When I went to Argentina in January of 2011, I had two cameras with me: the Canon EOS 40D and some type of Canon Powershot. I left Canada with the idea that it would be a pain in the butt to carry around a whole pile of lenses, so I took only a 28mm prime lens. While it ended up being relatively light, having only a single focal length lens significantly impacted my ability to take the photos I wanted to. Other than one or two shots that turned out well, I didn’t really walk away from Argentina with the photos that I thought accurately represented what it was like to be down there. The Canon ...

I set out to create some free Facebook header images the other day based on the eight months of travel I did in 2011. While I’ve customized them a bit further, I thought I would release these basic versions in case anyone else would like a new header. Simply click on each photo to obtain the large, properly sized Facebook header image. Puerto Madero, Buenos Aires, Argentina Cape Reinga, North Island, New Zealand Ko Pee Pee Leh, Thailand Oahu, Hawaii, United States Running Gentoo Penguin, Ushuaia, Argentina Wish Lantern, Northern Thailand Tierra Del Fuego, Argentina Yaletown, Vancouver, ...

As of yesterday, I am no longer the owner of a SLR camera. I purchased my first SLR back in 2004, so I’ve been a SLR user for almost 7 years. And while I love the quality of photos you can take with a SLR camera, dragging tons of equipment and lenses around gets a bit tiring. That’s even more true when you start picking up some of the nicer, heavier lenses, many of which I owned previously. I sold all my L-series glass about 6 months ago, partially because they weren’t being used and also because I needed the cash to finance some of my current traveling adventures. I wasn’t originally ...

I’m in the process of checking myself out of my apartment in Buenos Aires, and will be shortly heading to New York City for a few days of feasting and sight-seeing. One of the first items on the agenda though is to head to B&H camera to pick up my first micro four-thirds system camera. E-PL2, Photo by John Biehler I’ve decided on the Olympus E-PL2 camera, which is one of the newest, highly reviewed micro four-thirds bodies available. John Biehler just did a great write-up on the same camera, so definitely check it out. While John used the 17mm lens, I’ll probably be buying the 20mm f/1.7 ...

I’ve been blogging about buying a new camera for quite some time now, and I’m pretty sure I have it narrowed down. Unfortunately, buying a camera at this point is a compromise for me, and I have a hard time making compromises in the technology sphere. SLR cameras and lenses are heavy. They are hard to carry, hard to pack, and a pain to take from place to place. But if you want high-end image quality, than a SLR offers you the best of the best. I love my SLR, but my Canon 40D SLR is in need of replacement at this point. I sold most of my lenses last year, so I don’t really have any professional ...

Last night a few of us went down to check out a little party on a boat docked in Puerto Madero. Puerto Madero is the area on the east of Buenos Aires that is one of the newest, trendiest (also, more expensive) areas within Buenos Aires, and is home to a lot of skyscrapers, one of which houses Microsoft’s offices here. It was the first time I hazarded to take my DSLR out in public, and I’m really glad I did. Truthfully, it’s been great getting back into photography, since I essentially took a few years off when I was in Chilliwack. Here are a few shots. Puerto Madero Skyline Puerto Madero ...

I’ve been blogging a fair deal about my upcoming trip to New York City, and how one of the highlights for me is undoubtedly going to be visiting B&H Photo in New York City. B&H is an extremely well known photography store, and it’s been on my list of places to visit for many years now. B&H Photo-Video, Photo Supplied by B&H Thanks to the power of the Internet, Hershel Waldner, Supervisor of the Online Marketing Department for B&H Photo, contacted me and asked if I’d like a private tour of the facilities while I’m there. Obviously, I said yes! So, I’ll be visiting ...

Take a look at the photo on the right. If you notice, there are four boxes for Canon Digital Elphs, two boxes for Digital SLRs, and one box for a HD camcorder. That photo was taken almost three years ago now, and since then I believe I’ve had at least one more Canon point and shoot camera. The thing is though, I’m all Canon’ed out. At least in the Point and Shoot realm, I have found myself continually disappointed with the performance of the cameras. Every Digital Elph I’ve owned has suffered from the exact same pixel bleeding issue when exposed to bright lights, such as those in a club. ...

Matt Trentacoste was talking about this bad boy on Twitter the other day, and I’ve been passively thinking about it ever since. In short Fujifilm is releasing a compact camera that has some high-end image specifications. I suspect you’re going to see more and more of this going forward. While SLRs are great, they are a big and bulky and hard to carry around. If you could get comparable image quality out of a smaller camera, it would be a game changer for the professional camera market. So before you read too much more, check out the official site for the Finepix X100. What I like About This ...

This was one of the things I was afraid of. About six months ago I decided to sell off most of my camera gear. Part of that decision was due to the fact that if I was going to go on this trip I would need more money, and my camera gear represented a significant investment ($5,000+) that I could tap into. I could always buy another camera, but I may not always be able to do a trip like this. The second was that I was originally planning on traveling with just a backpack, and there really wouldn’t be any room for a big SLR or lenses. About a month before I left for Buenos Aires, I decided it would ...

