I got out with my 5 day old digital rebel yesterday. I got a few pics that I think are decent (note I've been taking pictures for 4 days).

All are straight from camera no retouching as I haven't figured out how to yet.

 

Hey Patrick,
First off, congratulations on the new toy, you must be excited with it.

I keep looking at the first pic, trying to figure out what it is I like about it. The rings circling the frolicking fowl really add to the sense of movement.

The sunset/sunrise (?) shot looks great. Once you learn your image editor, I'm sure you'll go for saturating the colors on this one.

Keep posting photos.
-Juan

 

I just like that while I was shooting something else, 30 feet away from me 2 birds decided to have at it. The really funny thing is that 2 other birds (I'm guessing the females) were spectators to the whole event. The onlooker to the bottom right was about 10 feet away and was drawn to the incident.

That whole episode has me ready to trade in the rebel for a 20D because they went at it for maybe a minute but I only managed to get 6 - 7 shots. I think the internals of the rebel are USB 1.1 or something because I'm using 2 Ultra II cards and it takes a LONG time to transfer each image out of the buffer. That and I really want to shoot RAW + Small JPEG after taking quite a few pics that day, I see the value of having decent preview files. Call me crazy since I really don't know what I'm doing, but these things are making me lean towards an upgrade.

 

OK -- Let me share a couple of personal favorites from my galley on PBASE. A couple of years ago, I was experimenting with ways to photograph Star Trails. This picture is a composite of 140 individual frames, each one a 90 second exposure, spanning 4 hours:

The streaks are from airplanes. The brighter ones are landing or taking off from BWI airport, while the fainer ones are from planes at altitude. You can see their wingtip lights strobing ~1/sec. The one diagonal trail with a break in it was split between two of the 90 second exposures.

In the background, you see the arcs from stars as the earth turns underneath. For reference, Polaris is the center of the arcs, actually ~1 degree from the true north pole. The Big Dipper is skimming trees in the lower left-hand corner. The gap in the star trails was where a 256M CF card filled up, and the 4 hour duration was limited by my patience and the amount of juice in the camera's battery.

Well, on another night (actually the night before the photo shown above, Sep.7, 2002) we had a beautiful visible aurora borealis visible here in MD. An animated GIF movie made from the individual 90 second exposures can be seen here (allow time for all the ~40 frames to download) and a ~2 hour composite looked like this:


FYI -- These photos were made with a Canon D60, Sigma DG 20-40mm lens @f/4 & 20mm, and a Canon TC80N3 sequencing timer, The D60 is now replaced with a 20D.

You might also find my collection of funny signs interesting -- many were contributed by others, some are mine. This one in particular was right across the street from the motel we stayed at for Reservoir Dogs 2 along with Ian (GBMINI) and the Balto/Wash contingent.

 

Tom,

That is a really cool idea! Too bad I live in LA and we don't have stars here (the burning gas ones in the sky).

 

Here are some photographs from my visit to the Auto Show last night.
(a few more over in the SoCal forums)

 

Here's one I grabbed from the show... Freakin' COOL interior!

 

From last weekend . . .

Was able to catch this sunrise over Lake Michigan on Saturday morning (with windchills somewhere between -10 and -15).


Snapped this on the flight home Monday night. (my wife loves doing crosswords.)

 

I just got a 70-200mm f4 L and on it's first test run 2 days ago on top of my building I snagged this...

People that know stuff about photography is this decent?

 

I like the composition, particularly that the Wedbush building is in there. That's one of my favorite "modern" buildings in L.A.

A couple thoughts
1) I would crop it ever so slightly on the left and right sides to remove the sliver of sky that's present on both sides.
2) The tall middle building appears to have a slight lean to it. I'm not sure if you have a grid on the Digital Rebel, but if you do I would turn that on to help you line up the vertical axis more easily. From the exif, it says you shot it at 70mm, so my guess is you may have already done quite a bit of cropping in order to get the moon that size.

BTW, you got a nice exposure on the moon!

 

I did crop it because the sides were just blue sky. The 100-400mm IS L I'm picking up this weekend and the 20D is coming on Wed along with the 1.4x teleconverter will hopefully let me snag a better moon shot :-)

The lean is probably due to the fact that I was on a slanted roof... I guess I didn't correct enough for it.

It took me like 40 shots to get the moon there and sharp. Dumb luck + lots of shots = one good pic.

I think the 70-200mm f4L is a pretty darn sharp lens though.

 

So you have a 70-200 f/4L? The post before said it was a 70-400 (which I gather was a misprint). The 70-200 F/4L is a very nice lens. I had a chance to play around with one on a 20D. It's a great combination. Nikon is missing out by not offering a comprable lens.

 

Exactly what the post says... now

Seller of the 100-400mm IS L looks like he is backing out so that one might have to wait.

I really like the 70-200mm f4L. It's small enough that I can carry it in my bag along with a 50mm 1.8 II, 18-55 EF-S, 100mm 2.8 macro, tamron 28-75 2.8, and even the outgoing 75-300mm IS USM lens. To be quite honest, the one thing I'm most worried about when it comes to bigger zooms is not wanting to carry them around due to size/ weight issues.

Patrick

 

I have the Nikon 70-200 F/2.8 VR (basically equivalent to the Canon 70-20 F/2.8 IS). It hasn't been nearly as bad to carry around as I was expecting. It certainly isn't a 28-75 tamron or a 50mm F/1.8 in terms of weight, but it's not as bad as I thought it would be.

 

Patrick -- I got a 100-400L a couple of years ago to use with my D60. I now use it with a 20D. It has proven great for "long reach" telephoto applications like

and wildlife photography , baseball , etcetera. I love the lens.

But it makes for a really heavy combo. You have to plan to take it with you because you really want what it gives you. I often put it on a monopod that I use as a walking stick when I'm on an outing, with a smaller (like the 17-85 EFS) lens on the camera around my neck. If I see a shot that really needs the long lens, I put the smaller lens in my jacket pocket and pop the 20D on the 100-400.

BTW, A Tamrac Velocity 9 bag will hold a 100-400L or 70-200L plus a 20D plus several other lenses.

Good luck -- Tom

 

Wow that bag is HUGE! It looks backpack big.

I'm using a lowepro nova 3 aw bag. I might give that one a shot when I get a bigger lens.

Thanks

 

Not really a backpack. It has a single shoulder strap, which allows you to pull it around to your chest if you need to get something out. Normally you sling it around to the rear, but you can do a quick grab and put it over your shoulder. It includes a waist strap to keep it from bouncing around if you are on a longer trek.

In the past I have used the smaller Velocity-7, and I just got the -9 for an upcoming trip so that everything would go in one bag, with nothing carried loose.

 

You guys have some kick butt photos on here. There're so many that I like that I'm not going to pic favorites but I do have one of the Mini In Motion photos by David on my desktop. Looks awesome on a 23" LCD.

I took 2 years of Photography in high school but that was so long ago I don't remember much. Night time pictures are my favorite. I only get out and take pictures a couple times a year but after seeing all the pics in here I just might get motivated to get out more often.

Here's some of the ones I've taken in the past.

http://homepage.mac.com/bcarter/PhotoAlbum39.html

 

Well, about a week or so ago we went to the snow... I thought that this would be a fun picture to post, nothing special, but fun. Enjoy!

 

Went to the automotive museum in Sylmar, CA this afternoon.
That cosmetics guy sure had an extensive collection of cars. I wanted to check out the Tucker but it was in another building, which requires reservations. Oh well.

I wish I had had my tripod with me. The shots are all handheld. Used my 50mm 1.8 prime most of the afternoon.