This past month I have been going crazy with lenses for my Digital Rebel. Let us go through them one by one.

28mm f/2.8 Reverse Macro

This is more of a fun little toy than a serious lens. It is a Sigma 28mm f/2.8 that mounts backwards so the part that would normally be pointing out and away from your camera is pointing right into the sensor. This causes a large magnification effect in the area of 1.25x actual size. With this lens I will be able to take larger than life macro shots which is trickier than it appears.

In order to focus the front of the lens (really the back because it is reversed) needs to be one or two inches away from the subject. You can scratch bug photography with this lens off of my subject list. In addition to a close proximity to the subject, a lot of strong light needs to be available. I was using an old 200 watt A/C plug in to the wall light that I had laying around and it seemed to do a pretty good job.

The first instinct of a photographer is to seek out lenses with a large aperture (smaller number, f/2.8 is bigger than f/22). But with a reverse macro there is no real benefit to an f/2.8 aperture due to the paper thin depth of field. When taking some test macro shots I found using the largest aperture yielded the best results. The Sigma 28mm lens has an old Canon FD mount which means it has a physical aperture built right in. This gives me a good idea of what the depth of field will look like before I take the shot.

Here is a macro shot of the back of a dime.

Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8

This is my new walk around lens for general photography. Before this I was using the Canon 50mm f/1.8, mainly for its large aperture. I feel limited by a prime because I am stuck with a single focal length which dictates my composition choices. I tend to like to zoom in close to things in my images and the Tamron gives me a wide range of options. The large aperture is another favorable aspect which will come in handy for dimly lit scenes. If I am shooting indoors and it is really dim I may just revert back to the 50mm f/1.8 for the extra f/stop of light.

Most people in Internet forums seem to be uneasy about going with off brand lenses, but what really pushed me over the edge for this one is the ranting and raving about the sharpness. Every review I read clamored on about how sharp this lens was and how it went beyond their wildest expectations. And because it is not a Canon brand name lens it is significantly lower in price. How is that for a good deal?

As an added bonus, the Tamron 28-75mm lens lets me get real close physically to my subjects (though not as close as the reverse macro lens) so I can do some outdoor macro shots. Large aperture, extreme sharpness, and macro capabilities: I think this lens is a keeper.

Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8

Now we are on to the big one. This 70-200mm f/2.8 is meant for action photography. The large aperture allows for really high shutter speeds on bright sunny days so I can capture the clumps of grass that fly up from a football game or a chilling glance from a hawk just before swooping down on it’s next meal. What you can’t tell from the photo is this thing is big with a 77mm filter thread (circumference) and weighing in at 2.8 pounds. After a couple of hours with this thing on the front of my camera my arm begins to get sore. But it is all worth it to capture some great shots. This new telephoto is replacing my beginner telephoto lens, a Sigma 70-300mm f/4-f/5.6 (talk about slow).

As a bonus, the seller who sold the Sigma 70-200mm threw in a Sigma 28-70mm f/2.8 for free. The catch is it doesn’t work; when I attach the lens my camera won’t even power up. It just sits there like there is no battery even after checking the battery and checking other lenses. Weird.

I need to talk to Sigma to see about the possibility of getting it re-chipped to work with my Digital Rebel. Besides, I really like my Tamron version and see myself sticking with it. The Sigma 28-70mm will probably end up back on eBay in due time.

I now feel as though I have a complete lens collection. Sure there may be other great deals that tempt me but I think I have the resistance to turn them down. eBay can be a great place for deals, and all of these lens came from the online auction house for a lot less than it would cost to buy them new. My next step is to take some pictures that I can sell to counteract my case of lens fever.

My girlfriend was driving down the highway when she spotted a bright car with question marks all over it. As she passed by she whipped out her cell phone and snapped this photo.

For those unfamiliar it is Matthew Lesko, the question mark guy who is seen in TV commercials yelling about free money programs from the government. Check the YouTube clip below.

Die-hard Photoshop users will get a kick out of this. David at IronicSans.com wanted to make an image that looked the same in the histogram view. For the laymen in the crowd, a histogram is a bar graph representing all of the tones in an image. Most pro-sumer digital SLR’s come with a histogram view so photographers can check for clipping of colors. In Photoshop you can see the histogram of your image by going to Image -> Adjustments -> Levels. He didn’t get a very interesting image from that as you might imagine.

Then he got the idea to try and create an image in the histogram view. After some tedious tweaking by hand he came up with this rather dull image.

But if you look at the histogram then you will see this.

The explanation of how it was done boggles my mind, although at the heart of it, it is just math. This reminds me of the Aphex Twin song that when viewed on a spectrograph (a way of visualizing sound) you saw a creepy face.

Joe Cunningham happened to be in the right place at the right time with his camera after snapping a woman in the process of being mugged. Joe Says…

“It happened very fast in front of me as I was out walking. He shoved her to the ground and they wrestled for her purse. She clung tight and I shouted I was calling the cops. He heard me and gave her bag two more hard yanks and then fled empty-handed into the street. I helped her up and over to the payphone. Once the call was made I sat with her while she waited for the police. Her name is Patricia Yellow Hammer. She was shook up but uninjured save for a scuffed thumb. To pass the time and take her mind off her troubles we had fun making some pictures of random people. By the time the cops arrived, she had her smile back.”

My roommates bought Chinese the other night and I like to just eat the fortune cookies. Ironically this was my fortune…

What can I say? I eat Chinese food and buy lots of products made in China. Fortune cookies are so mystical and all-knowing.

I was just browsing the front page of Digg.com and found these three top-notch hilarious photos.

What’s a splatter zone? Oh…

Could this be why the U.S. is producing less engineering graduates?


We should meet where?

Over the weekend I helped my girlfriend shoot photos of sushi and wine for a design project. This has been the first time I have taken photos in a good couple of months and it felt great to fire off 270+ pics. This was also my first attempt at food photography. Here are some of the highlights:

Do these make your mouth water? Feedback is always appreciated.

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National Geographic is known for its amazing wildlife photography. Last November they had a special on Leopard Seals and the pictures blew me away. Check these out:

Wow. Who knew Leopard Seals could be so fierce. Caption from the photo:

In a death shake, the large female shreds a penguin chick by whipping it from side to side. It took 1/2000 of a second to freeze the action; at the time all I saw was a splash and storm petrels and gulls gathering for scraps. This efficient killing machine prizes above all else penguin stomachs stuffed with krill.

Check out the rest of the gallery ->

Mmmm half price burger day at Mr. Smith’s.

Insects make for an interesting photographic subject, not because they are rare, but because of their abundance. Finding bugs is not a hard challenge but releasing your shutter in the nick of time before they buzz off can be like herding cats. PopPhoto.com has some good tips to take into consideration while you are out on a critter chase. Some of my favorite include:

• There is not just one bee or fly out there. Remember, you are surrounded by millions of insects every day and if the first one you see gets away, there’ll be another soon enough.
• Most insects are very sensitive to carbon dioxide, and will run or fly away if you breathe directly on them; however, certain beetles will freeze when breathed on — experiment!

These tips would have come in handy back when I was shooting the spider in my bathroom. Well, a macro lens would have helped too.

(via Boing Boing)