Beau Photo • PMA 2007 Blog

Blog Contents

The End: The Last Two Days
March 22nd - Arches and Canyonlands
March 19th - Three More Days...
March 16th - Grand Canyon, Lee's Ferry etc...
March 13th - Death Valley with Ted
March 9th - PMA 2007 - Day 2
March 8th - PMA 2007 - Day 1
March 7th - Las Vegas
March 6th - Bryce Canyon National Park
March 5th - Zion and Bryce National Parks
March 4th - Zion National Park
March 3rd - In the desert finally!
March 2nd - Day 2 of drive...
March 1st - Day 1 of drive down...
Introduction

The End: The Last Two Days

Well, I have been back in Vancouver for a week now, and am finally getting to the last couple of days of shooting on my trip. I had planned on ending the blog at the last entry, but thought "What the heck...": I might as well add one more gallery to the blog with the last couple of days around the Moab area. The above image, infrared of course, was captured in Arches National Park. I was hiking between some sandstone fins, near the Devil's Garden area, when I spotted this great patch of light on the ground. After a few minutes of photographing that, I finally decided to look around and actually see where the light was coming from. To my (somewhat embarrassed) amazement, I saw that a small arch was the culprit - duh!!! The above image is that arch...

The final blog gallery: Last Two Days

The last morning, I met up with Jon Fuller, formerly of the Moab Paper Co. Since Legion Paper's recent acquisition (pdf press release) of Moab Paper, he has moved on and is now running a photographic guide company, Moab Photo Tours. He is also extremely knowledgeable about photographic locations in Utah, especially around the Moab area. Whether it is little-known Native ruins, petroglyphs and pictographs or simply where the prime locations are for sunset and sunrise scenes, he seems to have a vast repository of knowledge in that respect. Jon also seems to frequently work with Tom Till, a very well-known (and oft-published) large-format landscape photographer working out of Moab, and I'm sure they share a lot of tidbits of info on where the prime spots for photography are.

Jon met me at Mesa Arch in Canyonlands National Park, early on Friday morning. This is a very popular sunrise destination for photographers, and despite the fact that the weather was very dicey, there were lots of photographers there! There was barely room for me to squeeze my tripod in (see image 26 in the above gallery), hoping for a break in the clouds for sunrise. Apparently, for Mesa Arch, it actually was not very busy that morning! Alas, it was not to be: sunrise came and went without the warm glow of the rising sun hitting the underside of the arch.

After Mesa Arch, Jon and I went on a tour seeking out some sandstone pictographs (painted) and petroglyphs (chiseled) on an offshoot of Sevenmile Canyon, north of Moab. GPS in hand, he flawlessly guided us to several different locations with some very impressive native rock art. When it started raining, we decided to call it a day and have lunch, after which I unfortunately had to make tracks back home!

I left Moab around 1:30 in the afternoon and drove to just outside Twin Falls Idaho that evening. The next day, I made the run all the way back home - over 1100 km in one go. The weather was great for driving, at least until I got west of Ellensburg WA, on I-90. Heavy rain and poor visibility plagued me most of the way back home at that point and I was quite fatigued when I got home at just after midnight on Saturday night/Sunday morning.

Okay... now that's really it! No more updates to this blog. I will migrate this blog over to my own website in the near future (in some form or other), along with all the galleries as well. Eventually, in the next couple of weeks hopefully, I will have an updated set of galleries on my site in their usual style - definitely a lot of work to do in that regard!

One final note about Adobe Lightroom: I used it extensively on this trip and all the blog image galleries were created using one of its templates. Lightroom was really the thing that made processing all these raw files (yes, everything was shot in raw only - no jpegs) and creating these galleries, on the fly so to speak, a possibility. On my MacBook Pro (Core 2 Duo), it made short work of editing, selecting and adjusting the raw files to prepare for the image galleries. I don't think I could have this in the "traditional" way, where I use PhotoMechanic (my mainstay photo organizer for several years now) to choose the images, open the raw files in Photoshop, tweak them, run an action to prepare them for my website, save them and then run the resulting folder of prepared jpeg files through my usual gallery creation program. Sure, I can generate nice web galleries directly from PhotoMechanic, and the latest beta version does have some very slick templates, however those would be jpegs created from raw files without any adjustments whatsoever, with no way of straightening the horizon or ability to retouch the odd dust spot in the sky, etc. With Lightroom I can make all these adjustments very quickly and process images to very near completion, all within the confines of the program itself. After using Lightroom during the 30 day trial, I decided it was definitely valuable enough to buy. It is not without some minor glitches and does have a few missing features, however for a version 1.0 program it was very stable and never once caused me any concern whatsoever during importing, editing and working with the 3700 images I shot on this trip. Lightroom is definitely worth a look for anyone shooting raw with a digital SLR...

