Guess from where!

A wireless remote shutter release is a handy thing to have. I use one with an ancient Olympus 5050 for the Christmas family snap. That Olympus has more shutter delay than you want to know about, so it’s an exercise in frustration. Further, I would guess the much used Oly’s years are numbered (the plastic focus and zoom racks are the first to go in these P&S digitals) and whenever I want to include myself in a landscape picture it means resorting to the delayed action on the 5D (hell to find with all those buttons) and run for it to try and get my Olympian physique placed just so in the frame.

I ruminated about a Canon 5D remote but once I saw the price ….

And that one is wired! OK, so it has a timer and will probably make your breakfast, but at that price I’ll eat at MacDonald’s, thanks. I seem to remember they listed a wireless version for some $500 and if you read on you will cease wondering why it’s no longer available.

I remember thinking about the interminable delay of the Olympus when taking this year’s family snap (it’s been bugging me for years), and checked ePrey shortly after. Well for $10.99 and $11.99 shipping from Hong Kong I decided the risk was acceptable and as I have had nothing but success with the incredible studio flash remote I bought a while back, so I pressed the ‘Buy It Now’ button and forgot about the whole thing.

Well, it arrived today and I must say the gadget is totally awesome! It’s radio frequency, not line of sight, which translates to tremendous, non-directional range. And if interference is an issue (your brand new BMW starts itself and goes off the road, say) you have sixteen radio channels (16!) to choose from.

A CR-2 Lithium battery (provided) goes in the remote and the camera-end receiver comes with a 23A battery installed.

With the antenna extended the range is quoted at 320 feet! I gave up at 105 feet which is the length of my hallway (it’s raining outside so a longer distance was … out of range). With the antenna retracted, which makes the transmitter easily pocketable, I got 75 feet.

A couple of small pieces of Velcro keep the receiver attached to the LCD shade on the back of the 5D.

So if you need a wireless remote for your DSLR because you want to avoid shutter lag or you don’t want to risk a coronary while running into your landscape snap, blow $22.98 on one of these. I have not checked but I would bet that this device is made for most DSLRs out there. Heck, the DSLRs are made in China anyway, no? The picture on the box shows the receiver attached to a Nikon D200 and, if it helps, the inventory check-off tab on the box provides options for five different connectors, though I must disappoint you by disclosing that my Chinese is not up to snuff to make sense of these.

When you press the button on the transmitter, the first pressure gets you a green LED on the transmitter. That means the transmitter and its battery are working. This changes to red to on further pressure to indicate activation but be warned that it changes to red whether you are in range or not. To make the camera end functional, you do have to press the button on the receiver, one of whose LEDs will glow red when you do that. Fear not. The instructions state that the stand-by life of the receiver’s battery is 1,000 hours if you forget to switch it off. Based on my experience with the strobe remote, I tend to believe what they write. Further pressure on the transmitter button will make the second LED on the receiver glow red, indicating it has received the signal to fire the shutter.

Further, by pressing the button on the transmitter for 3 seconds with the camera set to bulb, the camera’s shutter will open and remain open until you press the transmitter’s button again. Use mirror lock-up and we are talking minimal vibration here.

There’s more. Set your camera for continuous shooting, hold the transmitter button for 3 seconds and the 5D (or whatever) will bang away until you press the transmitter button again. Maybe there is an option for making your breakfast after all?

It’s OK, you are not taking a job from an American by buying Chinese – the American can (and does) make more on unemployment.

And yes, every time you try to open that wretched rubber flap on the 5D you will wonder how long it will take Messrs. Canon to Fix That Flap.

One final thought and a word of advice from the instruction sheet, and I quote: “When monitor light glitters, the battery will be vanished, change new battery”. You have been warned.

A few months’ patience will save hundreds

It’s not hard to guess what the Mark II version of Canon’s 5D will be like. If the upgrades to the current pro (1D Mark III and 1Ds Mark III) and amateur (Digital Rebel, D40) models are any guide, expect to see sensor dust removal technology, a slightly faster frame rate and a 3” diagonal LCD screen replacing the current 2.5” one. Who knows, the new screen may even be readable in daylight.

