The Photography thread - with pictures.

[Cameraman Jenn]

[aliantha]

Great stuff, Jenn! The shot of the deer feeding is great. You can see his li'l antler nubbins on the top of his li'l head. Awww...

[Seareach]

absolutely love the raccoon!! Next time I come to the States I'm determined to see one of those in the wild (or, at least, not in a zoo).

So we've got ourselves a pup (his name is Fingers. We didn't call him that and will probably shorten it to "Fin").

Anyway, here's a couple of pictures of the pooch, plus one with SoS playing soccer with him.

[Cameraman Jenn]

YAY!!! Fin is adorable.

[Prebe]

Cool wildlife (and domestic life too)!

Having your skull split totally sucks!

[Vader]

Beautiful photos everyone.

Jenn, what camera are you using? The Missus will kill me but I'm about to buy a digital SLR simply because I'm sick and tired of autofocus and macro modes that don't work at all. I thought a Nikon would be a good brand to look at ...

Anyway, here are a few pics shot by me recently and a true story.

I never really wanted a cat, but now obviously I got adopted by one.



According to our neighbours she doesn't really belong to anyone. She was run over by car a few years ago. Some other neighbours (who don't live here anymore) found her and took her to the animal hospital. The vet wanted to put her down but the neighbours insisted on surgery. The cat made it and now all is well apart from the tail she lost. When her rescuers moved away she stayed here. Now she has obviously decided to spend her days in Vader's garden. Vader normally isn't a cat man but he likes this one.



Hopefully she'll take care of this. The missus has watched her catching mice already.




I guess she's attracted by the piggies in the enclosure I just built for them. But there is no way in there unless you have hands to move the locking bar.


I'm not going to feed her (yet). Let's wait if she decides to stay. As for the mousing, she's already trying to do her best. Something must be in there, she hasn't caught it yet, though







And the Vadress is happy as well.


Another one from the piggies:


and the new roof deck

[Cameraman Jenn]

AWWWWW!!!! Feed her, make her your kitteh! Of all the kittehs I've had over the years, the strays I took in were the most loving and most appreciative I've had. Cute piggies too by the way.

I shoot with a Canon Rebel XT and I love love love love love love love it. my macro stuff is 99% manual focus but the autofocus for action shots rocks with the other lenses. Nikons are pretty good and I wouldn't turn down a good deal on one but if you can hold out for the Canon I highly recommend it. The color is superb and they design them so that you and use your highly expensive lenses with many different models. I saved up for six months to buy the Canon and have not regretted it for one tiny instant. Her name is Beulah and she rocks my world. Betsy is my zoom, Beauty is my macro and Barbara is my regular lens. All my friends who have been out with me while I am in camera mode know when I say, "Hand me (so and so)" which lens to grab. Most of FBH was shot with a Canon GL2 video cam. Towards the end we got the super fancy Panasonic and I can't remember the model but even though it had so many more features I still loved shooting with the Canon best because I could rely on all of the checks and balances (lighting/b&w balance etc.) to look like what was on my screen or in my eye if that makes any sense. My only complaint with the canon is that if you don't erase when you import it will stay in there until you manually erase and you can't command it to erase events in the menu as you can with some other brands. It only erases by individual or ALL, no select option. Keep in mind that from my lounge position in the bed I can count seven cameras, one sony, (ancient camcorder mini dv workhorse), one olympus 35 mm (can you say old school? about twenty five years old and still works fabulous), the Canon Rebel, (my precious Beulah), the Canon GL2 (Francine the goer), my JVC stealth camcorder, ok, not that impressed, a Nikon point and shoot stealth still camera which is pretty cool, and a sony point and shoot stealth still camera which is meh. I know I have another Canon 35mm somewhere in the closet which works but is so obsolete I'll probably never touch it again but just haven't thrown away... Ok, I'm a freak....

[Seareach]

hey Jenn. What lenses did you have? I'm going to upgrade my camera and was thinking of the Canon Rebel but I'm not sure what to go for with the lens. Sounds like you have more than one? Are they Canon? I've read that the Canon ones are kinda crap (ie: there's been a lot of reviews that I've read about them being plastic and not that great...not that the reviews for the actual pictures taken with the lenses are that bad). Anyway, was just wondering. I was thinking of getting a (from memory) 22-50-something lens and then a 50-something to 200. What have you got? Any recommendations?

What lens did you use for your wildlife pics above (the squirrel and raccoon?)

[Damelon]

absolutely love the raccoon!! Next time I come to the States I'm determined to see one of those in the wild (or, at least, not in a zoo).

If you want to find one, or more likely a family of them, leave out an open, full garbage can. I made the mistake of leaving a full hefty bag of kitchen garbage out overnight a few months ago and got a visit by them. Garbage all over the porch. You don't see them often during the day though.