Thanks again for reading, and looking!

Mike Mander
April 1, 2007

Website: www.sublimephoto.com

March 22nd - Arches and Canyonlands

These last couple of days have been a little frustrating: lots of stormy weather, clouds and some rain storms too. Two days in a row, and sunrises have either been rained out or totally grey overcast. Some good weather in the middle of the day and one good sunset allowed me to get a few photos. The above is from that sunset at the Green River Overlook in Canyonlands National Park. Here is a small gallery:

Arches and Canyonlands

Met up with Greg Schern from Moab Paper Co. (now a part of Legion Paper) and we had a good few hours of chatting about photography, printing, and exploring the back country around Moab. His enthusiasm for all things photographic and the desert is inspiring - I hope to tap his seemingly endless reserve of photographic location tips on my next visit down here! Sitting in an Internet Cafe (Eddie McStiff's Espresso Bar) and while waiting for the weather to break (it now has -yeah!) I decided to update the blog one last time before heading home. Today and maybe tomorrow morning will allow a few more opportunities (hopefully!) for some photos, but it already feels as though the trip is drawing to a close. I am fighting my usual trip-end depression as the reality of heading home and going back to work is hitting me. Moab is a great little town and I am always reluctant to leave here. Luckily Beau Photo is a great place to work, so back-to-work is not all that bad!

Anyway, this may be it for this blog.... unless I encounter bad weather and decide to stay in a hotel on the way back to Vancouver. All the image galleries will be consolidated on my sublimephoto website within a few weeks, with further edits... especially the infrared photos. In case this is the last entry, I hope you all have enjoyed this experiment in trip blogging. It was quite time consuming but rewarding also. Any comments can be sent to either digital@beauphoto.com or mander@sublimephoto.com. Thanks for reading!

March 19th - Three More Days...

Three more days of shooting. Whew! I think this is turning out to be one of the most diverse and successful trips for me. Lots of images to go through when I get back! Luckily, a lot of the editing is being done in the evening on my MacBook Pro, often times from inside my tent!

The above shot is at sunset from Arches National Park, north of Moab. The view has some of the park's "Petrified Dunes" in the foregound (the orange mounds) and the La Sal mountains in the background. The sunset showed great promise but alas, the clouds never became dramatically colourful. Nonetheless, they were dramatic enough, even without colour.

Without further ado, here is the latest gallery: Three More Days

Infrared down here in the southwest is unpredictable. Often times, what looks like prime IR material just turns out muddy and "blah". Other times, when I turn the IR camera on something that I am not necessarily expecting much from, I bruise my chin as my jaw drops and hits the sandstone! An example is tonight's sunset; the La Sal mountains with the dramatic clouds seemed far too dim for IR to my eyes, but when I tried it, I was amazed at the dramatic contrast!

Where did I shoot these last few days? First I drove a long 280km detour to revisit Canyon de Chelly National Monument. My last visit, a few years back, was right at sunset with mostly overcast skies and I did not really have much time to look about. This time I was allowing the better part of a day and the weather was stunning. However when I arrived, I was disappointed: the canyon floor was filled with tourists on horseback, hikers, people in 4x4's, buildings, roads, you name it! Not the pristine ancient cliff dwellings I was anticipating. Argh... I was very disappointed and gave up pretty quickly.

Then came Monument Valley. I drove in fairly late to catch the evening light and did the self-guided loop drive. After being told of the phenomenon known as "Indian Time" a few years back, where often Native Americans don't seem to be as "ruled by the clock" as us pale-faced folk (much less pale I am, after being in the desert sun for a few weeks!), I made sure that I was at the exit gate 20 minutes before the stated closing time, and about 40 minutes before sunset. However, the gate was already locked! When I read the fine-print on a sign, it said to backtrack 150 feet and exit to the left. Ah... an alternative exit to the highway. Great, now I can get back to the visitor centre and watch sunset from there. But no, the entrance was already closed! Dammit... foiled again! After numerous bad experiences at Monument Valley in the past, I drove away in quite a huff, vowing never to return there again. Fat chance, that... I'm determined to get some good shots there someday! The next time I think I'll bite the bullet and hire a Native guide to take me around.

