For the past two months, I’ve been working on a plug-in to verify image files in Lightroom. The plugin works by computing a hash for each file which can be thought of as a digital fingerprint. As long as the image is unchanged (i.e., the file is still ok) the hash value will also remain the same. If the image file becomes damaged or corrupted, the fingerprint will change and plugin can identify this by comparing the hash to a previously stored value.

The plugin is now available as a beta and you learn more about it here:

• Validator: a Lightroom plugin for verifying image files with hashes

In the spirit of Harper’s Index here are some random facts about my photo business:

Largest number of prints in a single order: 11
Largest number of images licensed in a single transaction: 12
Biggest reproduction made from my work: 8′x25′ (400 sq. feet)
Biggest license: $5,840
Biggest license for a single image: $1,400
Smallest sale by a distributor: $27
Largest sale by a distributor: $350
Number of images on my website: 6,890
Number of images in my library: 32,097
Lines of Perl code to generate/maintain website: 2,452
Lines of PHP code to generate/maintain website: 1,683
Size of MySQL database: 4.1 MB
Number of MySQL records: 16,132
Number of hard drives in active use: 23
Total hard drive storage: 22TB
Number of data backups: 4x
Number of business related files (including images): 439,543
Total space taken: 1.54 TB
Number of submissions to the copyright office: 27
Cost of business license: $38
Cost of insurance: $547

Prague: A Photographic Guide was developed in iBooks Author and is available from the iTunes Store.

Last fall I visited the city of Prague in the Czech Republic and spent a week photographing historical and cultural sites. With several thousand pictures’ worth of raw material, my wife and I decided to co-author a coffee table-type book that showcased the city through photographs.

I previously authored a photographic book of Los Angeles with a traditional print publisher, so I was familiar with the complexity of a book project. I considered taking this route again by searching for a publisher, but decided against it because it is generally not easy getting publishers interested in new book projects and I wanted to experiment with self-publishing ebooks.

I saw several advantages to self-publishing an ebook:

1. With self-publishing, you are in complete control of all aspects of the book’s production. Thus is a large plus in my view, but for some photographers this may be a disadvantage, as you will not have any editorial or marketing support.
2. An ebook potentially offers greater distribution opportunities, higher margins, and negligible production costs compared with a physical book.
3. From a content perspective, ebooks offer no page limits and can support interactive features to make the browsing experience richer.

Our first step was to select a format for the ebook and there is a confusing array of choices ranging from PDF and ePub to various proprietary formats. In the end, we decided to use Apple’s iBooks 2 format based on the strength of the iBooks Author software. This article will focus on our experiences creating, publishing, and distributing our book Prague: A Photographic Guide, which we produced with iBooks Author.

Why Choose iBooks Author?

iBooks Author (IBA) is an ebook application created by Apple, which runs on Mac OS X. It is designed to produce rich interactive books that can be viewed on an iPad. The software is free to download and you can distribute books made with it through the iTunes Store, or provide free copies directly to readers.

For an author and photographer, the advantages of iBooks Author are as follows:

• IBA uses a fixed layout, which is required for precise formatting and positioning of text and graphical elements.
• IBA supports dynamic and interactive widgets. For example, you can create a gallery widget with thumbnails and it is possible to include other content such as videos or sound files.
• IBA is easy to use compared to the alternatives. Although I ran into many frustrating bugs with IBA, one can easily create and format a book in a single evening without any prior experience with publishing software.
• IBA has a built-in platform for distributing your books, the iTunes store, and for selling them (if you desire).
• If you are selling your book, Apple charges a 30% commission of the sales price which results in a net of 70% that goes to the author. This is much higher than for a print book, which might be in the range of 5-10% for a first-time author.

Disadvantages:

• Books made with IBA can only be viewed in iBooks 2 on an iPad. This limits the number of potential readers as those who have other tablets or ebook readers cannot view your work. Furthermore, the books produced in IBA cannot be read on your computer/laptop or on an iPhone.
• IBA uses a proprietary file format which cannot be read by other programs. Although IBA has some options for exporting your content to PDF or text, you will lose the interactive elements in the conversion.
• Apple imposes restrictions on where you can sell or distribute your books. If your book is free you can distribute the iBooks file anywhere. However, if you want to sell your ebook, you must do it through the iTunes store and undergo their review process.
• The book cannot be printed without losing the interactive elements.

