24 Hours of Flickr

Hunting Comics
Originally uploaded by ultrahi.

A few weeks ago, well just before 5th May to be precise, Flickr started to prepare its members for their first '24 Hours of Flickr' event. This group had one simple goal - to take photos on 5th May, whatever you're doing, then to choose the best and add it to the group. Then the lovely folks over at Flickr make their picks and put them in a book commerating the day, which you can either buy or enjoy a free copy if your photo gets chosen.

Nice idea, although Fotolog already did something similar but with all the photos on their site. Personally I think I prefer Fotolog's approach, as I was having a 'bad photo day' on the 5th and wasn't particularly inspired with any of my pics.

Anyways, after much cogimatation I chose the photo above which pretty much represents the lazy, hanging out day that it was - plus it's a representative 'Matt Hobbs' photo. I'll let you know if it gets chosen. Fingers crossed..

Canon 20D: Lens Auto Focus Constantly Adjusting Solution

The last few days I'd been having a 'problem' with my Canon 20D in that in the customizable modes (such as P/Tv/A/M) my Sigma lens would not auto focus properly. Every time I'd try and take a photo, the lens would constantly keep adjusting itself, jittering around and making a lot of whirring noises. Many of my photos were coming out unfocussed, so I ended up going to manual focus as I prepared to visit a camera repair shop, worried that all the bouncing from the amazing Faithless gig had broken my beloved camera.

Well it turns out it was a feature rather than an issue. At some point, most likely during the gig, I'd accidentally turned on the AI Servo feature. This changes the auto focus mode from where you half press the shutter release to focus once, to it constantly adjusts focus as you keep the shutter release button half pressed. Doh. This explained why when I went to full automatic mode the lens behaved itself. The simple solution? Press the Drive/ISO button on the top of the camera then adjust the AI mode to 'One Shot' using the front selector dial. Easy.

Of course now I know what the AI Servo mode is for, I find myself wondering why the Sigma lens seemed to go so crazy all the time - constantly re-adjusting its focus (from in focus to out of focus) even though nothing in the frame was moving. Sounds like that is a problem, but one that doesn't generally affect my shooting as I never use that mode.