Olympics in Milan: Capturing the most picturesque parts of Milan (at day and night)!

I have to start this blog post with "Yay - I am in Milan!!!" because I finally had a chance to go out and see some of the city yesterday. Due to the schedule and how the US hockey teams have done, we had a day off yesterday. I tried to take full advantage of that. I worked on a couple of blog posts in my hotel room until 11:30am and then headed out into the city. Actually, before I left, I did a Google search on things I needed to see if I only had one day in Milan.

I made a short list on my iPhone and then headed to the metro station.

I started at the most iconic part of Milan, the Duomo. It was a beautiful day yesterday, with nice blue skies and mild temperatures. I was traveling lighter than usual, with no laptop, no long lens, and no Canon R1 bodies. I went with just my Canon R6 MKIII, RF 24-70mm lens, RF 15-35mm lens and the RF 7-14mm fisheye lens which fit nicely in the ThinkTank Walker Pro rolling backpack. 

This first photo was taken with the RF 24-70mm lens. I underexposed 1/3 stop (as I do with most daytime photos) to accentuate the blue sky and to keep any highlights from blowing out (over exposing).

I then walked very close to the Duomo and put on the RF 7-14mm fisheye lens to get this distorted view.

Next I entered the Galleria Vittori Emanuele, which is the oldest and most beautiful shopping area in the city. It is also the fanciest and most expensive. I took pictures but did not do any shopping! :)

This photo was taken with the RF 15-35mm lens. I wanted to highlight the building and show the motion of all the people walking around. For this reason, I changed my shutter speed to 1/3 of a second (f/22 at ISO 50) and held on tight to not shake the camera during the shot.

Throughout my day / night in Milan, I was switching lenses a lot! For this shot I went to the center of the galleria and shot straight up with the RF 7-14mm fisheye lens. What a cool view, huh?

I saw this pretty painting on the wall and used the RF 24-70mm lens at 70mm to get me in as close as I could.

This is the same view, with the same lens, this time at 24mm.

I then walked around the area for a while and came across this fountain, which is next to the castle. I tried different lenses here, but preferred the RF 24-70mm lens with no distortion.

After grabbing a really amazing lunch (a light and very tasty carpaccio salad), and relaxing for an hour, I decided to return to the galleria for some late afternoon light. I saw these two officers and had them pose for me. I got down low with the RF 7-14mm fisheye lens and took this shot. One of my favorites from the day.

My goal was to get to the Olympic flame for some "blue hour" shots. Those are images taken about 20 minutes after sunset, when the night sky looks the best. I had a little time to kill so I took a couple more wide shots before heading to the Olympic flame.

I arrived to the Arco Della Pace about an hour early. I wanted to get a position dead center and right in front of the arch, because I wanted to shoot really wide. I then waited. There was a 6pm show where the flame actually opens up, which was quick but fun to see. Everyone was there for that, but I was there for better evening light. I waited some more...

I used the RF 24-70mm lens to get some tight shots as the flame opened up...

...and then when I had the perfect evening light, I switched to the RF 7-14mm fisheye lens. I liked this image but felt that it was a little too wide.

I then reached down into the ThinTank bag and grabbed the RF 24-70mm lens and took this shot...

...and this one.

Then I felt that this deserved something in between the mid range zoom and the fisheye lens, so I put on the RF 15-35mm lens. I told you I was switching lenses a lot! I probably looked like the crazy American frantically switching lenses to get the best photos in the best light. And yeah, that's me!

Before leaving, I went to the back wall and took this photo at a distance. I did this because being far away like this gives me an image with no "bending" distortion. 

Being the crazy guy again, I decided to use the RF 7-14mm fisheye lens once again to show the whole scene.

Since I knew that there was a metro stop back by the Duomo, and I wanted to capture the Galleria once again at night, I walked back that direction.

This was a VERY wide shot taken with the RF 7-14mm fisheye lens at 7mm from the center of the mall. After taking this photo, I decided it was time for some dinner and then a metro ride back to the hotel. I had walked over 10 miles and I was tired.

