Tuesday, August 27, 2024

A bunch of fun "non sport" photos from Paris

I have been back home for almost two weeks now and I feel like I have been playing catch-up ever since landing. I was able to clear most of the email backlog and photograph two big events for clients. Life is getting back to normal. other than the media and podcast recordings and other stuff like that.

I was just looking at images on my iPhone and some other folders on my computer and thought I would share some of the fun "non sports" photos from Paris.

I was behind the scenes at the fencing venue when I ran into the mascot. I had to take advantage of this and get a quick photo.


I don't get a chance to hold the Olympic torch at every Olympics, but there was an area in La Concorde where they had a torch, and I stepped in for another goofy shot.


I took this photo inside the gymnastics venue, where all of us photographers were waiting for Simone Biles to arrive and perform on the beam. When I said there were no open spaces, I really meant it!


I can't remember which press room I was in when this was taken, since most of them look alike. This was my typical desk layout, with my laptop open, ProGrade memory card reader magnetically attached to the screen, and cameras surrounding me. Since the 16" MacBook Pro battery lasts for 20 hours, I rarely plugged it in to the power until I got back to my hotel at the end of the day.


There was one day when I had a couple hour break in between events, so I decided to walk to Sacré-Coeur. I asked a police officer to take this photo of me.


About halfway through the Olympics, a friend of mine sent me a text telling me that his son was really into the Olympics, and asked if I could send him a selfie of me at a venue. Later that day I was over at the Stade de France (Athletics stadium) and took one for them.


And that started a "thing" with them where I would take selfies of me at every location.


They were not great photos, but they did the trick. This photo was taken from the top of the press tribune section of the beach volleyball venue (where I took my favorite sunset shot). 


Weirdly enough, I came across a second Olympic torch towards the end of the Games. I was looking for the media center at the Kayak venue when I took a wrong turn and ended up in the volunteer's room. They were taking turns photographing each other with the torch and I asked if I could join in. They were very nice and took this photo for me. Much better quality (lighting and background) than the one earlier in this blog post.


This is the main street which runs from La Concorde to The Louvre, and it was closed off to most vehicles. I was taking a stroll this one afternoon (with just my iPhone and the Tiffen filter mount with the Tiffen 58mm polarizing filter) and thought that this was a unique photo. Normally this street would be packed with traffic.


Same with this area.


I grabbed some lunch from a nearby cafe and then strolled over to The Louvre. 


This is a panoramic photo from the iPhone. I love the way that the polarizing filter really accentuates the clouds above the iconic museum.


I walked into the central area outside The Louvre and saw the Olympic Rings. There was a long line to get a photo in front of it, so I just went next to the rings and took this photo.


When walking by The Louvre I saw the hot air balloon (Olympic Flame) in the distance, and it reminded me of the night of the Opening Ceremony. I walked to the exact same spot where my group of photographers were positioned for the lighting of the flame. They were not good memories, with the late night, the pouring rain, the soaked gear and the exhaustion. As you can see, the weather was dramatically different on this day, and I thought "Why couldn't the weather have been like this on that night?"


There was a long line of people trying to get into the area, but I was able to use my press credentials to go in the back way and get up close to the balloon for the first time.


About three days before the end of the Olympics, I was walking to the swim venue for one of the USA Water Polo medal games. I had the Canon RF 10-20mm lens in my bag, and I thought it would be fun to use that wide angle lens in the La Defense center.


This photo could only be taken with a REALLY wide lens. I went right up to the stairs, pointed the camera almost straight up, and took this shot. 


This was one of the closer train stations to my hotel, so I spent a fair amount of time in this square.



Just before getting to the swim venue, I turned around and took this photo of the Arch from farther away.


This is an exterior shot of the La Defense Arena (the swim venue) where I spent a lot of my time. 


After the women's last game, USA Water Polo had a party for the athletes, staff, family and friends, on one of the hotel rooftops.  It was the only time I saw the cityscape with the Eiffel Tower from a distance.