Alternatives to IBA

There are several alternatives to IBA but they have significant drawbacks:

• PDF is a widely-used standard for documents. It uses a fixed layout and supports precise positioning of image and text content but does not allow for interactive elements. With PDF, you may also be responsible for distributing the book yourself as many online stores do not sell PDFs (or they may require them to be converted into alternative formats).
• ePub is an open format for electronic books and is designed primarily to handle re-flowable content where the text and figures are laid out adaptively according to the screen and font size. This is best for documents that are mainly text and only have a few figures that do not require precise placement.
• To deal with the limitations of ePub, several retailers have developed their own proprietary extensions to achieve fixed layouts. For example, Apple, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble all have their own fixed layout formats (note that the Apple format discussed here is distinct from the format produced by iBooks Author). Although these formats are based on ePub they have proprietary extensions and are generally not interchangeable. In addition, books in these formats can be difficult to produce and may require coding in HTML and CSS. For more information on the various formats see the article by Jean Kaplansky or the entry on the MobileRead wiki.
• A final alternative is to create a dedicated software app to display the images and text. While this offers the ultimate in flexibility and distribution it requires significantly more investment (either through development or licensing the application code from a third party).

In short, iBooks Author is an easy way for photographers to create and distribute photo books.

Preparing Content

iBooks Author should be considered the last stage in putting together a book project. The software is best thought of as a tool to handle the final layout of content. The functionality for text editing and image manipulation is limited and I strongly recommend preparing your content in other dedicated programs before bringing it into IBA.

Image Preparation

I prepared my images in Lightroom prior to assembling the book. It was very easy to create a new catalog set and add the images I wanted to include. Once the images were selected, I needed only to:

• Crop images for the final composition in the book.
• Resize images at 132 dpi. For example, if the image should appear at 2”x3” on the page, the resized image should be 264 x 396 pixels.
• Sharpen images for screen display.
• Export the images as jpegs.

Lightroom’s batch export, which handles both resizing and sharpening, made the whole process very easy. Once my initial layout and book design was complete, I re-exported the images from Lightroom at 264 dpi to take advantage of the higher resolution on newer iPads with the retina display.

Full Screen Image Sizes

In iBooks Author there are several ways of displaying images utilizing the full screen:

• Static Full Page Image – Images can be displayed at full screen on a given page in iBooks. Since the interface reserves 20 pixels at the top for a status bar, the image should be sized at 1024×748.
• Borderless Images – By placing images in a gallery widget you can display images at full screen in response to a touch. When the image is expanded the status bar disappears and the image can be as large as 1024×768.

Generally when preparing images I resize them to the largest dimensions at which they will be viewed. For example, if a 2”x3” image can be viewed full screen with a touch, I would size the image to fit within a 1024×768 pixel box (double the resolution for retina display images).

Text

Although our book was primarily designed to highlight Prague visually, there were a number of text passages that we needed to write. Our book had approximately 6000 words and initial drafts were written in Pages and then cut and pasted into the file at the appropriate locations.

Layout and Image Display

iBooks Author has a WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) interface that supports visual display and layout. Much like other page layout programs, you can have linked text boxes with the content flowing between them. Since all elements are placed in a fixed position, it easy to design complex layouts that may involve multiple elements, callouts, sidebars, and so forth. Note that iBooks Author also supports a flowing layout when books are viewed in portrait mode but I would recommend disabling this for photo books and enforcing landscape mode only.

iBooks Author comes with six templates for formatting your book and many more are available from third parties. I initially considered using the templates in order to drag and drop content but quickly realized they were too limiting for a book designed to showcase photos. My recommendation would be to start with a blank (or nearly blank) template and use the template to do only basic stylization of the book (e.g., background color of pages, title text, etc.) and then position photos and text boxes individually on each page.

In our book, we displayed images in several ways:

• Static images placed on the page.
• Images placed on a page, which expand to fullscreen when tapped.
• Multiple images placed in a gallery widget.

Static Images

The simplest way to arrange photographs in IBA is to place them as static images. In this case, there is no action taken in response to a touch. We used this used this mainly for images that were already displayed as a full page or scaled to the maximum vertical or horizontal page dimensions, as shown below.

Expandable Images

Many of the images in our book respond to a touch by expanding into a fullscreen view. For example, touching any of the three pictures on the page below brings up a full screen image.

Expandable images can be implemented with either the image widget or as a gallery with a single image

Multiple Images in a Gallery Widget

One of the dynamic widgets included in IBA is the image gallery. This places a gallery on the page with the first image showing. A swipe of a finger across the picture advances to the next image in the gallery and a tap brings up the current image in fullscreen. There are many options which control the presentation of the captions and thumbnails. We used the gallery extensively in the book as a mechanism for grouping related pictures.

For example, the page below has two images in a gallery widget. The presence of multiple images is
indicated by the small circles under the picture.

Touching the image expands it to fullscreen with the caption visible at the bottom. A second touch hides the caption and the close icon.

Alternatively, one can display images in a gallery widget with thumbnails.

Variety of Layouts

In our book we used a variety of layouts, such as those shown below. Of these layouts, the panorama mode is the only one that I feel does not adapt well to the tablet format because of the mismatch between the image’s aspect ratio and and that of the iPad, which means that much of the screen real estate is not utilized.

