A Familiar Path

This week I’ve asked my friend Maury to talk about lenses. I’m always picking her brain about which lens I should buy so why not share her valuable information with you too? She advised me to get the Canon 50 mm prime lens which I rarely take off my camera now I love it so much. It has spoiled me with its sharp photos so that now my zoom lens leaves me a little disappointed

Those of us who are relatively new DSLR users will benefit from what Maury has to say and from now on I won’t have to email her and say, “Now what was that lens you mentioned?” I can just refer to this post.

I warned Melissa when she asked me to guest post about lens, that truly I am a big dummy about this sort of thing. I guess since my husband and I have had a photography business she thinks I may know a thing or two.

Honestly, hubby is the technical brain all the way in this operation. He has done all the research, reading reviews, to decide what all camera and lens we needed. Then he sat down, and figured out how to use them once we get them. I am the one that comes along and says, “Show me how to use this thing?” My brain automatically shuts down if he uses too many technical words.

Lenses are different, depending you what camera you have, so the best thing to do is do research to find reviews for lenses to know what operates best for your camera.

So, this is my attempt to tell you what my favorite lenses are, and why I like them.

Emily did a great job telling you the difference between a zoom lens and a prime lens in her post past week. She said,

“~Prime lenses are also called FIXED lenses.~Zoom lenses zoom. (Told you I wasn’t an expert)
Zoom lenses allow the photographer to stand in one spot and the camera will do all the work and as long as you can focus on an object/person…it’ll get you there. Zoom lenses are fun for trips and days when you don’t know what you might be photographing.Prime lenses make the photographer move because the lens is fixed at one focal length on your camera. The photographer (you) MUST move and compose your shot in your viewfinder. It’s work ladies. It’s not for the lazy, but for portraits they’re amazingly clear so I try and only use a fixed lens when I’m taking portraits.”

She is exactly right. When we first got our DSLR camera, it was a Canon 10D, (they no longer make these) and it came with a camera kit. These were zoom lenses. I learned to use them and thought I was in business. Then my hubby introduced me to a Prime lens. I complained, and protested, not wanting to have to “move” to take a picture. It totally threw off my brain from my previous way of thinking.

Over time though, I began to LOVE using our Prime lens. Indeed, they take a great picture. My favorite way to take a photo is with no flash. You just can’t do that with a zoom lens unless you have perfect light. I also found that when you are having a large print made of your photo, they were much clearer than the photos taken with a zoom lens. We purchased a few more expensive zoom lenses, and still found we liked the performance of the prime lenses much better. So, that is the type of lens I have been using about 90% of the time for the past 3 years.

Recently, we have decided to close our business, and have sold most of our equipment. I had been using a Canon 5D, but since that was our most expensive camera, and we could get the most money back out of it, we sold it. I now use a 40D, which is also a great camera, just not the one I am used to. Because of this, I have been in a photography funk, and haven’t taken the time to play around with it. Lately, I have been using our old zoom lens and the on-camera flash, and am remembering how much easier a zoom lens can be when I am with my kiddos.

To demonstrate what I am talking about, I took photos of my son with different lenses. All of these were on the P setting of my camera (meaning it is mostly automatic settings, but it allows me to change my film speed, or ISO) I purposely did not edit these photos, because I wanted you to see the out of the camera difference with the lens. I shot all these images except the last one with an ISO of 800 with no other light on in the room, only the natural light coming in from the window.

Photo 1 was taken with a Canon 28 mm 1. 8 lens. Notice there is just a little blurring of the background. This lens lets in a lot of light, so this is good in low light settings and no flash.

Photo 2 was taken with a 50 mm 1.8. Notice there is more blur to the background, pulling your eye more to the subject. This lens to me is the best buy for your money. It operates great for a portrait lens, and won’t break the bank.

This photo was taken with the Canon 85mm 1.8. I forgot to mention that I sat in the same spot for all the photos I took, but I did have to lean back to get this much in the frame. This lens has always been my very favorite lens with my photography. It blurs the background great, and gives a lot of depth to your image.

Photo 4 was taken with a Sigma zoom 18-50 mm lens. Do you see the difference? I couldn’t get a clear picture at all with this lens without the flash. This was with it zoomed to 50mm.

This one was taken at the 18mm with the same lens…meaning it was not zoomed at all. Still blurry. Also, no background blur.

Using the same Sigma zoom lens, I turned the ISO to 4oo and turned on the flash, and this one did much better, but has a whole different look from the prime lens with no flash.

One more lens I want to tell you about is a Sigma 70-300mm zoom lens that has a macro feature on it.

When we first got our camera, this lens came with the camera kit. My husband had gotten these roses for me, and he was playing around with the Macro feature on the camera. He used available light from a window, but he put the camera on a tripod, allowing the shutter to be able to remain open longer, but the photo not be blurry b/c the camera was perfectly still on the tripod.

