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Monday, May 19, 2008

Getting The Hang Of It

Last Christmas I bought myself a new DSLR camera, the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi along with a Canon EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III Telephoto Zoom Lens. So after taking some classes at the local Wolf Camera stores I think I'm finally getting a handle on shutter speeds, apertures, f-stops, white balance, ISO and what not. The toughest thing for me to wrap my head around is the concept in photography that smaller numbers equals bigger openings as it applies to the lens aperture. That's very counter-intuitive to me.

But this weekend it all finally clicked for me (Thanks Paul!) and when I went to the Zoo on Sunday I got some great shots with my telephoto zoom lens. After going through almost 300 photos I picked out what I thought were the very, very best and posted them to my .mac account web gallery. You can see them here if you're interested. I was very happy with the color, exposure and focusing on most of the pictures. I didn't have to post process any of them which is a first for me. I've still got to work on getting every shot in focus, but I'm making progress that I'm very pleased with.

Now I want a better telephoto zoom lens. After really using the one I have for a few hours I realize that the zoom action is stiff and the autofocus can be soft when zoomed in at 300mm. So I'm looking at about 3 Canon lenses with buit-in image stabilization: Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens, or Canon EF 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 DO IS USM Lens (I've read this is a good travel lens as well as being just as good as longer lenses with the same specs) or Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM Telephoto Zoom Lens. I'm really leaning towards the "L" series lens even though it only goes to 200mm it's got a wider aperture.

Anyway, if you like the photos, let me know.

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