phil-roberts

Very nice. I love nature shots like this. Great lens!

Florida is so green and blue, and cloudy every day lately, so I was

driving to a job site thinking I need to capture some warm colors, but

where? I'm seeing these little monsters crossing the road and do my

best not to run them over. I get to my location and look around for

something other then cold colors to shoot. This little guy was trying to

hide behind a gate post. He was moving to the backside every time I

would try to get a clear view. He stopped moving when I raised the

camera in front of my eyes. And then I saw the shot, full frame and

sharp manual focus hand held zoomed to 55mm apature priority set

as wide open as possible at 5.6. I would never think the T3i kit lens

could get this bokeh and sharp focal point. I did a little photography

and developing 35 years ago in high school, and some in college,

but I'm an amateur. From time to time I just see something that

makes me say "I have to stop and get this. I just see it."

The photo was huge at 100% I had to rotate it, crop and shrink it to

display on the computer. The 100% crop of this monster looks

amazing! I ran tune correction in DPP, and I let the Tone Curve

Assist do it's thing. I didn't do anything else to it other than resize it to

get the whole monster in the frame.

I really love nature photography and landscapes. I did some macro

work on my previous camera, a Canon D30 (ouch!) with my prime

20mm f/2.8, and some came out very nice at 100% crop, but this T3i

is at a whole new level that just blows me away. I really want to

replace the kit lense with the 17mm - 55mm f/2.8 IS USM. That looks

like the lens for me. I spent a week doing shoutouts with all my

lenses to see what they were capable of. That was fun, and I learned

much about them. Tests with the kit lens against my 20mm prime

show a blotchy quality. Its sharp and has color saturation, and even

contrast, but the details get lost on distant details. I did get a

matching 55mm - 250mm f/4.0 - 5.6 IS for $250 that I must say is a

quality lens, and I would be hard pressed to find something in the

Canon lineup to replace it. I want to stay with Canon lenses to be

able to use the correction features in DPP, and I like Canon IS. I'm

doing video for the first time ever and starting to learn about it now.

How wonderful these new little cameras are.

Anyway, thanks for looking.

Phil