Posts Tagged ‘Photography’

I guess since I sold 100% of my previous 20D, Gitzo Explorer, and Acratech setup I’m wondering if I should change things up and do it a bit more differently and intelligently.

The Explorer was a great tripod, and I’m pretty set on getting the new version. It wasn’t quick to set up but it was infinitely versatile. The Acratech was also a great ballhead, I can’t think of any complaints really, at least none that aren’t solved by the new Acratech GP ballhead.

I’m sort of thinking though that this new ballhead should have a pan arm though for video usage on the 7D. Thinking about it now, it’d be awesome if Acratech just added a screw hole to the right side of the quick release plate. That way you could screw in a pan arm. There’d be no question about the ballhead then. For now, it’s not that way so I’m considering options, next in line is a RRS BH-55.

Help me decide Internet! Too many forum discussions to read!

At any rate, the 7D with the EF 24mm f/1.4L II is awesome, I need to get off my ass and update the theme here and create a decent gallery. I wish this was all a lot cheaper it’s such a relaxing and enjoyable endeavor, it sucks that paying for it creates such stress.

I created a nice little task for myself this week and figured I’d start early. I expect some more changes and updates soon but for the time being I’ve switched to a new theme. It’s basically just the Essence theme created by Jelle Druyts for dasBlog. I’ve modified it quite a bit, swapping the text sides, making the body wider, fixing a minor bug with the columns stacking when in windowed mode, and I popped in a header image. Picking an image was quite hard since there’s only 100px in height to work with, etc. I’ll most likely change it out over time. For those that read in a RSS reader it won’t mean any difference. I just had to do it since I got sick of seeing the same thing when I went to manage the blog here. I also added the GeoURL info to the metadata as well. More changes soon.

Chris and Jake randomly asked if I’d like to review one of the original Lensbabies lenses ages ago. I’m only just now getting around to it. Is it way too late? Possibly, especially since they’ve now released a second and improved version of the lens. Though even taking that into consideration I honestly can’t say that it would change my opinion any. Basically they sent me the lens and I went at it.

After toying with it to figure out the focus and the aperture and such I grabbed a couple shots. I really wasn’t impressed with any of the shots as it really seemed to be too sensitive to movement when it came it getting the specific area I wanted in focus. After taking 5 shots I went to remove the lens and started having major difficulties. Having used non Canon lenses on my 20D before this was a bit unusual. After pressing down on the lens quite a bit more than normal it finally came out. But not without damaging the bracket and pins slightly. Because of this I had to send the camera into Canon for repair which took a week and a half. I received the camera back as good as new but I refused to pop the lens back on.

So in this post we’ve got the one shot I’d actually think that might be worth posting. The end result is interesting but nothing one couldn’t do in Photoshop. Since I’d classify this as a post processing effect I’d say that’s where it should actually be staying. When shooting digital it’s really important that you’re keeping original digital negative, whether that be the untouched JPG or the RAW image. Because this lens is no where near the quality of any one of my Canon lenses it wouldn’t make sense to shoot with it. It would be much better to shoot with the Canon, visualize the concept in my head then apply a Lensbabies like effect to the photo in Photoshop. That alone makes me think that for digital photography the Lensbaby idea isn’t all that great.

Now if I were a film photographer then I’ll admit that this lens would actually be pretty cool. But that’s not how I tested it so I won’t go into that. Now realistically if I hadn’t been jaded by the fact that the lens messed up my camera I probably would’ve used it quite a bit more and probably have gotten much more experience with it to get some decent shots. I’m normally all for cool gizmos like this lens but this is one time where I’d fall back on my Photoshop skills.

So what’s the bottom line? Well, I wouldn’t buy one, nor would I recommend it. Save your money and buy Photoshop and become proficient at using that.

Kerry Skarbakka has some excellent photos in his latest portfolio. “The Struggle to Right Oneself” has some great shots, not sure how many of them are done with Photoshop or if they’re all 100% reality. It’s a shame he’s not posted some tips on his production process. Definitely a cool project though.

After a short down time with Canon Repair, I finally got my 20D back yesterday. Really have missed it which is kind of odd. Think this weekend will be good for some more photography, been craving a nice relaxing weekend doing nothing but that. Annoyingly FedEx had this weird do not release thing going on with the package so I had to shift lunch a bit, get home right at one then get back to 50 by 1:25 so I could catch a meeting at 1:30 which ended up being cancelled. Still didn’t feel like I could eat so I just sat outside a bit to relax and examine the camera a bit to check all the functionality again. Managed to grab some nice shallow DoF photos of some of the random plants around the building before the hour for lunch was up. I think I got lucky once again, they replaced a couple of the parts that I knocked out while cleaning the camera with new ones, cleaned the sensor and the entire camera. Then even replaced the battery grip with a brand new one. Got both in the same package and definitely wasn’t expecting that. Especially when the entire repair only cost me the $4.90 to get it to them in the first place. Am hoping Dom will write that 30 lines of code I need so I can copy over his gallery software and start making it public. Of course then I might actually have to start filtering some of the crap photos I take.