New Camera...

With our trip to Europe coming up soon we thought it would be an opportune time to upgrade our camera body. We've been talking about it for a long time and just couldn't bring ourselves to spend the cash.

Well, a trip where we'd be spending most of our time photographing things combined with the increasing frequency of errors on our old camera topped off with an unexpected bonus and some over time means we could finally take the plunge. We bought the 50D from Canon with a new walk about lens with image stabilization.

So far we're really happy with it. The 15MP makes a difference as do the higher ISO's, less noise, and better color handling. Plus it has senor cleaning, focal lock indication, and easier to use controls for ISO, white balance, etc.

I could go on for days but instead I'll leave you with this one last picture....From the amazingly fragrant magnolia tree at my neighbors!

80 degrees and perfect...

I spent my weekend and the first part of this week at a trade show in, of all places, Miami! Hafta say, leaving the 40 degree wet chill of NoVa for the glorious sunshine of Miami had its draw.

Unfortunately, the most sun I saw was on Saturday when we spent a few hours by the pool dozing before dinner. The reminder of the daylight hours were spent schmoozing prospective customers and getting them to try out our product.

I did manage to get a few shots each night before the sun set (on our way to dinner) and figured I'd share (and make up my post for this week - so far I'm on a roll!)

This is the first time this season that those tootsies have seen the light of day. My poor pale feet are badly in need of some seasonal maintenance but were just happy to be out of heels and into the fresh sea air!

Those tire footsies walked me over to Mambo's Cafe right in front of this awesomely colored building. With all the sights around I'm sad I didn't have my trusty SLR - for this trip my little Canon PowerShot made due. Not bad me thinks... No much creative power but takes an adequate picture and is super tiny so it fits in my purse.

Oooo...My Turn...

So I took my turn at the macro extender tubes and I'm hooked! These things are great! I took the camera on Macie's lunch time walk and shot a few of these.

I put the 12mm extender on my 50mm prime lens. Dropped the ISO to 100 and selected shutter priority (since the tiny focal length almost gurantees good bokeh - hope I spelled that right)

It was high noon when I took these but I think it actually adds to the shot. I usually hate taking in such harsh sunlight.

I was on the hunt for as many textures as I could find - the concrete broadband box was actually a great place to catch a few!

Alas, I had to cut my fun short as I had to get back to my day job:) I thought I'd post these for everyone's enjoyment - gosh I love Picasa, it makes quick blogs like these totally possible!

Macro fun...

Mark bought me a new set of extender tubes for my lenses so that I can do some macro photography. Unfortunatley, I went out of town right after I got them and didn't get to play - but he did!!

These things are pretty cool! They're different from an actual macro lens because all they really do is extend the current lens you have to alter the focal length. The result is pretty neat! You can get closer to the image and capture more detail.

One of the side effects though is that the focal area is very small in some cases (catching only one stamen or grain of pollen).

Here you can see Macie's foot - you can see the detail of each little hair on her foot (and a fuzzy that was stuck to her nail!)

The tubes he got me were made by Kenko. They come in three sizes and combined can give you about 9 different focal lenghts. I've been attaching it to my 50mm but want to try it on the L-series lense next.

Aperture Study

There are three basic parts to taking a picture on a manual camera - aperture, shutter, and ISO. I'm going to focus on aperture for this post.

One of the most basic things that a photographer needs to understand is how to control light entering the lens. It affects so many different aspects of the photo and can ultimately make or break the picture. The feature of the camera that is used to control this is the aperture.

The aperture is a variable disk in the lens that opens or closes to allow light to enter the body of the camera. The larger the opening the more light etc. However, that opening also affects the focal length of the shot too. The larger the opening the less in focus you have. You can see in the lamp shot that the lamp is in focus but the paintings on the wall behind it are not. I had to open the aperture the whole way to let in enough light in without compromising my shutter speed.