I woke up this morning and knew that I had some time before I had to head to the ice rink, so I Googled other fun places to take photos in Milan. I found some cool locations in the Garibaldi area, which is only 15 minutes from my hotel. So off I went. This is taken from the bottom floor of a parking garage (I posted an Instagram story showing this weird location), but it was really cool.

There is this interesting brass area for the kids to play with (using their voices through the brass tubes). It looks cool from above...

...but way cooler from below. 

Once again, I used the wide angle lenses to capture this scene. 

Once I was done shooting in the parking garage, I decided to walk around the area for a little bit.

Milan has numerous apartment buildings with trees growing on them. I saw this one and took some photos. They were OK, but nothing special.

Then I saw this reflective building next to the walkway and thought "This would make a much more interesting photo if I could include the building and it's reflection." And so I did.

This last shot shows more of the Garibaldi area and the lovely park that is there.

And now...I am off to the ice arena for the rest of the day and night.

I hope you enjoyed viewing my little tour of Milan as much as I did taking the photos.

Please excuse any typos. Normally I try to proofread everything before I post, but here at the Olympics, time is a commodity. I definitely miss some things. :)

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• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Africa, Iceland and more.

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Olympics in Milan: The RARE LOOK inside Canon's room full of loaner equipment!

Every two years, when I am lucky enough to find myself at the Olympic Games, people beg me to get myself behind the walls of Canon to see ALL the goodies that they have brought to the Games as loaners. Once again, after enough pleading, Canon was nice enough to bring me behind the closed doors to see all the amazing loaner gear that they have here. 

Remember, unlike the Summer Olympics and previous Winter Games, there is not one big media center for the whole event. For this reason, there is one main center in Milan and 3 medium sized centers spread out in Italy. What you are about to see in this "tour" is not all the gear since Canon Professional Services (CPS) has 4 different locations (Milan, Cortina, Levigno, and Tesero) at these Olympics. Since I am based in Milan, I got to visit the CPS area within the Main Press Center (MPC) here in the city. It must have been a logistical nightmare for them (and the other camera companies), trying to figure out what gear to provide and determining the proper staff levels at each location.

Even with that in mind, and the fact that a lot of equipment is currently loaned out to photographers, Canon had more equipment back there than I expected.

Let's get on with the tour...

The first thing I noticed was all the big lenses that they had with them. You can see all these RF 800mm lenses lined up. At $19,000 per lens, that is a lot of money sitting there! Heck, this is like looking at a fleet of cars lined up here.

I was told that the container below had even more of these big boys. 

They had a whole bunch of the newer RF 100-300mm lenses ready to loan. I wish I had known that they would have this many, as I wouldn't have brought my personal one with me. :)

They had a plethora of RF 400mm f/2.8 lenses at the ready.

Needless to say, they had plenty of camera batteries for the Canon R1 and R3 cameras...

...and plenty more for the Canon R5 and R6 models.

I saw all these batteries charging on a wall and thought "I need a wall like this at my place!"

I took out the new Canon RF 7-14mm fisheye lens and took a wide shot of this dream wall.

There is so much amazing gear here! I wanted to get a wide shot of this equipment rack without the fisheye distortion and saw that they had one of the new RF 14mm lenses in the room. I asked if I could use that lens for some photos. All the following photos were taken with that lens.

I have been using two of the Canon R1 cameras here at the Games and feel lucky to have them. Then I saw ALL these R1 cameras in one place and was blown away. This would be my ultimate candy store!

They had Canon R1, R3, R5 MKII, R6 MKII, R6 MKIII and even older 1DX MKIII cameras there. I asked why they had the old stuff, and they said they want to be prepared to loan that equipment to anyone who is using this gear and familiar with it. That makes sense, although I don't think I have seen anyone here not using the new mirrorless camera bodies. You will also see a whole bunch of other L Series lenses. Everything from the RF 24-70mm, RF 24-105mm, RF 70-200mm, RF 100-500mm and more. I looked to see if there were any unannounced goodies back there but did not see anything.