Will the sensor be upgraded? Well, the full frame pro model (1Ds Mk III) migrated from 16.7 to 21.1 megapixels, so maybe the 5D Mark II gets an upgrade from 12.8 to 16.7? It really does not matter. First I think it’s unlikely as there is too much risk of cannibalization of the $7,000 top model compared with the $3,000 or so to be charged for the new 5D. Secondly, the 5D’s sensor is already recognized by many to be superior to the old 16.7 megapixel one in the 1Ds Mark II, so marketing may dictate the change, image quality does not. Canon’s sensors in their DSLRs are already so far ahead of the competition that incremental changes reflect the law of diminishing returns.

The point of all of this is simple. Today a new 5D (Mark I) body can be bought from a reputable retailer for $2,200. The used market sees mint bodies selling for $1,700, give or take $100. A 24% discount, say. Now I’m a huge fan of buying used as that means someone else has paid the depreciation for you and you save money at very low risk. If the new 5D comes out at something like the $3,000 I paid for my new Mark I (no used ones were available at the time), I can see the used market dropping another 10%, making a mint used ‘obsolete’ Mark I some $1,500, or half the price of a new Mark II.

“But there’s no warranty on a used product” you cry. Well, first read this then find a good mint used model. The odds are very much on your side. Remember, all insurance (e.g. warranties) is nothing more than a play on human gullibility and fear, the latter seldom supported by objective analysis.

If I’m right about the enhancements in the Mark II, unless you need dust removal or a larger (probably every bit as useless) LCD screen and those are worth $1,500 to you, have at it. I would suggest the better course of action is to wait 3-4 months and pick up a used mint Mark I for less than half the price of a new Mark II. The $1,500 can buy you two or three great primes from Canon which, I can assure you, are optically in a different class from the zooms, to say nothing of their compactness. Alternatively, you can blow the change on a few tankfulls of gas for your car ….

Back in May I wrote that a $2,500 budget couldn’t get you into a full frame DSLR kit. Well, that is no longer correct, which is great news. Your $2,500 gets you a mint used 5D body ($1,500, say, in a few months’ time), the ultra-wide 17-40mm L zoom (they are giving it away at $650 new) and the drop-dead fabulous 85mm f/1.8 portrait lens ($320). That’s $2,470.

Most certainly not a solution.

OK, so I was feeling a tad spendy the other day.

And, yes, I have complained loudly and often of the awful LCD screen on Canon’s 5D. ‘Useless outdoors’ about summarizes it.

No problemo. I look up the splendid B&H catalog, you know, the one printed on rain forests or whatever, and I come across this Delkin gadget which claims to fix the crappy brightness of the Canon 5D’s LCD in anything resembling daylight.

Twenty-five bones and four days later, there was Marty, our UPS man, with the package. The Delkin Pop-Up shade ….

It’s actually very nicely made. A thin sheet of glass protects your LCD screen (off with that plastic film protector!) and the whole thing replaces Canon’s eyepiece with its (identical) eyepiece, plus the shade thing and a couple of pass-through buttons for printing and deletion. Here I am peeling off the plastic sheet protection for the glass plate.

Off with the Canon eyepiece and on with the gadget. It fits perfectly, meshing nicely with the base of the Manfrotto QR plate. The fit is very secure and the increased depth of the camera in no way interferes with the useability of the viewfinder.

Here it is after prying open with a figernail.

Does it work? Does it make the screen remotely legible in sunlight?

Well, here’s my subjective rating on a scale of 1 to 10, the latter being today’s state-of-the-art.

iPhone 10
5D + Delkin 5
5D naked 0 (meaning unuseable)

Ergonomics? The only complaints I have are that the On/Off lever is harder to get at (no big deal as you can leave the 5D ‘On’ for ever without significant battery drain) as you can see below, and that you have to angle the camera away from you a bit when trying to read the display in sunlight, otherwise all you will see will be your own nose.

Worth $25? Barely.