Canon EOS 7D updates (January 2011)

Canon EOS 7D product photograph

If you’ve got a Canon EOS 7D, here’s some 7D news you might have missed during the holidays.

Firmware update version 1.2.3

A recent update to the 7D firmware addresses issues with the Speedlite Transmitter STE-2 and the Macro Ring Lite. Download 7D Firmware Update Version 1.2.3 here. This isn’t the first firmware update since the 7D came out, so even if the Version 1.2.3 fixes don’t apply to you, you might want to install this to get caught up if you haven’t installed any firmware updates since you bought the camera.

Add a lock to your mode dial

Do you ruin shots by accidentally nudging your mode dial to the wrong setting, ending up with B when you meant M or with Tv when you meant A? Now Canon will add a mode dial lock to your EOS 7D or EOS 5D Mark II…but it’s cost you. About $100. Engadget has the details.

Canon rebates expiring January 8, 2011

The current round of Canon rebates expires this weekend, so if there was Canon gear Santa didn’t bring you, now’s your chance to pick it up for yourself. Rebates apply to bodies, lenses, flashes, and more. For more information, go to the Promotions page on the Canon USA Professional Imaging Products web site. It’s worth checking that page periodically, since Canon tends to offer different rebates and discounts during the year.

I won’t be publishing news on every camera out there, but if you and I have some hardware in common you’ll periodically see some news about it right here.

Discover better photos by getting high (or low)

It’s easy to fall into the trap of seeing a subject, shooting at eye level, and simply moving on; I have to remember to break out of that habit all the time. Walking past a building site the other night, I was intrigued by the color and perspective of the green pipes they brought in. The way the pipes leaned out over the new walls looked like a battleship gun Terry Gilliam would dream up. The eye-level shot I took really didn’t do anything for me and I deleted it, but I really wanted to make the shot work. I remembered to try pushing the pipes up into the sky or down into the ground simply by moving the camera up and down. As a result, I got two shots I liked a whole lot more than the eye-level shot.

Fire Station 21 pipes looking up

Fire station pipes looking down

For the first shot I lowered the camera to about a foot off the ground, and for the second shot I raised the camera as far up as my arms could reach. That simple 6-foot difference produced two noticeably different images.

What the photos don’t show is the chain-link fence around the building site. To make the fence disappear, I moved the camera right up to the fence and shot through it. The fence turned out to be more of a help than a hindrance, because I was able to brace the camera on the fence with both hands to steady a long exposure enough for the camera’s image stabilization to be able to make up the difference. This was made easier because I was shooting with my pocket camera, a Panasonic DMC-LX3 set to shoot raw at ISO 1600. If it had been an SLR, I wouldn’t have been able to rest the entire lens inside one of the chain link holes.

It was the screen on the back of the camera that let me compose the shots without having to lie on the wet ground or finding a ladder. There’s a rather significant group of photographers that’s devoted to the optical viewfinder, and they tend to take a dim view of shooting with any electronic viewfinder. These two shots are examples of why I don’t agree with them. On the camera screen I was able to compose and check the composition at the edges, level (with the help of the on-screen grid option), and check exposure with the help of the histogram and clipping display, and I could do it with the camera at an odd angle far from my face. Being able to read the screen from a distance freed me up to create two very different compositions from the same spot on the sidewalk.

When processing the shot later in Lightroom 3.3, noise reduction, Clarity, and Vibrance were very helpful in cleaning up the image and punching up the color and local contrast. High ISO shadows can be a little purple on this camera, so I reduced the purple saturation in the Hue/Saturation/Lightness panel.

Updates: Photoshop CS5 12.0.2, Camera Raw 6.3, Lightroom 3.3

Adobe photography application icons

Adobe has released a wave of updates for its professional photography applications:

Adobe Photoshop CS5 12.0.2 (no release notes link, see download/updates link below)
Adobe Camera Raw 6.3 (click for release notes in PDF)
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.3 (click for release notes in PDF)

As usual, you can read the release notes and download the installers from

http://www.adobe.com/downloads/updates/

or:

To update Photoshop and Camera Raw directly, start Photoshop and choose Help > Updates.

To update Lightroom directly, start Lightroom and choose Help > Updates.

I may pull out some highlights from the release notes here later when I have more time, but for now you can refer to the links above.

Print color profiling targets with no color management

Adobe Color Printing Utility 1.0

Adobe Color Printer Utility 1.0 released

If you print color target images because you build printer profiles, and you’ve been frustrated that the No Color Management option is missing from the Print dialog box in Adobe Photoshop CS5, you can breathe a little easier now. No, make that a lot easier. Adobe has released the Adobe Color Printer Utility, specifically designed to print RGB TIFF color profiling targets without the risk of having the test swatch colors distorted by a color management system.

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iPhone asks for unknown voicemail password

iPhone voicemail password request

Has your iPhone all of a sudden started asking you for your voicemail password? Is it not letting you in even though you’re sure you entered the right voicemail password? Or have you completely forgotten the password?

When this started happening to me, I ran a search on Twitter and found a lot of people complaining about the same thing. Which means it might have been an AT&T system glitch and nothing we users did wrong on our phones. People have proposed various solutions out there, everything from calling AT&T customer service to having the phone send you a new temporary password via SMS. But what worked for me was a lot simpler and I didn’t have to use a different password.

My fix. I used my iPhone to dial my own phone number, which answers by putting me directly into my voicemail account. I then followed the voicemail menu to where you can change your password, and get this: it didn’t ask me for the old password before entering the new one. How convenient. I entered the password I wanted, and the next time AT&T voicemail asked me for my password, I entered that one and it worked.

When you get to the AT&T voicemail menu, here’s the sequence (or just listen to the menus if they changed them around):

  1. Press 4 for personal options.
  2. Press 2 for administrative options.
  3. Press 1 to manage passwords.
  4. Press 1 to change the password.
  5. When the system asks you to enter the password you want, do it.
  6. When the system lets you know the new password is set, press * to back out of the menus until the system says “Goodbye!”

The next time the Voicemail screen asks you for your password, the one you just set up should work. And all of your saved voicemails should show up again. That’s what happened to me, anyway; if it isn’t working for you I really don’t know what to do next except maybe contact AT&T.

OK, that was easy. But if there was a kung-fu film called Enter the Password, at this point its hero might say, looking around with suspicion, “…that was too easy.”

Security concern. While it was convenient to be able to change my password without having to know whatever mystery password AT&T was expecting before, security-minded readers may see this as a security hole. It means that if your iPhone is in the wrong hands for less than a minute, they could easily lock you out of your own voicemail by changing your password. Just another reason why every smartphone user should use the feature that locks your phone when you don’t use it for a couple of minutes, requiring a passcode to get back in. Yes, a phone passcode is a hassle, but there’s just too much personal information on these phones now and too much access to key parts of your life to allow a smartphone to be unsecured.