Other Interactive Media

iBooks Author supports a number of other interactive widgets that might be of use for photo books. These include video and sound files and also dashboard widgets, which could include things like calculators or an embedded Google Map.

Distributing Books

There are two basic ways to distribute an ebook created with iBooks Author.

1. If the book is free, you can distribute the iBooks file however you want. For example, you can put it on your website and have readers download it and import directly onto their iPads.
2. You can distribute the book either for free or for sale through the iTunes store. Apple takes a 30% commission of the retail price.

We chose to distribute the book through Apple, which involves a multi-step process to setup:

1. Complete an application for either a free or paid account in iTunes Connect.
2. With iTunes Producer, which is a separate software program from Apple, create and upload a media package containing your book asset, meta data, and pricing information.
3. Pass the Apple review process and respond to any issues raised.
4. Manage your book sales and distribution with iTunes Connect.

Creating an iTunes Connect Account

The major choice that needs to be made is whether you want a free or paid account. The primary difference is that with a paid account you can charge for your books in addition to offering them for free.

A paid account has additional requirements and you will need to provide:

• A valid US tax ID (e.g., Social Security or EIN number).
• Bank account information, which will allow you to receive payments.
• An ISBN-13 number for your book, even if you are distributing it for free.

ISBNs are very expensive if bought singly, but you can get them cheaper if if you buy them in blocks. Typically a single ISBN costs $125, whereas a bundle of 10 sells for $250. There are discount resellers that may offer you an ISBN for as little as a few dollars, but the drawback is that you may not be listed as the publisher of record.

One of the final steps is to sign a lengthy contract detailing your distribution agreement with Apple.

Creating a Media Package with iTunes Producer

Apple has a dedicated software package for uploading content to the iTunes store, which is called iTunes Producer (ITP). In ITP, you begin by entering meta data and pricing information including:

• Basic meta data such as author name and a book description.
• Subject classification. For our book we listed three categories:
1. Travel / Europe / Eastern
2. Photography / Subjects & Themes / Regional
3. Travel / Pictorials
• Indicate whether you want to enable Apple’s FairPlay DRM
• Pricing by Territory. Currently there are 32 different countries in which your book can be offered.



Below is a screenshot of the book info page in iTunes Producer.

After the meta data, one needs to upload the book asset, which consists of:

• The .ibooks file (2GB maximum size)
• A sample .ibooks file, which is a subset of pages/chapters available as free download to potential customers (required for paid accounts). Apple recommends keeping the file size under 20MB so that it can be downloaded on cellular networks.
• Up to five optional screen shots of your book.

The easiest way of getting screenshots is to view the book on your iPad and press the home and power button simultaneously. The drawback of this approach is that the screenshot will capture the status bar and the iBooks application rounds the corners of the pages. Alternatively, one can capture screenshots straight from iBooks Author.

Passing the review process

Once your package is uploaded, you will need to undergo Apple’s review and approval process. We uploaded our book on 7/20 and it was finally approved and live on the iTunes store on 7/31 with a total wait time of 8 business days. During the review process the only issue that we needed to fix was the use of the term “iBook”, which we used describe our product. Apple has trademarked this term and insisted that we describe the book with an alternative term, such as “ebook”.

Although the review was reasonably fast, the approval process was not as transparent as it could have been. There was no indication of expected time frames for Apple reviewers and we were often wondering if Apple had even received our corrections.

I have been unable to find an exhaustive list of issues that will cause Apple to ask for a revision, but some known items that Apple checks for in the submitted book include:

• Poor quality images, audio, or video files
• Formatting issues
• Contains advertisements or links to competitor’s sites
• Contains prices
• Bad links

Managing Sales through iTunes Connect

iTunes Connect is a basic web interface used to manage your account and your content available through iTunes. It provides the following features:

• A sales dashboard with sales disaggregated by book and country (see below)
• The ability set pricing in the different territories
• The ability to provide up to 50 promotional codes for the book
• Management of trouble tickets

While the reporting functionality is adequate it is not particularly detailed and you can’t see information such as the search terms used to find your book in the iTunes store or aggregated customer demographics.

Conclusions

The iBooks Author program greatly simplifies the mechanics of creating and publishing an ebook. Photographic books are easy to design and Apple’s iTunes ecosystem provides a venue for distribution. The main drawback is that the book files can only be viewed in iBooks 2 on an iPad. While Apple’s iPad sales are growing exponentially, with millions of units sold every quarter, there is no way to read or view the files on other platforms (including Mac OS X).

