New Lens and WWDC

Last weekend a new lens arrived at the house that I just had to try out right away.  I bought a used Canon 70-200, 2.8 first generation.  My lovely assistant (Anita) and I packed up our gear and headed downtown San Antonio before sunrise as usual.  We walked around and made a few improvements on some photos that we had previous captured, soon got board, and grabbed breakfast at Shilo's deli.  Breakfast was good and the place had a great vibe.  We were talking and I was telling Anita how our sons were trying to help me find more photo spots a couple weeks ago and recommended the San Antonio Botanical Garden.  I asked if she was interested and we were off.  What an amazing place for practicing photography!  To Anita's dismay we were there for about three hours.  I just couldn't get enough.  I was able to practice macro, landscape, black/white, and high speed telephoto.  I learned a lot and had a blast.  I think Anita has forgiven me because she asked me Thursday where we were going this weekend.  Love that lady!

Abrupt transition!  So, I used be a Lightroom user and moved to Apple Aperture about three or so years ago because of the promise of comparable features and tight integration into the Apple ecosystem.  I certainly got tight integration but Apple has refused to invest and keep up with Adobe.  Apple Aperture users have been begging for a new major version for the last 4 years.  Well, WWDC is the big annual Apple software release event and it just wrapped up this past week.  No, mention of Aperture?  I'm out!  I'm currently moving my RAW images back into Lightroom.  It will be a monumental undertaking but I feel that it's necessary at this point.  The more I think about it, why would Apple invest in professional tools when there is so much money for them to make in the consumer hardware and software game?  I wish that I would have seen the light (pardon the pun) before I left Lightroom the first time!

05-27-2014 - Epic Fail

So I'm traveling to Europe and India in July.  After shooting with a Canon 40D for years, I used the upcoming travel as the perfect excuse to upgrade my equipment.  I had the Canon 40D operations down pretty well but this new camera (Canon 5D) has a bunch of features that I need to learn before I really need them.  

Since I got the camera I've spent all my free time trying to learn the functions and on the weekend go out to test them.  This past Saturday Anita decided to join me for a photo walk in downtown San Antonio.  Even though it rained off and on we had a very relaxing time wondering around and taking photos.  After about four hours in we decided to stop only because the rain got intense.  We were both very excited to see what we had captured.  

We get home, download the photos from the camera, and I see a lot of digital noise in the first image.  Same in the second.  Hmmm.  Something isn't right here.  That would most likely happen if my ISO was really high but I keep it set on 100 all the time...wait...there was the birthday of the friend's daughter...under that pavilion...with no flash...I had to crank up the ISO...oh crap!  And that folks is how you make four hours of junk.  The look on my face had to be priceless.  

The morale of the story is to always check your ISO, aperture, and shutter speed.  Always!