I think vets can hire you, instead of dental x-rays, your shots are much better!!
Pissed off the Spidey with the light mounted on a tripod stand, after sometime she started to pack and leave
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Ooo... nice, clean close-ups. I'd like to be getting more shots like that. Something so satisfying about em.
Is that your on camera flash? Most of my close ups have been on a tripod so I avoided... but if built in flash can do that I might have to try. Might spare me a ring light.
Never mind... looked but didn't read lol
Expect to acquire a new to me Canon I 1100D EOS for a reasonable £dosh it will be in addition to my 400D EOS
Enjoy it! Funnily enough I might've cut you a deal on a t3i but I decided to keep it, even though I've got myself a nice mirrorless with a good range of glass... I just can't bring myself to ditch that camera. Still get a lot done with those older Canons!
EDIT: Welp... I guess I'll vomit couple of photos from the backlog. I've been holding off because I just haven't taken any good pictures lately. Maybe rambling and actually sharing some photos will help me regather my motivation. It's been rough on that front these days. Getting ready for the new school year means a lot of physical work and sweating in my workday. And then it doesn't really settle down until the first month of school is almost over. Between that and things with my old roommate coming to a head, I have been cherishing the meager moments of peace in my own home. So happy to have both of those things behind me. Now if only my home wasn't still being torn apart
Some of the very first I took with the M5...
Something I really like about this pose and angle. She's rearing up to jump! I tried to frame it to suggest that there's something of interest up past that right corner with the weighting being down in the other corner... to try and get across that she is in motion and moving in that direction without needing to show everything. I figured it's more interesting if you don't
see what she's looking at or where she's going to... I felt like adding the windowsill in the shot would've been a distraction from the most appealing part of the image. I wanted to show off her stripes and beautiful jade eyes while she just did what she does. In abstract, it's "Beautifully patterned, jade-eyed cat jumps up." rather than "tabby cat jumping on white windowsill." You know? Not sure if I even came close, but I'm nonetheless trying to train myself to take things like that more seriously. Let the photo show what's happening and what's of interest without being a slut about it. As I go on seeing more of what works for me, I'm leaning very heavily towards stronger separation with a few simple highlights. I naturally try to simplify the image as much as possible.
She's watching cat TV. Don't mind the 12g romex. In the middle of an impromptu remodel and the wire isn't even connected to the sub-panel. A copper line in the foundation has been leaking for a long time... so they ripped out a lot of the walls in the kitchen dining area... all of the tile in the house, the cabinets. It all has to be replaced. All over a pipe that only feeds a f-ing HOSE BIB. Doesn't make for the best backdrop. My life is such a mess right now <_< Thank god for BOKEH!
After taking these, I got inspired to go out for an afternoon shoot. I should've stayed right there and tried to capture the full story of all of the things she does by those two windows. Going out was a total bust. I think when the walls and floors are done I might do that.
Still only had my EF-S lenses at the time. I can see the massive IQ jump from the T3i to the M5 there, but I also started to see where those EF-S lenses' weaknesses are. When you put them up against the best M lenses they really seem cheap... in build, too. It's like a toy vs the real thing. I used the 24mm pancake EF-S for these... it's really soft wide-open. Stopped down a little the sharpness is much better in the middle and the color rendition is pretty good, but I dunno... it doesn't ever have that fineness to it and the bokeh looks kinda wrong to me. Is it stupid to say it looks fake? The general IQ limitations really show at larger resolutions. Scaled down they look great, but they start showing more flaws at the higher web resolutions. Good on a page, just okay for single viewing. You all won't see it as much due to pretty aggressive sharpening, color, and contrast adjustments. You can get beautiful images, but it always takes a lot of 'cleaning-up.'
That was my first taste of the DPAF/touch autofocus. I wasn't even using subject tracking. Just followed her face around with my thumb as she jumped up and down and pranced about... and let continuous focus do its thing. Just pressing the shutter whenever I felt like it. I couldn't believe that 9/10 shots were actually in perfect focus. It really blew my mind. I have my doubts about really fast-moving subjects, but to be able to just move the focus point around as you compose at will and have the subject in focus no matter where you put it in the frame is a wondrous thing for setting up more typical handheld stills. It's like magic. Just pretend you're sliding the subject around in the frame as you move the camera. It's so intuitive. You keep your eye to the viewfinder and just move through the shots. It really feels good... I felt completely immersed... in the act of taking cat pictures. But still!
