New Lens

Well I've heard from several sources that my first lens purchase should be this 50mm Canon lens.

The best--and most affordable--regular use lens I ever purchased is a 50mm prime lens. (The Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens)

from MckMama (Don't judge me! I was reading some of her photography "lessons"!)

And

I would recommend getting a nice 50mm lens as one of your first additional lens purchase. You can get a really fast (1.8 or 2.0) for under $100, and if you want to get really high quality glass you can get a 1.4 for around $350. A 50 is a great lens to have, so I always suggest that as a first purchase

from a conversation with my old roommate about photography, as...he is one, and I'm not. I had asked about lenses, but not specifically the 50mm prime.

So...I decided to take the advice of those in the know, and I ordered the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens. I found it for just under $100, but I'm sure it's out there for a few bucks cheaper. We were just wanting to take advantage of Amazon's free shipping by joining some items. Most of the reviews agreed that you get what you pay for (few lens are going to be <$100) with build quality and auto-focus, but as far as value for the money, it's one of the best "deals" out there. I had considered the faster 1.4 50mm, but...it's 3 times the cost, and I'm hoping to get some sort of zoom lens in the future. So saving $200 to put towards it is helpful. And I wont know how much more I'll want the extra speed until I experience 1.8. So while I thought my first lens purchase would be an anxiety filled journey of indecision (and this one did have some moments of indecision), this was probably as easy a decision as it will ever be (unless I find more $100 lens or unbelievable deals, which...I never find).

The only person to recommend AGAINST the prime 50mm was my brother in law who suggests the 35mm. And I see his point. 50mm with the T1i's outrageous crop factor of 1.6, means I'll be shooting on a virtual 80mm lens (I think that's how it works), which may mean that I'll have trouble getting far enough away to frame the shot. But...again...$100. Hard not to give it a trial run. And I couldn't find any similarly priced 35mm.

So that should be here next week. I'm sure I will not lack in "comparison" pictures, so I suppose they will make their way here.

Baseball Field

There is a park in the neighborhood across the street.

Ocean City Sunrise

So if you do a search on flickr for sunset you get 5.9 million results. If you do a search for sunrise you get 1.4 million results. Maybe it's because more people are naturally awake for sunsets. Maybe it's because more photographers live on the West Coast. Either way...sunsets seem to be more popular. And generally...I would say I enjoy a good sunset more than I feel like I've enjoyed the couple of sunrises I've witnessed. Maybe because the best sunsets are places where you can see them...and if I'm somewhere I can see them, I'm on vacation, and if I'm on vacation and sitting there watching a sunset, then the rest of the day was probably a pretty good day. If I'm watching a sunrise...I'm generally a little cranky and I feel like there's less color, though I'm not sure what basis I have to say that.

Regardless...I'm in Ocean City...the sunrise is all I got.

Given the oppurtunity...and the fact that the day we left for the beach I found my little tripod. And as I'm still itching for "interesting" things to shoot (I know I need to look more into life around me...but...I can't find cool landscapes driving around Odenton!). I decide I'm going to wake up early and shoot the sunrise. Judge me if you want, but I must have been a bit excited because I woke up an hour before I planned (and thank goodness I did because I would have missed a lot). I went to the beach...set up my little 2 foot tripod...and started shooting the sky. Again, judge if you like...I know I'm a pretty little girl...but I had a lot of fun. I just enjoyed being able to use the camera in the areas it excels over my previous point and shoots. I enjoyed shooting in what looked like night to me and getting a very bright and saturated blue sky. And the temperature was perfect. And it was one of the few times I felt like I was preserving the experience through film instead of missing out on the experience because I was distracted taking pictures, most of which wouldn't help me re-experience anything, it would only be a poor reminder of it.

Anyway...I ended up taking a lot of pictures (filled up a 2GB card and then some), and a lot of them looked the same because...well...I would take a shot...like the way it looked...take a few more...look around for another thing to shoot...then look back at what I had shot a couple of seconds ago and think, "ooo...that would be a good shot"...and take some more. And I mean...I was out there for an hour and a half. What else am I going to do? You might be wondering, how many things can you point the camera at during a sunrise? Well...I tried to get creative...but...the best shots (relative to each other) were of course of the sun rising.

So I'll just put up a couple of my favorites here (which I'm sure when I start importing will turn into much more than a couple), and I'll probably stick a few more up on flickr.

I did some enhancing to a few of them, as I had some pretty bad exposures that I didn't realize until later. But for the most part, they are pretty true to what came out of the camera, which is nice because...well...I'm not a very good photo editor.















So the last half are an hour after sunrise when the sun was doing this cool, light from heaven thing. And the last one obviously is not of the sunrise...just a shot I liked.

Hand-Coloring

So one place that Ann and I differ in our photo preferences, is where I get excited about stuff that was new in like the 90's and if not done properly, might be considered a little corny (at least when I do it). I think my excitement is mainly in that I can do it myself. I'm not sure I would want to look at picture after picture of this type (though at the moment, probably more than most). But I figured out how to do hand-coloring (though I've just seen it described as color-tinting, which sounds much more likely to be accurate) and I had to experiment. You definitely don't want to do this to everything, and I've probably done it to more than I should, but it was in an effort to find one or two interesting transformations. But I'll try to keep my postings of them to a minimum.