These 2 flower photos are my all-time favorite photos, and they were both taken with this lens, but using a tripod.

This lens would not do good indoors without a flash, at all, unless you did have a tripod. But…I love it for outdoors, capturing my kids smiling, playing, with water on their face? One of my favorites that I took of my daughter was when she was playing in the pool, when she was 2, and you can see the water drops on her face…unfortuately, it would take me an hour to find that photo for you. I recently pulled this lens back out, and took it to our downtown water park to play around with it. It allows me to stay really far back and not get wet, but capture all of what is going on with them.

……….

Thanks Maury! This is going to be so helpful when I go to purchase my next lens. You can check out Maury’s blog at www.mdd5.blogspot.com

I asked my friend Emily to do a guest post in the Using Your Camera series this week. I actually did a call for guests posts on the Blog Frog and no one jumped in so I had to email a few friends and beg. Emily recently got a DSLR and her pictures have blown me away. Eggs. Chickens. Children. It seems anything she photographs is stunning. So, I asked her to share what she has learned about photography since she began shooting with a DSLR. Here’s what she had to say.

Melissa is risking it all this week by asking me to jump in and do a guest post. I know very little, but hey…I’m willing to share the little that I do know.

In February I was blessed with a rockin’ camera. A Nikon D300. At the time I had never even looked through a viewfinder of a DSLR camera….uh, I also didn’t even know what a DSLR camera even was! (or what a viewfinder was.) (psst…it’s the little square that you look into, not the screen)

I knew that the ladies taking fabulous shots of their kids all had one, so that was the direction I wanted to go!

BTW: DSLR stands for Digital Single Lens Reflex camera. Clear as mud? Good. We’re all on the same page.
I just wanted to take pretty pictures…So, I started from ZERO and now I’m pretty comfy with my Big Daddy camera. (Big Daddy refers to GOD, who gave me my camera and the fact that it’s carpal tunnel syndrome heavy)

A few things that I’ve learned that seem basic, but are really important…

1. It’s super hard to take fabulous pictures in direct, bright sunlight. Shade is your friend.
Why? It’s because of these things called eyeballs. They don’t appreciate direct sunlight and end up getting scrunched up and make the person look, well, scrunched.

The best…BEST….absolute best time to take a lovely portrait is in the early morning or late in the day. To test this theory of mine try this little experiment. Place your child near a tree in your yard that has different amounts of sun exposure. I would bet you a box of Andes Mints that if you compare the photos of your darling at 1pm and 7pm~dusk…you’d be surprised that indeed…your child’s skin is a totally different color! Oh, and they have lovely color in their eyes at dusk.

I’ve learned that I practice on inanimate objects during peak sunlight hours at my house. I save the great shots of kids for after dinner. (where I say cheerily, “Who wants to be my model tonight?” and hordes of children literally RUN to me….or not.)2. DSLR cameras use 2 kinds of lenses. Prime and zoom lenses. I have both, and I switch them out often. If you got a kit lens with your camera, it’s a zoom.

~Prime lenses are also called FIXED lenses.
~Zoom lenses zoom. (Told you I wasn’t an expert)

Zoom lenses allow the photographer to stand in one spot and the camera will do all the work and as long as you can focus on an object/person…it’ll get you there. Zoom lenses are fun for trips and days when you don’t know what you might be photographing.

Prime lenses make the photographer move because the lens is fixed at one focal length on your camera. The photographer (you) MUST move and compose your shot in your viewfinder. It’s work ladies. It’s not for the lazy, but for portraits they’re amazingly clear so I try and only use a fixed lens when I’m taking portraits.

I’m the proud owner of 3 lenses, so I’m not an expert. Some photographers have dozens of lenses, but do research for YOUR camera and find out the top 2 lens choices of great photographers…what do THEY use. Then, save your pennies (…and scout Ebay, I did!).3. Get Photoshop. The End.
Photoshop takes a great snapshot and intensifies and revolutionizes it! (Oh, and 98% of professional photographers use photoshop. Dirty Little Secret that I didn’t know until I started digging into this camera business. I felt lied to! It’s part of the industry and it’s totally legit. )
You can do tons of fun things to your photographs like this….This is simply a quick snapshot taken in 5 seconds. I liked her smile in this, so I took it to photoshop and added a cool texture to the background and sharpened the picture and voila…much more scrap-worthy.

To show what Photoshop can do, I would have to come back and blab on and on another day. Thanks for letting me ramble. If you enjoyed my rambling you can read my blog HERE.

Melissa here. Thanks Emily! If anyone is interested in a few Photoshop tutorials I might be able to talk her into doing a few here. Express your interest in the comments below as a means of persuasion.