I saw these older EF lenses and was told that they had them for the same reason they had the older camera models.

Here are more of the wider L Series lenses.

Can you imagine how much money is sitting in this room? It must be millions of dollars of cameras and lenses, with most of the value in the endless expensive lenses.

They did have a repair team working on cameras and lenses behind this area, but I was not allowed to photograph that area. That was fine with me, because I was able to capture all the mouthwatering camera gear to show all of you.

Please excuse any typos. Normally I try to proofread everything before I post, but here at the Olympics, time is a commodity. I definitely miss some things. :)

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

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Africa, Iceland and more.

• 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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The difference between the Canon R1, Canon R5 Mark II and the older Canon R3

A fellow photographer friend recently sent me a message and asked me how much the Canon R1 differed from the Canon R3. He also wanted to know the difference between the newer R1 and Canon R5 Mark II. After a year of using the Canon R1 (both pre-production and the final product), Canon R5 Mark II, and receiving numerous questions like this, I thought it would be good to share my thoughts with all of you.

Let me start with the big differences between the Canon R1 and Canon R3 (in order of importance to me).

Both the Canon R3 and Canon R1 are top-of-the-line cameras from Canon and have that feel when you pick them up. At first grip, it is hard to feel or see much difference between the two camera models. One thing I love about Canon cameras is that when you get used to using one of them, the similarities are so close that a person can go between one model and another without much of a learning curve.

It is like driving a car. You can get into almost any vehicle and drive, regardless of the engine performance and handling. But that performance and handling can make a huge difference if you want to do something more than just drive from point A to point B. The Canon R1 lets you drive harder and better than you could with R3. When you get into the guts of the Canon R1, there are numerous improvements that really make the camera stand out vs the preceding model.

Focus

As I have mentioned numerous times in the past, the focus system of the Canon R1 is noticeably faster and "stickier" than the Canon R3. This was VERY noticeable when I was photographing the fast-moving Olympic athletes in Paris and the R1 tracked them so well. My take rate of tack sharp images was so much better than with any other camera.  

Pre-Capture

This is one feature that I have used many times and find it absolutely indispensable when photographing unpredictable wildlife, birds about to take flight, and sports which I am less familiar with. I don't use pre-capture all the time, but love having the feature in the camera when those moments arrive. And I should mention that this ability to go back a half second and grab frames I might have otherwise missed, has yielded me many great photos I would not have captured with the Canon R3. 

Dual CFexpress Slots

One of the things that irritated me (yes - it really bugged me a lot!) about the Canon R3 is that Canon chose to include one CFexpress card slot and one SD card slot in the camera. If you read my blog a lot, you know that I always shoot RAW images to BOTH card slots (to make darned sure that I have my images even if a memory card were to fail). I really hated the fact that the Canon R3 limited by capture abilities, when shooting at fast frame rates, to the speed of the much slower SD cards. Arghhhh! I actually missed numerous photos at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo because of this. Thankfully, Canon opted for two of the faster CFexpress card slots in the Canon R1 so I can blast off shots almost endlessly, if needed, and not be slowed down by the older and slower SD cards.

Eye Control

Just to be clear, I am not talking about the eye detection of the new mirrorless cameras, where the camera can lock in on the subject's eyes or face. Eye control on the Canon R1 and Canon R5 Mark II is the feature that allows the camera to determine which subject I am looking at and move the focus point to that subject. I know that the Canon R3 had this feature as well, but I find that with the much improved technology in the Canon R1, it now makes this useable for the first time. I tried this on the Canon R3 and found it unresponsive and distracting. The same feature in the Canon R1 is incredibly accurate and helpful in almost all scenarios. 

Burst Rate

The Canon R1 can capture images at a faster burst rate (40fps) than the R3 (30fps), but this is not a critical factor for me since 40fps is rarely used in my case.

