kja

it totally is a great exercise! Not just limited to the 50 but if you're ever in a slump or kinda blah on things, choose one lens or setting and only shoot that for a strict period of time. Force yourself to look at things a different way.

No, you don't need it. Work with the lovely Sigma for a bit longer and really run it through the different focal lengths and apertures. See what you like, what you don't like, what frustrates you and what works just fine for you. THEN start looking at add more lenses. The 50 1.8 is a fantastic buy as for a very very small sum of cash it introduces you to: - extremely thin depth of field - wide open shooting - low light, no extra flash shooting - fixed focal length shooting But you don't need it and some find that they don't like the 50mm length (you can test this by making yourself only shoot for a day or a week at 50 with your zoom) or that the "downsides" of the 50 1.8 aren't acceptable and so they move straight to one of the far more expensive options.

Looks like FB is using some of the same sharpening or something overdone as flickr does. I wouldn't be uploading high res anywhere at all - everything on the net can be taken without your knowledge or permission. It's just how it is.

shell - You chose the 5DII for action? Interesting choice It's a beautiful camera, but action and focus with anything but the centre point are its weaknesses I only know four other people with the 50D and they all shoot a variety of ball sports and things like moto-cross with no problems. Two love to do the bird thing and haven't said anything about missing BIF shots. Me thinks you got a lemon - even after the fix!

What a cutie!! Congrats on the new toys FWIW I find photobucket to be far easier for posting to forums from - you don't have to muck with extra clicks and stuff, there's just one code to copy and paste. AND if you upload a series (eg file name dog001, dog002, dog 003 etc) you can simply paste the one code and manually change the 001 to 002 to 003 etc - so much faster than the individual image codes at flickr. You will want to learn to resize images for sharing on the web as if you try to send out of camera files to friends via email etc they're going to be just massive. And even just uploading to flickr or photobucket will be slower and may use your monthly allowance from your provider. Canon supplies DPP in the box and it's a good piece of editing software. There should be a simple Save As or Export function that will allow you to quickly save a small copy of your image that is ready for the web. I use Lightroom so can't really give you step by step for DPP, but I'm sure someone can if you can't figure it out yourself. Here are the web sharing file parameters I set: - longest edge resize to 700-900 pixels (depends on my intention, just pick one and stick with it - both work fine. Anything larger means that most ppl will need to scroll to see the whole image) - set my ppi (pixels per inch) to 72 (this pretty much just helps reduce the file size as dpi doesn't impact the viewing) - choose colour space sRGB - save as jpg or jpeg - I also usually rename my files instead of using the camera defaults, but that's a personal pref and doesn't really matter in the scheme of things Have fun!!

My default settings in Lightroom import everything as DNG and I've been doing that for years and years. I say go with DNG

Did you get it to work? let me know and I can try to walk you through it - it's super easy in lightroom once you know how. And you can make it an export preset so you only have to do it once then on the next ones you can simply click one thing to make it go

Some good advice already. You need to understand WHY and WHEN a shallow depth of field is desirable. Just because you have a fast lens, doesn't mean you should shoot everything with it wide open. Just because you're in low light, doesn't mean you should shoot at 1.8 all the time - you may need to up your ISO to maintain a smaller aperture instead, for instance. it's simply another tool for you to create the image you want to create. Do a test through the apertures - establish a subject that doesn't move and that is in good light and that has some depth to it. Pick one focus point and start at 1.8 (put your camera in Av so you set the aperture and the camera chooses the shutter or in M and when you stop down one stop slow your shutter by one stop to keep everything equal)...then go through your aperture to about f11 or f14ish. Compare the shots side by side. This is the best way to see how your depth of field changes as you stop down or open up - illustrating it with your own shots really does help solidify the concept and helps you develop a sense of when YOU think a particular aperture might be appropriate. Shooting with a very shallow depth of field can be challenging. Remember that the closer you are to your subject, the shallower your DOF is, too. So maybe even back off slightly to start - you can always shoot to crop if that helps you get the technique of shooting down. It's all about practice, so don't get discouraged!

