I was going through my pic­tures and real­ized that there were quite a few I haven’t post­ed, so I decid­ed to do an end-of-year wrap-up. Most of these are pho­tos I like but they did­n’t fit any­where, or were made redun­dant by oth­er pic­tures telling a sto­ry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since we got bought out by a pub­lic com­pa­ny, the pur­chas­ing pro­ce­dure has changed quite a bit. Some of the top brass from the head office in Boston flew in this week, and I made it a point to thank the CFO for per­son­al­ly approv­ing the pur­chase of a new Canon Rebel XTi, 100mm f/2.8 macro lens, and 50mm f/1.8 lens. After the pres­i­dent intro­duced me, he told me I did a fan­tas­tic job with the pic­tures in the com­pa­ny cat­a­logue, and it real­ly made my day.

I think I’ve real­ly devel­oped as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er in the lit­tle time I’ve owned my first SLR cam­era. Looking back on a year of pho­tos has made me real­ize that I’ve learned a lot, not only sim­ple pho­to­graph­ic the­o­ry, but famil­iar­i­ty with my cam­era and post-pro­cess­ing as well. I still have a lot more to learn though, espe­cial­ly with expo­sure and meter­ing, as dig­i­tal cam­eras make it easy to get good shots with­out real­ly need­ing to have an in-depth under­stand­ing.

So I’ve devi­at­ed from my pre­vi­ous plan to wait until the new Canon 17–55mm f/2.8 IS came out before mak­ing any lens pur­chas­es. Aside from the fact that I would have had to wait until the sum­mer for reviews that may be less than favourable any­way, the main rea­son is that my two dream lens­es, the Canon EF 24–70mm f/2.8 L and the Canon EF 16–35mm f/2.8 L were being sold refur­bished and used respec­tive­ly. I make it a habit to check one par­tic­u­lar pop­u­lar online retail­er every morn­ing in case of any such deals, since they update their stock some time around five in the morn­ing and most lens­es are gone by nine, L glass espe­cial­ly. Although I had no plan on buy­ing either lens (I had yet to see either up for sale until this month), I could­n’t pass up the oppor­tu­ni­ty. It saved me close to $2000 in total.

Now I have my ide­al focal range cov­ered with a lens that goes as wide as 16mm for my envi­ron­men­tal and land­scape shots, and anoth­er one that goes as long as 70mm for por­traits. Both have ring ultra­son­ic motor focus­ing sys­tems, which makes aut­o­fo­cus­ing beau­ti­ful­ly slick, smooth, and qui­et, with sup­port for full-time man­u­al focus­ing as well. They also go as wide f/2.8, which is per­fect since I do a lot of low-light, indoor shoot­ing, and the extra aper­ture blades pro­vide but­tery smooth back­ground blur.

The trade-off is that both lens­es are heavy, one heav­ier than the cam­era body itself. This comes from the fact that the con­struc­tion is rock-sol­id and weath­er-sealed, being made from met­al and ground glass. There are sto­ries of peo­ple drop­ping their L lens­es onto asphalt or rocks and sur­viv­ing with only cos­met­ic scratch­es.

After all the mon­ey I just spent (more than twice as much than on the cam­era itself), not includ­ing the extra hand-strap/bag/­fil­ters that went along with it, I’m try­ing not to think of my next pur­chase. In the back of my mind I know that I want a macro lens or a full frame body, but I think I’ll be sat­is­fied for the next lit­tle while.