On the second to last night of the Games, one of my sponsors (Hahnemuhle - Fine Art Paper) had a party at their Paris office. I was able to stop by for an hour, in between all my other events.


My last day in Paris was a free day for me (since I did not want to deal with the crowds at the airport the day after Closing Ceremony). It was 97 degrees, but I had a good time walking around the city and being a tourist.


Since I knew that I would be walking more than 10 miles in the heat, I once again chose to take only the iPhone for photos.


You know what they say, "The best camera is the one you have with you" and I proved that point on this day.


This photo captures one of my favorite moments from the Paris Olympics. It was taken on the last day of the Games, right after the men of USA Water Polo won a bronze medal. As you may remember from that blog post, it was a highly emotional day for Alex Bowen (who I had photographed many times before). After taking photos of him celebrating with his teammates and with his fiancé, I said, "we have to take a photo together" and got this one. This is a great memory for me.


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• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• 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, Asia and more. 

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Thursday, August 22, 2024

Upcoming Photo Tours with Jeff Cable - COME JOIN ME!

Now that I am back from Paris and I am back to the real world again, I wanted to let you all know about my upcoming photo tours. Whether you are a seasoned photography enthusiast or a beginner wanting to learn how to take a great photo, you can join me for an amazing trip. I have been leading photo tours for more than 8 years now, everything from close to home to all over the world. You will learn a lot and have a ton of fun too.

If you live in the US, you can even borrow cameras and lenses from Canon at no charge!

Here are the upcoming trips where I have availability:

2024

SAN FRANCISCO

September 23-25

$2950 per person


INDOCHINA (Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam)

October 8-20

$9750 per person including ALL airfare (from your home airport)


2025


TANZANIA (African Safari)

January 13-27

$14,950 per person including ALL airfare (from your home airport)


JAPAN 

April 3-14

$9750 per person including ALL airfare (from your home airport)


GREECE

June 25 - July 7

$9850 per person including ALL airfare (from your home airport)


BOTSWANA

July 16-28

$15,950 per person including ALL airfare (from your home airport)


ALASKA

September 6-13

$13,500

I only take 6 people on this trip and there are only two spots left


Click HERE to see details for all the upcoming trips, and let me know if you have any questions.



__________________________________________________________

• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• 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, Asia and more. 

 _________________________________________________________________  

Tuesday, August 20, 2024

How DID the Canon R1, Canon R5 MKII and new lenses REALLY do at the Olympics?

Before I flew out to Paris, I had a lot of you asking me for my feedback on the new Canon R1 and Canon R5 Mark II cameras. As I have always done in the past, I wanted to use the cameras for more than a couple of hours to give you a real world review of the products. It takes a decent amount of actual "in the field" use for me to determine what I like and don't like about any new camera or lens. Actually, this is true for just about any new product I am using, whether it is a new phone, watch or even a car. 

Prior to the Olympics, I had very limited time with the new cameras and just didn't feel like it was fair to share my opinion with you all. Now that I have basically lived with both the pre-production Canon R1 cameras and a Canon R5 Mark II camera for a month, I feel VERY qualified to share my opinions publicly.

This was day one in Paris when I picked up the new cameras and brought them back to my hotel room. My original R5 is on the left (brought as a backup and never used) and on the right you can see the Canon R5 MKII and two Canon R1 cameras.

The overall feel

The Canon R1 will be the flagship camera for Canon (when it comes out) and it feels a lot like the last top-end camera, the Canon R3. Both are solid cameras, fairly heavy, and are built like a tank.  They share the same batteries which is nice, and they feel similar in my hand. Most of the buttons are in familiar places, but Canon changed the power switch of the R1 so that it turns on and off in the opposite direction of the R3 and this took some getting used to. For the first 2 weeks of using the Canon R1, I kept trying to force the power switch in the wrong direction. The rest of the button changes were minor in my opinion.