During my trip to Costa Rica, I visited Tortuguero village, a very small community in the park that survives on eco-tourism. The entire area is undeveloped (there are no roads) and I traveled to the village by boat with our local guide. To my great surprise, as we pulled into the docks we saw many children swimming and playing in the water. Normally I wouldn’t think anything of this, especially on a hot day.

Children swimming and playing in the water. Tortuguero village, Costa Rica.

However, just downstream from the village we saw this fellow in the water:

Crocodile sunning itself in the Tortuguero Canals, Costa Rica.

It’s hard to judge how large he was as I took the photo from a distance, but I would guess anywhere from 7-10 ft in length. Maybe larger. Certainly large enough to seriously hurt or kill a human. I don’t know if there’s any source of statistics on crocodile attacks in Costa Rica, but there have certainly been cases where children have been killed in Tortuguero.

Children playing in the water. Toruguero village, Costa Rica.

Young boys after swimming. Tortuguero village, Costa Rica.

Handheld panorama of Punakha Dzong in Bhutan.

I love to take panoramic images and when I’ve planned a specific shot I will carry all of the gear: a heavy tripod, leveling base, panorama head with nodal slide, etc. However, many times, especially when traveling in foreign countries, bringing all of this equipment is infeasible because it weighs too much or takes up too much space (or you left it at your place of lodging).

If you are caught without your panning gear, it’s still possible to create high quality panoramas if the conditions are good. For example, the above panorama of Punakha Dzong in Bhutan was created from 8 handheld shots. Using AutoPano Pro, I combined the images to produce the final panorama. It turns out the hard part was not dealing with mis-alignments caused by hand holding but rather the cable with the pigeon was moving in the wind causing a break in the stitched picture. This would have a caused a problem even with a full panning setup and I dealt with it by manually cloning portions of the image to get the cable to line up.

Individual images comprising the Punakha Dzong panorama.

To maximize the chance of getting a successful stitch:

• Use proper camera holding technique.
• If you are using image stabilization, make sure to wait half a second for it to settle before moving on to the next picture in the series.
• If you have grid lines in the view finder, it helps to line them up with the horizon or another feature that you know is perfectly horizontal.
• Try to rotate around the nodal point as much as possible (basically rotate around the middle of the lens).

Generally hand held panoramas work best with the following conditions:

• There is bright light yielding fast shutter speeds.
• The subject is far away to minimize the impact of parallax errors.
• The photo is taken with a longer focal length lens.

Sometimes when I shoot handheld, Autopano Pro will fail to produce a good stitch of the image no matter how much I play with the program. To deal with this, I try to shoot the same scene several times so that at least one version will stitch cleanly without artifacts. For example, with the panorama of the Reichstagg shown below, I shot this same scene five times and three of the series had errors in stitching.

Handheld panorama of the Reichstag, Berlin, Germany. Composite of 6 images taken at 70mm f/10.

Handheld panorama of the Gallery of Kings on Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, France. Composite of 8 images taken at 135mm f/11.

Handheld panorama of the 108 Chorten at Dochula Pass, Bhutan. Composite of 7 images taken at 50mm f/10.

Handheld panorama of Old Town Square in Prague, Czech Republic. Composite of 5 images taken at 24mm f/11.

I’ve had this lens for several years but only recently decided to test it formally so that I could compare it with my 70-300 f/4-5.6 L lens. During this time, I shot thousands of travel images and it was one of my most used lenses during my trip to Bhutan. The lens’s fast autofocus, constant f/4 aperture, and light weight made it an ideal travel lens and it yielded many great pictures of traditional dancers at the Tsechu festivals.

Figure 1. Dancer at the Thimphu Tsechu. Thimphu, Bhutan. Photo taken with the Canon 70-200 f/4 IS L lens.

Physically, the lens is 3″ in diameter and 6.8″ in length (Figure 2). It feels very lightweight and compact but this may be because I am subconsciously comparing this lens to its much larger 70-200 f/2.8 sibling. Unlike many other lenses, the 70-200 f/4 does not extend or contract as it is focused or the lens is zoomed. The build quality is very good and the lens is metal with a matte gray finish.

Figure 2. Canon 70-200 f/4 L lens mounted on a 5D mark II body.

Sharpness

To evaluate the sharpness of the lens, I selected an architectural column of Stanford University (Figure 3) as a test subject and took photos at varying aperture and focal length. I used a Canon 5dII camera, tripod, and remote release. Image stabilization was turned off and the camera was mounted vertically with an L-bracket. The images were processed in Lightroom 3 with only white balance adjustments. Sharpening was left at the default levels (amount = 25, radius = 1, detail = 25, masking = 0) and the crops were saved in photoshop with save for web (quality = 60).