I will say I really appreciated having some real DR to work with shooting against a window. Even at relatively high ISO, these shots left me a lot to work with... though I didn't need to do too much. The overall detail and light/color rendition was great... like spot on. The metering on this camera is just right. The AWB leans warm, but often that's desirable for me, and when it isn't, I shoot RAW anyway. The in-focus parts didn't even need NR. It only shows on the blurry parts. I pretty much never got away with that at ISO 1600 on the T3i. Now I'm thinking 3200 and 6400 are probably very usable. It'll be nice to have another 2 full stops of sensitivity to put to use with still more DR than I ever had before.
While I'm saying this very plainly, that's actually a pretty big deal for me. I feel like I've been banging my head against a wall, not having much of any pull. Like, even if I nail the exposure, I still want to be able to bring out in editing the aspects of the image the camera can't show on its own. It was the main reason I wanted to upgrade, and assumed I would be moving away from Canon for that in an APS-C to get there, as much as I love the way Canon cameras handle and operate. Then came the M5 with amazing ease-of-use and 80D quality sensor. Now I think people really exaggerate the superiority of other brands' APS-C sensors over Canons. The 24mp ones at least are about as good as any other currently out there and the AF is respectable and unique as well. Sony focuses better... and many other APS-C and m4/3 sensors edge out a little bit with ISO performance and DR... but the difference isn't so much that it's actually a different bracket... like, I really doubt the images you'll take will be better enough with any other crop-sensor. They're still all crop-sensors. All modern crop-sensors hit the same walls at the same points. There's nothing about the other ones that's going to elevate the way you shoot or the quality of the pictures in any real way. Having the best crop sensor isn't saying much if we're talking about any of the high-MP ones today.
I feel like people who passionately make the case for such and such crop sensor over any other JUST on the merit of the dang sensor these days miiiight have FF envy.
Even the 'lesser' one is very good! It's really the features they have that does or doesn't put more power in your hands. Past that it's down to the one that's most set-up for how you want to operate it. Quality of life stuff. With the best crop-sensor you're getting, perceivably, the same IQ as the lesser one. You don't get better pictures. Just a better experience.
The standard EF mount 50mm f/1.8 (the metal mount version,) has way better everything for less money... probably takes cleaner images than any EF-S, and quite a few others out there. The CA can be strong, though. Like sure, you get f/1.8 with very pleasant bokeh, but at times it really handles the lateral CA poorly wide-open. You can still get it pretty easily even at moderate apertures. But I will say that even stopped down less than a full stop, it has amazing resolving power. f/2.2 or even f/2 aren't bad. And it always seems to have more satisfying contrast. How can any Canon-user not have one for portraits and close-ups?
I hate the EF-S 10-18. It's fine for basic video or vlogging, but as a stills lens I don't find it impressive at all. It has weird sharpness issues. Like, it's decently sharp and in proper focus with nice, defined edges in the area of focus, but right out of camera at low ISO's it looks like it's has heavy NR and sharpening done. And the edge sharpness has never been good, no matter what I do. And then the colors and contrast seem flat. I pretty much never use it. And when I do, I usually resort to B/W. Maybe I have a bad one cuz people seem to really like this lens. Part of this might be that I'm reeally bad at shooting wide-angle, but then I never want to partially because when I do I have to contend with the fact that they'll be they'll always be pretty lackluster compared to my other lenses.
The EF-M 32mm f/1.4, I sadly haven't gotten to use much yet, though just firing off random test shots, I can already tell it's a much better lens than your typical EF-S affair. Not quite L, but closer to that performance than not. Like, not even comparable to some of the other nice, normal-length primes out there. Well worth the $500. Makes for a pretty handsome-looking setup, too IMO... though my closeups still need so much work lol. To be fair, it's gotten much harder for me to stand there with my T3i when through it, I'm just
looking at a majorly better camera setup, that I in fact own, and wishing I was using
that instead. Couldn't even be bothered to check WB, let alone focus.
