Today iis PHOTODAY!!!!

[AlexN]

I went out for most of this fine brisbane saturday with 350D + 70-200 F/4L in hand with hopes of capturing a few nature shots (birds are my favorite photographic subjects.) and came back very very impressed with my new acquisition.

Its taking time to get used to the Canon AF system, the Nikon system is MUCH more user friendly... But im getting the hang of it...

Heres a handful of my favorites for the day..

Comments, Critiques all welcome...

Cheers,
Alex.

[renormalised]

They're all very good...nice ones, Alex:)

I like them:)

[Dennis]

Hi Alex

I’m not sure if it is simply the size of the photos you’ve posted, but some don’t quite have that “biting” sharpness that the 70-200 F4L is renowned for?

So, were they hand held? Was the IS turned on? Did you apply any sharpening out of the camera? Did you shoot RAW? Were they hand held/tripod mounted?

Apologies for the barrage of questions, it might just be me, my computer screen or tired eyes?

Where did you go for the photo session, Mount Coot-tha Gardens?

Cheers

Dennis

[AlexN]

hand held, its plain jane F/4L - Doesnt have IS... shot raw, only editing done was lowered or raised the exposure/contrast in PS, and added the borders.

The lack of sharpness could be due to a few things, I was using AF Servo for a few of them and AF Focus for others... As in the first post, im still getting used to the canon focus system. with the nikon, I just set the focus zone i want to use, and click away. I've not yet figured out how to do this with the canon, It seems to choose which focus zone it wants to use...

I have downloaded the manual and am reading up as we speak.. but it still doesnt seem to have the intuitivity of the nikon.... LOVE the lens though.

[AlexN]

This is one of them with a very slight unsharp mask and a little bit of DDP..

[AlexN]

oh, and Location was actually a little park area about 500m from my house in Murrumba Downs. An area which the council plans to build a 5 story high appartment complex to house around 900 people.. Great conservation of wildlife I must say.. (who voted for those morons anyway?)

[Dennis]

Hi Alex

Whoops – I assumed the lens had IS, my bad. However, I have noticed that the IS takes a little time to “kick in”, (which makes sense), so in my early outings it did not appear to help my low light photos as I wasn’t allowing it time to lock on and do its stuff.

The sharpened version shows lovely detail in the Egret’s wing feathers, really nice!

I did read that RAW frames straight out of the camera do require some degree of sharpening simply due to the nature of RAW captures.

Another interesting piece I came across indicated that our eyes, like 35mm film, are non-linear in response to tones whereas CCD (and CMOS) chips are totally linear with a Gamma of 1. IIRC, our eyes and film have a Gamma of maybe 1.8, so they can better distinguish subtle differences in dark tones than light tones?

I found that with the 40D, I was under exposing as I was used to 35mm film and exposing for the shadows, letting the highlights look after themselves. It seems that with DSLR’s one should expose to the right of the histogram as the sensor can handle bright whites (not level 255 blow outs) better than film and this then prevents shadows from becoming too noisy.

I found this article (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/understanding-histograms.shtml) to be very helpful on understanding the histogram. And this one (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml)on exposing to the right.

I’m not sure of your experience and background, so my apologies if I am writing kid’s stuff!

Cheers

Dennis

[renormalised]

That's typical anyway. They mouth off about wanting to conserve parks and how important it is preserve nature and such, then they just go ahead and do something like this. Money....that's what's talking here. It's typical for pollies to do that which will "enrich" them the most. They can't be trusted to do anything right, and least of all morally just. Their highest priority is "what's in it for me" and "how can I placate my big business mates", if re-election comes out of that, all the better.

[RB]

A nice set of shots there Alex, the 70-200 F/4L is a great performer.

:thumbsup:

[Robert_T]

Very nice Alex, I love the water lilly? flower shot in particular. Great stuff. I'm looking for a quality telephoto addition to my Sigma 17-70... would you recommend this lens? I'd love an F2.8 but it would break the bank. cheers, Rob

[Jen]

:thumbsup: nice pics Alex

[AlexN]

More than recommend Robert, I am telling you. Buy this bad boy!! :D

@ around $775 most places its unbeatable, if you have 2x that much to spend the 2.8 non IS is a good option, or then you could have the F/4 IS....

I went without IS as im pretty good at hand holding and can get away with it...


Thanks Jen