As many of you know I have been interested in photography for some time. Well, at least interested in cameras and camera technology. I'm on like my fifth-point-and-shoot camera right now. Unfortunately for a long time all of my pictures have looked exactly the same: me pointing the camera at myself while in my house. Or maybe pointing the camera at myself and one other person. There's something that just feels wrong about having a really exceptional camera and nothing to capture with it. I've never really been one for taking artsy pictures of flowers and sunsets...if I want to see that I'll just download a picture off of the internet.Well, Ashley and I are beginning to look with an expectant eye at the new addition to our family, and that means pictures! For several years I have been shopping, thinking about, and talking about getting a dSLR camera. The big ones with the interchangeable lenses and awesome photographic potential. In preparation for a whole new level of need for photography, we agreed to get ourselves one--the new Canon XSI. And it came in the very morning we left for our trip to Saint Loius to hang with Heber's family. I think I took hundreds of pictures of Ashley driving on that trip. Look down to the description of our trip. The two pictures of Ashley from the post about out trip to Heber's were taken with the new camera, the rest were of the old (I was too afraid of damage to take it hiking...besides hiking is supposed to be about ultralightness). Such great pictures.
The first thing you observe about pictures from an SLR camera (besides the shocking lack of CCD noise present even in low light pictures and the complete absence of red eye) is that focusing really matters. That is, one of the advantages of those big lenses and sensors is you get a big hole through which the light comes, measured by the aperture. With large apertures, you can take pictures in very low light, but the dept of field of the focus is much smaller. In other words, if the focus is just a
bit off, whatever you were hoping to take a picture of will be blurry. This is actually a very desirable feature in portrait shooting because you want your subject to be really crisp and to blur out the stuff behind them. That blurring is called bokeh, and it's a major difference between professional looking shots and snapshots. Both of the pictures of Ashley from the trip below show significant bokeh. The picture of Ashley walking down the street illustrates the kind of bokeh our new camera is capable of as well.Large aperture is typically the limiting factor. All reasonable lenses are able to decrease the size of the aperture so that the depth of field is increased (like for landscape pictures) as much as you want. The downside of this is just that less light gets in so the shutter potentially has to remain open for longer, potentially blurring the picture. That's why lenses with a large aperture are called "fast" lenses, I guess. Because for the same shot, a large aperture lens requires less open shutter time to get a good photo. Aperture is measured by f stops, where a larger f means a smaller aperture, but they are not comparable between cameras because of the different sensor size. For example my point and shoot does between f2.8 and f8, but my dSLR kit lens, which does between f3.5 and f22 or something takes in about four times as much light at each aperture. Also the scale is not linear, so for example f2 takes in twice as much light as f2.8, while at smaller apertures the difference in numbers is greater: f22 takes in twice as much as f32.
Anyway, large apertures are really good for indoor shots and portraits, and this camera has already proven itself in that regard very well. However, we are having a dang baby soon, which means we will be wanting to take lots of indoor shots (without a flash) and portraits. That means the possibility of getting a lens beyond the kit lens. The kit lens is a decent little zoom lens that will take you from what your eye sees to a 4x or something zoom in. The aperature is limited to f3.5 when wide open and when zoomed it can only do f5.6.
We have done some looking around for good lenses and found one thing: lenses are crazy expensive! I'd like to replace our kit lens with a similar lens which can do f2.8 at all zooms and has about the same zoom power, but the dang thing costs $1000. That's almost twice what the camera costs! And it's not particularly a luxury lens. Those cost several times as much.
However, it turns out that if you get a lens that doesn't zoom, called a prime lens, you can really do better. First of all, there are fewer moving parts and it can be really optimized, so it can get clearer and sharper, and it's easier for them to build in a large aperture. The physical lens is smaller and lighter and it's much cheaper. The cheapest available lens for large apertures is the Canon 50mm 1.8 II lens--it's a serious budget lens, but with rather good clarity. The 1.8 means it can do f1.8. That's a big aperture compared to what we have now. And 50mm is much like our lens when it's zoomed in. So comparing at similar zooms, the prime lens takes in approximately 10 times as much light as the maximum amount our current lens will do, which is like 4 times what a point-and-shoot camera can do! That means pictures in low light situations with no flash, perfect clarity on what it's focused on, and bokeh up the wazoo.
So we bought it.
It's supposed to arrive on Tuesday and I find myself really itching to get it. True family life requires true photographic skills. Ashley and I do pretty well for ourselves right now, but add a little baby that's got more cuteness in her tiny little hand than we have in our whole bodies and you need to take photography to the next level.
You can't really rush babies out of the womb, but you can go crazy preparing for them!
19 comments:
What no video camera? How are you supposed to e-mail videos of your babies first fart to the grandparents (and 150 other close friends and family) without the video camera? Man Grant, you are seriously unprepared for this baby... ;)
Aaaaaahh! You're right. Canon hf10. That's what we're getting. I don't know when, but before the dang baby is born, you can count on that!
Thats a pretty sweet camera. Its not quite as cool as my gun (http://sethandkristina.blogspot.com/2008/08/seths-baby.html), but it is still very cool.
And I'm all over its bokeh! Although I still don't think that is a real word, I CAN clearly see the "professional" look of the picture of Ashley on the street.