But anyway, that 32mm... I can't wait to take more pictures with it. Every picture I take, even stupid ones like these are so much more pleasing with this combo. It's got so much more pop to it. And the colors I bring out in post with it do not exist with images from the T3i and/or chintsy EF-S lenses. Man, it's such a nice change to not have to always be limiting myself and jumping through hoops to squeeze out better IQ. the f/1.4 bokeh is also delicious. Thank god Canon actually gave the M line a really nice high-quality prime at a versatile focal length. It's got me enjoying colors and textures a lot more. Maybe too much so...
I've never seen the color and texture of these elephant ears so well before.. the color pattern actually got picked up! I had such a hard time grabbing that with my old setup. Now those streaks just pop like crazy.
On this day, there was AMAZING light outside. I wanted to be out there so bad, but it was after a downpour and the humidity made it impossible. I knew the window would be too short for me to acclimate the camera. So I drowned my sorrows by trying to do something artsy... which in this case meant metering on the sky while taking pictures of things like an aggressively pruned datura plant, or my dusty blinds...
But that's how it goes this time of year. I bring you a typical summer afternoon in beautiful coastal south florida... as seen when ruined by anxiety-inducingly tilted power lines.
I've also got the EF-M 55-200mm f/4.5-f/6.3 in hand now. I'm really excited to get to work with that one. Got it used for $180. For a kit lens, it's not cheap quality at all... especially compared to the venerable EF-S 55-250. Super well-built plastic lens. It actually even has a glass front element. And the image quality is very good. It doesn't feel like much of a compromise on the sensor's potential. You probably won't find an EF or EF-S kit lens with nearly the perceived resolution or image quality, even the faster ones. Thanks to DPAF, it actually focuses as well as any other lens on the camera (which is responsive, accurate, and consistent,) even at 200mm when it hits 6.3 for its widest aperture. It just needs reasonable light, as the new M sensor's DPAF doesn't have the best AF light sensitivity and the combination of tighter aperture and longer lens doesn't help. I was still grabbing focus without it flipping to contrast-detect focusing in a room lit only by a 350 lumen lightbulb. So it's still gonna work fine in most situations. True low-light, no way - all bets are off. The IS works really well, though being so small in general the whole setup is significantly easier to keep steady. I swear I can pretty consistently take 200mm shots at 1/20 and not have shake. I wouldn't rely on that or anything lol, but the point is I could do it if I really focused on it, more often than not.
How cool is that? A good medium tele with IS that's only about 6 inches long and maybe 2 inches wide? At that point, everything else is pretty much a bonus. I can forgive how slow it is.
It's been interesting to see the kind of glass Canon puts out with such a short flange distance. The ones I've tried so far have basically been tiny APS-C lenses that generally outperform thier older, bigger APS-C lenses in everything but minimum aperture. They're also much denser in the hand, even the plastic-mounts. I like that for stability. It puts the bulk of the weight right around where the tripod mount is, so it just kind of rests in the hand. I doubt that extra weight is some new kind of STM motor, as EF-S motors with STM and IS element groups still weigh nothing. So that's just glass! People diss the M lenses for being limited, which I get... depending on what you shoot and how, you might not have your lens, but they really do cover a good range between just 3 of them... everything from 11mm-200mm, and the actual quality of those lenses would still be very good if they were DSLR lenses. They're pretty unique and show a lot of promise. Be interesting if they ever update em. Never know... they're pushing forward with an M6 mkII supposedly.
Then when they do make a fast lens for these bodies, it far surpasses the bigger APS-C lenses made for their DSLR's. The 32mm especially is probably on par with many of their more expensive DSLR lenses. Not like, hands-down best territory, but definitely one of the best available for Canon in that focal length. I don't feel like that's a huuuge stretch.
If all I had was that and the M5 and that chunky little lens, I'd think I made off pretty well for $1000! You're just not going to find a camera and lens with so much all-around capability for that money. You can have a better camera for a little more money, but a comparably good lens would probably put you at ~$2000 with the camera easily.
"An art," he says. Oh, is that all? So what you're telling me is I just gotta feel it?