Anyway, my first day, of these next three, was the most disappointing of the trip so far. Despite gorgeous weather, circumstances transpired which give my cameras a welcome -for them, not me!- rest.

The next day was wholly a lot more successful than the previous I felt. First, sunrise at Valley of the Gods in southern Utah. I drove to my campsite in the dark and when I got up for sunrise, I was surrounded by amazing views, all the way around! What a truly remarkable way to start a day! After driving the loop drive and, among other things, getting some "chin bruises" from some IR photo-ops, I stopped in at Goosenecks of the San Juan State Park for breakfast. After that is was onward up the "Moki Dugway", a tortuous, steep and winding dirt road that rapidly rises up and out of the valley and onto Natural Bridges National Monument. I hadn't been there in a long time and this time, armed with my Canon EF-S 10-22mm ultra-wide zoom, I figured I finally had a wide enough angle of view to take in these gigantic water-worn natural bridges. The lens proved perfect for catching the bridges in some unusual "poses" and I made the best of the wide end of the zoom.

Today started out near Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, where there is a huge variety of slickrock (sandstone) formations. I visited numerous interesting locations. If I saw a cool spot, I stopped and hiked. If I saw a cool looking spot on my topographical map, I found a backroad with my mapping-GPS and drove in, then hiked to where I wanted to go. Today I had no plan, but one spot after the other proved photogenic. One place in particular, shown on the map simply as "Little Egypt", had an area filled with what appeared to be a cross between the "goblins" (bulbuous rock mushrooms) of Goblin Valey State Park, and the red and white "needles", reminiscent of the "Needles District" of Canyonlands National Park. An amazing scene, quite unexpected, and one I intend on returning to in the future. Along the way, at one of the stops, a large (8 inch long) lizard decided to pose for me and I spent about 20 minutes photographing it in a multitude of poses.

Finally, this evening was spent at sunset up at the Petrified Dunes area of Arches National Park. Anyway, time for me to hit the sack! I want to get up for sunrise tomorrow... ciao!

March 16th - Grand Canyon, Lee's Ferry, Horseshoe Bend, Antelope Canyon

Wow... massive numbers of photos already after only a few days on my own! Witnessed a spectacular sunset over the Grand Canyon (south rim) and a nice sunrise. It was crazy busy there and I was lucky to snag a campsite right at the south rim to facilitate a sunrise photo session. Subsequently, I headed over to Lee's Ferry, then Horseshoe Bend and finally Antelope Canyon (south slots) for more great photo opportunities. Weather is very hot, apparently unseasonably so, and this after the major cold-snap the shouthwest had a couple of weeks ago! Glad I hedged my bets and didn't only bring cold weather clothing!!!

This evening, after a few days of hiking around in the intense heat, a shower became something of a necessity, as did a haircut (finally), followed by an evening in a nice Internet cafe with free wireless to update the blog. Tomorrow, I will head over to Monument Valley and southern Utah.

Here is a small sampling of images from the last couple of days of shooting...

Gallery: Grand Canyon, Lee's Ferry, Horseshoe Bend and Antelope Canyon

I'll be back here in a few days if possible...

March 13th - Death Valley with Ted

After 3 days of traveling Death Valley with Ted Marshall (many of you may remember Ted since he worked for Beau Photo for many years), I am back at the Riveria in Las Vegas. This may well be the last blog update in quite some time, although I will try to update a couple of times during my next week and a half of traveling alone. Here is today's gallery, with a selection of shots from the the three days in Death Valley...

Gallery: Death Valley with Ted

It was amazingly hot with daytime highs over 35 C, but lows dropped to near freezing up at the higher altitudes such as at the "Racetrack" - see above photo. The Racetrack is so named because rocks appear to be racing each other, leaving tracks in the mud. See my own website for a further explanation...

