I just re-launched my website about 2 weeks ago, and so far I’ve been getting some spam comments, but nothing really interesting or clever yet. Come on bots ! You can do much better. If I get some good content, I promise I will feature it in a future post and give you credit, but you are going to have to try harder ;-P
In the meantime, here is a cat picture that I made several years ago. I really like the way it turned out. I performed editing in an older version of Photoshop or something similar, and the photo was taken on a Canon SD500 (7 Megapixel pocket-sized digital camera). The cat was half-climbing up my leg and the late-afternoon summer sun was hitting a good angle. I usually take several photos of everything, pick a good one and/or crop it, and then make some adjustments. I really don’t like photo editing very much though, so I try very hard to get everything right the first time straight out of the camera 🙂
I don’t have a Kindle, but apparently it’s one of the #1 selling products on Amazon right now. Apparently they have waterproof cases for them now, I guess that’s kind neat if you like to read whilst floating in the swimming pool. I’m actually holding out for Android wifi tablets
Currently I shoot with a Canon EOS Digital Rebel T1i and an assortment of lenses. I still have a Digital Rebel XT that I haven’t used in a while, since the T1i has a much nicer LCD screen and it has in-camera capability to saturate colors more. It also will shoot video, but I always seem to end up with skips in the video after I process it. I typically use something simple like Windows Movie Maker. I have iMovie on my 13″ MacBook Pro (late 2010 edition), but it only seems to want to import photos from iPhoto, which crashes every single time I try to import one set of photos, and then import another set of photos afterward. It’s really really annoying, so I don’t use iPhoto or iMovie at all lately.
Getting into the camera equipment more, here are the Canon lenses that I have or had. I’m providing links to Amazon Associates affiliate member with them, hopefully it will one day help to support my website. They don’t always have the best prices compared to Adorama, B&H Photo or your local camera shop. But they are always open, have a variety of shipping options and usually multiple sellers of the same item. I order a lot of items on Amazon just because it’s so easy. Returning items is easy as well if you need to do so.
My Canon (and other) DSLR lenses:
50mm f1.8 – very inexpensive, but good to have. Surprisingly, I use it very little. The f1.8 is great for short depth-of-field, but 50mm on an APS-C camera seems to be an awkward range for me, plus it isn’t a macro lens, and the non-ultrasonic focus motor searches a lot before the focus locks in, particularly in low light. For video use, the lens motor is probably too noisy in most situations if you are using the camera’s microphone for audio.
18-55mm kit lens – not used currently but still have it
EF-S 60mm f2.8 macro – sold a few years ago, not bad, but I would have liked the EF 100mm f2.8 macro better since you don’t have to get so close to your subject to really see microscopic details. I felt like I had to get very very close with the 60mm, which makes it difficult if you are trying to take a picture of something skittish like an animal or insect.
EF-S 10-22mm – I use this currently, it’s great for creating a very wide-angle close-up
EF 70-200mm f4L – Non-stabilized, because it was much cheaper. I actually don’t use this very much, because I prefer the 100-400mm L lens. The 70-200 just never quite gets close enough for me, even though the sharpness is supposedly very very good.
EF-S 17-85mm – This is one of my most-used lenses. It’s got more zoom than the 18-55mm, but definitely goes wider than any of the 24-105 or 28-135 lenses. Since I have an APS-C sensor in this camera, the 24-105 and 28-135 lenses just aren’t wide enough for my purposes.
EF 100-400mm L – This is one of my most used lenses also. The push-pull style zoom is excellent, a twist-style zoom ring would just be too difficult for a lens that is this long when extended. I use this for airshows, car racing (autocross, rallycross and rally), wildlife, architecture… I do wish it would zoom even farther, but I’m not currently willing to invest in the 1.4x or 2x extenders. I haven’t tested them, but the drawbacks for the price haven’t convinced me to splurge on one yet.
Tamron 200-500mm – I owned this for a few hours before I got my Canon 100-400mm and found it difficult to use since it lacks a stabilizer and had a twist-style zoom ring instead of the push-pull found on the Canon. I also felt that it wasn’t as sharp as the Canon, so I took it back to the store, and forked over the extra $500 or so for the Canon. I think the Tamron was just under $1k at the time, which is why I looked so hard at it relative to the Canon.
Somehow I feel like I’m forgetting a lens somewhere, but I think those are all of them. My wish list for the future includes the EF 100mm f2.8 macro, the longer macro lenses seem to get quite expensive, and the 100mm generally gets very good reviews.
I do have a few other cameras as well. A Canon SD880is which does a great job with and without flash, colors are great, LCD screen is good too. A Casio EX-Z450 that I won in a photo-of-the-month contest over at http://www.steves-digicams.com. Here is the photo (left), it also was published in Buffalo: A Waterfront City Transformed. (Canon Rebel XT and 17-85mm lens with tripod, some Photoshop editing was done afterward to remove items from the photo, clean up the noise in the sky, add the moon and star, saturate some colors and adjust contrast and sharpness…I spent several hours editing this).
Additionally, an east coast US high school asked me to use it for the cover of their yearbook, but I never heard back from them after sending them a digital copy of the photo. So I don’t know whether or not they used it.
For the dog-lovers, here is a picture of Dylan, he is a Great Dane who belongs to my uncle. Dylan is seen here sitting on the deck. This was shot with the Canon Digital Rebel XT and either the EF-S 17-85mm or the EF 70-200mm f4L.