I did a photoshoot the other day for a few friends of mine. The shoot was in a big field, at around 4pm in the afternoon. There was lots of light obviously, since it was a sunny day, but the sun was high in the sky and the shadows were pretty harsh. For the most part, I always take a flash outdoors with me now. A long time ago using a flash outside would have seemed silly, but I’ve photographed a few weddings now, and understand that fill flash is required in many outdoor situations to help balance the ambient light. So for this shoot, I brought along my speedlight. While the photos turned out ...

Yesterday, after dropping Boris off at his place so that he could get ready to go to Spain, I went down to Broadway Camera to see if I could play around with a Canon EOS 40D camera. I had called the day before to see if I could actually purchase one, but unfortunately they said they were already completely sold out. So imagine my surprise when, after asking if they had any in stock (which was basically a rhetorical question for me), they said “yeah, we have one here.” Unfortunately for me it was the box that contained the kit-lens, when I really wanted to just purchase the body only. The lens ...

So, I called around this morning, and the first trickle of the Canon 40Ds are hitting stores. Unfortunately, Canon is behind on manufacturing them, and there are tons of pre-orders, so the average Joe won’t be able to buy one for some time. I have my name on a wait list, and I’m pretty sure I’ll get mine on Tuesday, should I still want it. But since today was payday, and I have money sitting aside for it, I think I’ll probably get it. ...

I purchased my current digital SLR in December of 2004. It is a pretty decent 8.2MP SLR from Canon’s prosumer line, which is sort of the cross over from the consumer to the professional lines. It’s a really awesome camera, and it’s been great to learn on. That being said, technology has continued to improve over the last few years, and my camera is becoming more and more out of date. The main problem (if you can call it that), is that my camera has a 1.6X crop factor. What that means is that the CMOS sensor inside is smaller that the size of a 35mm film, so part of the image falls on the ...

Canon has noticeably lagged in releasing new DSLRS, especially on the higher end versions. To their credit, they did a big upgrade to the Digital Rebel line earlier this year with the Rebel XTi. This is a great camera that improves on a few areas that the 20D/30D had, even though it’s considered part of their consumer lineup. Some of the nicest changes in my mind for the XTi are: The ability to view the ISO in the viewfinder. On the 20D, you have to hunt for it Larger LCD screen over the 20D Canon sensor cleaning system I consider the last one very important. I’m very careful when I change ...