I came to Buenos Aires with an iPad, a Macbook Pro, a Canon DLSR, a 28mm lens, a Kodak Playsport HD camera, and a Canon something or other point and shoot camera – quite the load. Here’s a little update on how it’s going. The Good The iPad is great for reading at home, but it’s not so good for reading out in public in a city with a lot of petty crime. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen a single iPad down here since I’ve arrived. As a result, I’m thankful I brought my Kindle with me, since it blends into a coffee shop scene far easier. Right before I left Canada I purchased (or rather, ...

This last weekend I had the opportunity to visit the world renowned Japanese Gardens in Buenos Aires. Outside of Japan, they are some of the largest Japanese Gardens in the world, and I have been looking forward to visiting them ever since I arrived. The Japanese Gardens are located in Buenos Aires, just north of the Palermo area and the Buenos Aires zoo. I walked there from my apartment near Paraguay and Gurrachuga, and it took me about 30 minutes or so to get there. This was the first real trip I had done in Buenos Aires where I decided to take my digital SLR along with me. At the advice of ...

We have limited flight options here in Canada, one of which is WestJet. Compared to some of their competitors, WestJet comes across as fun, receptive, and youthful, which is why I do my best to fly WestJet whenever I can. Every Wednesday, WestJet asks people via their Twitter stream (@westjet) to submit photos of the winglets on their planes. For those of you who don’t know, a winglet is the little tip that points up on the edge of the wings. Winglets technically increase drag on the airplane, but decrease the turbulence from wingtip vortices. In most cases winglets improve the airplane’s ...

There was a time when I had over $6,000 worth of camera gear sitting in my computer room. I love photography, and having a whole kit full of professional lens is great to have, but it’s not really very practical to lug that much gear around, especially if you’re trying to travel light. I’ve spent a lot of time over these last few months thinking about what type of camera gear to bring. My first plan was to simply take along a high-end point and shoot camera and make due with that. Given that my old Canon Digital Elph was dying, I went out and bought one of the nicest compact cameras I could ...

About a month ago I was in my room moving some stuff around when I heard a big thump. Looking down, my SLR had taken a small dive off of my bed and landed directly on my Flash unit. Unfortunately, being that the mount is this flimsy plastic thing, it immediately snapped, rendering the 430EX Flash pretty much useless. I spent a little time investigating whether or not it may be fixable. Not only is it fixable, but it can be done at home for relatively cheap. The first step is to order the part online. I actually found a store in San Diego that carries all the Canon parts. Here’s a whole section ...

I realized last night that I’m sort of envious of the people who only post their best photos to their Flickr stream for the purpose of showcasing work or soliciting opinions on techniques. Given that my current Flickr account is pretty jam packed of personal photos, I thought I would start a second account for mainly my high-quality photos or photos that I’ve taken time to process and enhance. If you’re interested in following along, the new account is here. Feel free to add me as a contact and I’ll add you back. I’m going to challenge myself to try and do a setup shot each week to try ...

As most people know, I spent a lot of my time in Vancouver taking photos of the city. I was one of the first people in the city to dabble with high dynamic range imagery, and because I carried my wideangle lens around with me quite often, ended up with quite a few HDR images of Vancouver. While down in the Dominican, I was talking to Dale about possibly putting together a little package for media organizations during the Olympics. While in the process of putting that together over the last few weeks, I figured I might as well put everything online as well. To that end, I registered the domain ...

Canon has just announced a brand new EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens – the 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II. This is one of Canon’s most popular L-series lenses, and is pretty much a must-have for most serious wedding and event photographers. I have the non-IS (image stabilized) version, which works fairly well in most scenarios, but I’ve heard the IS version allows you to hand-hold shots in scenarios where the non-IS version would fail. Here’s some information on it: Canon has improved the optical performance by redesigning the internal elements, incorporating a fluorite element and a fifth UD element ...

A long time ago I wrote that I had started to try and turn the Crossroads Flickr plugin into a full-featured stock photography plugin. Unfortunately, I haven’t had much time to work on it in the last six months, but finally sat down last night to start to hack on it a bit more. I’m thankful to say that I’ve finally put most of the pieces together such that I now have a full featured stock photography section on my website powered almost exclusively by Flickr. If you’d like to browse around, I suggest you head over to Leslie Feist gallery and start there. There is still a ton of room to ...

Without a doubt, shooting in low-light conditions is one of the most challenging aspects of taking photographs. I would still probably rate weddings a bit more challenging (since most weddings include some elements of low-light in addition to outdoor shots), but it’s definitely near the top of my difficulty scale. With the advent of digital cameras, most SLR bodies now have the ability to allow the user to arbitrarily increase the ISO setting on the camera in order to improve the low-light responsiveness. So obviously when a photographer encounters a low-light situation, he or she can simply ...