Using the new Canon Speedlite EL-1 professional flash (Real world test)

The Canon Speedlite EL-1 flash was announced late last year, and like many of you, I saw the price tag and thought that I would save some money and keep using my old Canon 600EX-RT flashes. Let's face it, at $899 each, these things are not cheap. But about a month ago, I decided to pull the trigger and purchase two of these flashes. Even though I typically use 6 flashes when shooting events, I had a very specific use for these two new flash heads. But that would be getting ahead of myself, so let me tell you a little about these newer flashes.

The first thing I noticed when unpacking the Speedlite EL-1 is that it is noticeably larger than the previous Canon flash heads. I believe that a big part of this is the fan which is integrated inside the Speedlite EL-1. Yes, there is a fan in these to help keep them cool, even when being used heavily. 

Here is the older Canon 600EX-RT flash laying side-by-side with the Speedlite EL-1. You can see some of the size difference in this photo, but this view does not do it justice.

Here is a head-on view, and you can really see the difference in size of the flash head. As you would expect from seeing this, the Speedlite EL-1 can pump out a lot more light than the 600 series flashes.

Heck, the flash head is almost as big as the base of the unit. But even though this new flash has increased power and light, it is still not why I wanted the two units. 

I purchased the two new Canon Speedlite EL-1 flashes for the faster recycle time! With the new cooling system and large battery pack, this new flash can recharge itself much faster than the older flashes and fire almost endlessly without overheating. 

As many of you know, I photograph a lot of events and rely heavily on remote flashes at receptions. I usually have two flashes with the MagMod MagSphere diffuser (one for each camera) and two remote speedlites set up on 12 foot light stands in the venue. My hope was that these new flashes could stay up on the light stands and keep up with my rapid fire shooting (using two cameras and flashes) for the whole night. I can easily change batteries for the on-camera flashes, but not so much for the remotes. 

As opposed to the Canon 600EX-RT flashes which use AA batteries, the Canon Speedlite EL-1 uses the new LP-EL battery pack. And let me tell you, this battery can hold enough charge to last me for an entire 5 hour party (at a manual setting of between 1/32 and 1/128 power) and still have plenty of battery life left over. I also love that I can charge these batteries using the same charger as my Canon cameras that use the LP-E6 batteries.

I used this flash for my last event and look at the battery indicator. It stills has plenty of juice left over. 

The El-1 has a much better LCD display and a new user interface. After working with the Canon 600EX-RT flashes for so many years, I am still getting used to the interface on the Speedlite EL-1. 

The good news is that these new flashes can fire off more shots, and faster than the older 600 series flashes, which gives me more high-quality images for my clients. 

I am still using the Canon 600EX-RT flashes on my camera, both as a flash and a trigger for the remotes. and you may be wondering why I am doing that instead of using all Speedlite EL-1 flashes. There are four reasons I am shooting this way (for now):

1. I like the smaller size of the Canon 600EX-RT flash on the camera.

2. My MagMod diffusers fit much better on the smaller flash heads.

3. I can change out AA batteries quickly since the flashes are always with me. Having a second set of AA ready to swap out half way through the party works well.

4. It saves me a lot of money.

I can tell you that my take-rate is much higher with these two new speedlites working as my remote flashes. As I fire off my 2000 images during the party, I have way less shots where the remote flashes did not go off.

Do I get nervous having $900 flashes up on 12' light stands with kids running around? Yeah, I do. But so far so good. I hope I did not just jinx myself.

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If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa, Costa Rica, Cuba, Europe, Asia, India and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours. 

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San Francisco - A NEW PHOTO TOUR and FLYING over the city!

A couple of weeks ago I posted on social media that I took my new Canon R5 out of the box for really cool photo opportunity.  And now I get to share with all of you the images from that shoot. For the longest time I have wanted to take aerial photos over my home town of San Francisco, but it just never materialized. Well...until a couple of weeks ago. 

I was talking to my friend a couple of months back and she told me that her son had recently graduated from Purdue as a pilot (not an easy task!) and was flying here in the San Francisco Bay Area. I asked Jake if he would take me up in a plane so I could take photos and he readily agreed. Then it was a matter of coordinating both of our schedules and making sure there was not a SF Giants game (which severely restricts the air space over the city. Two Fridays ago was the day!

I was going to use my Canon R3, but at the very last minute, I decided to break out my new Canon R5 which has higher resolution than my Canon R3 or Canon R6. That was a good choice! I brought a Canon RF 24-105mm lens and a RF 70-200mm lens but figured that I would be using the wider lens most often. As it turned out, that was the only lens I used.