Lots of great photographic opportunities abounded and both Ted and I took advantage if them and shot quite a lot! During a brief stop at Stovepipe Wells, we ran into Larry Frank and Mike Meisel of Daymen who were also doing a post-PMA tour of Death Valley. Rather than traveling in style in a dusty and dirty Isuzu, they were both riding through on shiny clean Harley's! Black leather in 37 degree heat though? Count me out!!!

That's it for now... hope to have some more up in a while!

March 9th - PMA 2007 - Day 2

Day 2 at PMA saw Carol and I meeting with a lot of suppliers and scoping out potential new product lines to sell, some of which I can reveal and others which I cannot. We met with Nikon today and apart from the new 10Mp D40X and a slew of P&S digital cameras, there really wasn't much new to see... although based on how busy their booth was (it wasn't in the above photo), you'd never know it! There were some impressive large sample prints of photos taken by the D40X, so although it is inexpensive and consumer oriented, it is indeed capable of (depressingly, as far as pros are concerned) good results. There were many other examples of fine photography on display in their booth as well, and some large prints from photos taken with their D-200 and D2XS cameras were stunning.

Here is the full gallery from today: PMA 2007 - Day 2

LowePro had a impressive new lineup of camera bags and clearly aren't sitting around to let other companies out-innovate. First up, there was a series of new laptop bags, in various trendy colours and styles. Then we saw the new SlingShot 300 AW, now the largest of the excellent SlingShot lineup. The SlingShot series is a single-strap backpack that, because of its design, can quickly be rotated around from the back to the front, allowing easy access to the camera compartment without having to remove the backpack. I have the SlingShot 200 AW and it really is a simple yet functional design. Moving on with more innovation, the new DryZone Rover is not only waterproof but has a built-in CamelBak style hydration system built in for those on long hikes and/or working in hot weather. Lastly the new Vertex series of backpacks (100, 200, and 300 AW) feature a multitude of useful features, including two external organizational pockets, which can hold spare batteries, memory cards or filters. They also have an outside padded pocket for a laptop, a new adjustable GlideLok mounting system, waterproof YKK zippers and, of course, an All-Weather cover.

Next up, was one of many inkjet paper suppliers we visited, the newly designated Moab by Legion Paper. Moab has an impressive new lineup of papers coming, including new heavy-weight (245 gsm) Colorado Fiber-Gloss and Colorado Fiber-Satin finish, very heavy (270 gsm) Lasal Photo Gloss, Lasal Photo Luster and (235 gsm) Lasal Photo Matte. Lastly, they also have a bright waterproof canvas with fairly minimal and shallow texture called Anasazi Canvas Premium Matte. I am looking forward to trying out these wonderful looking new papers from Moab and will provide further feedback when they start shipping in April.

Also visited was the Museo booth (no photos) where I saw their new ultra-smooth, very heavy weight (300 gsm) Portfolio Rag paper. This paper has no optical brighteners and looks a lot like a super heavy version of Epson's enhanced matte, but with a much higher quality feel. Their Maestro Fine-Art Canvas Gloss and Fine-Art Canvas Matte also look somewhat interesting for certain applications. I have a small sample pack of these papers to test when I return from vacation.

Although we are not carrying their products at the moment, Innova digital fine-art paper (no photos) is looking better than ever. I had tried their FibaPrint Gloss paper in the past but found it to have a very obvious directional texture which I found so distracting that I couldn't see using it, despite its excellent DMax and vibrant colour reproduction. Now however, they seem to have really tamed this weird texture and I can only see the barest hint of this directional texture and no longer find it bothersome. They have a whole slew of new FibaPrint papers, which I will be also testing when I return from vacation, so I'll be able to see how it stacks up to the new Moab line-up and the highly regarded and very popular Hahnemühle papers.

We also briefly swung by the Wacom booth which was showing their latest line of Cintiq LCD displays/tablets. These new displays/tablets can be angled and rotated at will with a tremendous degree of freedom and have two sets of ExpressKeys and TouchStrips, one on each side of the display. Pricing is not too bad, coming in at $2400 US for the Cintiq 21UX, a 21.3" display boasting a wide viewing angle and included calibrated ICC profile for colour accuracy. Working directly on a display with a Wacom pen is incredibly intuitive and makes retouching and other tasks in Photoshop an amazing experience!

