Fall Shoot

I left the house early this morning so I could take advantage of the beautiful fall weather which, at 6 degrees Celcius, was quite a change from yesterday's high-winds and near-freezing temperatures.

On the walk between home and work, I shot more than 100 photos. I kept my camera in aperture priority at f/1.4 most of the time as an experiment to see how photographs would turn out. I was expecting some accidental surprises from shooting large vistas at f/1.4 but naturally, they all came out blurry.

Update Sat Nov 01 11:15:32 2008: The fashion shot was the only photo I took, just as the light turned green; the GO Train photo was also a single shot; the red plant was one of eight; the photo of the maple leaves was one of 18. I also increased the LCD brightness to 2 notches above the default, to be able to review photos in direct noon sunlight.

Settings

More settings I changed:

• [wrench2 menu]: enabled live view exposure simulation (in Live View mode, pressing this button simulates what the exposure will look like)
• [wrench2 menu]: enabled grid display (in Live View mode, a grid is overlayed on the LCD (helps in aligning verticals and horizontals; I found that my photos tend to lean down towards the left)
• [wrench3 menu]: INFO button displays Shoot Functions (I prefer to use the LCD on the back to adjust my camera settings using the scroll wheel and the cursor controller; the LCD on the top is less than useless because of the number of buttons I have to press)

Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L USM

The Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L USM is on sale for $1250 at Downtown Camera. Seriously considering getting it (but having second thoughts after only shooting about 100 shots with the 50mm and that the 24-70 weighs nearly a kilogram).

Need to shoot some more downtown landscapes with the 50mm to see its limitations. Maybe I'll just get a 24mm prime used by the backstage photographers featured on Behind the Lens.

Portfolio: Richard Reinsdorf

Richard Reinsdorf's portfolio; the last photograph in editorial no. 11 is technically amazing.

Beijing Press Box

Quicktime VR of the Beijing Olympics Stadium Press Box, 30 minutes before the 100m finals.

Stickers seem to be popular addition to lens hoods. I can't tell what the most popular camera is (Nikon or Canon). I wonder if the white balance is off as all the telephoto lenses are beige rather than white.