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<p>I'm actually going to Italy later this month for a couple weeks. I'm thinking of only bringing my 17-55 and 10-22 because I'll be traveling very light. How useful is a telephoto for traveling? I've always felt you should just get yourself closer to the subject, but maybe if I had more telephoto range I'd use it more. Granted, Europe has some buildings with amazingly high ceilings and you can't get very close to thse.</p>

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<p>Try the vibrance slider in Lightroom or CS4 (or CS3 ACR). It tries to saturate the colors other than skin tones. Also, there are two plugins by NIK Software that do an amazing job of enhancing images. Color Efex Pro has a setting for color contrast, and Viveza is a nifty tool for selective adjustments.</p>

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<p>Neill is on the right track if you'd like a low-cost general zoom lens. I use the 100mm macro on a 40D and it works as a short telephoto (160mm) much better than any sort of general lens. Don't let the macro title scare you though. It focuses to infinity and also has a switch to knock out the closer auto-focus range for general purpose photog... Think of it as a regular lens with an extra feature that lets you get scarily close to your objects. If you don't want to go as long in the mm range, you could also try the ef-s 60 2.8 macro. It's super sharp and puts you in a fantastic portraiture length (96mm). You also get to play with macro. Once you have it, you'll love it. </p>

<p>There aren't too many options for fisheyes on crop sensor cameras. The effect is dramatically reduced and you probably won't get what you're looking for. Sigma makes a 10mm fisheye designed for crop cameras, and will give you an effect similar to that of 15-16mm fisheye. And Tokina has a 10-17mm zoom fisheye that, at full zoom, appears much more like a wide angle. If you get into circular fisheyes, you'll see something you may or may not be looking for. <br>

Here's an example of the 10mm on a crop:

And the 4.5mm circular: http://www.benbailey.net/index.php/2008/08/14/review-sigma-45mm-circular-fisheye/</p>

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<p>My best advice is to spend a day in the big city seeing the sights, then get out in the countryside. That's where you'll see what the culture is really like. End up in some small town that doesn't expect tourists and you'll see the most amazing scenery, meet the nicest people, and have the best food. Everyone goes to Paris and photos the Eiffel Tower, but not many wind down a country road and see reality. Many small towns in Europe have been there for hundreds of years, with families living in houses their great great grandparents built with their hands. <br>

That being said, you'll have the most fun with a wide angle. Keep it as simple as possible and get completely familiar with the equipment you have before getting more. You'll enjoy yourself more.</p>

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Think of a RAW files as a digital negative. You never actually do anything to it, but you can make prints from it. When LR puts out a PSD or a TIFF file, the RAW stays untouched and LR creates a copy ("print") for you to play with in Photoshop. Just like when you're simply exporting a file from Lightroom for the web or whatever, it's always a jpeg, tiff, etc. because you can't export a RAW file... you just don't edit them. All those adjustments you make in Lightroom don't ever write to the RAW files. You edit an image FROM a RAW file but never edit the RAW itself. Plus you wouldn't want to. That's your uncompressed original that you want to keep safe. When you edit in Photoshop, send it out of Lightroom in a PSD or TIFF. Lightroom can read those files just like RAWs. It's the best way to do it.

You can get pretty close to this by messing around with contrast, clarity, saturation, and fill light. The basic develop panel in Lightroom should take care of most of this.

In lightroom's preferences, you can setup the file format sent to photoshop (psd, tiff, etc.). Also, pay attention to the "edit photo" dialog box and be sure the "edit a copy with lightroom adjustments" option is selected. Check your file format options and be sure it isn't a raw format, and you should be fine.

There's a couple things to do. First, turn on all the lights you can to make your camera happier. Use soft/frosted bulbs if you can. If you try the flash, get it OFF the camera. Use a PC sync or TTL cable and have it off to the side. For example, on the second picture, I'd have it off to the right pointing in a bit, but be sure you don't get reflections off the wall. Use bare walls as diffused reflections. Dial it down a stop or two and you'll have as much of a natural feeling as it'll let you have. Diffuse it or just pull out the 580's built-in wide angle diffuser. Pay attention to white balance, as flash light is fairly cool. I usually end up warming up the image a bit even after taking it with the white balance set to flash.

If you have a tripod, there are a couple other options: take longer exposures, take multiple exposures and blend them (make sure one is properly exposed for the outside view), or research HDR.