Speaking of displays, we also spent some time in the Eizo booth (sorry, no photos... I was getting tired and forgot!) which manufactures an extremely high-end series of LCD displays, boasting extremely wide gamuts, self-adjusting brightness calibration and high bit-depth (14 or 16 bit) internal processing for essentially banding-free calibration. These days, with the demise of CRT displays (which were easy to calibrate accurately), LCDs have been a tough item to whole-heartedly recommend. However based on the display quality I witnessed, these Eizo LCDs may finally be something I can recommend without reservation. The pricing is not too bad these days either, starting at around $1500 - give or take... honestly we were both tired and Carol and I remember different starting prices! If we decide to carry this product line, I will provide more information and pricing in an upcoming Beau Photo newsletter.

I didn't really spend any time at the Hoodman booth, but it was definitely eye-catching in a, um... cheesy sort of way!

More bags! Now that Beau is carrying the Kata line, we checked out their booth to see what was new. Some rugged rolling stand bags and lighting bags were being shown. Although very lightweight, they are still strong enough to stand on due to some honeycomb reinforcing material. Rugged enough, despite the fact that they are not made of rigid plastic like, for example, Pelican cases are.

Yet even more bags! We had a meeting with ThinkTank Photo to look at their new, and very comprehensive, line of camera bags. These bags simply exude an air of quality workmanship and rugged materials. Each and every bag seems intelligently designed and manufactured and one can really see the thought that went into all their products. An example is one of their rolling camera cases: strong, yet very light, this case boasts alloy wheels and handle, built-in cable-lock with its own storage compartment, a fitted slot for a very well padded laptop sleeve (they make fitted sleeves for numerous different laptops) and it is designed to fit perfectly as airline carry-on baggage.

In addition, ThinkTank Photo's 2007 DIMA award winning Rotation 360 bag (which I may be testing on my upcoming 2 weeks in Arizona and Utah) boasts and incredibly innovative design. While wearing the backpack, one can pull a locking tab from the front, and simply rotate around the bottom compartment of the backpack, without having to take the pack off. Once you're done, simply rotate the bottom compartment back into its storage slot in the bottom of the backpack and pull the tab the opposite direction to engage the Velcro lock again. Very, very slick design and I can see this as being very useful when walking around it wet/muddy/sandy conditions, in other words, conditions where you would like to not have to remove the backpack to acces your gear! Similar in application to the LowePro SlingShot bag I already own, the ThinkTank Rotation 360 is certainly a far more comprehensively engineered bag and because it has a full harness with two shoulder straps (as opposed to the single strap of the SlingShot bag), it will likely be easier to carry heavy gear around for long perioids of time. Hopefully you'll be able to buy ThinkTank's exciting line-up of products from Beau Photo soon!

A few last odds and ends: Olympus was showing a couple of their new Stylus 770 SW digital P&S cameras frozen in a huge sculpted block of ice. This 7.1 Mp camera with a 38-114mm (equivalent) zoom lens is shockproof, waterproof, freezeproof and crushproof! A super rugged stainless steel body and reinforced LCD means the camera can withstand 5 foot drops onto concrete over and over, it can be submerged to an amazing depth of 33 feet without an additional underwater housing, it can be operated without concern down to -10C and it can withstand up to 220 pounds of crushing force. This little camera also has a depth-guage that measures air and water pressure to calculate the altitude or depth of your photos (!!!) as well as featuring a super-bright white LED that can be used for underwater photos or simply as a flashlight! Of course it also has a regular flash, a movie mode and all the other common features that P&S cameras come with these days. This camera is so impressive, that we have decided to put one in our rental department since we get many requests for waterproof cameras. This one ought to be able to survive the abuse that our rental customers sometimes dish out! ;-)

FujiFilm was showing off an impressive dye-sublimation printer, the ASK-4000. It won a DIMA award for best dye-sub print quality, seems very ruggedly made, boasts very fast print speeds and low cost-per-print. We are not sure if it will be available in Canada, but we will be looking into it for all those whos still need the throughput and duty-cycle of an industrial-grade dye-sub printer for high-volume event work.

Finally, Canon had a camera museum of sorts set up, and here is the first of several photos, showcasing some older models.