I am excited to share the aerial images with you all. 

We started the flight with a selfie. All that fancy gear on board, and I used my iPhone for this one. :)

We took off from the local airport exactly at 7pm, hoping to catch golden hour light on the city and night shots as well. Once we were over the city, I opened the window and determined the best angle to shoot through. It was a small amount of space to stick the lens out, but it worked.

As luck would have it, we had a clear view of the Golden Gate Bridge, with the evening sunlight perfectly lighting this landmark.  I asked Jake if he could fly out and away from the bridge and then come back in over the South Tower for this shot.

We also flew over the Palace of Fine Arts. I have photographed here many times (on the ground), but never seen it from this view. Because I had the window open, and was using a zoom lens, the force of the wind kept pushing the lens into its widest focal length. I had to hold the lens really firmly in its zoomed position in order to get this shot.

Moving away from the Golden Gate Bridge, we were heading straight for the city. What a beautiful place!

We circled the city numerous times so I could get different perspectives. I love how you can see straight up Columbus Ave in this photo.

After circling the city for a little while I asked Jake if we could fly over towards Sutro Tower. I saw how the tower was sticking out, with the late day sunlight hitting the top of the fog.

It is really interesting to see how different the tower looks from the other direction (with sunlight at our backs and the city in the background).

Before heading to the airport, I made a list of shots I wanted to capture.  One of those photos was looking straight up Market Street towards downtown.

This is a similar shot to the one above, but taken vertically. This gives you a better view of City Hall (the domed building towards the front of the image and to the left).

I really liked the way the sunlight was hitting the SalesForce Tower. Jake came in around 2500 feet so that I could get the tower and the Bay Bridge in the background. 

We flew right over the SalesForce Tower, so I angled the camera down and grabbed this shot, with the building half in sunlight and half in shadow.

Jake flew around for a while, as I waited for the light to drop. As you can see, we had some fog moving in over San Francisco. That was fine with me as it adds drama to the photos.

This was taken at 7:45pm, with the last bit on sunlight on the buildings.

Then it was time for some sunset photos. Time to turn the ISO up to 640 on the camera.

I had Jake take the same route as before and waited until I had the setting sun directly behind the SalesForce Tower. I turned my exposure compensation to - 1 1/2 to protect the color in the sun. This darkened the city quite a bit. I then opened the shadows in Photoshop when I was processing the image.

Here is a wide shot, showing the piers, the city and Sutro Tower at sunset.

Right before the sun dropped out of site, I got this photo of the Golden Gate Bridge and the incoming fog.

We had more time to kill before I could get some night shots of the city, so Jake flew out past the Golden Gate. We had this pretty view of Marin County.

As we turned and came back in towards the San Francisco Bay, I turned and saw the fog coming over the tops of these mountains. I shot this through the back window of the Cessna 172. The yellow lights you see at the bottom of the photo are the openings of the Robin Williams Tunnel.

We got back over the city but it was still not dark enough for the shots I wanted. I checked the camera and saw that my shutter speed was dropping fast with the decrease in light. I turned my ISO up to 2500.

This is an overhead view of Pier 39, a popular tourist location in the city.

I saw this building just off of Market Street and liked the way it was framed in blue lights.  Again, you can see City Hall off to the right.

Here is another shot of Sutro Tower peaking out of the fog, with a beautiful sky in the background. I timed this shot to get the lights blinking on top of the tower.

Now the lights were on and we turned back into the city to get my night shots. I had to increase the ISO of the camera to ISO 6400, and even then my shutter speed was only 1/60 sec. Combine that with the movement of the airplane and the incoming wind, this made for a pretty tough shot.

What a pretty view of San Francisco, and exactly what I was hoping for!

For these last photos, I had to crank up the ISO to 10,000. I bursted out many photos hoping to get one that was sharp. 

Even though I had little light to work with, I loved the challenge of capturing these night photos.

Having captured what I wanted, it was time to head back to the airport. But not before one last shot looking down over the South of Market Street.

Jake sent me these flight maps showing our flight path for the two hours we were in the air.

If you did not know better, you would swear that we were lost. 😀

Oh wait - I have some great news for all of you! After many years of people asking me to do a photo tour in San Francisco, I have finally added one to my schedule in 2023. You can find that here.  

I may even add an aerial option to the photo tour! I will blog more information about that soon.

I hope you enjoyed seeing these images from above my home city. 

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If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
__________________________________________________________________________
Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa, Costa Rica, Cuba, Europe, Asia, India and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours. 