I love that last one especially!!! Great timing

There are presets and actions out there that will do this but on your own try some/all of these - you'll need to tweak lots to get what you want for a particular image until you have a system that works for you. - reduce contrast - if you are using LR, reduce clarity - this softens the image - reduce saturation & vibrance - color wash with the split tone sliders - use your tone curves to keep a little "light" in the image if you dull it down too much Obviously you need to start with the exposure that works for you. Best bet is to shoot three testers that are more or less the overall look you are going for - make one exposure what you consider perfect and then do one slightly overexposed and one slightly underexposed. Tweak - see which exposure makes life easier in post. have fun

40D is still the best bang for buck camera in Canon's line up. I'd find a good second hand one if you are budget conscious. 7D is pretty pricey but it's a fabulous body. The 5D and 5DII are both great, but again pricey and they are different beasts to the crop factor cameras - probably overkill for most people (and many shooting doggies etc will miss the "extra" reach of the crop factor) and there is the focus issue that plagues them. I haven't yet seen much from the new 60D. The 50D is a fine camera, but for me personally wasn't worth the extra cost over the 40D. The newest XXXD range are also really good and worth considering. Have fun shopping!

RAW shooter here and I've just popped a quick note in another thread here that may help

Do a little search here for RAW as we have had several long discussions on it and there is a ton of good information on it. Also head over to POTN and look around. imho RAW is a no-brainer. It's simply a format and if you don't want to do any processing really, don't. But the information is there if you need it. My biggest regret when I first moved to RAW capable system is that I didn't start shooting RAW right away because I bought into the scare-mongers telling how time consuming it was, how much storage it ate up and how much fuffing around one needed to do on a RAW image. using RAW my editing time is drastically reduced. You still need to get the shot right in camera - the format you shoot in doesn't impact the essential need to get your exposure and composition as right as you can when you take the shot. I don't like shooting jpegs simply because I don't need my camera to throw away information - and that's what shooting jpeg does. The camera decides that you don't really need all those pixels and tosses them. You might actually need those pixels to tweak the image in post, but they are gone baby gone. And every time you save a jpeg, you lose quality. Since RAW is just as easy I see no reason to deal with this issue, as minute as it might be for some. Storage is cheap. you have the software (it also comes with your camera) so you're set to go. Editing is easy and you have far less worry that a tweak will cause undue noise or other problems with the final image. You still have the option to simply download your images and go with no tweaking. Lightroom in particular is great as you can create a custom preset that applies during import and you just select that (you can set it as the default so you only ever have to deal with it once!) and go. I only shoot jpeg on my baby Canon as it doesn't have RAW. It's fine. I miss having the leeway when I need it, but that's not what I bought that camera for so it's all good. RAW or jpeg - both work. RAW is intrinsically better because it's more complete data and you as a photographer have far more control over your final image. As with everything in photography, there is a tradeoff no matter what you choose - you have to decide which tradeoffs work for you. there's no "right" or "wrong" and some shooters are perfectly happy shooting jpeg.

LOL you must beat the snot out of your bags! I have two Lowepros that are 8 + 11 years old and they're going strong I'm hoping they just got unlucky coz they are beautiful bags

Ash - love to know how you like the bag in six months+ ... they are so gorgeous but I've had two friends get those rolling travel ones in the last 18 months and the bags didn't last very long :D I love my lowepros for on the go - I have several backpacks and one of the sling bags. They tend to be pricier than the Kata's though - and the Katas are really nice bags so you can't go wrong there, I reckon!

Ah ok Sigma's 70-200 is lighter than Canon's 70-200IS 2.8 that I use and I hand hold that baby all the time - and I used to be a weakling LOL

Looks great! I do wonder why you say the Sigma 70-200 2.8 needs a tripod to use it, though?

Not everyone - if you need it, you've been waiting for it :D I've always been tempted to get into long primes, but for the type of shooting I do right now, it's just not worth it. One day... I think the expected price for the 70-300L will come in around $1000 US.

Most of it's simply drool worthy with a price tag to make you take out a second mortgage, but there's a new body and a couple of "reasonably" priced items LOL POTN Canon announcement

Thanks for the great reception - I'm happy it helped some! Kirs - anything that helps others is welcome Of course you can save it, print it, whatever helps you the most!!

