one monkey typing

Flickr is moving to limiting their free accounts quite a lot. I don't feel like I use it nearly enough to bother paying so I'm moving my images. When I moved from LJ to DW I looked around and found imgbb.

I don't know how imgbb stays around - they charge nothing, you don't even really have to register, but have unlimited image hosting for images indivually < 16MB and a perfectly nice clean interface.

But whatever, I am using them to host images for here and I think I will start using them for my blog and random albums too. I'll be moving my Flickr albums there over the next few days.

I've gotten a bit wound up about getting going with photography again, spurred on by a desire to travel more from now on.

I have:
Bought a used 60D. But then did some research, and found that really I want a 70D. I got on Amazon and found a used 70D for about $530, from a shop in SE Michigan. Should have that mid-week.

The 60D is delayed in the post. When it shows up, I'll just put it onto eBay straightaway.

I also picked up a used 24-105 f/4L. I used it a bit on the 500D today, it's pretty nice.

I got a 24mm f/2.8 pancake for walking around. Bought that new.

I just tried putting Magic Lantern on the 500D. It's OK but I got scared by some behavior and uninstalled it. I don't want to do anything that has a chance of bricking my camera.

I also ordered a new bag, spare batteries, and some straps. I found that 2 of the 3 batteries I have for the 500D are basically dead - straight off the charger they run the camera for about 3 minutes in live view mode before blinking red. They're in the trash and a new pair are coming. They say put in service in 2009 so I can't really complain.

I want to play with using the 70D for video (a main reason why the 70D over the 60D) and picked up a well rated but very inexpensive shotgun microphone. I have a new tripod, pistol grip tripod head, and controller and some remote strobes and softboxes on my wishlist. Probably will hold off quite a while on the strobe stuff as it's mainly for portraiture and I don't really see myself doing much of that.

Learning Lightroom. Thankfully you can still get the old, perpetually licensed version. I own a copy of ACDSee, which probably does a lot of the same stuff, but there's something to be said for using the software that everyone else uses.

I've also been putting a lot of stuff on eBay to clear the decks of stuff I'm not using while it still has some value, and partially fund this stuff.

The windows at work look out over a nice treeline (and some industrial buildings alas, but the eye has a wonderful ability to ignore what it doesn't care to see) that gets lit by the sun beautifully in the early morning. I always try to remember to have a stroll by there at sunrise to spend a minute watching. Now that the leaves are starting to turn and there's a little fog hugging the ground it's getting even better.
click for full res

Finally got around to ordering a set of neutral density filters, in time for the UP trip. I just can't get the cotton candy waterfalls without em! OK, cotton candy waterfall photos are cliche as hell but I still like it.

I love ebay and DealExtreme for random photo stuff like this; ND2,4, and 8 filters for $30 shipped. The trick is to find (A) GLASS filters instead of plastic, and (B) a US shipper, given that the trip is in just a few weeks and sometimes HK shippers take a month.

What I REALLY am going to want for waterfall photos will have to wait a year or three; a 10-22mm zoom lens. I used Mike's at the wedding and it's very nice for indoor shots of people, and I bet would be great for waterfalls too; I can NEVER go as wide as I want at a waterfall, and going pano doesn't work that well either, though it's OK. Sigma, Tamron and Canon all make decent lenses in this range.

A couple of weeks ago I thought it would be a good exercise for me to try to take at least one photo worth sharing per day. At this point, I think maybe one per week would be a more achievable goal.

I scored an incredible find earlier this week; I found a like-new Sigma 170-500mm lens on a Canon mount at a rummage sale, and got it for $250. Today I went out and managed to keep the dog inside long enough for the birds to come back to the feeders and took a few shots. I thought it was back focusing a bit but I think it's just that at 500mm it's very difficult to get the camera to focus on the bird and not a leaf 6 inches behind it (and at 500mm, 6 inches is outside of DOF).

Anyway, I'm not certain of the identification, this may be a juvenile of some kind, but for now I think this is a female cowbird. Taken from about 60 feet away, cropped down a bit. This is a 100% crop (not resized). Shot RAW with a bit of sharpening and some brightness tweaking.

