Photography
Written by Kai Dietrich   
Tuesday, 02 January 2007

Photography

Seeing things, that not everyone sees. Capturing the beauty of the moment. Anything is possible.
When I bought a Digital Camera I've found out how much pleasure it can be to capture a bit of the beauty which lies in this world.

You can see some of my photographs here:


 

or here:

 

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Equipment

I use a Canon EOS-350D single lens digital mirror reflex camera together with various lenses and a battery grip (BG-E3). At first I want to suggest the battery grip to anyone using the 350D. With the right batteries inside it lasts forever (I have 6x2300mAh = ~3000 exposures) and gives the whole camera a better feeling. As you can see the body already has some traces of use. I really think about upgrading.  Image
 The Canon EF-S 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6 lens came with the bundle. For a start it's a good choice but once you want to do more serious work you will soon put it away. It's full plastic case make it feel cheap and the zoom grip runs not very smooth. The focus-ring is much to thin which essentially makes it only usable for autofocus. The autofocus is quite fast but manual is unusable. Image
 My next lens is the Tamron AF 28-300mm F:3,5-6,3 XR Di. It's huge focal length range makes it a very versatile lens. It's decent quality and price make it a good buy and working lens. I sometimes use it for outdoor shooting, when I don't know what exactly I'm going to take pictures of. It's motor driven autofocus is not very fast and pretty loud, but it works. The manual focus works pretty well, I got used to it quickly and can work precisly and fast. Image

The next investment was the Canon EF 50mm 1:1.4 lens ... and hell ... it was worth it. The f1.4 50mm from Canon is a  very high quality lens which feels good in your hands and deliveres exceptionally sharp and vivid images. The USM autofocus is a big advancement, too. It's fast, it's silent, it's robust. I often use the 50mm for studio-portrait work and also for outdoor shoots with low light conditions.

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 And ... my latest buy is a Canon EF 28mm 1:1.8 lens which handles basically the same like the 1.4 50mm except of the different focal length and all it's implications.
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 LOMO Love :) (LOMO LC-A+, 32mm 1:2.8 Minitar Lens)  Image
 My latest love, an old russian Leica clone, the FED 2d with an Industar 61 (52mm,1:2.8) lens.Fully manual rangefinder  Image
 To have a complete equipement, you have to have a flash. Even with fast lenses like the 1.8 or 1.4 primes, there are low-light event conditions when you just need a flash to freeze motion. The Metz 58 AF-1 for Canon seems to be a perfect choice. With the additional front reflector I expect it to be a very versatile tool.  Image
Last Updated ( Tuesday, 01 June 2010 )