Higher Resolution Viewfinder and LCD

The Canon R1 has almost double the resolution in the viewfinder as compared to the Canon R3. Although I find this nice, I never really had a problem with the viewfinder of the R3.

Now let me address the difference between the Canon R1 and the Canon R5 Mark II (in order of importance to me).

Both of these cameras offer exceptional focus speed and accuracy, and they share the pre-capture and pupil detection features. But there are some key differences which offer advantages to each model. Although both cameras are exceptional in my opinion, I use them interchangeably depending on what I am photographing. My choice is almost always predicated on what resolution I desire and the physical size and weight of the camera. 

Resolution

Even though the Canon R5 Mark II is the less expensive camera, it actually has a higher resolution sensor (45 megapixels) as compared to the Canon R1 (24 megapixels), but that does not mean that it is my camera of choice for all my photography.  I love having the higher resolution when photographing wildlife so that I have more ability to crop and have a high resolution image, and often choose the Canon R5 Mark II for my photo tours for this reason.

As I mentioned, the increased resolution does not mean that the Canon R5 Mark II is the best camera for me at all times, When I am photographing sports and personal events (bar mitzvah, weddings, corporate events...), I prefer not to have the highest resolution, as most images I am delivering are not going to be enlarged to a billboard size print. They are often being printed at 4x6, 5x7, or 8x10 or going into an album. In these cases 24MP is plenty. 

Physical Size

One of the obvious differences between the Canon R1 and Canon R5 Mark II is the physical size and weight of the cameras when holding them in your hand. 

Sometimes bigger is better. I really love using the Canon R1 for portraits and events since I am often turning the camera and shooting portrait (tall) vs. landscape (wide) and I love having all the redundant buttons on the camera grip. I also prefer the larger batteries for these types of situations, because when I am working an event, I am moving too fast to worry about battery life.

Sometimes smaller is better. This is why I often choose the Canon R5 Mark II for my photo tours, since it is easier to travel with the smaller and lighter Canon R5 Mark II and Canon R6 Mark II combination. Not only is the camera smaller and lighter in weight, as compared to the Canon R1, but it also uses the smaller batteries and shares the same small battery charger with the R6.

Eye Control

Both the Canon R1 and Canon R5 Mark II have the eye control, but I can tell you that this feature is MUCH better on the R1. This is probably due to the much larger eye piece and amount of detection on the Canon R1. 

Card slots

As I mentioned before, I am not a big fan of mixed memory card slots, especially when one of the card slots is a slower SD slot. Canon created the Canon R5 Mark II with a mix of a CFexpress slot and a SD slot (much like the older Canon R3). With that said, it is nice to travel with a single memory card reader which has both CFexpress and SD slots. This saves me a little more space when on the road.

Wrapping this all up

All of these cameras are excellent bodies for any photographer, capturing images at fast burst rates and with excellent focus abilities, but as you can see, they each have their pluses and minuses. If you are struggling with a purchase decision, I hope this helps you make a good choice.

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

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Alaska and more.

• You can 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.
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Backing up 65GB of images to my NAS drive from a different country!

One of the most challenging things I deal with is the secure storage of my images. Well...I call them my images, but they are also the images for my clients, and I hate having them in only one place. This keeps me up at night.

In the past week I was crazy busy with photo shoots for a government client, another institution, and 2 personal events. After all of this, I had just enough time to get all 10,000 images onto my MacBook Pro before heading to the airport on Sunday morning. Just in case something happened to my laptop in transport, I duplicated all those RAW files onto a SSD back in California before heading out.

I then spent the 9 hours of travel going through all the images and purging the duplicates and rejects, and ranking the good ones. I renamed all the files, retouched my favorites and got each gallery ready to post to my clients. I posted one event from the airport in Houston and the remainder from here in Costa Rica.

