a couple of teaser videos or our location shoot with the 5D Mark II...

It takes a bit of work to get our attention on the Pro-Digital blog.  There’re a boatload of products out there that are, well, to be kind, less than professional-grade.  The Eye-Fi Wifi card is something that, at first glance, seems a little gimmicky, but when you take a good look at it, it’s actually quite remarkable, and a potentially powerful tool for the working pro.

It is, pure and simple, a memory card with either 2 or 4GB of on-camera storage.  It also has a WiFi transmitter that allows you to move files to a workstation, wirelessly.   

What’s not to like here?  First, on set, there’s one wire we can leave at home.  Actually, one complete setup- card reader, network configuration, whatever your preferred method of transferring files to the computer is. 

Both Adobe and Apple have released some updates centered around RAW file support.  (Adobe’s Camera RAW works within Photoshop and Lightroom, Apple’s RAW file support is built within the operating system (OSX) to allow Aperture 2, iPhoto 08, and iPhoto 09 and others, even Finder to handle RAW files.)

Adobe’s Camera RAW 5.4 is adding support for the following cameras (there are no interface or feature updates):

   *  Canon           EOS 500D (Digital Rebel T1i/EOS Kiss X3 Digital)

    * Canon          PowerShot SX1 IS

    * Epson           R-D1x

    * Hasselblad    CF-22

    * Hasselblad    CF-22MS

    * Hasselblad    CF-39...

Things are so simple in DSLR land.  There’s the Big Two, and the others…  occasionally you have some cross-fertilization, oh, maybe some lenses or software bridging between two players, but rarely do you see the complexity and intrigue of the medium format segment.  We, here at H2H, even have trouble keeping it all straight, and then Phase One goes and buys Leaf, right?  We thought it may help to look at the landscape before the bit Phase deal to understand where this is all coming from.  

Here goes, alphabetically.  

Hasselblad

First we have Hasselblad.  Hasseblad is the easiest, actually, because as of around 2005 or so, Hasselblad made the bold move of dedicating it’s H series cameras to only the Hasselblad (known in the US as Hasselblad, actually, Imacon in the rest of the world…) digital backs.