New Gears in the House III

This is my first time buying a second hand stuff from someone else that I do not know beforehand.

The item is Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS. This lens is regarded as one of the "Poor Man's Trio" (other 2 being EF 50mm f/1.8 II and EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS). The effective focal length on my EOS 1000D is 88-400mm. This lens is currently having the longest focal length in EF-S lenses line-up.

Although it is cheap for a telephoto lens, the performance is not. This decent lens have one UD element in it and imbued with an official-claimed 4-stop effective IS.



The price of a new unit is around RM850-RM950 now. I got this lens off a guy named Derrick for just RM700. And guess what? This lens is 9.99/10 new in condition and aged less than a month. Plus, it comes with a 3rd party lens hood (worth at least RM30) and a brandless UV filter (another RM30).



I have not yet to get a chance to really try on the lens at this moment (just managed to take some shots in a Park), but all the functions (AF, IS) works fine to me, no fungus, no physical damages etc.


Here are the sample Images I took with this lens, I only adjust the white balance, and that's it. No sharpening done.

(250mm, 1/80s, f/5.6, ISO 100, hand-held , Custom Picture Style, RAW converted in Adobe Photoshop 7.0)

100% Crop:

(250mm, 1/80s, f/5.6, ISO 100, hand-held, Custom Picture Style, RAW converted in Adobe Photoshop 7.0)

100% Crop

The shots are taken at the telephoto end and widest aperture, in most cases, these 2 areas reveals the weakness for every telephoto lens. This 55-250mm lens impressed me.


Price: RM700
Discount: -
Net: RM700

Total spending to date: RM 3,560

Im addicted, help~!!!!

Smoke Trails Photography II

Now this looks better than the first time:

Smoke Trails Photography

I like to try new things.

For this time, I tried to photograph smoke's trails.

The set up was simple: a black T-Shirt as a backdrop, a coil of mosquito repellent, a camera and a tripod. I do not have external flash, so all my shots are using the built in flash.

("Nameless")

The most tricky part is actually focusing. it is extremely hard to focus under a completely dark room with just torch light lit on the smoke (for focusing purpose)

("Kirin" - Mystical Creature)

("Flame of Passion")

I do not have a macro lens so I have to crop my picture. I used Adobe Photoshop to tweak the Curve and change the colour of the smoke in Channel Mixer. I do not know how to change the colour of the smoke partially and make it an mirror image that is same on the left and right sides, example: click here.

("Seahorse")

That's all for now, I'll try more on the weekends when I have more time.

My First Portrait Session

When it comes to photography, shooting portraits is my least favored (I don't know why, I just don't like it), but, as a photographer (not professional off course), you must try every types of photography. And thus, i organized my first session with few of my "photo-kaki" and the model - Reiko.

The location is a park in TTDI, I didn't expect that place will be so packed on a Sunday morning.

The first few shots are just warming up shots, just an ice-breaking session.

Here are the shots:

(Im not going to talk much on the EXIF data, most shots are taken using my EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens at f/2.8 with varying shutter speeds to suit the lighting condition)

I took around 100 shots during the whole session, only these few are ok.
others are totally failure.

Well, I'll just take this as an experience, I found that I shot too less "landscape" pics, all my pics are vertical =.=

And finally, thanks Reiko for volunteering~