Figure 3 shows an image with the full scene and the location of 100% crops marked by the red squares. Figures 4-6 shows the pixel level detail as the focal length varies from 70mm to 200mm. In general, the 70-200 f/4 performed very well and I would summarize my findings as follows:

• Center sharpness is good at all focal lengths even when the lens is wide open at f/4.
• At 70mm and 135mm there is some softness in the image near the corner of the frame.
• The lens is very good at the long end (200mm) and is sharp to the extreme corner.
• Stopping down improves corner sharpness considerably.

Figure 3. Scene for testing sharpness. Red squares indicate location of 100% crops shown in other figures.

f/4 f/5.6 f/8 Center Mid Corner

Figure 4. Performance at 70mm: pixel level detail from 100% crops.

f/4 f/5.6 f/8 Center Mid Corner

Figure 5. Performance at 135mm: pixel level detail from 100% crops.

f/4 f/5.6 f/8 Center Mid Corner

Figure 6. Performance at 200mm: pixel level detail from 100% crops.

Back Focusing

I noticed a slight amount of back focusing with the 70-200 f/4 on my Canon 5d II. This occurred when I was shooting a shore crab at Point Lobos. Figure 7 shows the full image and Figure 8 shows a crop of the crab. I had used autofocus on the close eye of the crab but the point of focus actually appears on the rear eye. Although I tried refocussing several times, I always got the same result with the focus point being just behind my target. To resolve the issue, I ended up using live view instead. Thankfully, the crab remained fairly motionless.

I’m assuming the backfocus was caused by my lens, but I haven’t tested the camera to see if it was at fault. I also have not bothered to use auto-focus micro adjustments as I don’t usually take such close range photographs with this lens.

Figure 7. Full frame image of striped shore crab at Weston Beach, Point Lobos.

Figure 8. Close-up of the crab showing back focus. Image taken with Canon 70-200 f/4 and 5D Mark II.

Compared to the 70-300 f/4-5.6 L IS

• The 70-200 f/4 is a little sharper in the center but the 70-300L definitely wins in the corner. Both lenses are very good and I wouldn’t let sharpness be a factor in choosing one over the other.
• The 70-200 f/4 is lighter (1.6 to 2.3 lbs) but is also slightly longer: collapsed the 70-300 L is 5.6″ compared to 6.8″ for the 70-200.
• The 70-200 is cheaper by about $400.
• With the 70-200 f/4 you gain up to a stop in aperture but lose 100mm on the long end.

Although there is a large overlap in focal length range, I plan on keeping both my 70-200 f/4 and 70-300 L lenses. My plan is to use the 70-300 L for general travel and landscape photography. However, if I know that I’m going to be doing more people shooting or if weight is at a premium, I’ll take the 70-200 f/4.

For more information, you can also see my review of the 70-300 f/4-5.6 L lens.

Other Comments

• The lens comes with a rubber gasket to keep water and dust from entering in the gap where the lens is mounted to the camera body.
• This lens accepts Canon A II tripod collar but so far I haven’t felt the need for this. The Canon collar is very expensive ($140) but there are also third party collars that are significantly cheaper.
• The lens accepts 67mm filters so if you have a three lens travel kit with the 17-40mm and 24-105mm zooms (77mm filters), you’ll either need to carry an additional filter or hold it by hand.

Conclusions

This is a stellar lens that is sharp, light weight, and reasonably fast with a constant f/4 aperture. The lens focuses quickly and with image stabilization it makes a very nice travel lens. In my opinion, the only reason to select a different lens is if you absolutely need more range on the long end (e.g., a 70-300mm or 100-400mm) or a faster aperture (f/2.8) for action photography.

Figure 1. The Canon 70-300 f/4-5.6 L IS lens mounted on a 5D mark II body.

When I first heard that Canon was going to release a new 70-300mm zoom lens, I wasn’t very excited as Canon already had a number of zooms covering this range. When I heard that Canon was going to price it at $1600 for a variable aperture lens (f/4-5.6) I thought they were completely nuts.

Up until this point I had been using the 70-200 f/4 zoom and the 70-300 f/4-5.6 non-L lens to cover my telephoto needs. However, I was not happy with this combination:

• The 70-300 f/4-5.6 IS non L lens did not have good enough image quality even when stopped down.
• The 70-200 f/4 IS L lens, while producing very sharp images, simply did not have enough reach.
• Carrying both lenses was not an acceptable solution either since it entailed extra weight and the 70-300 performance was worst at the long end.

I had thought about pairing my 70-200 f/4 with a teleconverter to get the extra reach but this also did not appeal to me as it was an extra piece of gear to carry around. Furthermore, I didn’t want the hassle of putting on and taking off a teleconverter while shooting.

As a result, I decided to try the 70-300L lens and I have been very pleasantly surprised by it’s performance. In short, if you need a travel or landscape zoom with edge to edge sharpness, the 70-300L is a very good choice.