For the Canon R5 Mark II, I found it very easy to use this camera right away. The battery has been upgraded, but the older batteries work (with some degraded features which I will probably never use). 

The menus of both cameras are also different from the previous models, in that there are new options for focus, eye-control, pre-continuous capture, people priority (on the R1) and many other new features.  But like trying any new Canon camera, I found it really easy to navigate and make changes to the menus.

Burst rate and Pre-Continuous shooting mode

There are certain features that I would rely on more heavily at the Olympics, like having a burst rate of up to 40 fps (frames per second). I really love that I can modify the maximum frame rate of the faster and medium speed burst modes. There were many times when I did not want 40fps, and I changed the fastest burst rate down to 30 (also lowering the next level down to 15 fps). These changes can be made to both the Canon R1 and Canon R5 Mark II.

I added the burst rate item to "My Menu" so that I could quickly change it. Even though I would usually shoot at 15 fps, whenever there was a shootout or some high action about to happen, I would quickly change the camera to 30fps. I then had to remember to change it back after. FYI - When Simone Biles was on the beam, I was shooting at 40fps to capture all the action! You can click on the video below to see this.

Simone Biles at 40fps. Viewed on the new Apple 16" MacBook Pro M3 Max using Photo Mechanic

With pre-continuous capture turned on, the camera will capture a half second of photos prior to me hitting the shutter button (as long as I have it pressed halfway down). This is a really cool feature, but it is really important to know when to have it on and when to turn it off. There were certain sports (which I was not as familiar with) and I found myself missing key shots, but when enabling the pre-continuous mode, I was able to hit the shutter even after the key moment happened and still have that moment saved on my card. 

The first time I used the Canon R1 for a water polo game in Paris, I accidentally left the camera at 40fps (with pre-continuous shooting on) and racked up 5700 photos in a little over an hour of shooting. That was a big mistake, since I am under a tight deadline to go through all my images, find the best ones, and deliver to the team!! I captured way too many images and knew that this would not work for future events. 

After a while I did learn to use the burst modes and pre-continuous capture to my advantage, but that took some learning. 

FOCUS

If you are going to put emphasis on one section of this blog post, it should be this one. The focus system on the Canon R1 is absolutely AMAZING! The camera's focus system is so fast and is so "sticky" that I was getting photos that I could never have gotten in the past. Let me give you an example. In the past when I tried to photograph women's gymnastics at the Olympics, I found it VERY difficult to keep my focal point on the athlete. This is especially true for the uneven bars and during the vault when the women were turning, twisting and moving up, down, towards me and away from me. I would try as best I could to keep that focus point on the person or their face, but with all their movement in all directions, my take rate was maybe 15 percent. With the face and subject detection on the Canon R1, the camera would lock in on them and hold that focus even though their faces would only be showing part of the time. My take rate was something close to 90 percent. It was crazy! 

This is not to say that the camera was perfect in all conditions. I did find that when photographing water polo, the camera had a hard time holding focus on the athletes. I found that the focus would drift when another person would be in the frame or when the water would splash in front of my subject. My best guess is that, since most of the person is not visible (under water), and they are wearing caps, the camera has a harder time locking in on them as a subject.

But for just about every other sport where I could see the whole person (gymnastics, equestrian, fencing, taekwondo, breaking) it was breathtakingly awesome.

You may have noticed that towards the second half of the Olympics I was using the Canon R5 Mark II more often. I did this for a number of reasons. 

1. I was getting tired and appreciated the lighter weight of the Canon R5 Mark II vs the Canon R1

2. I found that the focus was comparable to that of the R1. With this level of trust, I leaned on the Canon R5 Mark II more and more. 

3. I really liked the increased resolution of the Canon R5 Mark II. I definitely took that camera for the sunset shot at the beach volleyball venue knowing that I would enlarge this photo for my house (which I have).

4. Adobe had support for opening RAW files on the Canon R5 Mark II during the Olympics, but had not yet added that support for the Canon R1. As of the latest release of Adobe Camera RAW, the R1 is now supported.

