Tag Archives: 7d

Remembering the Summer

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You know what it is like when you’re getting towards the end of winter; day after day of gloom with no end in sight. Winter can seem so long. Spring is almost here now and the first flowers are making their tentative appearance. Its almost like they are putting their “toes” into the cold water, testing it before jumping in!

I’m constantly looking for anything that looks vaguely like a flower and so I do find them in the strangest places. That said the best place in the depth of winter is the botanical gardens or anywhere with a decent glasshouse. Failing that I go back over my archives, longingly gazing at flowers I’ve photographed in the past.

Here’s a lovely rose I came across from the end of last simmer. My botanical knowledge is pretty limited I usually refer to flowers by the their colour. In this case I like the yellow looking one!

This photo by the way was captured using the so-called “plastic” 50mm 1.8 lens from Canon. At the price it is a must have if you’re branching away from the kit lens that came with your new camera. Often people think they need a big zoom or longer reach lens but really the standard 50mm is so versatile its hard to beat. I’ve got the Canon 50mm 1.4 semi-permanently attached to my Canon 5D as a great walk-around lens.

Takes pretty good “yellow flower” photos too, it turns-out.

Yellow from the summer

See it full-size here.

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The Simple Portrait

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You can’t beat the classic 50mm lens when it comes to making an intimate portrait. This one was taken using the 50mm 1.4 EF lens from Canon. Its quite a jump in price from the “plastic fantastic” 50mm 1.8 but worth the jump if you can afford it. The 50mm 1.8 can be used to create some pretty sweet photos considering its price-point (around $100 USD). What you will find though is that the 1.4 has a much more pleasing bokeh; the increased number of blades in the lens is probably a factor there. Attached to a APS-C type camera (like the 7D used here) can mean that you lose a bit of that intimacy and certainly you will find it a bit cramped in a café type location. In that case the 35mm might be a better bet.

When all is said done you really do need to have some kind of 50mm lens in your kit. Start with the 1.8 (Nikon have a similarly priced one too) and then work your way up. My only negative with the 50mm 1.4 is that it’s not weather-sealed; you’ll have to go all the way up to the expensive Canon 50mm 1.2 model to get that.

For this photo I processed it using Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 for the black and white conversion, then blending it out to bring back some colour. I’m not a huge fan of the selective colouring, which is to my mind often over used. I guess it’s just a matter of taste at the end of the day.

By the way I tried this exact portrait with the 50mm attached to a Canon 5D and preferred this one in the end!

 Boy portrait - closeup 

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Black Shag at Sunrise

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Topaz Clean is a cool Photoshop plug-in that you can use to create a kind of painterly or art effect to an image. There way I see it the plug-in alters the edges of objects by either removing detail or turning a straight line into a wiggly one. The effect is easier to see than explain! I find it works best on nature or landscapes. When you use it on an animal with feathers or fur you can create a very interesting look. On this bird (a black shag) you can see in the feathers look more pronounced. As you might guess its one of those effects that can be over-used. More advice is to push it to extremes and then use a mask to paint-in just the bits that work.

Download it from Topaz and give it a whirl; you will love it!

IMG 4523 Edit small

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Little Country Church

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A scene like this is easy to miss.  Normally when I’m driving somewhere I’m focussed more on “getting there” and can zip past some great photo opportunities.  This time I was actually looking for them; I saw this little church off the road and made a mental note to stop there on the return trip.  I almost forgot!  So after some “James Bond” braking I stopped and took a few minutes out to snap this one.  The sky was just right; it was in the middle of day but the cloud cover helped to make the shot work.  
It does seem to me that 90% of photography is about “just taking the shot”.   We cant always wait for the sun to drop down or the sky to be perfect.  Any shot is often better than making none at all I reckon.

This church was closed while I was there, so I was unable to gather much in the way of background information.  What I can say is that its built on local Maori tribal land (you can see a small whare on the right of the church itself.
I do like white picket fences, too! Little Country Church NZ

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