The new SLR, a Canon Rebel T1i, has arrived. First impression; it's quite nice. Since I've skipped 4 generations, the menu system and button layout has changed considerably, but the workflow on it is still in the same family so I am not too lost.

As with any non-trivial camera, it'll take me a few weeks to get comfortable with it, and probably a few months to get proficient. I'm waiting for the 55-250 lens to show up so I can take some bird photos, and I have put a Tamron 90mm macro on my wish list; the samples from it are awesome; full-frame photos of houseflies with every eye facet and little hair visible. That'll probably wait until next year though, this pretty much blows my toy budget for the year.

Also still on the way; battery grip and a couple of cheap spare batteries.

I've had a Canon Digital Rebel (the original, 300D) for about 6 years now. I've been pretty happy with it, it was absolutely great when I got it; it was SO NICE to hold a REAL camera again instead of a point-and-shoot. Over the years it's been surpassed by now 4 generations of new cameras. It still works great but it shows its age in that it's a bit slow (to boot up, mainly) and images are quite noisy at higher ISOs. Since I wind up doing a lot of shooting in fairly poorly-lit areas, that's actually a bit of a problem for me; lots of the stuff I shoot with it winds up kind of noisy.

In fact, the SLR has gotten so dated that I've largely stopped using it; my point-and-shoot was giving me almost as good results in many if not most situations because it was a couple of generations newer. I was only really using the SLR when I needed to shoot fast or needed to use a big flash.

I recently started looking and it turns out that high ISO performance is one of the things that have VASTLY improved in newer models. Honestly the new cameras have less noise at ISO 3200 than mine does at 400. So I decided it's time to upgrade. I was trying to decide between the 450D and biting the bullet for a 50D, which is about $400+ more.

Then Wednesday night I discovered that Canon had just released the 500D in March (it's just showing up in stores now) and it's most of a 50D crammed into a 450D body, and at only about $140 more than the 450D. It's got the 15.1MP sensor, the 930,000 pixel 3" screen, and all the other cool stuff. The only significant difference is that it only shoots at 3.5 fps in burst mode rather than 6, and it has less sophisticated autofocus sensors, which somewhat limits its performance in low light situations. I can live with that for about a $300 savings, which I can put into lenses instead.

Also, the 500D shoots true HD video. It's still not a replacement for the actual HD camcorder since it has a monaural microphone the size of a pinhead, but it'll be nice to have as an option when the camcorder isn't in hand.

All that and a bag of chips: The new camera with all that and the new lens with IS is $100 less than I paid for the old camera 6+ years ago.

Also, they've redesigned the 18-55 kit lens; it now includes IS and is apparently a big improvement over the last one. While the original 18-55 was OK, it was a bit mediocre and I wound up replacing it with a Sigma 18-135.

With the old camera, I also originally had the 55-200 companion lens, which honestly STUNK. It was horrible and I sold it after about 6 months. However, Canon now has replaced it with the 55-250 IS. I was seriously considering the 70-200L, and it still might happen someday, it's a darn nice lens, but at 2.5X the cost of the 55-250 IS and no IS on the L lens, I can't currently justify buying L glass. At least, not until the credit cards are paid off...

Both the 18-55 and the 55-250 have I think a 3rd generation IS; it has actually many fewer moving parts and reviews say it's pretty much as good as the IS in the expensive L series lenses. Also the technical reviews indicate that Canon has clearly taken significant steps in reducing chromatic and spherical aberration. And the new cameras ship with a RAW processor that includes a database of Canon lenses and can correct out the remaining CA and barrel/pincusion distortion.

I think it's a really good time to upgrade. A friend at work disagrees and is sticking by the old "when upgrading, always buy better glass" adage, but I think in the digital age that doesn't hold quite as true. The image sensor and supporting circuitry has become much more important than the camera body used to be in the film days, and it needs upgrading occasionally.

I'm also happy to see that 3rd party battery grips are now available for dirt cheap. I have a battery grip for the 300D and I really, really like it. It's not on the camera a lot, but when I go somewhere specifically to shoot pictures, I put it on. It is VERY nice to have a proper grip on the camera in portrait mode, and I was worried I'd have to give it up if I upgraded. Honestly I may wind up with the battery grip on most of the time; apparently they've made the new camera so damn small that it can be hard to grip.