newly inspired to photograph

A few weeks ago I volunteered to help take photos for Jason and Maggie's wedding. It sounds like I am trying to help, but I am actually quite a bad photographer so probably it's not such a great "gift". That got me started thinking about why I am so bad, and of course, instead of blaming myself for lack of practice and patience, I decided that it's the camera's fault and went and bought myself a new Canon 30D.

I still feel guilty about splurging on another piece of expensive equipment, but the purchase has indeed reignited my enthusiasm to get better at this craft. The most important change from my old Konica Minolta Maxuum 5d is the ready availability of lenses for a brand that is the market leader. This time I refused to get the mediocre kit lens and bought a fixed focal length prime lens to practice. Pictured above is the 30D fitted with my lens. The f-stop on this lens goes all the way down to 1.4! Back on the Konica Minolta I couldn't get below 5.6. The huge aperture makes a big difference since it lets in like 16 times as much light. I can now shoot handheld in much lower light conditions. And I love the shallow depth of field it gets you--I have a couple shots of Plum where her head is in focus but her butt is entirely blurry! The camera defaults to a low f-number, so I actually need to pay attention to increase it to make sure that everything I want to be in focus is actually in focus. Basically, I am very very happy about the new camera.

It's nice to be part of the Canon family. I already got to borrow a lens and a flash from Pan, and Victor also has a wide-angle lens that I can borrow for the wedding (and Victor is also looking to buy a DSLR; I must convince him to go Canon!) Commercially, it's also easy to rent Canon (and Nikon) lenses. I found a couple of sites (lensprotogo.com and ziplens.com) that mail lenses to you. I am already thinking about renting the 24-70mm f/2.8L USM lens for our trip to Maine this fall. This would be the next lens I get, but at $1000, it'll be a while yet. In the meanwhile, paying $70 for a week to shoot fall foliage at Acadia National Park really isn't bad at all.

And finally, I've discovered RAW. Ahh, although I have avoided it out of laziness in the past, it is really quite an astonishing tool. The ability to adjust exposure and white balance after the fact is wonderful; I already played with a few pictures where it made the whole world of difference, changing a pic from "toss" status to "good" status. I can't go back to shooting in JPEG now. With RAW I feel like I can really sink a good bite into this photography thing.