If you're going to try gaussian blur, be sure to feather your selection. That way you'll have softer edges around your subject and have it look more "authentic" as a variable gradient of blur versus a sudden blurry edge. And despite the photoshop tips, believe me, I'm all for capturing it right at the source.

Always focus on the most important part of the subject. If it's a portrait, change your camera's AF point to the eyes, then subtly add some unsharp mask in photoshop. I usually have my aperture no smaller than f/11, which is too small quite often. Find out your lens' optimal aperture range for sharpness, and it's usually +/- a few stops around f/5.6 and f/8. Great lighting though... quite dramatic.

I'm assuming it isn't a significant increase in price (like double). When you next talk to the client, tell him/her that you received the check and you're happy to honor the original price even though your regular fees have gone up. Make them feel like they're getting a deal, and that you're more than happy to bend for them. That's basics of customer service. If you try to charge more, you'll only make them upset and you never want that. You might miss out on some money, but it'll be worth it in the longer run. Consider updating your contracts to have a price agreement expiration.

Did you physically move any files on the hard drive? Perhaps you have a corrupt catalog file... Did you upgrade to Lightroom 2? LR2 has some separate view options in the library that may be throwing you off, but they are there!

What you've run into is the 1.6 crop sensor problem. 24mm is hardly a wide angle on your XTi and ends up being around 38mm. The 20mm prime is teetering into wide angle at an effective 32mm. I know they're limited with compatibility, but the EF-S lenses were designed with the premise of taking lenses like the 16-35 and making those ranges available to the crop frame cameras. Ironically, the EF-S 10-22 has a virtually identical range to the 16-35, and would be your best bet. I don't think either prime on an XTi would give you the feel you might be looking for your landscape photography.

For your use, I'd probably say the 17-40 for a couple reasons. First, it has a longer end so you can escape some of the wider barrel distortion. The other two are pretty much all wide angle all the time. Also, it's cheaper than the rest brand new. With the rebates floating around, you can order one from Adorama for $650 and not have to deal with the risks of used lenses. Also, the 3mm in the low end makes a much bigger difference than elsewhere and you might end up enjoying it. The extra aperture out of the other two options is appealing, but you'll probably be able to use the 17-40 for more shots given it's extended range without sacrificing quality.

There are some definite trends. I've got to throw one up for the Canon SD cameras. They're smaller than my wallet and it's comfy in my pocket walking around all day. The SD750 starts up quick and has great quality especially for its size. It also has a high iso feature for lower light, but it's pretty noisy so use it only if you really need the shot. Looking back, I had an SD450 that seemed to produce slightly better pictures, but the functionality of the 750 is much better and quicker. I don't have trouble in sunlight either, and don't miss an optical viewfinder.

I'm going to agree with Steve on this one. There have been some amazing points and tips here, but I hate to undermine them by saying "go with what you know." It's not worth losing the whole event because you couldn't figure out one tiny technical thing about some new camera. Bring it with as a secondary, set the iso high, shoot RAW files, and use "P" mode.

Mendel has the right idea. Think of RAW files as your digital negatives. When you open them in Photoshop and see that first screen with "Open Image" at the bottom, this is where you "develop" your negative with white balance, exposure, etc. You never actually touch the RAW file, only an "exposure" of it. Just like in a real dark room: once the negative is developed, you leave it alone and make prints from it (unless of course you're performing artistic manipulations). That way you'll always have your original file and won't destroy or modify it.

If you take a TIFF or PSD from it at 300 dpi, you should not notice much quality difference. Of course, it might have a different white balance, etc. Lightroom behaves in the same vein. All your lighting manipulations are like a mask over the original RAW negative that is never touched, only read from.

The barrel extension during focus was a huge turnoff for me, and I went for the canon 100mm after tons of research. The funny thing is in terms of sharpness, I've seen reviews that favor canon and others tamron. If you've got an ef-s mount and are going for pure quality and sharpness, I'd say go for the ef-s 60mm (effectively around 94mm), otherwise, for little more money you can get more working distance out of the 100mm.

I have the 17-55 f2.8 IS on my 40D and I love it. It's sharp, gives me that wide angle shot as well as a good portrait range. The USM is quieter than some of my other lenses. Also, it's been described as having L-quality glass, while neglecting some of the enhanced build quality. I haven't had any issues, and it's what I usually recommend to anyone aiming for the same idea as you.

 

For a similar price point you could also get a fast prime in the 30-50mm range. Some of them have very wide apertures, perfect for your night time shots. The IS is great, and has saved a number of pictures, especially in lower lights and other hand-held shots.