BUT at this point I had all the curated images only on my laptop and that makes me nervous. In the past, I would back them up on one of my Crucial 4TB SSDs and keep that SSD in a different bag from my laptop as I traveled, but was not ideal. I also tried uploading to my NAS drive directly through the web app but every time there was a disconnect from the Internet, or I had to close my laptop to move it, the synch would have to start over and that was impossible.

A couple of months ago I was watching an online presentation from QNAP and they mentioned something about Dropbox integration and this peaked my interest. I was thinking "Can I create a Dropbox folder and have it automatically uploaded to my QNAP 8-Bay NAS drives back in California?"

I reached out to the support people at QNAP and they were nice enough to help me set this up and, even though I am jumping ahead of things, it works amazing!! 

Using the Hybrid Backup Sync application from QNAP, I was able to create a link to my Dropbox account.

I then told the HBS app which folder to monitor.

Before leaving for this trip, I created a test folder with a handful of images to see if it worked, and within seconds of me uploading the files to my Dropbox folder, they were on the NAS drive. When landing here in Costa Rica, I took the two folders (with approximately 30GB of images each) and moved them the "Upload to QNAP Server" Dropbox folder I had created.

I let the computer run all night while I attempted to catch up on some much needed sleep. When I woke up in the morning, I saw that there were only a few more files remaining to upload to Dropbox. After a quick shower I checked again and the process was complete.

At this point, I was happy to have them in the cloud but wanted to check and see if they really had made it to my NAS drive. I used the MyQNAPCloud web link to log into my server from this remote location.

I was happy to see that both of the new folders had transferred over..

I then opened the folders to make sure that the synch had happened correctly and that everything is in place, and as expected, all 65GB of images are safe and sound! I guess this means that the images are in 4 places right now. They are on my MacBook Pro, Dropbox (for now), my server and my backup server. Sweet!

I am really excited about this newfound data transfer method and look forward to using it for future trips and even from here in Costa Rica this week for all my favorite photos. And thanks to the support people at QNAP for helping me get this set up.

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

• Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Alaska and more.

• You can 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.
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Top 10 things you DON'T want to do with your digital camera!

This blog post is LONG OVERDUE and I have been meaning to write it for quite some time. As opposed to most of my other blog posts where I encourage all of you to DO or TRY certain things with your digital cameras, this blog post is just the opposite. I am going to cover the top 10 things that you should NOT do with your camera.

I have compiled this list from 20 years of being a full-time photographer, but also from many years of leading photo tours and teaching others. Some of these are absolutely imperative and can ruin your camera or images and others are precautionary tips to protect your gear. So without further ado, let's get right to the list.

DO NOT CHANGE LENSES WITH YOUR CAMERA UPSIDE DOWN!

If you have gone on a photo tour with me, you know that this is something I always caution people about on day 1. Any time I see someone changing a camera with the lens opening facing up I cringe. Doing this allows any dust in the air to fall into the camera and create nasty dust spots on your images. Do NOT do this! And do not leave your camera exposed (without a lens) for any prolonged period of time. Whenever I change lenses, I try to do so as quickly as I can and I never do this in a windy, dusty environment. (Note: I even used one of my older cameras to take this photo because I did not want to expose any of my current cameras to dust.)

DO NOT DELETE IMAGES IN YOUR CAMERA

I wrote a blog post about this way back in 2016 and it is one of my most read posts ever with almost 400k reads. Even though a lot has changed in 9 years, this tip still holds. I know many people who say "I delete images in my camera all the time and have not had a problem", but regardless, I never recommend doing this. It can cause corruption in your memory card and you can lose images. You can format the card in your camera, but don't delete individual images.

FORMAT MEMORY CARDS IN YOUR CAMERA AND NOT ON YOUR COMPUTER

It is a really good idea to format your memory cards whenever you are photographing a new event, but I always recommend doing this in your camera and not on your computer. The reason is this: your camera will format the card the way that it wants to, adding the appropriate data structure and folders. I even make sure to format my memory cards in the same camera model I am using it in. In other words, if I am using a CFexpress card in my Canon R1, I format it in that camera. If I use that same card in my Canon R5 Mark II, I format the card in that camera.