*edit* OOH. I didn't see the cat. She looks just like my Ariel

[Cameraman Jenn]

I have a 18-55 standard lens that came with the camera, a 70-300 zoom and a 100 mm macro lens with settings for .31 and .48. All of my lenses are canon and they ARE NOT CRAP. I LOVE LOVE LOVE my camera and all the lenses and I will sing praises about this model and these lenses until the day I can't sing anymore. Yes, I have to use the manual focus for all my close up bee shots and tide pool stuff, so what, it rocks anyway and if you just play with it and get your abilities right it rocks your socks off. Sea, the wildlife was taken with the 70-300 zoom. I had the advantage of these critters being relatively unafraid of me as long as I was still and just making odd clicking noises. I do want to get one of those super zoom ones for long distance action stuff and I will probably upgrade to the next generation of Canon SLR before I do that but my lenses are good to go for many future cameras to come as well as some gone by. Yes, Canon has profitability in mind and yet they keep the consumer in mind too. A lot of the other brands don't keep making interchangeable lenses, such as Nikon, a lot of the lenses from three years ago are not compatible with the cameras they are putting out now so it's a whole different investment in lenses that might be obsolete if you choose to upgrade your camera in a few years. My parents gave me the fancy lenses and my stepdad did a bunch of research on the lenses and decided to spend the extra money to get the canon brand for that very reason. He's a.... bit..... um.... quite a bit... ocd so it took him four months to choose the lens. He's also a physicist and very tech savvy so I trust him when it comes to these decisions and again, I love love love each one. I did the camera research, I had been coveting the Canon Rebel for a long time before I broke down and bought it. I have not regretted one second of that decision. I got it on sale at Best Buy and it wasn't cheap but I haven't regretted one red cent of that spending. It has multiple factory settings and settings you can personalize and so many options and it just simply rocks... Damn, I should be making commercials for Canon. seriously.

[annabie]

@Cameraman Jenn: Your photos are really beautiful, especially the photos of squirrels.
@Seareach: I love the dog ♥
@Vader: That cat looks nearly the same as my cat. Oh my god.

[Menolly]

Welcome to the Watch, annabie!

Please come introduce and tell us a little more about yourself in the Say Hello in Here thread.

[Vader]

Today we spend the day at the Zoo in Hannover to have a look at the new Yukon Bay area they have just finished building:





They (re)built a Yukon Bay harbor facility, complete with waves and surf and an old damaged ship.


You can enter the ship and see what's going on under water.


Polar bears are badass.


A replication of the Duchess, the oldest steam locomotive in British Columbia, as they told us.


Of course you can pan for gold as well. If you find enough you get a medal. And since it's for kids and we live in the age of PC they all get one, regardless of how much they find.


Dannies Deli. The customer is no requisite.


Hey, Savor Dam!


I could post tons of more pictures of great animals and maybe I will do later. Here is just a little teaser. In the Oriental/Indian section you can currently see 4 newborn Indian elephants. Here's the smallest of the lot (not that I would want him to stand on my foot):


I wouldn't mind having this one in my garden. It would take care of the moles properly, but then I'm afraid I wouldn't find dead mice on my doorstep but dead cows.


And being a fan of guinea pigs here's one of my favorite kind animals of course:

[Seareach]

Love the polar bear shot, Vader. And the capybarras...how do you spell that?!?!? I went to Fota zoo in Ireland about 6 years ago and they had the capibarras...cappybarras...capppy...erg...those things...walking around the zoo everywhere.

And thanks for your opinions, Jenn. I like to hear what kind of cameras people have, their opinions etc before investing a whole heap of money into a camera. Wish MM was around....

[Cameraman Jenn]

You are welcome Sea and I must say that you put out some stellar images with whatever you are shooting with. Some of your shots are so beautiful it's actually brought a lump to my throat. There was one of SOS a while back, playing in the surf that should have been an ad for something, anything, whatever it was I would have bought it. Your nature shots are spectacular and you have a serious gift and yes, I agree that MM is quite a great photographer and has great opinions and information when it comes to cameras.

Very nice shots, Vader.

[ur-bane]

First RAW image from EOS 50D with EF-S 18-200mmf/3.5-f/5.6 IS lens:



Hope You like it!

[Cameraman Jenn]

GORGEOUS!

[ur-bane]

Thanks Jenn!

Here's another I took. Very busy...bokeh sucketh due to settings and needing not to spook this little guy.



@Vader:
Here is a GREAT site for equipment reviews, mostly Canon and Nikon.
I used it to help me decide what body/lens combo to initially get:

the-Digital-Picture

You have to forgive me...I'm in a sharing mood.
Here's my baby's baby:

[Seareach]

You are welcome Sea and I must say that you put out some stellar images with whatever you are shooting with. Some of your shots are so beautiful it's actually brought a lump to my throat. There was one of SOS a while back, playing in the surf that should have been an ad for something, anything, whatever it was I would have bought it. Your nature shots are spectacular and you have a serious gift and yes, I agree that MM is quite a great photographer and has great opinions and information when it comes to cameras.

Thanx Jenn [I only just saw this comment now...gosh I'm behind!] I was only using a Canon PowerShot A710S. A point and shoot auto. I got it because way back when ever it was MM had one and I was so impressed with the clarity of the shots etc. [MM where are you!?!?!? ]

Anyway, it was good for what it was but, gosh, I was so tired of having no control over what I was doing (the auto focus in particular; but lack of control over all the other things were driving me bonkers too). I grew up with SLRs and funky lenses and all that jazz because my dad was a keen photographer.

SO I've just got myself a Canon DSLR EOS 550D. Two lens (18-55 and a 55-250. Will get a proper macro at some stage). And, gosh...it rocks. Haven't read the manual yet. Just been playing around with it and I can see the difference instantly. And the joy of it all is that I can now take people photos without getting posed shots. SoS was always good at this: he'd do these cheesy grins and all that because I'd have to get close enough for him to know I was taking his pic. Now I can sit a fair distance away and get lovely natural shots...

...and I'd post an example but imageshack has said my file is too big. They're 18mb It'll do wonders for my stock photography though. YAY!

[StevieG]

Amazing photos everyone! I haven't looked in this thread for a while... ur-bane, incredible photos!!