Update and Catch Up

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, so I thought an update on my status would be good.

So.... it’s now November so it’s been 2 months. In the past 2 months I have actually been quite busy I suppose.

My daughter’s day care went out to the Auckland zoo for the day, so I went along and took photos of all the kids. It was an experience to say the least.
It was quite a sunny day with a little cloud so a lot of the outdoor shots were difficult as I had to deal with the hard direct sunlight.
Just when you think you have a great shot the clouds move and you get streaming sunlight across your lens. I suppose one good thing about that is that it helps you take pictures quicker so they don’t get ruined.
I ended up getting 136 photos that I was happy with to supply the day care and parents.

It was an all day event so it did take a while and we made it around most of the zoo.
For the day I used my Canon 450D and two lenses. The EF 50mm f1.8 II and the EFS 17-85mm f4-5.6 IS USM.
The 50mm was only used for a few shots, where I needed the larger aperture. It’s a great budget lens with surprising clarity.
I picked up the 17-85mm from work, it is a little damaged so the auto focus doesn’t work and I had to manually focus all day. It’s not as bad as it sounds, I fully recommend using manual focus for a while and you will definitely get a better feel for composing a good shot. It really makes you think about where you want to focus and as you adjust the focus ring you can see the different focus areas light up. That lens is very good, but I have found that it has some slight vignetting, but I was able to remove it in Adobe Lightroom anyway so no harm done.

After the zoo day, the day care must have been pretty happy with the photos because they asked me to take some photos of the day care facilities.
So for this one I actually borrowed a friends lens and flash.
I used my 450D and my friends EF 17-40mm f4.0 USM L lens and 550EX flash.
I needed a high quality lens with a good wide angle. The 17mm factor is pretty wide, however my camera has a APS-C sensor size so the focal length of the lens is at a magnification of 1.6 so in effect on my camera the lens is 27-64mm which is not very wide but it still did a great job.
So thank you Bradley for the lens and flash, you’re a gentleman and a scholar.

The photos for that shoot were taken on two days, in the morning before work so I did feel a little rushed so I would not be late for work.
The photos turned out pretty good and I was able to supply them with about 50 shots for promotional purposes.
As far as I’ve heard so far they are pretty happy with those pictures too although I think a couple of them may have been a bit out of focus in a couple of areas. That was pretty dammed sloppy of me and I’ve been chastising myself for it too. There is nothing worse than producing a picture that’s less than perfect in your own eyes.

That’s about enough for the update because now I have to write about a special purchase that I made tonight.