So I made it a week writing a post each day (yey me) so I decided I should buy myself a present as a means of congratulations (like I need an excuse) so I just picked up a brand new Tamron 18-200mm lens. It’s a beast! (see my last post which was one of the first shots I took with it)

Previously I just had the stock Canon 18-55mm as my primary wide angle lens. After getting this lens and being able to get such a range of focal length in one lens is just awesome! I’ll still be using my 70-300mm for certain shots / scenarios (wildlife etc), but this is my new primary lens from here on out. I’ve also been debating getting a Canon 50D but right now I can’t afford it, and I’m also going to wait until they bring out a **D with HD video as a feature. That’ll be a knock-out camera I would imagine.

I didn’t catch the name of this guy, but he was playing some pretty sweet tunes.

I love the reflections in this building

Ok, so I’ve been shooting for about 3 years now, myself and my trusty old 350D. I’ve only recently had the money to buy some extra kit for the stuff that I’m really into – I bought a nice long 70-300mm telephoto and the BG-E3 battery grip (which is pretty much a pre-requisite for timelapses). I’ve also bought a few extra things, such as a thermal  waterproof cover. Of all these things, which have improved my photos (or so I’d like to think) – none have come quite as close as the power of RAW. I’ve only just become aware of the RAW power of RAW recently (read: past three days) and after having shot in JPEG for the last three years without giving much consideration to the file format that is .CR2

After having found out just how much stuff you can do in post-processing when using a RAW file as opposed to a .jpeg truely astounded me. Exposure editing alone is mind blowing how accurate you can get to a decent shot – just about the only thing you can’t do (and you never will be able to do) is control true depth of field.

This shot was just something I took while wanting to play around with RAW as an example, it’s my new mouse (which is a Microsoft Wireless Mouse 7000) and it’s pretty awesome as far as mice go. I fired up the shot into PS and edited a few settings and came out with this, which I actually think is now a pretty nice photo, purely because I like the colours.

From now on all my main shots are going to be done in RAW although I’ll have to keep timelapses in (relatively) small .jpg for space conservation on-location etc.

Otherwise known as the common UK butterfly, the European Peacock

This wee guy and about seven of his friends made an appearance one afternoon this summer just after I’d bought my new 70-300mm lens which made for pretty handy macro experience. I absolutely love the depth of field you can get with such a long lens. As a side note, I have no idea what plant they were on (despite having worked in a garden centre for three years – although I was in the IT department).

Update: I’ve just been told it’s a Buddleja davidii so there you go, don’t say I never taught you anything.

I thought I’d give this a go. I have to admit, it’s a lot harder than I was expecting. Remembering where you’ve “written” is mega hard. I must get into town and do some of these on some city street walls.

This is a tilt-shift video overlooking Cook St in Liverpool. Shots are taken 2 seconds apart with a frame-rate of ~30 frames per second.
Audio: Glory Box – Portishead

This was taken using my Canon 350D with a stock 18-55mm lens. I added the tilt-shift effect afterwards in Photoshop (cheating, I know). The timelapse was done with a Pclix 100, each shot was 3 seconds apart, sequenced in Quicktime Pro at a FR of 24.9 sec – then edited in Premiere Pro for AR and sound edit.
Start: 3:48pm
End: 6:10pm
Duration 2hr 22min

This was taken using my Canon 350D with a stock 18-55mm lens. The timelapse was done with a Pclix 100, each shot was 3 seconds apart, sequenced in Quicktime Pro at a FR of 24.9 sec – then edited in Premiere Pro for AR and sound edit.
Start: 3:48pm
End: 6:10pm
Duration 2hr 22min

Here’s some test footage I made for any people looking at getting a Panasonic TM10 or an SD10. Overall I think it’s a great little camera, can’t wait to take some serious footage in Oz with it. Enjoy! (and yes, I know I need a new windscreen wiperblade)