Finally, my website is online!

It took me a while, but here we are, I finally have my website and my own domain.

Feel free to check it:

http://stefanphoto.net/

My first super-tele lens

The need for a super-tele lens arouse pretty fast and having the opportunity to buy it together with my medium-tele lens left me no time for second thoughts.

To be more precise, my first super-tele lens was the Canon EF 100-300mm f/4.5-5.6 USM.

It was introduced by Canon in 1990 and it is a lightweight lens (given its focal length), with an 8-blade aperture (which is nice). It has a reasonable finish, nonetheless the zoom ring tends to be too easy, therefore the lens will extend all by itself when hanging downward.

It had reasonable sharpness and with my 1.6 FOV, chromatic aberration was acceptable.

Would I recommend it now? If you are tight on budget, yes.

Well, I have to warn you that it was discontinued. It has nothing to do with a true L-series super-tele lens from Canon, but if was a good start for me in tele-shooting.

The Canon EF 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 II USM lens

By the end of August (2005) I bought two second hand lenses, and as you assume already, one was a medium-tele lens.
To be more precise, it was a Canon EF 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 II USM. On a full frame body these focal lengths make sense, but on my EOS 350D with a crop factor of 1.6, the 44.8-168mm equivalent lens was less useful.

Now, about the lens. It is a consumer lens (no red ring), therefore you not should expect a top level performance. It is priced around 250$, making it a good investment if you want to experiment/learn with it. Focus is a little bit slow but at some focal lengths (not all, from my experience it's near the 105mm end), the lens can be very sharp.

I was very happy with this lens for a while. And then, one day, a Devil popped out from the ground, opened a box and showed me a L-series lens (you know, the red rings I was talking before; why do you think those rings are red? Now you know!). He said to me:

- Just try it, if you don't like it, that's okay, I have plenty of other people ready to sell theirs souls in order to have this lens!

I didn't sell my soul on the spot, but I couldn't forget that red ring. The Devil knew what he was doing. But wait, that's a different story!

What was I saying? Oh, I know, my golden ring (consumer) lens.

A final word: if you need a medium-tele lens and your budget is around 250$, that's an awesome lens, just go and buy it!

But don't tell me you were not warned: those red rings are watching you! From beyond!

Lenses, I need more lenses!

When I bought my first digital SLR kit (the Canon EOS 350D + EF 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 for the record), I though that the 1000$ invested in it would be the whole investment in (digital) photography equipment. Let's not say forever but at least, this will be the case for a long, long time.
Then I bought my 50mm fixed focal length lens (to be more technical: the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens) because I have realized that I really need it. But, hey, I buy now this lens and I stop! No more investments in photo equipment! Cross my heart and hope to die!
But then, you slowly realize that a zoom lens from 24-28mm to say 90-100mm is a must. You use in almost all real-life situations. You also realize that the wide-angle zoom lens from your kit is just useless unless you are close to your subject or if you shoot outdoor (wide-angle) architecture. And if you like to shoot distant objects/persons, a super-tele lens is also a must.
Didn't I swear to stop this "I need this lens, too" madness?
I surely did, but that was a long time ago (yeah, right).
So, let's face it: I've been tricked into this digital photography madness and it is actually a never-ending game of "I have to have this, I really need it right now" followed by "and this is the last photo item I buy".
Who will believe you?
Don't swear anymore, promises are made to be broken!

Buying my first lens

It didn't take me too long to realize that besides my standard kit lens, I really need an extra one.

Having a camera with the APS-C sensor format implies a crop factor of 1.6 (equivalent to a multiplication factor of 1.6 in you focal length). And, as you know, the ideal focal length for portraits is 85mm. Now 50mm times 1.6 yields an effective focal length of 80mm, which is indeed very close to the ideal one. So, I decided to buy a 50mm fixed lens.

Let me give you other reasons to buy a fixed focal length lens.

First, fixed focal lenses are better that zoom lenses because it is way easier to optimize the optical performance at a single focal length. Next, the opening of the fixed focal lenses beats most zoom lenses. This means you have the possibility of night shooting and also a shallower depth of field (important when you shoot portraits).

Now back to my lens. The main reason in choosing it, was the availability, at a very low price of EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens from Canon. It had an unbelievable price tag of under 100$ in the US. In France, of course, it was 129 Euros. But even at this price, it seemed to me a very good deal.

The EF 50mm f/1.8 is a lightweight, non-USM lens. This means that you'll hear the motor while focusing. But, it is an unbelievably sharp lens with nice colors and a beautiful bokeh!

I was very happy with it and sold it only after buying the EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens.

Would I recommend this lens?

Oh yes, it has arguably the best price - quality ratio among all Canon lenses!

If you have a tight budget and want to shoot portraits, this lens is just made for you!

I have my EOS camera; now what?

So, here I am, this black plastic thing in my hands is the long awaited EOS camera. What should I do with it? Oh, I remember: photography!

A good idea would have been to read first the manual but I was in a hurry so I started the "let's see what this setting does" frenzy. And it works, the only problem is that you'll probably lose more time experimenting than just (thoroughly) reading the leaflet that came with the Canon camera.

There was a new, exciting feature: the ISO sensitivity setting. I could shoot at ISO 100, 200, 400, even 800 and the scale ended at the whopping ISO 1600. How cool can that be?

And since my camera works at ISO 1600, why should I bother to lower it even if I shoot in sheer daylight? Of course I noticed those fast times (1/2000 s) and almost completely closed apertures (f/16-f/22) but that did not bother me either. I knew from my B/W film photography days that the smaller the aperture is, the greater the depth-of-field (DOF) becomes. And the exposure time, oh well, the faster the better!

And then, at a careful inspection of my pictures, I found those funny colored spots. Who are they, and what do they want from me?

They... they are: the noise!

And so, I learned what "digital noise" means. Having an electrical engineering background I quickly understood the cause, slapping my forehead and saying: "of course, you idiot!"

So I had my first (practical) digital photography lesson: always shoot at the lowest possible ISO level!

Buying my first EOS camera

Living in France has its good parts. They have probably the best bread in the world, not to mention those wines and their famous stinky cheese (that comes in thousands of varieties).

But when it comes to photo equipment, it's probably not the best place to live (and buy). One thing the French system adores are the taxes. They tax and over-tax everything, so that when you compare the local prices to those from other European countries (take Germany or the Netherlands for example) you cannot stop asking yourself: is it real?

Add to this the (at least) strange policy of Canon to sell the same product with different prices in the US and in Europe. And by different, I mean: 999$ in the US and 1400 Euros here. That's a 2/1 ratio and I was not ready to accept that.

Luckily, there were people living in the US and travelling to Europe. And if asked nicely, they could just buy the long awaited camera at the low US price, put it in their hand bag and fly it over to Europe. This is how I got my first digital SLR camera, Canon's bestseller (we're still in the year of grace 2005), the US-labeled Canon Digital Rebel XT and the rest-of-the-world-labeled Canon EOS 350D.

It came as a kit with the standard lens, EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6. Anyhow, at that time I did not pay too much attention to lenses, finally all that matters is the camera body, isn't it?