Not sure if these classify as interesting, but I had fun doing them. The originals are both from point-and-shoots...again.


This was taken in Alaska. Not sure what Denver is significant for besides it being a capitol city of one of our states. I mean...in that sense it's significant. I don't mean to downplay the importance of the entire Denver population. But a sign with the word "Denver" holds less significance in general, and even less still when put in the context of a train car in Alaska.

New Camera Pix

I know what you're thinking. "You bought a new camera, and all you post is stuff from your old point-and-shoots?" So up until yesterday I was still just taking pictures of stuff around the house. Those are rarely interesting. But I did kind of like the look of these two. So...I'll post them as the first fruits of the Canon T1i. Hopefully it only goes up from here.




But since I went to the beach yesterday, I've finally got a couple that are potentially more interesting than coasters (unless you thought that coasters picture was absolutely awesome!)






This is just a boy in a hole. We almost missed him when we were walking by. I thought it was funny.


And you gotta give props to this guy!

Mountains Gandalf, Mountains! (Okay I'm a nerd)

In Alaska, again with my parent's point-and-shoot.


Again Alaska with our FinePix. Not terribly exciting, and nothing spectacular with the color. But...I just like this one. With the clouds thicker on one side of the photo, it almost feels like they are moving in or moving out of frame. But...I guess if you look at anything long enough it might start to look like it's moving.

New Camera

So we finally got ourselves a DSLR. I would say that I've been doing my research for about a year, but honestly I've just been asking the same old questions from owners of them, trying to get them to tell me something about them that would finally motivate me to get one. Something like, "with one of these cameras you'll magically wake up on beach for a perfect sunrise, get the shot, then wake up back in your own bed in time for work." No one who had one regretted it, but I was definitely under the impression that I would need to learn a bit more about photography if it was to be useful, which at the time I felt like it was beyond me. This was mainly due to some of my half hearted attempts to learn, in combination with everyone's explanation of things like aperature and depth of field just wasn't sticking or resonating with me. I never did any price checking or brand/model reviews outside of recalling some popular sentiments that Canon provided good support for lots of different lenses...which is true, but so do a lot of camera makers I think. Regardless, I had somehow convinced myself that Canon was the way to go. It was based on nothing, but...hasn't disappointed me yet.

So I would still look at the DSLRs whenever I would go into Best Buy, and I would play with one whenever family members would let me. But I just didn't see it happening. We had enough we wanted to spend money on.

So my parent's come into town for the weekend, and they needed to go to Best Buy to pick up a new point-and-shoot before their cruise a week later. I had 10% off camera coupons from being a rewards member, and we decide to accompany them to Best Buy while they were here. So they are looking at point-and-shoots, and I gravitate towards the DSLRs. We find a knowledgeable salesman (I like Best Buy, but even there that seems hard to find for the camera department), so I ask some of the same basic questions I've been asking for about a year. Ann comes and joins me and starts to encourage me to just pick one out and get it. My jaw hits the floor, my heart starts pounding, my palms get all clammy..."pick one up today? Are you crazy??" Well...you can't argue when your wife wants you to pick yourself up a new toy! (it has been a year discussion) So we got my brother in-law on the phone, and on his recommendation (and his recommendation coincided with the feature list I wanted) we picked up the Canon T1i.

Since the purchase I've tried to make myself averse to the different components and options for the camera, as well as some general photo editing techniques so that I might put "cool effects" on all the photos I'd be taking. Since I haven't had opportunity to take many "cool photos", I've spent my free time editing old photographs, which has produced more enjoyment than I would have thought. Not that I regret the purchase and would have been happy just editing photos from our point-and-shoot, but I didn't find the pictures as bad as I was thinking.

So after some reading, I feel like I at least understand the technology behind the options on the camera, though I'm terrible at implementing them, and even worse at photo editing...but it's still a lot of fun to play around with and take 50 pictures of a remote with every possible shutter/aperature/ISO combination possible.

So I thought I might make use of this blog for some photo journaling. I find that the things I like are not what my wife likes, which leads me to think that I may be in the minority. And I definitely haven't come to grips with less is more with the touch ups and editing. So I know I may be putting up some junk for awhile. But hopefully, a growth and development might be seen as I progress, showing better judgment in composition and use of colors and effects. You gotta start somewhere...so...here it is. It's been awhile since my last post, so I'm sure I'm really hoping that no one reads this anyway, but those damn RSS readers are going to give me away (and I just found out that facebook will also be my downfall). Cursed technology!

So I'll start with one my favorite photographs that we have ever taken (when I say favorite, I typically mean based completely on the merits of the picture, not necessarily the warm fuzzies pictures might give because of its association with a beloved person or event. Those are my favorite in a different way, if that makes sense).


So I guess this is my favorite because it's completely unedited, straight from the camera, and it was taken with our Fuji FinePix F30, which we have lately found very frustrating, but it obviously has taken some good pictures in the past. This was in Hawaii on a boat before going Mana Ray diving.

Going with the sunset theme, I'll add one more from that same night (and same camera).



This does have a little bit of editing, but of all the photos I showed Ann with modifications, it was 1 of around 5 (out of 100 or so) that she actually liked the improvements (making you even more motivated to stay tuned!).