Boring days

What to do on those boring, cloudy, cold days...You can always go in a bar with your friends for a cup of coffee or a beer. And take your camera with you so you can amuse yourself and annoy your friends:D. Here are a couple of pics of my dawg S3to, still a part of my Canon EF-S 17-55 2.8 IS test. It was mounted on a 400D - a funny combination, the lens is much bigger and a bit heavier then the camera (without battery grip).

This are the first two photos of him that I've taken. It's funny that they are the best (out of cca 10 shots). On sessions with models it's always the other way around. Yeah, this are candids and some friends get annoyed after a few shots, girls just warm up after a few (20-30) shots.

I got stood up

Yeah, it had to happen to me too some day. Today was the day. And ofcourse it had to happen on a day that everything was planned, weather was nice and the model gorgeous. Murphy. And I'm an understandable person, if she'd at least call or send a sms, that she couldn't make it. It wouldn't be a problem. Ok it would be since the weather is going to be bad for quite some time now. But I would understand. However I can't understand one could be so hypocritical and without any guilt to turn off the phone. And she wanted to be a model (didn't make it although she looks really good), now I don't wonder why she didn't succeed (or at least get a few commercial to shoot etc) anymore.
I'm sorry to bother you with this shit, I promise my next posts will be better, more positive. And I'll be careful in the future (a good thing was we were supposed to shoot in Ljubljana, so at least I didn't drove on the other part of the country for nothing). But I also learned something from that bad experience, every experience (bad or good) is beneficial in some way.

Canon EF-S 17-55 2.8 IS teaser

I got my hands on it today. My first impression is that it's by far the sharpest zoom lens in this range. I know it has the reputation for being ultra sharp, that's why I brought the Canon EF 50 1.8 with me to the city centre (mostly architectural photos), but didn't compare it - I plan to in the next few days. I think they are comparable at 50 mm, we'll see if my assumption is correct by the end of next week when I'll post a complete review, with 100% crops across the focal and aperture (f2.8-f8) range as well as IS tests.


center 100% crop: 17 mm, IS off, shutter speed: short enough;), ISO 100

100% crop: 55mm, IS on (I forgot to turn it off), f2.8, 1/200, ISO 100

Million dollar baby

This is the last session that I had with Tisa. We shot that in Sepetember in (and near) an abandoned slaughterhouse. Unfortunately we couldn't do everything we planned, because Tisa was late and she didn't have her makeup done, so we had to do it on the location. We also skipped the second makeup (which I really needed for some photos, which we didn't take or we did, but they didn't come out as well) and shoot all the photos with only minimal make up (and some water sprinkled on her every few minutes). We rushed a bit, since we had only an hour left to shoot (I planned a two hour session), but in the end I think it came out good. Tisa showed all her talent and beauty, so we were pleased with the results and the feedback from my friends and in on-line galleries was very good. On the other hand it was a good experience too, because we were time-pressed - I'm sure the experience will be useful someday, when something will go wrong, something maybe even more important, something that will have to be done on that day (commercial shooting). I just think my job won't be as easy as with Tisa, because she knows what I want from her (we had many sessions), on a few occasions it seemed like she read my mind:).

Fločo the frog

Yes, the best hairdresser in town again. While I was testing Pentax k10d and a couple of Pentax lenses we went for a cup of coffee in a local bar. He was in the mood for some stupid funny faces (come to think about it, he's always:). I took this shot with the Pentax 70 2.4 DA lens. I know the photo isn't good regarding lighting, although it was shot wide open at ISO 640 I had to use onboard flash. But the point of this photo is to bring a smile on your face not to show a technically perfect portrait. I hope I succeeded.

Another disappointment from Sigma

I tested antoher Sigma lens yesterday in the ZOO, the 70-200 2.8 Macro. And it was just one more Sigma lens with frontfocus issues. I tested 9 Sigma lenses in the last few months and only 5 were without AF issues. Here's a short summary:
-18-200 for Canon: ok
-17-70 for Canon: ok
-50-150 for Canon: minimal frontfocus (but unusable at f2.8 in the 100-150 range on close focusing distance (headshots etc) - because of the shallow DOF, where frontfocus is more visible, image is unusable)
-10-20 for Canon: ok
-70 2.8 macro for Nikon: ok
-300 2.8 for Canon: frontfocus
-8 mm f3.5 circular fisheye for Canon: ok
-30 1.4 for Canon: weird AF issues (read the complete review for details, posted a week ago)
-70-200 2.8 Macro for Canon: frontfocus

It's really a shame that 70-200 2.8 Macro has frontfocus issues, because it's tack sharp at f3.2 (very few Sigma's are). Here are a couple of samples which came out ok (tested on Canon 350D):

f3.5. 1/500, ISO 200

100% crop from the photo above

f3.2


And this is the focus test. I focused on the line below number 50. Frontfocus is quite pronounced (f2.8, 200 mm):

Even more stuff to test:)

Yeah, today I added two more leneses to the pile of equipment. The
two Sigma's mentioned in previous post (100-300 f4 and 70-200 2.8 Macro). Today is a beautiful day too (warm and cloudy, perfect for the test), so I'm going to the ZOO with my boy Luc. Ufff, I'm going to be late...Ups I forgot one of the Olympus boxes.