That's it for today... tomorrow will see us spending a few more hours at the show, but I will be heading off to Death Valley (before heading east) so I am not sure if I'll be able to complete another blog update for a little while! Hope you enjoyed these reports, and if I don't update this page anymore before I return, I bid you farewell! (for a couple of weeks at least)

March 8th - PMA 2007 - Day 1

Well, we spent the opening day of PMA visiting many smaller booths and tried to avoid the crushing masses of all the people on the main floor, where all the huge and popular booths are. I have a small gallery of images of products we saw at the show: The link for images from today is below and this blog entry will contain numerous direct links to photos (that will open in new windows) within the text as well...

Gallery: PMA 2007 - Day 1

First off, we visited the friendly folks from the Renaissance album company. They were showing off their new Mercer Book (photos showing on this album are courtasy of DQ Studios), which is a very nice looking all-digital album coming by the end of April, and a new addition to their already excellent album line-up.

The next next item of interest was a customized medium format film holder for the Nikon Super Coolscan 8000/9000 ED film scanner. This carrier comes with some film mounting fluid and an acetate overlay which basically allows you to wet-mount your film, thereby ensuring the utmost in flatness and minimized scratches. The fluid that is supplied will indeed evaporate (albeit slowly) so tedious post-scan cleaning of the film should be eliminated. While demand for this item will likely be minimal and we probably won't be stocking it, for some this might just be what the doctor ordered and we'll be able to special order it in as needed.

Next we saw an intersting new addition to Gitzo's tripod lineup, their new aluminum leg GT2340L tripod, shown with it's center-column removed to allow for low-angle work. This tripod is very light yet sturdy, with nice soft rubber grips, and new (easier-to-adjust) leg-positioning locks. This tripod uses Gitzo's latest inovation, Soulid 238 for most of its components. Soulid 238 is a new high-tech polymer which boasts strength equal to magnesium, yet it's 30% lighter by volume. It also has excellent vibration damping characteristics and being non-metallic, is also essentially impervious to oxidation. Also showen were the 6x Carbon-Fiber and Basalt versions of Gitzo's Explorer tripod. The Explorer allows for an infinite number of leg positions since it has locking clamps, rather than click stops, as well as the innovative swivelling center-column that can be unclamped and rotated at a moment's notice for use in awkward positions.

Then came a meeting with Hahnemühle to see their latest papers. A new paper that should be shipping in April sometime is Photo Rag Pearl, a 100% rag paper very similar to the Fine Art Pearl but with a warmer natural base that contains to optical brighteners. This should allow prints to achieve the absolute best longevity. In addition, they invited us to a luxury suite they had rented at the Wynn for drinks and some excellent food. Transportation was provided via a very swanky limousine! The Wynn is quite a spectacle and is one of the most elaborately decorated and most expensive hotels in Las Vegas.

On to the Crumpler booth, which is pretty much guaranteed to be one of the most uniquely presented at any trade show. This year, their entire booth was recyclable, made from cut and shaped cardboard boxes! Crumpler is continuing its tradition of offering stylish camera bags, laptop bags and messenger bags that don't look like camera bags, laptop bags or messenger bags... well okay, I guess their messenger bags do look, more or less, like messenger bags. Anyway, new colours and a huge selection of exceptionally well-made bags continue to win converts from those using products from the more traditional photographic bag companies.

Lensbabies, whoah... what have you done? Medium format Lensbabies! Yes! New 3G Lens Babies for your Pentax 6x7 as well as for your Mamiya 645 cameras! Wow, was that ever unexpected... but so very cool!

Next came the EZPnP booth with their new DM220 Plus portable DVD burner. This unit is due to start shipping at the end of June and boasts a few welcome improvements from their current DM220 model. Most obvious is a small colour LCD built-in that will allow you to view images that have been burned to visually verify a successfuly created DVD. Second is a USB On-The-Go mode (USB OTG) that will allow the DM220 Plus to pull images right off a digital camera, or any other device with a USB cable. I wasn't able to confirm this 100%, but apparently this will allow the DM220 Plus to be connected to a portable hard-drive, like their DM-180 or an Epson P-3000, and be used to burn DVDs from content on those hard drives, without requiring a computer. Cool!

