Nerding Out With My New Camera

New Toy

So preeeeeety!

My first SLR ever! I don’t think I would have been patient enough to learn exposure with regular film but I can do this with digital! So, after much himming and hawing I decided to just spend the money and make the purchase.

I ended up buying the Canon T2i which came with an additional 55-250mm lens in the package and had a 18-55mm included. I also purchased a polarizing filter as well as a UV.

This is a cool camera. I originally had my heart set on the new Nikon D3100 but alas, everyone was sold out almost as soon as they received shipment. The salesman at Best Buy spent two hours extolling the virtues of the Canon line (he owns four) so I made the switch. Other than missing the geo location data recording feature (which I REALLY wanted), I love it. I continue to find new features on it.

Moon

Here is the requisite shot of the full moon I took last night.  It is under exposed on purpose so that you can see all the craters and stuff on the surface.  It was actually blindingly bright. After fifteen shots of using various mixtures of exposure settings I think I finally began learning. First thing, use a tripod. Actually, I learned it after the fourth shot. There is no way you can hold still enough with your shutter open that long.

Second, I now understand the need for a remote shutter release because, even on a tripod, the jiggle produced by depressing the button shows up in the picture.

In one of the shots I used the full auto feature to see what settings the camera would choose.

**Note to camera: using the flash at the moon is USELESS.

Slam Dunk

Here is one of the early “learning” shots. It looked like the moon was getting slam dunked into the clouds.

Wind and clouds

Our custom made wind vane fabricated by Mike’s uncle Rudy features a German Shepherd because we own, breed (we did it once) and raise them. And, Uncle Rudy has one of our pups.

I love the way the dog has it’s own little cloud frame. There is also a ray of light coming through the clouds you can see much better in the lightbox mode.

Gazebo

A contextual shot taken in the early morning.

Your Input?

As I began loading my pictures into Photoshop I began wondering if the color and exposure adjustments I were making would look weird to someone else. I know different screens render color differently (none of today’s pictures needed any adjustment other than some cropping). Upon looking into calibrating my screen I found to do it right you really should invest in the expensive program (X-rite for two benjamins) which will tune your display to within an inch of it’s life. It’s what all the experts use and you wouldn’t want your screen looking different than theirs.

While I certainly plan to make that purchase some day, for now I am content with using the wizard that comes with Snow Leopard on my iMac. It looks great to me but I would love to know your thoughts. Please click on the title of this post up at the top “Nerding Out With My New Camera” to access the comments section and let me know what you think.  Thank you ahead of time.

A Little Fun With Testing For Color

Check out the FM 100 Hue Test to find out how well you can distinguish color hues.