Lensbaby roses

Bought some flowers and then played with my Lensbaby. I haven’t really taken the time to get to know it… But here’s a small comparison how the aperture affects the result. The first one has been taken with a really small aperture (I think it was f11 or f16 – sadly the exif info doesn’t show it…) whilst the second one was something around f4.

In the first pic the annoying black thing in the middle of the pic stands out annoyingly (I just noticed it after having uploaded the photos) whilst in the second with a larger aperture and thus a shallower depth of field it disappears into the bokeh enough so it doesn’t disturb.

But what ever the aperture, the roses are beautiful.

 


 
 
Posted in Flowers and plants
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Join a giveaway!

I haven’t posted a lot lately – I’ve been too busy to fiddle with my new Photoshop Creative Suite and reading some very interesting photo mags. However, now I’m popping my head out of them to give you this hint:

Want to win a Canon 5D MKII or Nikon D700?

MCP Actions is giving one away and you too can enter. Go see how by clicking this link:

Go and win a Canon 5D MKII or Nikon D700

And if you decide to join the drawing, please do it via this link – it’ll help me too :)


 
 
Posted in Unfocused ramblings

 

 

New Year


 
 
Posted in Cities and landscapes, Fire, Light
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Success in competition

Another competition – just our very small company camera club. A challenge competition between two companies. From four series I won three and got one third prize :)

Theme: Memories of journey – 3rd prize: “Rowing trip”

Theme: Memories of journey – 1st prize: “Wind in the hair”

Theme: Nature – 1st prize: “Two by two”

Theme: Water – 1st prize: “Splatter hunter”


 
 
Posted in Animals, Flowers and plants, People, Water

 

 

Cutie

Based on the first few shots on the sofa in artificial light I’m very pleased with my new Canon 24-105 mm f4 IS USM. It’s my first lens with image stabilization – but I’m not sure if it’s that or my new white light floor lamp or just the good quality of the lens but these shots were taken handheld in the evening in our living room and the sharpness is flawless despite my bad eyesight. I’ve only done some unsharp mask with them and corrected an ugly yellow colour cast from the first photo.

So the fact that it’s “slower” (f4) than my Tamron f2.8 doesn’t cause any trouble other than loosing some control over diminishing the depth of field. Focusing works pretty well also in bad light and manual focusing isn’t always necessary. But I might still hold on to my Tamron and cancel my plans for selling it. Remains to be seen if I’ll ever use it again after getting my hands on this Canon lens :)

 


 
 
Posted in Animals
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Visiting the toy store

So, Christmas came early this year. At least when it comes to presents – I went to get mine from a toy store today. First, a new camera bag, which I’ve been looking for a long time but especially now since my little back pack is at the “stable state”. That means it’s been everywhere at the stables so many times that it isn’t really presentable anywhere else anymore :D So this is what I came home with:

Tamrac Rally 7 camera/laptop bag. The laptop compartment just came with it – I didn’t actually want it and my 17″ laptop won’t fit in it anyway. But it’s a good place for papers and other stuff you want to keep unwrinkled. The camera compartment can just fit my 7D body vertically with the 70-200 f4L attached to it, so that’s good. And after accommodating my other lenses there’s still room left for other accessories and phone and the wallet. So it’s pretty much perfect.

I didn’t want another back pack because I never carry it like a back pack anyway. And to get stuff out of a bp you always have to place it down – with a bag like this you can just keep it on your shoulder and get what you want without worrying about puddles and other stuff on the ground.

The other purchase was a new lens. My wonderful Tamron 17-50 f2.8 is very good but it’s always been too short for me. So when I found Canons 24-105 mm f4 IS USM I thought it would be perfect for me. Much less switching between the normal lens and the 70-200 – besides it has the image stabilisation! The only minus is that it’s only f4 when the Tamron is f2.8, but you just can’t have everything, can you?

The lens was on sale and the guy at the camera shop dropped the price of the bag with 30 eur, too!

Thanks “Santa”, I really appreciate your gift :)


 
 
Posted in Unfocused ramblings

 

 

Chinese through Lensbaby

These pics are unedited, other than slight sharpening and adding the watermarks. Some of them could’ve used some cropping or cloning but I didn’t bother this time.

 

 


 
 
Posted in This and that
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Sound asleep


 
 
Posted in Animals
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Moss


 
 
Posted in This and that
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End of the flight

I’m testing a new photo hosting service: Mejuba. It seems to have its pros and cons but I’m sick of tired of the ads in pictures.fi. Flickr is great but the free service only holds ca. 200 photos visible. Mejuba is free, with no photo amount/size limits and no disturbing ads so I think I can live with the defects it has: Weird (to my taste) preset picture sizes (but there’s an option to manually pick any photo size you want) and a somewhat clumsy user interface. Being the geek I am I can handle those :)

 


 
 
Posted in This and that, Unfocused ramblings
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