Mar 2011: elf's Canon 50D Journal

From Friday Foto

This photograph of trees outside my window, is a composite of three photographs taken over the course of the last year. It was created in Photoshop Elements by overlaying the three images and then selectively erasing parts of each of the layers.

The three individual photographs used to make the composite were taken in the spring, summer and winter.

Fuji X100 first impressions from Pieter Franken; the only complaint he seems to have is that the AF speed is noticeably slow and he preferred to focus manually as he's a Leica shooter. His complaint about softness wide-open is moot (for me) as I usually shoot people at that aperture and I prefer them to be soft.

I am willing to live with slightly slow focus but only if, when it achieves focus-lock the image is perfectly focused on my subject. Update: there seems to be a debate whether the slow AF is due to the camera being set to power-save mode.

Some more pics from another user (the Provia setting give Canon-like colour to the images).

Sun 06 Mar 2011 09:40:49 PM EST: The X100 went on sale in Japan on March 5th. Photos taken with the X100 are beginning to appear on Flickr.

Having read the PDF manual which is now available online from various sites...

• The number of photos per battery charge is "approximately 300" (half the number of the Canon 50D which is rated at 640 photos). This means I would likely have to re-charge everyday instead of every other day or more with the Canon.
• A nice thing the X100 has that the Canons lack is the ability to quickly zoom-in to the area of focus when reviewing photos and in manual focus mode to aid in focussing.
• One of my concerns was whether exposure could be locked in an area different than the focus area and yes, that's possible.
• You can also take photographs without a memory card installed as the camera has 20mb of internal storage.

From Friday Foto

This bed of red tulips, next to St. James' Cathedral, was photographed with the 50mm lens at f/4. The foreground tulips were sharpened slightly to make them "pop". This photo appeared earlier on this journal but was not posted to the Picasa album.

Three finalists were announced for the inaugural Scotiabank Photography Prize worth $50,000.

I am not qualified to judge or comment on the finalists (but my favourite is the indoor spa photo.

There are five photographs in this series, taken yesterday. The slideshow begins with the on-campus celebrations and continues with photographs I took on my way home ending with the CN Tower.

The most spectacular landscape photography taken by a photographer who knows how to read the landscape.

From Pfoto 2011

With the 50mm, one photo was all I got. It was sheer luck getting her exactly in mid-stride; any other pose would have looked awkward.

From Pfoto 2011

This photograph (from 2003 taken with the Canon S30) of the Old City Hall clock tower framed by the buildings on Bay street was originally the top-half of a two-image panorama, but the composition works nicely by itself.