Photo For Now #010

For this photo, I stood on the chair and had Mikayla looking way up at me. I had to bug her for a bit to get her to smile that great big toothy smile of hers. I always try to make even my snaps around the house as creative as I can and as technically correct as I can. Practice makes perfect.


50mm, ISO400, F/8 for 1/200 seconds, Canon 430ex flash.

Chris.

Project Obie - Day 5

Lest We Forget.

This may seem rude but I wanted to include a photo of Obie today. I'm trying to keep up with the project but I'm not having as easy a time as I thought I might.

I don't know anyone personally who is in the military these days. Nor do I know anyone that has been impacted by a death of a family member who is in the military. I do know that these people put their lives on the line to make sure we get to live our lives the way we do.

We in Canada enjoy a freedom that most people in the world do not. The USA, Europe, parts of Asia. We all enjoy these freedoms and we should not forget those who have helped to make is possible for us.

This photo is not meant to demean the military in any way at all. This is my poppy I taped on to Obie. I wear it proudly. To those in the military I say Thanks.



Chris.

Photo For Now #009

Being stuck creatively is a bad thing. I'm there right now. I have gotten many suggestions on how to break through it. One of my favorites is to take pictures of mundane objects from a different perspective.

Here is today's mundane object. My pen on my desk.


50mm, ISO 400, f/1.8 for 1/640 seconds.

I love the 50mm f/1.8. Look at the shallow depth of field when it's wide open. It's only about 1/2" or so. Awesome. It is a little soft of focus when it's wide open but so what. That's really not the point. The bokeh is the point.

Chris.

Photo For Now #005

Here is a photo that I'm really happy with. It was about -3°C outside on Saturday morning and I noticed this line of frost covered leaves on the front lawn. Made for a great fall photo in the early morning light.



17mm, ISO 100, f/5.6 for 1/320 seconds.

Chris.

Project Obie - Day 1 Continued

Obie is a busy guy. He has to have a coffee first.



Then he is ready to get to work. Obie is a jack-of-all-trades. He can do anything. Here he is as a heavy duty mechanic repairing a manlift.





Obie is also a backhoe operator. This is his favorite one.





Obie also works his ass off. He has loads of paperwork. When you are only 4 inches high, paper is huge!



Chris.

Project Obie - Day 1

I've gotten myself into a creative rut. I'm not taking any pictures that are worth taking. Mostly just playing with the settings and such. It's driving me crazy.

Late fall in Edmonton is boring, drab and cold. Nothing to take pictures of really. So I need a project to keep me going. Something silly not too serious but one that will require me to use my skills.

Enter Project Obie (oh-bee).

He doesn't do much but he's always there lurking around the corner somewhere. This is the story of his adventures.



This is Obie. He's 4 inches tall and weighs about 1/4 pounds. He gets around. I will try my best to get good photos of Obie but he is quick and I may get tricked up.

Please check often for Obie's adventures and leave comments about them or any suggestions you may have for an adventure.

Chris.

I'm Published Again!

Well, this is starting to go to my head. LOL. I've had another photo of mine published. This time by Schmap Calgary. They have photos from each of the tourist attractions on their web based map. When you click on the attraction it's page opens and there are photos from that location scrolling by. It seems like 20 to 30 photos for each one.

This is the photo that was selected for the Calgary Zoo.



Chris.

Canon 50D Hands On Review Part 2

Ok, I've been using the 50D for a little over a week now. I've put it through some testing both indoor and out. With flash and without. I must say I am happy with the camera but a little let down at the same time. I think I was expecting more that was was possible. Don't get me wrong I love the camera. It's smooth operating and nice to work with but it's the high ISO that gets me. 3200 is work able and that's great but the higher 2 settings are not all I was hoping for.

Anyway, I'll stop ranting about that. I do really like the quality of picture and the ease of use. The menu structure, although much different from the XTI, is easy to navigate and there are lots of features that the XTI does not have. One I really like is the ability to move from ISO to ISO by 1/3's instead of full stops. That's cool.

So here are some more photos for now.


44mm, f/5 for 1/160 sec, ISO 100.


61mm, f/5.6 for 1/80 sec, ISO I00.

Chris.

Canon 50D Hands On Review

I have it! The 50D. Now to review it. This may take more than one post but I'll get started.

I've only had it a few days and have been quite busy so I have not done too much with it yet. But here goes.

This camera is bigger than the Rebel line. Heavier and much more solidly built. Metal instead of plastic. It feels very good in the hand. I won't need a battery grip on this one.

I have the 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM kit lens. It's sharper than the 18-55 on the Rebel. The image stabilization is very quite. I hardly hear it in a quite room. It works well too. I can get 1/10 of a second shutter speed and it looks good!

The ISO performance was much better than my XTI. The XTI goes to ISO 1600 and that's not the best of quality. On the 50D ISO 1600 looks like ISO 400 on the XTI. Nice. ISO 3200 is the highest on the regular scale giving a nice workable result. On H1 and H2 you get ISO 6400, which is very noisy, and ISO 12800. Forget about ISO12800. Yuck is all I'm going to say. I do like the ability to adjust ISO in 1/3 stops. That's new for me. I really like that.

Here are some photos from the last few days.



250mm, F/5.6 for 1/13 seconds, ISO 1600.
This is my first high ISO shot. Not a really high ISO for this camera but on my XTI this would have been bad. It's not too bad at all. All I did for this in post was to work with the noise.


85mm, F/8 for 1/125 seconds, ISO 100.
This one turned out great. I expected it to as the settings are low. What got me though is that when viewing in full size, you can see the edges and angles on the grains of sand!

22mm, f/8 for 1/250 seconds, ISO 100.
This one of Jacob shows nice color, sharpness, exposure was nice. For just grabbing an aperture and snapping away, it worked out really nice.

I'll get to more of the features as I use the camera more. Just felt I had to say something.

Chris.

Digital Photography Tip #006 - Leading Lines

Another way to enhance your subject is by the use of leading lines in your photo. A road, a railing, a beach, a branch. Anything like that that draws the viewers eye into the photo and around the photo works well.

Have a look at the examples below.




The shore line here leads your eye to Jacob and then beyond to the back of the photo then back to Jacob again.



Here the lines of the slide draw your eye up to Jacob no matter where you look. also notice the framing effect of the trees on either side of the slide.

Chris.