a picture's worth a thousand words

We got a new camera last week. It's a Cannon EOS Digital Rebel XT. It's several leaps up from my former piece, an Olympus Camedia C-750 Ultra Zoom.

The Olympus served me for the past 2.5 years, capturing moments for eVent Magazine, the Daily Courier and The Province in that time. It had a 10x zoom on it which means I could capture a fly on the wall from the other side of the house, and it took great pictures outside. However, inside shots were always a challenge, and its limited 400 ISO meant it was uncooperative in low or fluorescent light - especially if one person was wearing something white.

The new acquisition is an SLR (that means you can change the lens), and it has a much more reasonable 1600 ISO, and continuous shooting so I can just hold the button down and snap-snap-snap, no opportunity will be missed. My other camera couldn't do this, and it was after a failed attempt to get a shot of a (alleged) kidnapper entering court a couple of weeks ago, that I knew I needed to upgrade.

That was my reason. My excuse, however, came from weeks of securing the batteries with packing tape, after my battery lid broke during a fall.

So I've been trying to get familiar with this new little tool - but the more I read up the more daunted I feel. It's got so much capability, it feels right now like I'll never learn it all! I took it out yesterday for the first time, on a walk to Bear Creek Canyon on the Westside, to play around with some of the settings. The results are not bad - although I can't wait to start playing with some of the built in filters and other cool features.

Here's a sample of what I took, with notes:

Liam holding a jumping cactus. Taken in portrait mode, which means the front-most object is clear and the background blurred. I've always wanted to do this!





An action shot of Avery and Liam racing up some stairs. A little blur, to enhance the sense of action, would be good - I'll have to work on that.







A pine needle burst taken on micro setting, which essentially works the same as portrait but more extreme.

Rob took this one, of the river, using a slow shutter speed to blur the water. He was quite impressed with what it could do.