Canon 50mm f/1.4 Article

I just finished writing another article for my personal website. In this case, I wrote a review of the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 lens. You can read it here: Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens review.

I do enjoy reviewing and writing about equipment, and I've received a few kudos for posting my reviews. Often when I'm shooting, I'll consider whether a particular shot will make a good example for review article. For my less frequently used lenses, I have to dig back through an archive of images to find example photographs. Fortunately, the Adobe Lightroom program allows me to filter the images by the specific lenses that were used to produce them. Lightroom has made it much easier to organize and find my photos. It's not only great for reviews, with the judicious use of keywords, it allows me to find almost any image in my extensive library in a very short amount of time.

The photo to the left is an example photo from the 50 f/1.4 and shows this lenses great low-light capability. The image was taken completely by the available light of a little bar in St. Helens, Oregon.

Writing

I enjoy writing. I'm not sure whether that's because I enjoy the process of communicating my thoughts and ideas, or whether it's simply that I enjoy the process of crafting the words, sentences and paragraphs together into coherent wholes that convey those thoughts and ideas. I also enjoy photography, and therefore when I write, I generally write about my photographs, about my cameras, lenses and other equipment or about the people, places and things that I have photographed in the past or want to photograph in the future.

Lately, I've been writing a series of articles for my personal webite. A list of those articles can be found here: Writings and Articles. I'm concentrating on lens reviews right now, and it has been great fun to go back through my extensive archive of photos to find images that best exemplify the characteristics of a particular lens. The image to the right, for example, is used in an article about the Canon 28-70 f/2.8 EF L lens, which has been my workhorse lens for over 5 years. I have an entire list of additional articles on equipment that I'm slowly, but surely completing, and I'm always looking for new ideas for articles.

This image is taken from my review of the Canon 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 EF L IS lens. The image shows just how sharp this long zoom can be even when it is wide open (maximum aperture) and at its longest focal length. The image also shows that the lens has good bokeh (the quality of the background blur) and color saturation.

The image itself was taken at a mid-summer celebration party in 2006. Although the party had a pagan theme, there were guests from all religious stripes in attendance, and the event included costumes, body painting, fire dancing and excellent food and drink (very important for any party). It was really a fun photographic experience, and I enjoyed shooting the event for the group and sharing the images afterwards, and I had no idea at the time that I would be writing an article about both of the lenses I was using at the event.

So, I look forward to writing the articles, and I hope that those that stumble across my personal website find them useful and informative. During the holiday break, I expect that I will be able to finish at least two or three more of the equipment articles and at begin writing a new article about photographic lighting tips and techniques.

Favorite Models

I'm writing a series of articles for my personal website. The articles include lens reviews, places to shoot, tutorials for photographic techniques, and other subjects photographic. I finished a couple of articles yesterday; one on the Canon 85 f/1.2 L lens and another on the Canon 135 f/2 L lens.

I illustrate my reviews, of course, with photos taken with the lenses or at the places of which I'm writing. In the case of the two lenses I wrote about yesterday, the model here was used prominently to illustrate the lenses capabilities and to provide example shots to draw the readers' attention. As you can see, Christine would draw anyone's eye.

Christine is an aspiring model, and I worked with her for a couple of years assisting her with some shots she needed for her portfolio and for some modeling applications. She works hard, shows up on time, and really contributes to the creative endeavor. I really miss working with her. It has been over a year now, and I do hope she is doing well with her career.

The last time we worked together was in August of 2006. We were working on getting her a portfolio established on one of the major online modeling publications. We had gotten several shoots completed for her outdoor glamour portfolio and were about to start working on some more generalized fashion and activity shots when she abruptly told me she wouldn't be modeling anymore for very well thought-out personal reasons. It's really a shame, because she was truly my favorite model and I do miss working with her.

When I was writing yesterday, I found the photos of her best illustrated the particular concepts forwarded by the articles, and that got me to thinking about Christine and how she was doing and how much fun it was to shoot with her. I miss her energy and her willingness to try new poses and concepts, as well as her ability to look at the positive.

Christine, wherever you are, I hope you're doing well and that you've taken up modeling again.

Favorite Lenses

I enjoy using different lenses on my cameras. The primary reason I bought my first Single Lens Reflex camera was the fact that I could change the lenses on the camera to choose the one most appropriate for the subject I was photographing. Although I've owned many Point and Shoot (P&S) cameras (and I still do), my tool of choice is still a Single Lens Reflex camera with interchangeable lenses.

I went digital with my photography in 1998 and at that time the only economically feasible digital cameras were Point and Shoots. Digital SLR's at that time cost many thousands of dollars. I still shot film, but what I really wanted was the convenience of digital combined with the versatility and image quality of a DSLR. That didn't occur until late 2000 with the release of Canon's D30 DSLR (Nikon had a DSLR earlier, but since all my lenses were Canon, it wasn't an economically viable option for me). With the release of that camera I had my wish and I've since expanded my lens collection significantly.

As I was shooting some photos this weekend for a lens comparison article I'm writing, I realized that there are few lenses that are just wonderful for photography and have to be listed as my favorites. One of these lenses is the Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 with which the posted photo was taken. This lens is a great deal because for the money you got a wonderful low-light lens with fast auto-focus and great image quality. It's big brother, the Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L II can produce better image quality and has lower light capability, but at a significantly increased price and with slower AF speed.

As you can see from the image here, this lens is quite capable and produces lovely images. I almost sold it last year, but pulled it from my "to sell" list at the last minute. I'm certainly glad I did.

Mark