After speaking with some new dslr camera users I thought I'd whip up a very quick and dirty guide to what all those numbers mean on lenses. We'll use these lenses as our examples: 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 and 50 1.8 The first numbers in a lens (18-200 and 50) tells you the focal length. When a range is mentioned (18-200) it means that you are looking at a zoom lens. Focal length is, essentially, the reach of your lens. Focal length determines your field of view - how much of a scene will be captured. The smaller this number is, the wider the scene; the larger this number, the farther away your subject can be and still fill the frame* Here's a breakdown of focal lengths - all are approximates, just to get you in the ballpark: ultra wide angles = 4.5mm to about 20mm - great for landscapes and scenes; generally not great for portraits as distortion will occur wide angles = about 20mm to 35mm - great for landscapes, scenes, interior shots, careful use of the widest of these can produce cool portraits but it's a tough technique to master as they still have a distortion thing happening. normal range = 35mm to about 85mm - great for portrait type shooting; the smaller this number the more of the surrounding scene you can get in your lens; the larger this number, the farther away from your subject you can be and still fill the frame; extremely versatile lenses telephoto (this does NOT mean zooms, necessarily) = 85mm - 300mm - usually for distance shooting but also can do killer portraits supertelephoto (this does NOT mean zooms, necessarily) = 300mm - 800mm+ - almost under the specialty lens category (which I'm not touching on in this post) - especially for things like wildlife etc; and you thought some of the others were expensive, whooooeeee! Obviously some zooms will cross two or even three of these ranges, they are usually referred to as super zooms (our 18-200mm example is a super zoom) and there are several out that do a very nice job. The second number in a lens description (f3.5-6.3 and 1.8 in our examples) indicates the maximum aperture. Now stay with me, it's really not that hard... The aperture of your lens is the hole that light comes through. You can control that hole with your aperture setting and all lenses will stop down - that is, make the hole smaller. The number only tells us how wide open we can make the hole to let in the most light possible with that lens. It's actually a fraction so the BIGGER the number in the description, the SMALLER the hole that can let light in is. And photography is all about light so a lens with a smaller number is more desirable (usually and to a point) and thus, heavier and more expensive and almost always referred to as "better". This does not mean that lenses with big number suck. As we know, everything in photography is a trade off so as we have a smaller number in the description (larger aperture more light) we also lose depth of field. Depth of Field or DOF is how much of your subject is in the plane of focus - with these fast lenses it can literally be a couple of mm's only. It can make it very hard to nail focus on a static subject much less something that is moving. What we gain from a shallower DOF is subject separation - the background and other non-essential elements in the frame become blurred out. So, why do some zoom lenses have a range of apertures (f3.5-6.3 in our example). This is called a variable aperture and is very common on many zooms. Basically it means when you have your lens set at the widest focal length (18mm in our zoom example) then the aperture can also open all the way up to that smallest number (3.5 in our example). When we use the zoom feature that maximum aperture will get smaller - so at 200mm in our zoom example, our maximum aperture will be 6.3 not 3.5). What does that really means? In a nutshell - you'll need more light for the longer end of the zoom. You may need to add an external light source, slow your shutter speed down and/or increase your ISO (all things we can talk about in future if anyone is interested or doesn't quite get it). Easy. There are zooms out there with fixed apertures - such as Canon's stellar 17-55 f2.8 IS or the 70-200 f4. This means that no matter what focal length you shoot at, the maximum aperture stays the same. You will pay more for these lenses and they'll be heavier/bulkier but when you know you're going to need as much light as possible at all focal lengths, they are certainly worth the price tag. (BTW the Canon 70-200 f4 is a killer lens at a really nice price point, if you can live without the extra stops of light of the 2.8 (much pricier) version.) I hope this helps some out there. Fire away with questions if you have them. *gross oversimplification, but this post is intended to be a rudimentary introduction.

Maybe you'd like to have a play with some other glass this Sunday? I'll have a lens or two with me

Here's a happy snappy of the Girls from the other day

Pretty much all the beaches along the Gulf are dog friendly and those on the west side north of the national park are good, too, though we usually don't head over there. I love our beaches for the doglets!

Exmouth :D Looks like you're having a great time with it. Always happy to help if I can, just drop me a note.