Then on to Hasselblad. We were shown one of the new ImageBank portable hard drives. This new 100Gb ImageBank can be connected to any of Hasselblad's current generation of digital back via a FireWire 800 cable to shoot tethered, if shooting speed and capacity are important. It is way smaller than the previous generation of ImageBank and, in design decision so rarely made by companies these days, it will actually use the same NPF series of Sony Li-Ion battery that the old ImageBank used! Yeah! This new ImageBank is so fast, that it will allow unlimited continuous shooting from a Hasselblad digital back without any buffer issues whatsoever... in other words, it will never slow down, no matter how much you shoot to it. Lastly, the new ImageBank will also show up on a computer as a "normal" external FireWire hard-drive, so images can be transferred of without using their FlexColor software, if so desired.

I also saw some ISO 800 sample images from Hasselblad's new H3D/31 digital back. All I can say is "wow"! There was essetnially no noise visible in shadows, even when shot at ISO 800. That new sensor, although just a tad smaller than the 22 and 39 models, sure does seem like it might the ideal solution for someone frequently shooting under adverse lighting conditions.

Finally came Canon: they were showing off their iPF9000 printer, a 60" wide behemoth as well as a new 24" printer using the same inkset as the iPF5000 which I have been testing at Beau recently. This new 24" model does not have a designation yet but is due out the end of June. Now that Canon has updated the firmware in the iPF5000 and supplied new drivers, I will be putting it through its paces at Beau when I return from vacation. Print quality is reputed to be improved, making an already excellent printer even better!

Also from Canon, we saw their latest high-end/high-speed digital SLR, the EOS-1D Mark III and the new 16-35mm f/2.8L II lens, reputedly a huge improvement over its predecessor in terms of corner performance on full-frame digital SLRs. The 1D Mark III is a 10 fps, 10 megapixel camera which boasts a huge array of innovations and improvements over its successor, the 1D Mark IIN. The improvements are way to much to report on here, so I will instead direct you to an excellent preview on Rab Galbraith's website. Suffice to say that in the hand, the camera feels rock solid, super responsive and definitely lighter than the 1D Mark IIN. New, easier to navigate menus and better AF point selection are also welcome. Indeed, the new 1D Mark III looks to be a truly superb camera in every respect (even if you don't need the 10 fps) and if you want to get on the list for one of these, call or email Ron Joyce at Beau immediately to reserve yours!

That's all for today... see you back here with another update tomorrow!

March 7th - Las Vegas

In the morning, on the way from Bryce Canyon to Las Vegas, Carol and I stopped briefly at the Kolob Canyons section of Zion National Park. Cloudy weather discouraged me from taking many photos, but I have included one lonely shot in today's gallery... overwhelmed by the gaudy and over-the-top display of neon and kitsch which defines Las Vegas!

Several hotels were visited and photographed in the evening, including New York New York, The Luxor and Excalibur. The bulk of the photos in the gallery were taken at "The Fremont Street Experience", where there is a huge dome covering several entire blocks of Fremont Street. This dome houses an enormous number of RGB lamps which are all controlled to display huge moving image light-shows, every hour on the hour in the evening. We watched three different shows, the first being a big "advertisement" for LG Electronics who seems to be sponsering a big part of the Fremont Street show. The second was a blatant US patriotic show and the last was an "adult" show with scantily clad women singing and dancing their way across the huge domed ceiling.

Here is the image gallery from today: March 7th - Las Vegas

The rest of the neon was all shot on and around Fremont Street. I ran out of time tonight so my editing was somewhat incomplete and the gallery turned out somewhat large! Nevertheless if you are a fan of neon, have a look. Note that all the night shots were taken with my Canon 30D at 1250-1600 ISO, hand-held at shutter speeds of 1/8 to 1/250 second. No image-stabilization either! The shots turned out better than I expected...

Tomorrow is the first day of the PMA tradeshow so watch for some updates and photos of new cameras and other photographic items of interest! Finally... no more frivolous blog entries and galleries - you will see some "meaty" entries with that PMA info you've all probably been weaiting for!

March 6th - Bryce Canyon National Park

Today started out disappointingly. I woke up early with the intention of getting out near sunrise, however when I looked outside, the sky was totally gray and socked in with clouds. I decided to set my alarm later and get a little more sleep! After a few hours of disappointing skies touring the park, the weather finally broke and blue sky started to show again. While the weather was miserable, I decided to occupy myself for a few minutes by towing someone out of a snowdrift. He had got stuck when he drove his rental car off the side of the road, not realizing how deep the snow was! Got out my tow-strap, put the Isuzu in 4x4 Low, and got him out in no time flat. Carol amused herself by filming the "rescue" operation...

