Wednesday, February 7, 2018

An EXCLUSIVE look behind the scenes of Canon Professional Services at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics - A photographer's candy store!

Yesterday I mentioned that I was at the Main Press Center for the first time, and a big part of my reason for being there was to get my loaner gear from Canon. It was a pleasant surprise when I walked up to the counter of the Canon Professional Services desk and there was Calvin, my local CPS rep from San Francisco. He has helped me out numerous times in the Bay Area, but this time he was helping me out half a world away.



I was there to pick up two loaner Canon 1D X Mark II cameras and a Canon 200-400mm lens to use throughout these Olympic Games.

Calvin went back back into their storeroom and came back with my loaner gear. At that point, I asked him if I could shoot some photos of their stockpile. I was given exclusive access to do this in Rio at the last Olympics, and weaseled my way in once again.

This is a warning to all of you camera junkies out there. The following images may cause you to salivate excessively and possibly even send you into tremors.


I can not even imaging how much money is in this one photo. That is a massive amount of $6000 camera bodies and really big lenses that sell for $8000 and more.


And on the other wall are even more goodies.


This shows the wall of Canon 1D X MK II cameras as well as Canon 200-400mm lenses, Canon 100-400mm lenses, and Canon 70-200mm lenses.


They also have a whole bunch of teleconverters and even video products.


As you can see, Canon Professional Services has a plethora of small lenses as well, including the Canon 24-70 II, Canon 16-35mm, Canon 11-24mm, Canon 8-15mm fish eye lenses and others I have never seen before.


I looked in another room and saw a bunch of Canon technicians who were cleaning and repairing cameras and lenses. I actually had an issue with my Canon 70-200mm lens (my fault) and they should have it repaired within 12 hours. And they were nice enough to give me a loaner 70-200mm to keep me going in the mean time.


I saw this one technician working on the guts of a Canon 1D X.


I leaned in closer to get a better shot. It was very cool to see this.


This technician appears to be checking the camera and lens combination.


I have used Canon lenses for more than 15 years now and never seen one in pieces like this.


Canon has multiple teams of CPS reps and technicians working these Olympic Games, with them going from early morning until the wee hours of the night. And let me tell you, we all appreciate their efforts at home, but even more so here at the Olympics where we are so dependent on our camera gear.

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7 comments:

  1. Sounds and looks like another great day . Ohhh that room , I vision there is a room in heaven like that . Seeing them all lined up so perfect , you almost wouldn’t know where to start , CPS is a canon photographer’s best friend .
    Seeing the guts of the camera just reassured how talented these techs are . Happy to hear you gear is in good hands . Good luck for an amazing next day . Oh you haven’t said how is the weather so far ?

    Thank you for all the updates , I smile when my phone bings that you have posted . Rock On 📸

    Jenn C

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  2. Jeff, Thanks as always for all the amazing detail and narrative! Love following you around! Wondering what they do with all this gear after the Olympics... I may be in the market for an upgrade and that place looks like my kind of candy shop! Stay warm and safe!

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  3. Hello from Mrs. Taylor's 4th grade class in San Jose, CA.

    As a class we check in on the Olympics by reading your blog almost every single morning. Today we listened to the song "Dust in the Wind" so we could connect with your side story. In math we estimated how much some of the camera equipment would cost altogether.

    Picture #1 would cost about $1.5 million based on what we could actually see.
    Picture #2 would cost about $806,000.

    DM, a student, calculated that pictures 1 and 2 combined is about the cost of 6 Lamborghinis.

    Keep up the great work! We can't wait to check in next week and work on decimals and fractions.

    Fondly,
    Mrs. Taylor's Class

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  4. Pretty inspiring to see an elementary school class following the Olympics and kudos to Mrs. Taylor for sneaking a math lesson into those interesting photos!!

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  5. I enjoy reading your blog. Thank you for sharing nice photos. From South Korea:)!

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  6. I enjoy reading your blog. Thank you for sharing nice photos. From South Korea:)!

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  7. As impressive as that looks, I'm surprised that the technician isn't wearing a hair bonnet to keep any hair from getting into the cameras and lenses. I would think that kind of work would be done in a clean room environment.

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