My Canon Pixma 9500Pro printer is suddenly printing too dark at the top. Fortunately, I have made all my exhibit prints, so I’ll look at it after the exhibit’s first weekend. First a thorough cleaning then we’ll see from there.

One intriguing issue I had to solve, though, is this, and I thought I would share it. When using Canon art papers, Canon insists on a 3.5cm margin around all edges. Fine, I know that and I have set up my Lightroom printer parameters accordingly.

Suddenly, though, the settings no longer worked, and every print failed with a warning to use a driver with a 3.5 cm margin. I tried everything I could, but it kept saying that – and the margin setting in the Lightroom setups had not changed since – forever.

Guess what? It took a bit of doing but I solved. that one. The margin used to be set as 1.38inches in Lightroom. But either the Mac OS, or the printer driver, or Lightroom 4, now translates 1.38 in as just below 3.5cm! Once I changed the margins to 1.39in, it all worked.

The moral of this story: don’t give up, try all sorts of things when you are having an issue. Be creative and eventually you will hit on the one that gives results. I mean.. who would have thought that a rounding difference would cause issues?

You know it is handy to have a few clear filters available in your bag. But to use them always? I don’t think so.

Why not? Because they can degrade your image a little. In particular, they can cause extra flare. Like in these images taken today by a student:

With the clear protection filter on the 50mm lens:

And a second later, without the filter:

Look at my face, under my chin, etc: the strong back light causes flare in both locations; but it is noticeably worse with the filter, since the light bounces back and forth between the extra layers of glass, thus causing degradation.

My advice is: have a filter, but only use it when your camera is in danger from sand, water (especially sea water), snow, and other such dangers.

___

Learn From The Pro: You can benefit from private training and portfolio reviews too: the June special ($75 per hour instead of 95 per hour) is still on and there are some slots available during days, evenings and weekends.

….you have to do what you can and work around issues.

Like my Canon 1D Mark 4 camera, which focuses inconsistently.

When I shoot with, say, my 35mm lens at f/1.4, and I operate the camera properly, nevertheless focus is different every time – and rarely right. I am using one focus spot; I focus away, then aim my spot at a contrasty subject; and so on – but it’s a gamble every time.

Look at these five shots – a very typical sequence – where in each case I carefully focused the 35mm lens at f/1.4 (using the centre focus point) on the round red logo on the bottleneck:

Incredible, no? Only one or perhaps two of those images are sharp enough. The reset are focused all over the place, except at the distance I was focusing.

Especially in low light, that is what I usually see. Of course what can I expect, from a $6,000 camera with $2,000 (each) lenses?

Now seriously – as a Canon shooter, I love their equipment, and rather than blog about how unreliable autofocus is, I would be discrete and handle it quietly, but

• (a) Canon wants me to pay hundreds of dollars a year to get the good service I should get anyway when I spend tens of thousands on their gear (“CPS”, Canon Professional Services, which should be free); and
• (b) Even when I had CPS, all I ever used to hear from them is “everything is OK” – when clearly it is not. They will never acknowledge problems.
• A repair would take weeks, even longer.. what do I do in the mean time? Operate without a backup camera?

So why should I waste my time? Instead, I work around the issue. By avoiding close-up shots. By not shooting with large apertures. By avoiding shooting in low light. By choosing subjects that are good whether in focus in one area, or not.

The point is: even with expensive equipment, you will have issues that you cannot solve, but that you must work around.

Oh – my final workaround for Canon’s focus: shoot in bright light, and take every image several times.

Or, “more about those sunny days of summer”.

Why do you need a Polarizer (“Polarizing filter”, “Circular Polarizer”, “C-Pol”)?

Most lens filters bought nowadays  (“UV”, “Daylight”, “Protection”) do nothing but protect against sand, snow, and rain. And sticky fingers. But one filter, the Polarizer, does something.

Put it on your lens and you see the normal scene (but you need more ISO, lower “F-number”, or slower shutter to compensate for the loss of light):

Now turn the polarizer, and suddenly, the reflections on the non-metallic part of the car, the windows, disappear!

Bit more importantly, look at the sky. Here’s the scene outside my home yesterday at 2pm:

And now I turn the front of the filter until this happens: look at the sky, and observe the green colour of the tree:

And that is why, especially on those blue-skies-with-some-cloud days, you should carry a polarizer!

(Can we do this is Lightroom? Yes – but then you get funny edges around the shapes. There’s no real substitute for a Polarizer in this case.)

Again, a word about prime lenses, i.e. “non-zoom” lenses. I have said it before and it needs saying again.

Until the 1980s we used primarily prime lenses. Today, we use quality zooms – but quality or not, pros still use primes in many cases. I uses prime lenses whenever I can. Here’s why:

The main points for me are the lens speed – f/1.4 is better than f/2.8 as a maximum aperture – the sharpness, and the consistency of my shots. Zooms lead to laziness, while primes enforce discipline!

So if you only have zooms, then today get yourself a fast prime – a 24, 35 or 50mm lens perhaps – and go shoot some cool shots with that. On a crop camera, use 24 for events, 35 for general purpose, and 50 for portraits.

If you use a “crop factor” camera, one with a smaller sensor than a 35mm negative, you need to use smaller lens focal lengths to achieve the traditional effect a lens gives you with a 35mm sensor or negative. Like so:

So to get a “standard 50mm picture”, use a 35mm lens if you have a Digital Rebel, say (an “APS-C sensor” camera, which is the common size). And so on. You may want to copy down this table!