Without delay, here is today's gallery: Bryce Canyon National Park

It seems each of the smaller viewpoints has its own resident pair of crows who are not at all shy and seem to be hoping for handouts. One could walk within 3 feet of these birds without scaring them off. One of them, after posing nicely for me to take a bunch of photos, hopped over to my truck and started to pick dead bugs off the front! Yum! And thanks for the cleaning! It then hopped over to my camera bag and started pecking and poking it with its beak, however after realizing it contained only boring camera gear and nothing to eat, it gave up and flew back up to its preferred perch.

After checking out all the viewpoints, both Carol and I agreed that Bryce Point was by far the most spectacular and we decided to hang there for sunset. All the evening shots in the above gallery are from there. While at Bryce Point waiting for sunset, we met a very interesting fellow (I think his name was Ron Haus) who was doing large format (8x10) moonlight landscape photography in the desert southwest with very long exposures, anywhere from 2-5 hours! He was very meticulous at setting up, aiming and stabilizing his huge surveyor tripod for these long duration exposures. He had scores of interesting tales to tell and seems almost fanatically devoted to this project. Although he does not yet have a website, but I asked him to notify me (if he remembers) when he does since his photos sound like they would likely be very interesting. Even though he is not, not strictly speaking, a professional photographer, he has nevertheless reputedly won numerous awards for his work already.

Tomorrow it is back to Las Vegas, with a little side trip to Kolob Canyons in northern Zion. Then comes PMA... what this blog was originally intended to showcase!

March 5th - Zion & Bryce National Parks

Well, since Carol and I left Zion early today, sadly no Bumbleberry Pie was consumed. However, I did manage to have some Bumbleberry pancakes for breakfast and I bought some Bumbleberry jelly to take home as well. After driving up and out of the park and through the long 1.1 mile Mount Carmel Highway tunnel, Carol and I stopped several times for some scenic shots in the eastern part of Zion prior to driving the rest of the way to Bryce Canyon.

Near Bryce, while driving through the entrance to Red Canyon, we decided to stop for a few photos. I took a little hike off the pavement and managed to walk through some extraordinarily red (and sticky) mud! Have a look at the photo of my hiking boot in the gallery to see how red this mud is. It took a fair bit of work and lots of ice-cold snow (man were my hands ever cold after doing that!) to scrub the boots clean again. Carol, never having been in Utah before, kept muttering how amazing the colours were, how they were unbelievable. Yes, there is lots of saturated red in Utah... heck even some of the roads are paved with red asphalt and red concrete is fairly common as well!

The above photo is from Sunset Point, near sunset at Bryce Canyon National Park. Here is today's gallery, again mixed colour and IR: Zion & Bryce National Parks

For tomorrow, much high-altitude hiking is on the agenda (the rim of Bryce Canyon is over 8,000 feet high) with lots more photos to be taken. Hoping the weather cooperates!

March 4th - Zion National Park

Zion National Park... deep canyons carved into immense majestic red sandstone formations and the free flowing waters of the Virgin River, sustaining incredibly lush vegetation for such a hot and dry desert envirnoment -these contrasts are what distinguish this from other southwest desert parks. This early in the year though, the trees are still bare and the vegetation is still dormant after a fairly cold and dry winter. This park will be in its finest form later in the year when all the lush greenery is back in its full glory. It was interesting to see now but if there had been more than a mere dusting of snow on the bluffs, it could have been far more interesting.

Here is a gallery from today's wanderings, both IR and colour mixed: March 4th - Zion National Park

This time of year, the park had relatively few visitors and it was a relaxing not having to fight the "crowds". In addition, the drive up to the Zion Narrows is still open, whereas later in the year one can no longer drive in and must take a free shuttle bus.

Carol took lots of photos and video footage as well and I tried hard to help her break in her new hiking boots! The lodge we are staying at has great food and we both stuffed ourselves after a long day of hiking around. Tomorrow it will be off to Bryce Canyon for a couple of days with some stops along the way in the eastern part of Zion NP. Oh yes, and we also have to try the "world-famous" Bumbleberry Pie they have here in Springdale tomorrow before we leave...

Blog: PMA 2007 - Las Vegas

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