Bird with a fisheye..

jcaut

I thought this was kind of an interesting perspective.

A pair of Barn Swallows raised four little baby birds RIGHT beside the door where I enter my workplace every day. They (at least the little ones) got rather used to me. They were learning to fly the other day, not yet venturing too far away, and I used the opportunity to get a couple of pictures of them. I took a couple with a telephoto, but when I realized they were letting me get really close, I put the fisheye on and got very close. In retrospect, I wish I had used a smaller aperture, so that the length of the fence would have been in focus, to really exaggerate the perspective... But still I thought it was a neat shot. CHIRP!

steveinaz

Great pic!

BlueMDPicker

Thanks for sharing. You gotta' love those little mosquito munching munchkins! We have a mating pair that return each year to a nesting spot in the crossmembers of a two-story high deck.

Mike682

I think its a very good picture. Although you wanted to re-shoot with a smaller aperture, I like how the shallow depth of field really draws the eye to the bird while still giving a "feel" for the bird's surroundings.

Nice pic

michael_w

Very nice picture. I can never seem to get close enough for shots like that. You must have been really really close if you were using a fish eye too.

VR3

Very cool...

New wallpaper!!

F1nut

Ah, cat food.

Seriously, great pic!

janmike

Nice Shot. How close did you get?

jcaut

janmike wrote:

Nice Shot. How close did you get?

Thanks! About three inches. Veeery slowly. Like I said, they weren't really scared of me at all. The hood on the lens was touching the fence. I'm sure I could have grabbed it if I had tried (once).

I don't know about the one I posted, but on the full size image you can see my reflection (or my camera's reflection) in the birds eye.

Somewhere I have one of a rabbit where I did the same thing. Of course he was on the ground, and I didn't get quite as close.

Jason

jcaut

Here's the similar rabbit picture I mentioned. It was REALLY hard to get this close to this little guy, but it definitely gives a different perspective vs. the typical long focal length shot.

Jason

Mike682

jason

nice pic

what camera do you have??

bobman1235

jcaut wrote:

n't know about the one I posted, but on the full size image you can see my reflection (or my camera's reflection) in the birds eye.

Haha, that's awesome, you CAN see your reflection. Kick **** pics man.

PolknPepsi

Cool little bird.....

The bunny is now our wallpaper....Thanks.

michael_w

Another great pic. What others do you have?

My guess is that he's using a canon eos ____?

Mike682

michael_w wrote:

Another great pic. What others do you have?

My guess is that he's using a canon eos ____?

Yep, looks like a Canon DSLR: Digital Rebel of Rebel XT, or 20D. Shallow depth of field would be too difficult with a non-DSLR compact cam without photoshop

Mike

jcaut

Thanks again for the compliments, and yes, my camera is a Canon Digital Rebel.

I've been interested in photography for a long time. I used to shoot 35mm with an old Pentax K1000 and also a Canon AE1. I got into digital with a Canon G2. Found that I loved digital; Got some good pictures but I missed the speed and versatility (like being able to control the DOF) of an SLR. So, I grabbed a Digital Rebel as soon as I could afford one. I've been really pleased with it.

The lens used for both of the above shots was the Sigma 15mm f2.8EX fisheye. It's not too "fishy" on the DRebel and the pictures are easily de-fished if necessary. It's a fun lens to use and I find that I have it on the camera way more than I ever thought I would.

FYI, at least on WinXP, if you save those pictures to your HD, go to the file, right-click and choose "properties", "summary" tab, and click "advanced" if necessary, you should be able to see most of the EXIF data. Camera model and settings, etc., unless that data has been stripped or modified. There are also free image browser programs to display that info from pics on the web.

Jason

michael_w

jcaut wrote:

FYI, at least on WinXP, .....
..... info from pics on the web.

Ahh I forgot about that.

I've wanted a digital slr for a while but never really been able to justify it since I have an old film slr. (also waiting for prices to come down on them but it doesn't look like they have much lately)

janmike

Another great shot. I have been meaning to purchase a digital Cannon so that I could use the existing the lenses from the EOS.

Mike682

jcaut wrote:

Thanks again for the compliments, and yes, my camera is a Canon Digital Rebel.
I've been interested in photography for a long time. I used to shoot 35mm with an old Pentax K1000 and also a Canon AE1. I got into digital with a Canon G2. Found that I loved digital; Got some good pictures but I missed the speed and versatility (like being able to control the DOF) of an SLR. So, I grabbed a Digital Rebel as soon as I could afford one. I've been really pleased with it.

I knew it was a Canon!!

I also had the Pentax K1000. I used it in high school, great manual 35mm SLR. I had to give it back as it was a loaner camera to students in photo class. I then bought a Canon EOS Elan, another great 35mm camera. I still use it today along with my little Canon A510 digital.

I just love getting out there and shooting pics...

jcaut

I've been wanting to pick up an EOS film body, since I've got some nice lenses now. I've been watching Elan 7's on Ebay sell in the $125-175 range... It's shocking what the DSLR market is doing to some of the really nice film cameras. Even EOS 1-series cameras selling for <$300...

My problem is that I have a hard time looking at anything that I ever shot on film and saying, "Gee, I sure couldn't have done that with the DRebel." OTOH, I've got lots of examples that go the other way. And instead of boxes and boxes of prints and negatives, I've got a nice little stack of CD's and DVD's that contain thousands and thousands of digital negatives, in the form of RAW files, with an HTML index of thumnails. I make redundant backups and store them in different locations. Then if I ever need a particular picture, I can just browse the thumbnails, find the image and re-convert it, print it, post it, whatever. Can't do that with film.

michael_w wrote:

(also waiting for prices to come down on them but it doesn't look like they have much lately)

What generally happens is, instead of the prices falling, what you can get for the price gets better and better. In my personal opinion, I think we're approaching something of a plateau in regards to digital cameras, if that's possible. Not necessarily because the advances in the technology will slow down, but because the current cameras are getting so good that they exceed the needs (capabilities, maybe) of most people who buy them. For the average person,--even the advanced amatuer enthusiast-- more megapixels don't mean a whole lot, because at 6mp,--really even 4 or 5-- you've got resolution for a nice 8x10 print. And who prints that big regularly? Cramming more and more pixels onto the same size sensor makes it harder to keep noise down. So at some point you have to make the sensor bigger or you get to the point of diminishing returns. Big CCD or CMOS sensors are still going to cost a lot to manufacture for many years down the road. I really feel like the "sweet spot" is going to be in the 8Mp range, whether in a compact P&S or a 1.5 or 1.6 FOV-crop DSLR. And, as long as they're selling as well as they are right now, there's no reason to expect that the prices will fall much. Canon and Nikon both reporting record profits; Olympus and Sony both slashing forecast earnings... Indications that the DSLR market is hot and the compact digital cameras are getting so competitive that the profits are going away.

Jason

Mike682

I really like the fact that you can swap EF, Efs lenses between the digital and film bodies.

You are right about mp's and noise. When I see a compact digicam with 7mp , I cringe. Undoubtedly, there will be a lot of noise, especially with anything over 100 ISO. The mp war has gotten out of control. We know there's more to image quality than just mps, but numbers are easily marketable and most other people will look at mps first when looking to buy a digicam.

My A510 is only 3.2mp and I get excellent prints when I print them on my Canon Pixma IP2000 printer (which i got for $29 on a store error, retails for $79). Canon photo paper looks just like print film and I am very happy with the results.