Advice re Canon 30D & 100-400 IS lens

Check my images in the sig for the 30D + 100-400 IS L, your in for happy times!

AI Servo, IS mode 2 and a suitable shutter speed BINGO!

Canon center in london, offers the same ‘first clean’ offer if the camera is still under warentee, after that its £30 for the EOS XXX and £50 for the posh EOS XX and X’s (or atleast it was a month or two ago) on the plus side the canon center does the job in a day and its like a 5 miniute drive from the raf museum

The shop in Glasgow has a 1 to 1 1/2 hour turnaround, pretty good service IMO.

It doesn’t seem to be common knowledge but you get 1 free sensor clean with every new Canon DSLR, up here in Scotland a company called Johnsons in Glasgow do it, otherwise it’s £37.50.

Canon center in london, offers the same ‘first clean’ offer if the camera is still under warentee, after that its £30 for the EOS XXX and £50 for the posh EOS XX and X’s (or atleast it was a month or two ago) on the plus side the canon center does the job in a day and its like a 5 miniute drive from the raf museum

I’m not entirely convinced anything should be wearing off the shutter! I bought both my 350D and my 30D new, and straight out of the box the 350D’s sensor was totally clean. Not a single speck of dust or anything else anywhere. My 30D, however, was completely covered in crap! How can one new camera body be so clean and another, more expensive one be so disgustingly dirty?

Strangely it seems to be a problem many people have had with brand new 30D’s. There are many stories from people in Canon forums who’ve had the same experience. Also many stories of people who’ve sent their camera back to Canon to be cleaned, only to have it returned in an even worse state.

Come on, Canon. Get your act cleaned up!

Paul

It doesn’t seem to be common knowledge but you get 1 free sensor clean with every new Canon DSLR, up here in Scotland a company called Johnsons in Glasgow do it, otherwise it’s £37.50.

….You can clean the sensor using Eclipse fluid (based on methanol) and Sensor Swabs. Both made by Photographic Solutions Inc. A 59ml bottle of fluid should set you back around 10 euros (~7 pounds). The sensor swabs are rather expensive at 69 euro (~45 pounds) per package. If I am not mistaken there are 10 swabs per package.

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Personally, i use lab grade Isopropyl Alchohol (£10 for a 1ltr tin) from Maplins -it evaporates without any residue and is less aggresive than methanol based products. I have used it for many years for cleaning all sorts of camera items (including sticky shutter curtains on old cameras !!!)

My initial cleaning method for my canon 300D is to remove the lens – then hold the camera body face down toward the floor and then blast the dust out by using a big old-fashioned “puffer brush” you can from a photo shop – pull the brush bit off and use the puffer for moving the air around. This seems to fix many sensor problems without having to use physical contact.

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The dust issue is not really dust when the camera is new.
the problem is the shutter moveing parts bedding in and small swarf like
bit wearing off from the shutter.

I’m not entirely convinced anything should be wearing off the shutter! I bought both my 350D and my 30D new, and straight out of the box the 350D’s sensor was totally clean. Not a single speck of dust or anything else anywhere. My 30D, however, was completely covered in crap! How can one new camera body be so clean and another, more expensive one be so disgustingly dirty?

Strangely it seems to be a problem many people have had with brand new 30D’s. There are many stories from people in Canon forums who’ve had the same experience. Also many stories of people who’ve sent their camera back to Canon to be cleaned, only to have it returned in an even worse state.

Come on, Canon. Get your act cleaned up!

Paul

The dust issue is not really dust when the camera is new.
the problem is the shutter moveing parts bedding in and small swarf like
bit wearing off from the shutter. it does settle down after about 6000 shots. but you will need to clean it . the problem of dust and other bits like pollen will be the normal issue after this 1st stage of bedding in.
As for setting the ones above will be ok for start off.
but every photo shoot will be diffrent regarding light and exposer etc, best tip i can give is practice working on your exposer meter readings from the camera and take a mental note of the results.

Been there, done that on my Canon 10D. Hate it when that happens! Too many buttons or in too much of a hurry…….or my daughter has been messing with it!:dev2: Though I did intentionally use the 1600 ISO while shooting the Northern Lights from the deck of a moving boat, handheld, 8sec exposures…..not recomended!

Makes images really grainy!

The dust advice is very important.

Cool, that means I really am starting to get the hang of this 😀

One more thing, don’t do what I did recently and change the ISO value when you think you’re changing the shutter speed (ISO 1600 does not apparently equal 1/1600 second shutter speed :rolleyes: ). Reading the instructions is an ok idea, but for better and easier to understand results, try and find the book Canon EOS 30D Guide to Digital SLR Photography by David D. Busch. I’ve found it to be a very useful reference tool.

I will say that you should love the IS lenses, I have the 70-300mm IS lens myself and it is a godsend, delivering great shots (when I have the settings right) regardless of the conditions.

The dust advice is very important. In fact, all new cameras come with a free supply of dust. I was told this is because the final assembly is not in a dust-free room, but find that hard to believe.