Construction

When fully collapsed at 70mm the 70-300L is a short, squat lens. With a 3.5″ diameter it is wider than all my other lenses including my 24 TS/E II. It has a solid metal construction and weighs approximately 2.3 lbs. As you zoom from 70mm to 300mm the lens extends an extra two inches. With the lens-hood on, this make for quite an impressive looking lens (Figure 2).

Canon placed the zoom ring at the front of the lens which is the opposite of their other lenses where it is closest to the body. I find this awkward as I prefer to have my left hand under the zoom ring and thus need to move it forward.

Figure 2. The Canon 70-300L lens extends outward as one zooms to 300mm focal length.

Sharpness

This lens is sharp to the extreme corners of the image even when shot on a full-frame camera, wide-open. Read-on if you want to see the details.

To evaluate the sharpness of this lens, I selected an architectural column at Stanford University as a test subject and took photos at varying aperture and focal length. I used a Canon 5DII camera, tripod, mirror lockup, and remote release. Image stabilization was turned off and the camera was mounted with an L-bracket. The images were processed in Lightroom 3 with only white balance adjustments. Sharpening was left at the default levels (amount = 25, radius = 1, detail = 25, masking=0) and the crops were saved in photoshop with save for web (quality = 60).

Figure 3 shows an image of the full scene with the location of crops marked by the red squares. Figures 4-7 shows pixel level detail from these crops across as the focal length varies from 70mm to 300mm. In general I was impressed with the lens and I would summarize my findings as follows:

• Corner sharpness is exceptional wide open and is the best I have ever seen on a zoom lens.
• The lens is sharpest around 135mm but all focal lengths are good.
• The quality at 300mm is very usable unlike the older non-L version of this lens.
• Stopping down doesn’t help as much as you would think (since it very good already).

Figure 3. Scene for testing sharpness. Red squares indicate location of 100% crops shown in other figures.

f/4 f/5.6 f/8 Center Mid Corner

Figure 4. Performance at 70mm: pixel level detail from 100% crops.

f/4.5 f/5.6 f/8 Center Mid Corner

Figure 5. Performance at 135mm: pixel level detail from 100% crops.

f/5 f/5.6 f/8 Center Mid Corner

Figure 6. Performance at 200mm: pixel level detail from 100% crops.

f/5.6 f/8 Center Mid Corner

Figure 7. Performance at 300mm: pixel level detail from 100% crops.

Color Fringing

The 70-300L lens exhibits some color fringing (chromatic aberration) in images taken at both the short and long ends of the focal range. For example, in Figure 8 you can see both cyan and magenta fringes around the edges of the square. This fringing is only present near the edges of the image and was not visible at other focal lengths (i.e., 135mm and 200mm).

70mm f/11 300mm f/11

Figure 8. Color fringing occurs at the short and long ends of the zoom range for the 70-300L. Note that these image crops are magnified to 200%.

Vignetting

Vignetting is very noticeable on the lens when shot wide open. Figure 9 shows an example of how much the edges/corners are darkened when using the largest aperture.

Figure 9. Vignetting of the 70-300L lens at 300mm. The left image is taken at f/5.6 and has considerable light falloff towards the edges of image. The right image is taken at f/11 and has much more even illumination. Both images were taken with equivalent exposure.

Compared to the 70-200 f/4 L IS lens

• Both lenses have very good center sharpness but the 70-200 f/4 may have a slight edge in quality.
• On a full-frame camera the 70-300L has much better corner sharpness than the 70-200 f/4.
• The 70-300L is significantly heavier at 2.3 lbs (compared to 1.6 lbs) but is more compact with the lens is collapsed at 70mm (about an inch shorter).

Figure 10 shows a comparison of the 70-300L with the 70-200 f/4 and 70-300 non-L lenses when collapsed and extended.

For more information, you can also see my review of the 70-200 f/4 L lens. I used the same test subject so you can directly compare their sharpness.

Compared to the 70-300 f/4-5.6 IS lens

The Canon 70-300 f/4-5.6 IS USM is an older consumer grade lens that covers the same focal length range as the 70-300L. However, the only advantage of this older lens is its price ($550) and weight (1.4 lbs). In all other aspects including image quality, autofocus speed, and construction, the 70-300L blows the older lens out of the water.

Figure 10. Three telephoto zoom lenses: 70-200 f/4 L, 70-300 f/4-5.6 L, and 70-300 f/4-5.6.

Tripod Collar

Canon sells a lens collar for the 70-300L for approximately $200. Given the extremely high price for the lens, I feel that Canon should have included this with the lens instead of requiring an additional purchase. Currently the collar is out-of-stock, but in all likelihood, I will purchase it when it becomes available (or get a third party substitute) to improve stability.

Other Comments

• The lens comes with a rubber gasket to keep water and dust from entering in the gap where the lens is mounted to the camera body.
• The 70-300L cannot be used with Canon teleconverters.

