Monday, July 26, 2010

Happy Birthday to Me!!!

Well its my birthday today. Not only am I special because of that, I am special because I have a beautiful woman who loves me and for some reason...takes care of me.  Oh...keep it "G" fellas...not like I am gonna post any thing like that here.

Follow the jump to see what I got.


Thats right boys and girls. My lady loves me so much she got me a brand new DSLR camera for my birthday. Try to hold your jealousy.

Ok, enough gloating. This is the Canon EOS Rebel T1i. It is a great entry level DSLR. For those who are wondering (I had to google it) DSLR stands for Digital Single Lens Reflex.What exactly does that mean? I really don't know enough to try to explain it. It has to do with the way it shoots the pictures. What ever it is..it works.

Here are some shots I took as soon as I got them home. I did a comparison shot with my wife's point and shoot to give you an idea of what you get. I took both pictures using the same light, in as close to the same position as possible. I also did not do any alterations to the pictures using Picasa with the exception of cropping them down.

First with the Olympus Stylus 790 point and shoot.
Then with my new Canon.
The first thing I notice is the brightness. Both of these photos where taken under the exact same light, but the Canon drew in way more light. After that is size. That is a given as the Olympus is a 7mp and the Canon is 15mp. It is also interesting to notice the difference in the way the cameras pick up the color. The colors on the Canon are warmer.

I would say the pictures came out about the way I expected. The one exception being the color difference. Now the Canon pics are shot right out of the box with no adjustments to the standard settings. I am sure with some work in that area I will have some great shots in the future.

14 comments:

Messanger of Death said...

Happy birthday!!!

And I swear there is no jealous thoughts...

Messanger

Karitas said...

Hi there, and congratulations :)

the colour difference is indeed down to settings, called "white balance". every professional camera has this, in boradcast tv, film and still cameras. basically the CCD (the clever digital bit) dosent know what "white" is, so you have to tell it. if you set your white balance manually you point it at somehting white and press the "this iss white" button :)

it basically sets the camera to compensate for the colour temperature of the prevailing light. removing the yellowish cast of incadescants or the blue tinge of flourescant.

now most modern cameras have pre sets, a setting for incandescant, for outside, for flourescant and maybe one or two in kelvin for actual colour "temperature" try these first, but dont be afraid to set meanually with a shite of white printer paper for your booth set up.

other things you will want to look into are-

apeture, wide as possible to maximise depth of feild - shutter speed, slow (you are using a tripod or a solid base, right?) to gather as much might as possible and using the timer release, so that your finger on the button dosent cause any wobbles that result in a blurred image.

:)

Papa JJ said...

Happy birthday, and congratulations on the new camera!

Gauthic said...

Happy birthday, and your camera is very nice. I was comparing it to the Nikon D90 I was looking at last year and it's very comparable (and better in some ways!) and less expensive to that unit.

Very good choice! I'm sure that in the coming months you'll be quite the expert shutterbug thanks to your OCD :)

SAJ said...

Damn you, I was happy with my point-and-shoot until I saw these pictures.

But...I still hope you have a happy birthday.

Anonymous said...

A Happy happy birthday to you!....

Now to the meat and potatoes. A Single Reflex Camera for one lets you "look" through the actual lens that you are shooting through. If you take off the lens from your body (ewww!) you can technically still take a picture.

As far as the aperture goes Big number=Varied Depth of Field. Small number (known as being "wide open")=Precise Depth of Field. I usually shoot like 4.5/5 if its a 25mm square base, and like a 10-12 if its a Chariot size base.

Carlos said...

Happy Birthday!

Gauthic said...

Happy Birthday (I txt'd ya earlier this morning too ;) )!

I'm happy with my Nikon Coolpix's performance with the new Lightbox, but I've been in the market for a new camera ever since I got married. I've been discussing this with some associates in several media companies and I'm getting a target for a camera when I get a little extra money later this year.

My personal needs is a nice Macro, full 30fps HD and a Mic input.

Right now I'm looking at the bigger brother of what you got for your birthday and this is only for the full HD video & Mic input. The extra megapixels don't mean anything for a web developer (nor do they mean anything for HD video 1920x1080) from what I've quickly read.

Gauthic said...

Aw crud, I mean to link in the Camera I was looking at

Canon EOS Rebel T2i

Master Manipulator (every store needs one) said...

I did look at the T2i, but I could not find enough stuff to make up for the $500 difference in price. Th2 T1i shoots full HD video, does almost everything I need. I did not really need the few extra fps the T2i has or the mic input, so I could not justify the extra $500.

Gauthic said...

It's also the difference of 20fps vs 29.99 fps at 1080i too. Not much, but you're probably not looking to do much video work either. I have several projects in the future for which this camera (T2i) will work nicely.

It'll save a load of a fully loaded HD Camcorder (with interchangeable lenses).

CounterFett said...

I think you are on to something with the comment about color, the Canon is much more vivid and bright. Really shows off the beautiful paint job.

Mofreaka said...

Congrats on the new camera. I have an older Canon XTi and I love it, took some time to figure out all the quarks of a DSLR but once you do its worth it.

The next fun part is figuring out which is the best lens for your use's, that's when I had my oh shit moment when I realized the lens's a lot of times are more expensive than the camera lol.

I have the canon zoom lens 28mm-135mm if you want me to bring it up on a Friday so you can get a look at some of the differences, either way congrats the camera you got is very nice.

Master Manipulator (every store needs one) said...

Just so folks don't think I am a snob, I want to thank everyone for their B-Day wishes yesterday. This post was supposed to be more about me showing of my new toy than my B-Day so Thanks for the thoughts.