Wow. You geeked out a bit and lost me. But ... cool pictures! I like the bokeh on Ashley's pic. Have you seen Catherine's photography page? You guys are two peas in a pod. She's excellent, but taking classes and getting even better. Very cool. Pssst, stop calling it a "dang baby." It's making me cringe. ;o)
What a pretty picture of Ashley in the house. You don't need to wait for a baby to have something photo worthy. (PS you are getting a movie camera for Christmas from your parents)
Yeah, Seth, your gun is pimped out. I wish I had one like that. Too bad Ashley is scared of guns.
But cameras can be just as cool. My dream is to go hunting just like regular hunters but with a long zoom camera and just take pictures of the animals I would have shot. That way you don't have to take them home and eat them (yuck!).
Unfortunately lenses are pricey. And Ashley never seems that interested in the hike.
And then there's the laziness on my part. That's also an impediment.
Oh baby, a video camera!!!!!
Don't worry, we'll act surprized.
Hmm. I said hf10 but I meant hf100. Tho they are almost the same video camera.
Ya, the best pictures are pictures of babies. Notice our blog is the Simeon fansite :) Why would be take pictures of each other when we could take pictures of Simeon :)
BTW Grant, the whole point of hunting is eating the meat afterwards. If you don't do that you are missing the best part. My dad is giving us meat so next time you are here we will force you to eat some :P
I've always had a problem eating wild animals, especially ones I killed, whether it be fish or rabbits. Actually I can't eat chickens I killed either. I guess I could try, though.
Actually the grievous part would be gutting them and dragging their nasty carcasses off the dang mountain. Much easier to just take a picture.
I'm all for guns, and even killing animals, but I don't care to do the killing myself.
So I have to chime in on the hunting convo going on here--
Caleb got a deer a couple years ago. We made some jerky (yum!) and then froze the rest of the meat. I tried to disguise it with lots of spices and sauces when I prepared it. But it was kinda gross. I think Caleb decided it wasn't all that worth it if it wasn't even good to eat. If he goes again and gets something, we're making ALL of it into jerky. :)
Really? I've eaten venison before and it's not that bad...it's not that awesome, either. But it's not that bad. The texture is what was really hard to swallow for me.
I have family who's pretty hard core into venison and they take it to a meat place and have it ground and they even have it ground up with 50/50 venison/hamburger. Apparently it's better that way...
Venison is supposed to be *ahem* a bit of an acquired taste anyway. Last I heard, it was Elk that actually is edible.
Though dragging it down off the mountain still makes me tired, just thinking about it.
I really (and I mean, really) don't like venison. But Rebecca made some really good venison jerky. Luckily she told me after I ate it otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to eat it. Elk is pretty impressive, I must admit. Our friend gave us some and we BBQ'd it like steak. Oh, yum! But, there might be something about how old the elk is or something because I remember not liking the elk that dad killed oh long time ago.
Apparently the "gamey" taste in many meats from hunted animals actually is the result of the animal being killed but then not immediately cleaned and cooled in a refrigerator, so the bacteria begins to break it down, which changes the flavor.
The meat you eat in the store is, like, killed, bled, and cooled in a matter of minutes, so it's all clean and yummy.
It took Dad like all day to haul that elk down the mountain, and he did it in several trips. Meanwhile the warm animal is getting munched by bacteria, which raises the temperature further.
So as someone who grew up eating nothing but wild meat, I'll have to say a few things.
I don't know about the bacteria and what not, but I do know that when and how you cut up the meat makes a big difference. True, it takes a while to get the animal off the mountain (if you shoot it in the mountains) and true, it does take a butt lot of effort (if you don't have a donkey) but there are things you can to to prevent the meat from tasting bad. The first thing that is important is how you shoot it. If you shoot an animal in the gut, it will taint the meat because the gut juice will get in the meat. That is why people aim for the shoulder. So the next thing is how you gut the animal. Do you just go tearing into it and let all the gut juices get all over everything? Like I said, gut juices are bad. So cut around the abdominal cavity and especially don't cut open the stomach and let the nasty juices get all over your meat. Next, once you get the meat off the mountain, cut it up and freeze it right away. Don't leave it hanging in your garage for three days. It does goes get old and nasty tasting if you do that. And lastly, when you butcher it, (or have it butchered) don't leave any bone or tendon or fat on your meat if you can. If these sit against the meat in the freezer for months it will give a bad flavor to your meat. And true, ground wild meat tends not to be great. Grinding hamburger in with it is a good idea but is is also a good idea to not just grind up your scrap meat. Don't grind any tendons or fat into your wild meat and don't grind anything that you are just trying to throw away. Follow these great steps and you will have great tasting wild meat :P
My dad butchers all of his own animals and he does it the same day that he kills them. Our meat has always tasted good, even if the animal was an older animal. So don't judge wild meat just because someone doesn't know how to take care of it. Seth's parents just had venison at my parents house and loved it. But it is true that I like elk the best.
Let me just second what Kristina said about her family's meat tasting good.
We eat some of their meat every time we go there...and it is yummmm.
Also, I'm not so sure about what Grant said about stores butchering their animals right away. Apparently, in order to get best taste, there is an optimal amount of time that a butcher lets the meat hang. Mom and Dad's cow is on the butcher's hook now and will be for a few days. Butchers have a little equation they use to calculate the optimal time based on weight and fat content I think.
That was actually all new to me. Mom and Dad just filled me in.
Yes and wild meat doesn't have much fat so letting it hang doesn't make sense. But since beef has to hang for a while people think wild meat does too, but they are wrong.
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