ISO performance

Most of the time at the Olympics us photographers are not pushing the camera ISO above 3200. This is because the lighting at the Olympic venues is quite good. Much better than your typical high school gymnasium! I can tell you that a majority of the 85,000 images I took during the Games were taken between ISO 1000 and ISO 4000 (other than the outside venues where I was likely at ISO 160). This was not the case during the Opening Ceremony when the Team USA boat finally floated by me at 10pm and there were no lights on the river. I had to push the Canon R1 to ISO 10,000 to even have a chance at a photo. I was not happy! But the final results look very good, all things considered. (Image above)

Eye control

The Canon R3 had eye control (where the camera would track my pupil and focus on whomever I am looking at), but it did not work very well. Not only was it not accurate enough, but I hated the icon that would move around in the eyepiece distracting me from my work. I tried it for 30 minutes and turned it off for good. But that is all different with the Canon R1 and the Canon R5 Mark II. Now the eye control is incredibly accurate and there is an option to hide the icon. By turning off the icon, I now see nothing on the screen, but the focus point still goes right to the person I am looking at. I used this feature constantly in Paris, so much so that I now miss it. I just photographed an event on Saturday (using my Canon R3 and Canon R6 MKII) and kept looking at a subject waiting for the camera to lock focus on them. I am looking forward to getting my new cameras soon!

Battery life

If you have been following the blog for the last month, you know that I was shooting A LOT of images each day. There were days when I would capture more than 7000 images, and I never had one time where the battery died. This is true for both the Canon R1 and the Canon R5 Mark II. There was one time when I finished photographing gymnastics with the R1 (which has a larger battery than the R5II) and then had to go straight to the water polo venue to capture a game. If I remember correctly, I had taken more than 5000 photos at gymnastics. I was shocked when I got to the next venue and saw that the battery of the R1 was still showing full - even after taking 5000 photos! I sent a text message to one of my contacts at Canon to see if this was a "pre-production" error. But it was not. These batteries last WAY longer than the specs say they do.

Pre-registered people priority

The Canon R1 has a feature called "People priority" where you can take a photo of someone and tell the camera to prioritize that person over anyone else in view. I have to admit that I only tried this one time. I was photographing a runner (who was in a race with many other people) and I thought that this might be useful. I got great images of the runner, but honestly have no idea if that was the focus system, and the fact that I was using eye control to lock in on that runner, or if this feature was working. There is an icon that shows up (letting me know that people priority is in action) but I was concentrating so hard on getting the shot, that I have no idea if that icon was there. For this feature, I will have to say that it was not tested enough for me to give it a fair evaluation.

Memory card slots

With the Canon R3, I never liked the fact that this camera had a CFexpress card slot and an SD card slot. CFexpress cards are so much faster than the SD cards, and when writing the same files to both cards (which I always do), it slowed the camera down. Sometimes to the point when I would miss shots because the camera would stop shooting while trying to clear the buffer. The Canon R1 has two CFexpress card slots which means that both of them are running at high speed. I loved the fact that I could shoot endlessly without having to wait for the camera to clear the buffer. With the Canon R5 Mark II, this was not the case. This camera still has a combination of CFexpress and SD and I did have numerous times when I could not shoot anymore and had to wait for the buffer to clear.  

Other things I noticed

I know that most of you are not going to be using 1.6TB memory cards in your cameras, but I love having a really large card in the second slot of the camera, basically acting as a built-in backup drive for all my photos. I had one of these large cards in the second slot of my Canon R1 and literally had EVERY image that I took in Paris on that card. In the first card slot I either had another 1.6TB card or an 800GB card. When there were thousands of images (or tens of thousands of images) on a card and I hit the playback button, it would take a long time for the camera to show me my image. This was frustrating when I would capture something cool and, during a quick break in the action, I would want to see if I got the shot.