Conclusions

For a travel photographer, the 70-300L is an exceptional telephoto zoom lens that achieves very good image quality in a compact package. The lens is sharp across the entire frame even when shot wide open on a full-frame camera.

The main drawbacks of the lens are its cost, weight, and variable aperture. At $1600 it’s nearly three times the price of it’s non-L sibling and $400 more than the 70-200 f/4 L lens. The lens weighs in at 2.3 lbs making it considerably heavier than other tele zooms in the same focal range. Finally, with a maximum aperture of f/5.6 at the long end, this lens won’t be my first choice for action, indoor, or handheld low light photography.

This is a short summary of our trip to Bhutan which we visited from September 29th to October 10th in 2009. We departed from San Francisco and flew through Narita to Bangkok where we stayed overnight (more like a few hours). From Bangkok we flew Druk Air to Paro.

We used Village Treks and Tours as our tour operator who provided us with an excellent guide in Pema Sonam. Although, we did not know it at the time of booking, Pema had served as a guide to other professional photographers like Art Wolfe.

You can also see hundreds of my pictures of Bhutan in my photo galleries.

Costs

Tourism is highly regulated in Bhutan and the Department of Tourism determines the price for all visitors. This fixed price includes all expenses such as hotels, camping, transportations, meals, and other fees. The peak season rates are about $200 per person per day (for three or more) and $230 (for two people). This does not include tips for your guide or driver.

Day 1: Paro to Thimphu

We arrived early in the morning on a flight from Bangkok. We cleared customs relatively quickly and then met our guide and driver. We drove to Thimphu but along the way we stoped at a few sites including the Iron Bridge by Tamchhog Lhakhang as well as stopping at the Chunzon confluence of three rivers. There wasn’t much at Chunzon except for a few merchant stalls and three chortens in Bhutanese, Tibetan, and Nepali style.

We arrived in Thimphu near mid-day and had lunch in trendy cafe. In the afternoon, we wandered around Thimphu on our own. The streets were very busy with many Bhutanese people. I’m not sure if it is normally that crowded or whether it was especially busy because we had arrived during the Thimphu Tsechu festival which lasts for several days.

Day 2: Thimphu Tsechu Festival

We spent the day at Thimphu Tsechu festival which as held in the courtyard of the Tashi Chhoe Dzong. The festival was filled with thousands of Bhutanese people wearing their finest Gho (men) and Kira (women) and there were multiple religous dances. In the evening, my wife was tired and stayed in the hotel room but I walked around Thimphu again and made my way to the Chorten. The sun had already set in the valley.

Day 3: Thimphu

I woke up very early and went to capture the National Memorial chorten at sunrise by myself. After returning to the hotel and having breakfast we toured the city with our guide and visited the National Memorial Chorten, Post office, Textile Museum, Institute of Traditional Medicine Services, National Institute for Zorig Chusum (this is an art school for high school aged students), and the National Library. In the afternoon, we went to the Jungshi handmade paper factory and drove around Thimphu Valley to various lookout points where we could see the whole city.

Day 4: Thimphu to Punakha

We drove to the northern end of Thimphu valley and did an early morning hike to Cheri Monastery. On the way up, we encountered the head monk who was being carried down on something that was a cross between a palanquin and a stretcher. He stopped briefly to bless us. After the hike, we drove on to Punakha and along the way we stopped at Dochu La Pass where they have the 108 chortens (Druk Wangyel Chorten).

Day 5: Khamsum Yuelley Namgyal Chorten and Punakha Dzong

We started the day with a hike through rice fields and up the valley hillside to Khamsum Yuelley Namgyal Chorten. This took about 45 minutes provides stunning views of the valley. In the afternoon, we toured Punakha Dzong which is the second oldest and second largest Dzong in Bhutan. I also learned this day that Bhutan has cobras as I ran into one as I was moving around on the hillsides around the Dzong to get a better angle for pictures.

Day 6: Chimi Lhakhang and Wangdue

We hiked through the small town of Sopsokha and then made our way to Chimi Lhakhang, the temple of the divine madman. We then saw Wangdue Dzong and town. In the afternoon we drove on to Phobjikha Valley.

Day 7: Phobjikha Valley

We hiked the Gangte Nature trail up to Gangte Goemba. With my stopping to photograph, this took about four hours. The valley was very peaceful and this was my personal highlight of my trip. In the late afternoon we returned to Wangdue.

Day 8: Wangdue to Paro

From Wangdue we drove back to Thimphu. Along the way we drove through Dochu La Pass again, however, the weather was very foggy and it wasn’t possible to get photographs of the mountain views. In Thimphu, we stopped at the Takin reserve. Finally we headed to Paro.