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Jeff Cable Photography Blog - Changes to email subscriptions

If you are a blog reader who goes to this web site and reads my blog, then nothing is changing for you. But if you subscribed to the blog (getting this sent to you as an email or feed) in the past, then things are changing a bit, and hopefully for the better.

Ever since starting this blog back in 2008, I have used the Google Blogger platform, and all email and RSS subscriptions were done using their FeedBurner service. But as of a couple of weeks ago, Google turned the FeedBurner service off. This is why none of you received notification of my last blog post. So I searched for a replacement service, and one that would be even better for the thousands of you who get this sent to your email inbox. 

I found a service called Follow.it and I have high hopes for this new method of providing the content to you in an easy and safe way. 

If you are getting this email, and previously unsubscribed from my blog, I sincerely apologize. You can easily change your preferences with my new Follow.it page. They have a lot more options for delivery of my blog content.

FeedBurner did have a lot of issues, the most frustrating one being that when I wrote a blog post, sometimes the email would go out to subscribers within minutes, and other times it could take more than 30 hours. I am hoping that with the new service, the delivery times will be faster and more consistent.

As you all know, other than when I am blogging from the Olympics, I try to keep the blog posts to once a week (on average). I want to deliver good content to you without spamming your email inbox.

I hate change, but I hope this new service works well for all of us!

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Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!
__________________________________________________________________________
If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
__________________________________________________________________________
Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa, Costa Rica, Cuba, Europe, Asia, India and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours. 

__________________________________________________________________________  

Taking portraits of my granddaughter - portrait tips for all of you

Before I give you some tips on taking portraits of toddlers, let's start with the most important question: Am I old enough to be a grandfather? I sure don't feel like it!

But I love having my granddaughter visit any time and getting the chance to photograph her as she grows up. 

When she was 3 months old, it was tough to get good photos of her, since she could not sit up and did not have a whole lot of expressions. Of course, that did not stop me from photographing her. We would just prop her up in a pseudo-sitting position and I would fire away.

It is amazing how much she changes in such a short period of time. This photo was taken only 6 weeks after the previous image and she was now smiling. I put her down on a white backdrop to try and get a passport photo of her. (This image would not work because they do not want smiling and there was too much shadow and they do not allow that.) But I liked seeing that smile.

Last month was the first time that I took care of her on my own for two days. It was all consuming, and I really did not have time to think about photos. But late in the afternoon on the second day, we were out in my backyard and I thought "this would be a great photo moment". I went and grabbed the Canon R3 with the Canon RF 70-200mm lens and a Canon 600EX-RT flash. I was laying down on the grass in front of her, since it is important to be down at their eye level, and I focused on her eyes. I made sure to include her crazy hair in the shot! I turned the flash power down by 1 1/2 stops so that the photo would not look "flashed" but it would add catch light in her eyes. This photo is framed in my house right now.

A couple of weeks ago, my daughter-in-law was back at my house with her precious little girl. And now she is starting to eat solid food, so I had to document that! I grabbed the Canon R6 with the Canon RF 85mm f/1.2 lens and started taking photos. The light was not great in the kitchen so once again I added a Canon 600EX-RT flash with a MagMod MagSphere 2 diffuser so add a little more light on her. I waited for her to grab the spoon and look me and bam, captured this. I love the way that the 85mm f/1.2 lens (shooting wide open at f/1.2) removes all the distractions from the image, so we can focus just on her cute face. No, I am not biased at all. :)

Then it was time to try the same camera and lens (no flash this time) outside.

Just like before, I got down low on the grass so that I could photograph her at eye level. I had Emma (her mom) behind me doing funny things to make her laugh. The great thing about the Canon R cameras is that they lock into the eye so perfectly. Normally when shooting at f/1.2 with previous DSLRs, the "take rate" was about 50%, but with the new cameras it is almost 100% sharp on the eyes. I LOVE that!

Uh oh, was she already giving me attitude? 

When going through the images (using Photo Mechanic). Emma and I both agreed that this was our favorite photo. This one will be printed and framed any day now. And yes...I could remove the drool from her chin, but I decided to leave it alone. She is teething and this tells a story.  

Before putting the camera away, I asked Emma if she would get in the shot with my granddaughter. She happily agreed and I got this image. I made sure that they were both at the same distance from me, and I had to change the aperture from f/1.2 to f/2.5 in order to get them both in focus. I made funny sounds and got both of them to smile for this photo. Another keeper.

As many of you predicted, this little one is going to be a great subject for a long time!

 

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Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!
__________________________________________________________________________
If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
__________________________________________________________________________
Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa, Costa Rica, Cuba, Europe, Asia, India and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours. 

__________________________________________________________________________