Canon R1 with the RF 100-300mm lens and a RF 2x teleconverter

Some new lenses and how they performed

The one new lens that I used more than any other at these Olympics was the Canon RF 100-300mm lens. Up until these Games, I had never put this lens to the test. Ever since the Summer Olympics in London (back in 2012) I had relied on the Canon EF 200-400mm lens as my primary long lens for every Olympics and so much more. That older lens has served me very well, but it was great to use the new RF 100-300mm for these reasons:

1. I could shoot at f/2.8 to get more separation between my subject and the background.

2. Also because of the f/2.8, I could shoot at lower ISOs. 

3. This new lens focuses so fast! 

4. I love the smaller size and lighter weight of the RF 100-300mm lens, and did handhold it a fair amount while in Paris.

When I was photographing the behind-the-scenes of the Canon CPS loaner area, I asked to borrow the newer RF 10-20mm lens so that I could take wide shots with little distortion.  I had never used this lens before, and it was love at first use. This lens is physically small, light in weight, and produces a beautiful image. I then borrowed that lens for future images like the wide shots I took in the Grande Palais. I will be ordering one of those soon.

Worth the upgrade?

For those of you asking whether the new cameras are worth the upgrade, my answer is "absolutely" but it really depends on what you are photographing. If you are just using your existing R5 or R6 camera to take pictures of the family, maybe not. But if you are serious about your photography, and out taking photos of things like sports or wildlife, then definitely! I have already ordered my Canon R5 Mark II cameras and will order the Canon R1 as soon as it comes out. This also means that soon you will see me selling my Canon R3, R5 and 200-400mm lens on the blog.

Speaking of gear....this was my last day in Paris when I went back to CPS to return all my loaner gear. They were packing everything up and I said, "Can't you just send this case to my house instead?"



__________________________________________________________

• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• 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 Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Alaska and more. 

 _________________________________________________________________  

Monday, August 19, 2024

My TOP 15 photos from the Olympics

In the last blog post, I shared with you the statistics from these Olympic Games, and one of those facts listed was that of the 85,000 photos I captured, I had 266 favorites. A couple of people commented that they would like to see some of my favorite images, and I thought that this would make a great blog post.

Thank you to those who planted the seed for this blog post, and without further ado, here are my TOP fifteen favorite photos of the games (at least as of now) and in chronological order.

Whenever I am at the Olympics, I love to take advantage of the Olympic Rings to show where I am taking the photos. I was watching this young man practice his diving on my first full day in Paris, and framed this shot with him perfectly in the middle of the rings. I really like the symmetry of this photo.


We all know that Simone Biles was one of the great highlights of these Olympic Games and I was excited once again to capture photos of her in action. I got to the venue over an hour early to make sure to have a good position at the balance beam, knowing that the GOAT would be doing her magic there.  As always, I was looking to capture that "peak of action" and this was one of those moments.


This photo is a favorite for many reasons. I love the position of Simone in the photo with her laid out completely straight, but also the fact that I was in perfect focus on her eyes. I was locked in on her and she was locked in on her routine. Honestly, this is a testament to the new Canon R1 which helped achieve that level of focus even in really difficult situations.


I am always looking to take photos in creative ways. There are more than 2000 photographers at the Summer Olympics, and it is a challenge to photograph the athletes differently from all the other shooters. For this shot, I decided to photograph from a low position. I saw the Olympic Rings on the net and thought that this would be a great foreground element if I could achieve focus on Coco Gough through the net, which I was able to do. I took this photo at f/2.8 to make sure that my subject was in perfect focus, but the rings would be soft.


My favorite photo from the last Summer Olympics in Tokyo was a multiple exposure shot of fencing. I knew that I wanted to try that again in Paris. When I arrived at the Grande Palais I was surprised to see that they had fans on both sides of the stage. Normally, for the sport of fencing, they have one side blacked out and it is lit theatrically.  This created a different look from my photo from Japan, and I really like the results. For those who are not familiar with multiple exposure photos, they are all done in the camera (through custom settings) and not in Photoshop. 