Day 9: Paro

In the morning, we went to see the Drukgyel Dzong which now lies in ruins as it was destroyed by fire in 1951. It was raining quite hard but I think this suited the atmosphere of the ruins. We also visited Kyichu Lhakhang, one of the oldest temples in Bhutan built in 659. Finally, we saw the National Museum and Paro Dzong.

Day 10: Hike to Taktsang the Tiger’s Nest

The day started out overcast, foggy, and raining. I wasn’t sure if we would be able to hike to Tiger’s nest but the rain stopped and we began the ascent up the valley walls. We made it to the temple near mid-morning and on the way down the weather began to clear.

Taktshang Goemba (Tiger's Nest) monastery. Paro Valley, Bhutan.

Day 11: Paro

Our last day in Bhutan. We didn’t do much but relax in the hotel and then head to the airport in Paro for our flight back to Bangkok and then home.

Links

• My photos of Bhutan
• Tips for photographing in Bhutan
• Bhutan travelogue

Gitzo GT3541LS carbon fiber systematic tripod.

I’ve been using the tripod for over a year now and it has become my main support system. It’s very sturdy and can hold whatever load I’ve thrown at it, but it’s not so heavy that I can’t hike significant distances with it. It’s also tall enough so that I don’t need to crouch over if I am using the tripod on a hillside or on other uneven terrain.

The tripod has four leg sections and is made out of carbon fiber. The tripod is part of Gitzo’s systematic line which essentially means that you can replace the flat plate at the top with other accessories such as the following:

• center column (with a geared or sliding mechanism for changing height)
• leveling base
• integrated ballhead
• video bowl

You can also replace the rubber feet with different tips such as stainless steel spikes.

I know many photographers use 3541LS tripod with long telephoto lenses (e.g. 500mm+) and to support medium/large format camera bodies. Although I do not shoot wildlife and I’m using a relatively small body (canon 5D), my main reason in using this tripod is that I wanted a rock solid tripod for stitching and panoramas. I absolutely don’t want the tripod to shift between shots.

Mounting Plate Safety

The Gitzo systematic tripods keep the top plate attached to the tripod with a collar that is tightened with a single bolt. There have been reports of the screw coming loose and the top plate falling out along with the attached camera gear. I have not experienced any loosening of the plate, but if this is a concern, I would recommend either (1) using loctite on the bolt, (2) attaching a safety plate/bolt that prevents the top platform from falling out, or (3) always holding your camera strap when carrying the tripod with your gear attached.

Specifications

• max height w 4 legs extended 57.5″
• min height 3.9″
• folded length 21.7″
• weight 3.8 lbs
• manufacturer’s maximum load 39.6 lbs (note: there is no standard method for determining load rating)

Other Comments

• Consider getting the GT3541XLS if you need additional height. For example, at some landscape sites you might be restricted by a fence/cliff edge and the extra height can help keep those elements out of the picture frame
• If you want a leveling base, RRS makes an integrated base for the Gitzo systematic series of tripods. Their version is much lighter than Gitzo’s base (325g vs 600g). Another alternative is Acratech’s leveling base.
• If you don’t need to worry about fitting the tripod into a suitcase, consider the three section version.
• In urban areas, I would get a case for tripod as it is fairly large and looks expensive. By no means is it inconspicuous
• The tripod uses several bolts that require a torx key to tighten or loosen (two different sizes). I consider this to be a drawback and would have preferred that Gitzo used the much more common hex socket or allen key.

The Acratech leveling base is designed to make leveling the top of your tripod extremely easy and quick. The base has a ball and socket mechanism so that you can tilt it several degrees in any direction to compensate for uneven ground without having to make minute adjustments to the tripod legs.

The Acratech leveling base sits on top of your tripod and provides an adjustable platform that can be tilted in any direction.

You might be wondering why you would need a leveling base, especially if you are using a ballhead where you can quickly point the camera in any direction. The main reason is that you may need to pan your camera horizontally such as when you are creating a stitched panoramic or tracking a moving object with a telephoto lens. Using a leveling base saves a tremendous amount of time compared with adjusting your tripod legs.

Top view of the Acratech leveling base.

The Acratech leveling base works quite well. It’s quick to put on the tripod, and quick to level. There are only two things I don’t like about it:

• I can’t always set the base accurately enough so that I get an even horizon when panning. This may be user error on my part or it could be an inherent accuracy limitation of using a relatively small bubble. I haven’t used other leveling bases so I can’t say exactly where the fault lies.
• The top of the base is anodized metal without a protective layer of plastic or cork. Thus when I screw on my ballhead the two metal surfaces scrape against each other. If you look closely at the picture to the right you can see marks where the two rubbed against each other.

Specifications

• weighs 256 grams or 9 oz
• ten degrees of tilt
• adds 1.77 inches of height
• costs about $150