So I decided to be a complete cheeseball and play around with posing Lulu for a portrait. Then I made it look vintage and printed a giant canvas print for $6.99 (Mother's Day special!). I am so putting this up on the wall. In my sisters' apartment. Heehee.
Notes for next time: widen the depth of field and go for sharpness all around. I'm over this fuzzy bit.
I have created a "practical" wish list of sorts for my camera... a not-so-exorbitant wish list (IMHO) of lenses. I didn't go so far as to pick every "L" series prime lens available by Canon. Instead, I put together a balance of lenses based on my needs, wants and budget. I can't afford all of these lenses in one go, mind you, so when I say budget I am referring to the hypothetical budget I will be building this year as I hypothetically start to see a ROI through photography.
EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye, $719
My most probable next purchase, this fisheye lens will have a multitude of uses for both day-to-day shots and travel photography. I can already see wet doggy nose marks on the tip of the bubble. :)
EF 50mm f/1.4 USM, $379
One day, when I can say for certain exactly how this f/1.4 differs rom my f/1.8, I will sell my cheapy-fifty for this faster, ultrasonic version.
EF 85mm f/1.8 USM, $419
This will be another first-step purchase to practice portrait photography. If this focal length proves worthy over the 135mm, I will step it up to the EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM for $2199. For now I can fake my 85mm photos with my 24-105mm f/4 zoom lens.
EF 135mm f/2L USM, $1089
Speak of the devil, here is the 135mm. I played with my co-worker's 135mm for about 10 seconds at the office before I decided that I needed a DSLR camera and I needed this lens. Amazing portrait results. Okay, maybe this is my next lens.
EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM, $1999
This will be my super-duper I can take a picture of the eiffel tower from my hotel room even though I'm still in the U.S. lens. I just want it because it's pretty. *sigh*
So my to-do list will be 15, 135, 7-200, 85, 50. Actually, it will be battery grip, 15, 135, 7-200, 85 then 50. Or maybe battery grip, 135, 15, 85, 70-200, 50. Okay, who am I kidding, it will probably be in order from cheapest to most expensive. >.<
My EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens finally came in the mail today. I ordered it online the same day I bought my camera (2 weeks ago) so I could save $10 and ended up kicking myself for it because it took so long to come in! I really wanted to experiment with it while I was in Vegas. Luckily, my co-worker Ken was nice enough to loan me his EF 50mm f/1.4 USM for the weekend. I was actually going to decline, didn't want to get used to the faster lens and get stuck with the 1.8, but I wanted something other than my zoom to play with so I borrowed it anyway.
So now that I had both in my possession, it was time to test out to see if the 1.4 really is worth 4x more ($389 vs $99). First of all, the 1.8 is dinky compared to the 1.4. It's made out of a cheapy plastic that is lighter and shinier. It's super light and surprisingly quite smaller. It really is a no-frills lens. It took a while to get used to the 50mm in general... it almost reminded me of my first 35mm camera when I was 13 (won it in 7th grade for selling 12 boxes of chocolate). No zoom, no frills, just get close to your subject and shoot. The 1.8 was quick and it was easy to adjust aperture and shutter speed to get a good amount of light in, especially since our media room is kind of dark. However, the preview for each photo seemed so blurry. I was disheartened but kept on shooting. After I viewed the pics on my computer, I realized that the larger aperture had such narrow depth of field that it blurred out everything except for the very point I was focusing at. It was even more ridiculous in the 1.4. (I was shooting both in Tv, letting the camera choose the aperture)
50mm f/1.8 II // quick and dirty
50mm f/1.4 USM // super quick and much more vibrant
So, for now I'm not a good enough photographer to show much of a difference between the two so I am happy to practice with my 1.8. It's small and light and will be much easier to work with when I'm not freaked out about knocking it on a wall. At $99, you really can't complain.
P.S. Doesn't Cora look silly with short ears?
Okay, I don't want to fall into the bucket of amateur-photographer-discovers-photoshop-plug-ins but I will admit it is a lot of fun. Sure it's easy to go overboard (overprocessed images on Facebook bug me too) but I think they might make for neat prints framed on a wall.
I will probably stick to the more traditional method of touching up through Photoshop for my regular photos but why not let loose once in a while and go click-crazy? :)
I used 3 different presets for this shot of Cora. I wanted to get an extremely burnt, but not overexposed, contrast since the original image was so boringly brown. Brown dog on brown carpet against a brown background. I also played with a pixelating tool which made for a cool shadow around her head.
I had a nice, clear outdoor shot of Max that was, well, almost too clear. This was a good way to practice with "airbrushing" tools to eliminate blemishes, minimize pores and do just about everything my collection of Bliss products promises to do.
My last picture was a "happy accident" that Aai took with the camera as she was trying it out for the first time. Again we had a white dog against a white shirt in front of white cabinets so I wanted to play with color and contrast to add dimensionality. Adding the frame was a fun way to add balance to the edges.
So I finally bit the bullet and plunged head first in a dslr purchase. I've always had interest in photography but have always been too intimidated to use anything more complicated than a point & shoot. The BF gave me a Leica DLUX-4 for Christmas 2 years ago and though it's a great camera, it doesn't reward you unless you know what you are doing.
So for the past month I've been toying with the idea of getting a dslr. Working at a creative agency, I am surrounded by photographers so within a couple of days I heard enough opinions to narrow my sights on a Canon 5D. The question now was do I buy a used 5D or splurge on a new 5D Mark II? Then I started getting worried -- what if I spend all of that money on a camera and I learn that I am no good? Do I start with a 50D instead, which is half the price? The Samy's Camera Presidents' Day no-tax sale made my decision for me. Not only did I splurge and get the 5DM2, but I bought it with a kit so it came with a 24-105mm f/4L IS USM AF lens.
After taking my first test shot with the camera, I'm instantly happy with my purchase. The picture of Lulu below was taken on program mode (I don't know what I'm doing, remember? :P) in the low lighting of my media room and I was immediately impressed with how much warmth and rich color it captured. I'm excited to see how else I can incorporate photography into my day-to-day life, as both a way to capture memories and to add dimension to the mundane.