I went back to photograph Simone Biles a couple of times. This photo was taken during the individual competition, and she was really happy with her performance. As she came off the beam, she was beaming herself. I love the smile and her tongue sticking out so slightly.


I photographed a lot of water polo at these Olympics (as I do every summer Games), but this shot was one of my favorites, with a perfect arc of water coming off Jenna's hand. I literally took tens of thousands of photos of water polo and this was the only time that the arc was so clear.


This was the first time that the sport of Kayak Cross was in the Olympics, and they launched four boats from a ramp at one time. I waited for that one moment when all four boats hit the water concurrently and fired, hoping to get the curl of the water from every boat. It took many hundreds of photos, but this one was worth it. 


This photo is my favorite from the entire Olympic Games. For those of you who read the blog throughout the Olympics, you know that I made numerous visits to the beach volleyball venue to get this photo. I had a decent sunset on my first visit, but the second time was even better. I had envisioned this photo for months prior to my trip to Paris, and the final result was exactly what I was hoping for. I chose to use the Canon R5 MKII (for the higher resolution) a Canon RF 15-35mm wide angle lens to include most of the stadium in the foreground, but not be so wide that the Eiffel Tower would be small in the background. I also had to wait for that perfect moment where the tower was lit, and the sunset was at its peak color.


Once again in the pursuit of photographing more creatively and differently, I took this motion pan photo of horse jumping at 1/30th of a second. I had to move the lens at the EXACT same speed as the horse and rider to make this work, and I did just that for this photo. When done correctly, the horse and rider are in sharp focus while everything else is blurred. 


I had never photographed skateboarding at the Olympics before. They had the sport at the Tokyo Olympics, but I always had conflicts and never made it in 2021. This time I was able to visit the venue and try my luck with the men and their boards. I positioned myself straight onto the Olympic Rings and waited for the riders to jump into the frame. It took me hundreds of photos to get one with the skateboarder right in the middle of one of the rings. I had a photo with the skateboarder dead center, but myself (and many of the blog readers) all agreed that this one was more interesting.


On my first visit to the Grande Palais for fencing, I took the photo that you saw earlier in this post, but I did not have a super wide lens with me that day. I went back to that venue a week later to photograph Taekwondo, and this time I brought a Canon RF 10-20mm ultra-wide lens with me. I was sitting ringside for this shot, but the wide lens makes the athletes small and the amazing venue really big. I guess you could say that for this photo, the building was my subject, and the athletes were the supporting subjects. 


As I mentioned earlier, I took a lot of photos of water polo. I like this photo, not because it shows the peak of action (and I have a ton of those), but because I tried something different. For this photo, I saw that the "Paris 2024" and Olympic Rings on the ball were turned right towards me, so I quickly focused on the ball and not on Max.  


This photo is a favorite not because of the photo itself, but because of what this photo means to me. I had already taken the group photo on the platform, as their medals were given to each athlete, but I did not like the background. I picked this location, which was much better, and happy to get this photo. But as I just said, the photo is fine but the memory of this great moment (as the men medaled for the first time in 16 years) is what I feel when I look at this photo.

I also love this photo because, even though I don't particularly like being in front of the camera, I always love the chance to hold and wear an Olympic medal. This was the last day of the Games and it was a great ending to a really long 3 weeks in Paris! 

And for all of you who are wondering about my blog post with my honest thoughts on the new Canon cameras, I promise you I am working on it and will have it posted tomorrow. That one takes a lot more time to write! 


__________________________________________________________

• Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!

• You can now purchase Jeff Cable Photography images from my new fine art site at: https://fineart.jeffcable.com/

• 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, Asia and more. 

* Thank you to Canon, Apple, ProGrade Digital, Crucial, Tiffen, DataColor, ThinkTank, Adobe, and CameraBits  for providing loaner product to me for the Olympic Games!

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