The picture to the right of the cathedral is another low light situation where I didn't want to augment with flash (because flashes in church are generally frowned upon - especially when folks are praying up at the front). To accomplish this and still get the focus to be what I wanted I had to close up the aperture (to get more focal range) but decrease the shutter speed to still let in enough light. But with the decreased shutter speed (almost 1.5 seconds) I couldn't hand hold this image. Instead I plopped the camera on the guest book pedestal:)


With the pic on the left of me and the dog you can really see the effect of the focal length difference generated by the aperture. This is shot at f4.0 which means the aperture is almost wide open on this lens. This image however was augmented by our speedlight flash because even with the apeture wide open we still didn't have enough light to hand hold the camera (and who's going to set up a tripod in the living room for a casual picutre like that right?)

Like how the dog's head just hangs? That's her favorite position on the couch for some reason. Come to think of it, we find her with her head cocked back like that lot...hmmm....

New Toys!

So, Mark went on to B&H last night and ordered our new toys!!

We've been wanting to get a secondary flash for some time now and have reviewed a number of different one that fit on our Canon camera. We finally decided to splurge and get the Canon 580EX flash over the 430EX. I'll have to have Mark write a quick summary of why he picked one over the other but a lot of it had to deal with the fact that we've tried the 580EX (my cousin, Bob, has it and we loved it - btw - he does wedding and portrait photography - www.rmasonphoto.com).

I'll post his comparison as soon as he writes it!

Next Steps from the Point and Shoot

So I mentioned in my last post that we've been approached by a few of our family and friends regarding advice on upgrading from their point and shoot to one of the 'prosumer' DSLR cameras. Here's the email exchange between Mark and his cousin regarding the upgrade:

Tom: Question for you - we're looking at buying a DSLR camera and wanted your advice. We want to spend around $1000. Do you like yours or would you recommend something different after owning the one you have? Thanks for your help!

Mark:
We have the Canon XT DSLR. We’re very happy with it but only after we upgraded the lens. 90% of the pro-sumer grade DSLRs that you’ll find will come with a great body but only a so-so lens. When we bought ours we were really happy with the speed and additional manual features but we noticed that the image quality wasn’t always as good as pictures that we had taken with our high end point-n-shoot. Turns out that the lens on our high end point-n-shoot was of a higher caliber than the one that came with our DSLR. Once we found out the problem we invested in a top of the line lens and it made a world of a difference.

I would recommend going for the newer version of the Canon XT which is called the XTi. B&H sells it for $670. I would also recommend not getting the low quality kit lens that sometimes comes with it in a package deal. Instead (sticking near your budget) I would recommend getting the Canon EF 28-135mm f3.5-f5.6 IS USM. This lens will have greater “zooming” capability, high quality motor for auto focusing, and image stabilization to prevent blurring from a shaky hand.

Lens Review
Lens cost: $400

What they can do:
-take multiple photos faster than point-n-shoots (as fast as 3 per sec and up to 14 consecutive shots)
-take long exposures, for example shots of the stars (see example 1)
-controlling the focus on a portrait and decreasing the depth of field (adding the nice blur in the background, see example 2)
-Easy manual focus control. You’ll be able to adjust the focus by turning the lens ring.

What they cannot do:
-no videos
-looking through the LCD screen to see the image before you take it as you might with a point and shoot. You must look through the view finder.

Example 1:














Example 2:

So, after that email, Tom did indeed go and buy the XTi. Here's his response:

Well, I did it, after lots of reading and research... got the XTi and 28-135 IS lens like you suggested. Boy, what a camera! I'm worried that my wife won't be able to hold it up... good thing I got the IS. I think that's gonna be key when shooting our little girl in weird settings and action shots.

I've looked around for a smaller "walking around" lens to supplement this one but haven't found one with IS (which I think I'll need) that has good reviews. I looked at the 17-85 f/4-5.6 IS as a substitute for the one I got but it was about 100 bucks more. Do you guys have any others or do you just use this one? I think we're just going to have to get used to the larger size now that we've graduated from point & shoot.

Looks like we're on to another lens hunt! More later!!