Nonetheless, before using it you should clean it. Or have it cleaned by the camera shop if you feel a bit edgy about damaging the sensor. I would recommend on doing it yourself for the very simple reason that it is expensive to have someone else do it. And that is assuming there is a store nearby that does it! Also, for all the virtues the 100-400L has, it is a real dust magnet. I am told the push-pull zoom acts like a pump you’d use for the tires of your bike. With the air comes a load of dust.

You can clean the sensor using Eclipse fluid (based on methanol) and Sensor Swabs. Both made by Photographic Solutions Inc. A 59ml bottle of fluid should set you back around 10 euros (~7 pounds). The sensor swabs are rather expensive at 69 euro (~45 pounds) per package. If I am not mistaken there are 10 swabs per package.

The shutter mechanism will not last a life-time, so try to avoid “machine-gunning” your photos. You should be able to get loads of shots, but it is a large strain on the shutter. Don’t worry too much though as you will easily get tens of thousands of shots.

Do not over-expose. This will kill your photo beyond rescue with photoshop and the likes. Under-exposure can be dealt with quite easily with the computer.

Good choise on the camera. Got a predecessor of it and like it a lot. Have not got the 100-400 myself, but managed to borrow one once. Excellent quality photos. The 100-400L will be my next purchase, but that will have to be a few years down the road.

Gentlemen
Many thanks for such speedy feedback. It all makes sense so I’ll just have to pray for decent weather.

Very much appreciated

SF

AI Servo
Centre spot
ISO 100
Apeture priority at f8
Lens on IS mode 2
Sorted………………..:D

One thing to note is that you may find yourself having an issue with dust on the sensor like I have been experiencing recently. This is something that can usually be edited out in post-processing, but you’ll still need to clean the sensor off. The dust apparently can be the result of particles that lodged inside the camera during shipping, and as you use it for the first few months more of them dislodge and end up on the sensor. Then all you have to do after the majority of them are dislodged and cleaned off is take care when changing lenses and whatnot, and the problem should be over with.

H Steve

Excellent combinaiton!

These are the settings I use on my camera/lens and my advice for ground to air shots:

AI servo (perdictive), max (5ps) continous shooting in RAW mode.
Beware that the max burst in RAW mode is 11 shots in one burst of continuous shooting. After the 11th shot with continuous shooting continuing you will only be able to shoot about one photo a second so do not get too snap happy on one aircraft doing a pass and do not start shooting too early – you may miss the best shot. With slower aircraft there should be no need to take this number of shots anyway. Apart from this, is all too easy to take loads of shots knowing you can delete the less so good images later but it will very quickly take up space on your compact flash.

In practice, if say at Duxford and your taking shots of 7 Spits chasing each other there is usually a small gap between each spit passing which means there is enough time for your camera and compact flash to write down an image before you take a shot or two at the next Spit that passes. This should enable you to take 14 or more shots wihout coming up against the max buffer of 11 shots.

The compact flash I mostly rely on is a Sandisk Extreme 111. This CF card enables your images to be downloaded on you CF card significantly more quickly that a bog standard CF card or an Ultra.

Metering mode is either center weighted or evaluative

Autofocus selection is either centre spot or automatic – I have never been able to decide which is best except for take of and landing shots when I use centre spot in case of background clutter such a trees.

The IS lens should enable you to reduce your shutter speads to at least 100the a sec fo landing and take off shots for a an in focus image – some people can get it even lower. However you can only do this successfully for aircraft wth steady rate of ascent or decent. You will not be able to use such a low shutter speed for an F16 or F15 or any other jet that lunges itself in to the air. These arcraft will still be rotating on take off and the tail and nose of the aircraft will be blurred. I have actually used shutter speed of 800th a sec at ISO200 at RIAT on jets still rotating in the climb from take off.

My shutter speeds/ISO for ground to air should are:

Slow pistons (Old Warden variety) 340th a sec at ISO100
Faster pistons (Spit/Mustang/Sea Fury 400th a sec at ISO100. Poss 500th a sec.
Slow Jets (Sea Hawk and the like) 500th a sec to 800th a sec at ISO100 or 200 *
Fast jets (Typhoon/Tornado) 500th a sec to 1000th a sec at ISO200*

* I vary the shutter spead sometimes depending on the spead of the aircraft at the time. I also use the in between ISOs sometimes such a 125 or 250.

Some people may think that the shutter speeds I quote may be to fast for pistons as they may prefer even more prop blur. However sometimes I like to print an A4 size images and if the shutter spead is too low, a pic showing an aircraft topsiding may have the wing tips blurred due to the up movement of one wing and the down movement of the other wing.

On a dull day I use ISO400 as a last resort and try to lower the shutter speeds instead.

I use standard picture styles on my camera. An explanation of picture styles should be on page 56 of your 30d instruction manual. All of my images nowadays are also post processed.

You can see some of the settings I have used on most of my images on my web sites.

My aplogies if much of the stuff above is what you already know.

Best of luck

Martin