 
DO NOT USE YOUR CAMERAS BATTERY UNTIL THEY ARE COMPLETELY DRAINED

When I see that my battery indicator is blinking red, I almost always change batteries at that time. Will I push that a little bit? Sure. But I never shoot until the battery is dead. The reason that this is bad is because if you take a photo and the camera is in the middle of writing that image to your memory card when the battery dies, it can cause you to lose ALL of your images. I also do not fill my memory cards completely for the same reason. I don't want the camera to be writing part of the image and then the card fills. The newer cameras are basically computers as much as image capturing devices, but I don't want to leave anything to chance.


DON'T LET THE CAMERA DETERMINE YOUR FOCUS POINT

Many of the newer mirrorless camera have subject and face detection, but for any camera that does not, you want to determine where the focus is, and not leave that up to the camera. I can not tell you how many times I have helped a new camera owner with their settings and see this left as a default. Most consumer cameras (especially DSLRs) ship with all the focus points turned on, and defaulted to auto select. This means that when a novice picture taker hits the shutter button, the camera tries to determine the subject and what should be in focus. I really hate this! If you are using one of the older cameras, or if your camera randomly picks a focal point, I really encourage you to learn how to manually select that point. You will thank me for that at some point.





DO NOT LEAVE THE "RELEASE SHUTTER WITHOUT CARD" ON!

This is one of my biggest pet peeves and, for the life of me, I do not understand why the camera companies set this as a default. Why would you ever want to use your camera without a memory card??? As soon as you get your camera back in your hands, make sure this is turned off. I know several people who have gone out and photographed something like their kid's soccer game (Mike - you know who you are) to later find that they had no card in the camera and they have not one photo of the game. I have heard that the camera companies default this on so that the resellers can demonstrate the cameras without a card, but I do not like the fact that the reseller is prioritized over the user.





PUT YOUR LENS HOOD ON THE RIGHT WAY!


For all of you who have gone on photo tours with me, you have heard me push this point many times. Sure, the lens hoods ships to you in the reverse position (as seen above) because they fit better in the box, but that does not mean that you should leave them this way. Turn them around! Why? There are three reasons that you want your lens hood turned around:


1. It is good protection for the front element of your lens. If you drop your camera or bang the lens against something, you would much rather scratch or break a lens hood than break the lens.


2. The hood helps protect light from hitting the front element of your lens, which can ruin your photos (unless you are looking for that effect).


3. It is much easier to zoom or refocus a lens with the hood not in the way.





DO NOT THROW YOUR CAMERA INTO AN UNPROTECTED BACKPACK

You cameras and lenses are built to last but that does not mean that they like to be banged around. I always cringe when someone shows up to one of my photos tours with their camera equipment in a standard backpack with no separators. I use the ThinkTank bags for my camera gear and never put them in a situation where one piece of equipment might bang into another.

AVOID SALT WATER

This is one tip that I have added mainly because I have broken this rule more than once and paid the price for it. When photographing the image that you see above, I was on the front of a small boat in the ocean off the coast of Mexico. I was working hard to get this shot, but myself and my camera were getting drenched from the waves crashing against the front of the boat. A month later that camera was in for repair at Canon Professional Services and the body was corroded. It was an expensive mistake on my part. I highly recommend using a protective device over the camera or staying away from salt water altogether. Note: I have found that fresh water is much less of a hazard and I rarely ever use rain covers when shooting in the rain forest.


DON'T USE THE CAMERA STRAPS THAT COME WITH YOUR CAMERA


When I get a new camera, the camera strap stays in the box. I don't even bother to take it out. Spending more than 20 years of my life with a camera on my body, I have come to loathe any neck strap. I never recommend using the camera company straps because of the strain that it puts on your neck. I use the BlackRapid straps because they are well made, but mostly importantly they go across my body which is WAY more comfortable.


I hope that these tips help you in the future!


__________________________________________________________

• 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.
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