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I've made my call: I shoot with Canon digital SLRs. Still, many people often ask me which way they should go. I give them the stock answer I was given when I had the same question: Canon has better glass and, currently, offers the only full-frame dSLRs.
Still, the question remains: for an entry-level dSLR (with [...]

Despite the harsh lighting conditions (at times), I'm relatively pleased with how some of the shots I took turned out. Ben and Brandon were reasonable subjects, though it's obvious Ben is much more still (a good quality in playing pool) than Brandon, who had a lot more blur to most of his images.
Compositionally, I'm sure [...]

Adobe's $199 introductory pricing ($99 for students - I'll have to see if my teacher wife qualifies!) is almost low enough to tempt me into buying it. Even if I only use it occasionally, $199 (or $99) ain't bad.
The problem is that much of Lightroom's functionality can be found elsewhere: Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw [...]

I ventured to the Winter Snowfest at Frontier Park today. What a great place to sled! All we had growing up was the relatively puny hill at Gravel Pit in North East!
By far, the most interesting thing happened as I was leaving. A conversion van was driving along the road and sideswiped a parked van. [...]

I believe that writing daily is a good habit to get into. Today, though, not so much to say except "poof!"

Turns out +1 to +1 1/3 is a good exposure for snow at 4:00pm on an overcast Erie January day. We're getting dumped on now fairly hard, but all the snow we've gotten has given me an excuse to both try the new snowblower (a Husqvarna 10.5 HP) and take some pictures.
The snowblower will take [...]

Today I ventured into Cleveland to have a look at a Canon 5D at Dodd Camera. I wanted to get a sense for the size of the thing, and Erie's camera stores don't carry much more than $300 P&S cameras. The 5D feels great in my hands, and the viewfinder is incredible.
Canon is offering a [...]

Coming… ehh… eventually:

I spent some time playing with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom yesterday and found that I liked a lot of the things it did, but for me, Aperture beats it in a few key areas. The cross-platform nature, Adobe's Camera Raw platform (which isn't tied to the OS and which, by most accounts, beats Apple's in terms [...]

About a week ago I told Josh about a Korean website that was doing some interesting things with bokeh. Josh and I talked on AIM one day and devised a simple way to build your own "shapertures" and he took some test shots and published his instructions.
My wife has a scrapbooking machine called a "Cricut," [...]

All Erie has in the way of camera stores is Van Tuil, a store that appears to cater to people wishing to have their photographs developed more than anything. They carry very little stock, charge a good bit more than B&H, and aren't even terribly helpful half the time.
So, I'm looking for a big huge [...]

The "Sunny 16" Rule says that: in sunny light and with an aperture of f/16, if you use a shutter speed of 1/x (where x = your ISO), you should get a reasonable exposure.
I recently (re-)discovered the Radiant Vista site, and the thing I like most about it is the Daily Critique. I cannot imagine [...]

I've begun using Aperture for anything that goes beyond the "point and shoot" variety of pictures, and I find myself annoyed with a few things that aren't a matter of my ignorance (as are most of my annoyances with the application).
Both of these annoyances have to do with the list smart searches you see to [...]

I was bored, so I spent 30 minutes tonight setting up a little shot I've seen done a few different times. It's the old "drop something in a wine glass" shot. I chose a cherry in a glass filled with green dyed water (no sense wasting actual mint liqueur).

Shot was taken with the Canon 50mm/1.8 [...]

Today I added the strobe lights to my small little soft box setup. The results I got before weren't very good. These results were much better, even though the old ones look just fine after trips through Aperture and Photoshop.
Today I added the strobes to the setup. I had pretty long exposure times last time [...]