A Routan Owner's Blog
The once-obscure Volkswagen Routan ninivan is a top pick among Generation X car shoppers, a survey says. If you have noticed a lot of minivans on the road lately it may be because parents in their 30s and 40s are snapping them up. A survey of car buyers indicates the once-edgy demographic group known as Generation X is looking for safety, space and other family values in their vehicles. The most popular brands included Volkswagen, Land Rover and Audi. Surprisingly 鈥?or not so surprisingly 鈥?minivans dominated the roster of top models. 鈥淕eneration X buyers have a work hard/play hard mentality and chose cars that were comfortable and convenient for their lifestyle. They chose larger, more luxurious cars to take their families on vacations or kids to play soccer with ample room to store equipment and luggage,鈥?said Kristen Andersson, an analyst with TrueCar. Average paid is the estimated average transaction price of a vehicle after incentives. Percent Discount from MSRP is rounded to the nearest tenth.
In the days of film I tried to photograph everything with my wooden 4x5 field camera. It was large, heavy and cumbersome but it was really easy to focus on the large groundglass, even though the image was upside down. Ef 40mmm f2.8 lens and adapter, 1/200sec and F5.6 at f8. All the controls are visible on the screen, but only when one needs them. All one has to do is turn the rear control dial and the shutter speed, aperture and iso becomes instantly visible and just touching any of these settings enables one to change them. A touch of the shutter button and the screen is cleared and the new settings are stored ready for the next exposure. What can be simpler than this? All the images were perfectly in focus and I did not even enlarge the image on the LCD to check focus. I trust the AF to be spot on everytime.
I also know of course that at f8 ,small little variations in AF will easily be covered. Eos M passed the test with flying colours. The Eos M does two jobs, one as a backup camera and another as a focal length multiplier. The price of the Eos M is less than half of the price of a Canon 45mm TS lens, and I actually prefer the slightly wider view of the 38mm 'converted' lens to the almost standard 45mm view. Eos M and TS-E 24 mm f3.5 mk2 lens. Eos M and TS-E 24 mm f3.5 mk2 lens. Both the images above were made with the manual focus Canon Ef 24mm TS. For interiors I use iso100 for the best quality and usually set the aperture between f11 and f22 to get maximum depth of field. The images are very high quality and the only way to see the difference between the Eos M and the Eos 5d2 is to look in the shadows where some noise is visible.
I have printed these images very large, up to size 24 x 20inches and they look very good. For interiors the Eos M works very well and only using the Lcd to focus and compose with is much easier than one would think. I also use this method with my 5D2 but with the Eos M the screen is more intuitive and as a result easier to use. Its time Canon standardizes these wonderful touch screens across the whole range! The photograph below is part of some publicity photographs for my daughters school play. They performed for four nights at the Grahamstown festival and it was written and directed by one of the pupils. The students had made a small set with the stage curtains as a backdrop. When I got there the existing stage lighting was a bit inadequate so I had to use a 1000w tungsten halogen light softened somewhat with a white translucent umbrella. I used my 24-105L zoom with the iso set at 1600 to stop subject movement. The five images below were made during a jazz concert of Barbora Tellinger at the Musaion of the Unvercity of Pretoria.
