TRYING OUT MY NEWLY ACQUIRED, (USED) ZOOM LENS + LEARNING ABOUT 'APERATURE'

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A few days ago I purchased a used zoom lens, (since buying it new was totally out of the question), for my Canon EOS Rebel T3i camera. As most of you who bought the kit know, the Canon EF-S 18-55mm IS is the standard lens that comes with the camera. And for those of you who have been following me all along on my interest in photography, know that I am no expert and I don't pretend to be one.  Hence, excuse the retardedness that some of you professional photographers will see on my blog from time to time. There are many reviews on these types of lens out there so as usual, I won't go into that aspect of it. My goal here is to show you, my viewers, my way of learning to use a camera, from a newbie point of view! I am teaching myself photography through online help as well as my famous 'Press Buttons Now, Ask Questions Later' way! One thing I've learnt when it comes to learning photography - or anything for that matter, online or even in a book, is that they always make things more complicated than it has to be. My attention span is very limited and if you start using too many words I don't understand I'll just close the window, (or the book) and look somewhere else... or just start pressing buttons. Explaining things in its basic form is how I operate. I do that in my job when training people, I do it with my children when explaining how to use something, I do it in every facet of my life. Why make things complicated when they don't have to be. Professionals are so used to what they do that when explaining something, they forget to stop and think that the person they are explaining it to has NO CLUE to begin with and should try to use words in layman's terms and not 'professional' terms. It's like learning how to drive... "to get up to speed on the highway, depress the accelerator slowly". Why not just say, ".. to go faster, just step on the gas pedal... slowly!"
My first camera!

This aperature business, it was so confusing in the beginning. I understand the concept NOW, after reading it over a million times! The aperature, which plays a vital role in photography by the way, is the size of the opening in the lens when taking a photo and according to how wide or narrow the opening is, determines the amount of light that gets in. Fine, that I understand but when they start saying things like - the bigger the aperture/f-number the smaller the opening which in turn results in a larger depth of field - my mind starts to wander. Then they will go on to mention that large apertures (where lots of light gets through) are given f/stop smaller numbers and smaller apertures (where less light gets through) have larger f-stop numbers. The problem is our brains, (well mine anyways), equate smaller opening to mean a smaller number and not the other way around. So f/2.8 is in fact a much larger aperture than f/22.
So one thing at a time here. Let's just first worry about lighting before tackling depth of field. When it comes to understanding aperature in terms of lighting, just remember this (thanks redbubble.com/):
Higher numbers mean more restriction, and harder to get enough light in and lower numbers mean less restriction therefore lots of light can get in! In other words, Lower = LOTS of light! 


Ok, so now that we have THAT out of the way, the next thing to learn is that adjusting the aperature also means adjusting the shutter speed.  They go hand-in-hand and if you change one without adjusting the other, you will get something like the picture on the right above. But that's another lesson. For today I'm just learning the basics of aperature and how it changes the depth of field. So the low number which lets lots of light in also means that only part of the image will be in focus and the rest will be fuzzy aka bokeh imagery such as in the example pic I shot below.


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MY YOUTUBE FINDS: So papa, how do you like the iPad we got you?

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Although in German, no translation is necessary...

I don't think papa is the only one doing this, perhaps mama too? Funny video!









AAAH! IT'S THE INVASION OF THE PEANUT BUTTER SNATCHERS!

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I woke up this morning and as usual, made my coffee before starting my day.  I pulled the curtains back on my patio door and lo and behold, who was all waiting out there? Those cheeky squirrels! Not one, or two or even three but FIVE of them waiting for me to give them some peanut butter with toast.

Usually they come one at a time.  I really wished I could have captured them all at once to show you guys but they never really stayed still long enough for me to do so. By the time I ran to grab my camera - they all scattered! It was a great chance however, for me to try out my new Canon camera - capturing them in motion.

In the beginning, I was only able to capture at most, three of them at one time - through the patio door, so these did not make for the greatest pictures...






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TURKEY DISASTER + HAVE YOU EATEN TURKEY THAWED OUT AT ROOM TEMPERATURE?(POLL)

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Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a great Christmas and let's hope an even better new year to come.  I wish I could say I had a great Christmas dinner but I must admit it was a bit of a disaster.

Christmas day was on a Wednesday so I asked my husband if he could thaw out the turkey on Monday night.... in the laundry sink. Fine. Christmas day rolled around and I actually.... WE actually forgot about the turkey in the laundry sink.  Oh well, it must be still a bit frozen, I thought.  It was not.  The insides were still a bit cold but basically it was thawed out.  Anyways, Jack decided to look online for a turkey recipe but the more and more he read, he kept seeing this warning NOT TO THAW TURKEY OUT ON THE COUNTER or NOT TO THAW OUT TURKEY AT ROOM TEMPERATURE. It could lead to food poisoning.  I told him it would be fine, we've eaten things left out the night before - no problem.  I told him we've thawed out chicken on the counter (before placing it in the fridge to cook later) - no problem. Well holy matrimony!  He started going on about we can't eat this, we'll all get poisoned and am I trying to poison everyone.

I started going on about "what are we going to have for a christmas dinner? There's probably no turkey left ANYWHERE and it's Christmas day.  EVERYTHING is closed! Needless to say, we argued for another 15 mins then finally, I just grabbed the turkey and dumped it in the garbage container outside. In the end, we just had our ham which was quite tasty (thank God).  3 days later we actually found a few turkeys left and bought one. This time we thawed it out in cold water as one of the ways recommended and eventually had another christmas dinner.... this time with turkey included!

Now I've asked a few people at work if they've ever eaten turkey thawed out on the counter.  Two said they have and they have never gotten sick.  Were they lying? Have you ever eaten turkey that's been thawed out at room termperature and lived to tell about it? And how do you usually thaw out your turkey?




MERRY CHRISTMAS 2013 VIEWERS! HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014!

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Falling snow effect courtesy of Google+



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Original photo taken with Canon EOS REBEL T3i -  f/8, 1/80sec, ISO-800, 50mm lens

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