jstraw

<p>I took this at the circus last weekend. The light wasn't great obviously, but I thought it was an interesting shot anyway.</p><div></div>

<p>I did essentially the same trip last summer. I took the 15-85 and 70-200 F4. I used the 15-85 the majority of the time. The couple extra mm the 15-85 has over the 17-55 and 18-55 does make a big difference. A lens longer than the 70-200 would have been useful occasionally in the rainforest to get birds and monkeys, but we were often close enough that I could just crop the photo a little bit and it still looked good. The two lenses together is a pretty compact package and is not too heavy. I used a Think Tank Speed Demon bag to carry the camera (an XSi) and the 15-85. When I wanted to brink the 70-200 also I had a container just for the lens that could attach to the bag's strap.</p>

<p>There's a small wetlands area in town. I have no idea what kind of birds are there -- other than ducks, which even I recognize -- but every time I go there are quite a few people there taking pictures of them. It's right off I-10 so it's easy to get to.</p>

<p>http://cms3.tucsonaz.gov/water/sweetwater</p>

<p>We went to the Grand Canyon this past weekend and arrived just in time for some snow. This is the train that runs from Williams, Arizona, up to the canyon.</p><div></div>

<p>I agree that M mode is probably the best option, but the metering you were getting doesn't make much sense. If it's supposed to expose for the ambient light when you have the flash on, then the exposure should be pretty similar to what you get when you don't have the flash on, since it's also metering for ambient then. Turning the flash on shouldn't cause all pictures taken in AV or TV to be wildly over-exposed.<br>

I tried this myself with my 450D and got different results. The ambient, no-flash exposure was F3.5, 1/25, ISO 400. I got this in both AV and TV modes.<br>

When I popped up the integrated flash, the exposure changed to F3.5, 1/50, ISO 400. This was indoors in a fairly small room, so the flash lit up everything. The histogram for the photos with and without the flash look pretty similar. I tried with an external 430EX flash and got the same metering as with the integrated flash.</p>

<p>Canon EF-S 15-85</p><div></div>

<p>This is the Ecuadorian jungle lodge I stayed at recently.</p><div></div>

<p>A caiman in a small lake in eastern Ecuador.</p><div></div>

<p>Summer vacation in one week!</p><div></div>

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<p>My son playing chess.</p><div></div>

<p>Taken at the Day of the Dead parade in Tucson last Sunday.</p><div></div>

<p>This is from a local zombie walk last Saturday.</p><div></div>

<p>Technical difficulties - please stand by.</p>

<p>At Red Rocks Amphitheater near Denver.</p><div></div>

<p>Canon has unveiled a new 120 megapixel camera sensor. Apparently though, it is not coming to a camera near you anytime soon.</p>

<p>http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/360568/canon-unveils-120-megapixel-camera-sensor</p>

<p>The going rate on Ebay for a used 550EX seems to be $175 to $200. You could use a non-Canon flash as the master, which would be cheaper. But it would be all manual, and you'd need to buy a trigger for the slave flash.</p>

<p>You could buy a used 550EX flash for quite a bit cheaper than a Canon transmitter. It can serve as a master for your 480EXII, and also gives you a second light if you want it. In cases where you don't want a second light, you can use it to just trigger the other flash without it adding any light itself.</p>

<p>I have the new Canon 15-85, which I purchased a few months ago for a trip to Portugal. The image quality is excellent, reportedly better than the 17-85 which I haven't used. It's a little more than $500, though not that much. I looked at a listing of all the focal lengths I used on the trip and found that it was fairly well distributed throughout the whole range, but with a significantly higher number of photos at both 15mm and 85mm (and, oddly, a big spike at exactly 50mm). So, if you're shooting similar subjects, you might find the extra bit at the wide end useful. I would think zooms that start at 28mm would be rather limiting for an all-around lens, particularly in city settings where the wide angle is really useful. The extra reach at the long end would be nice sometimes, though you could always use a wider angle and crop the photos later.</p>

<p>I backpacked from Costa Rica to Mexico, but it was about 10 years ago. I don't remember hostels as being common there as they are in Europe -- hotels are cheap enough that there's no real reason to share a room with strangers. And I don't remember any of the hotels having facilities for locking things up. You could bring your own lock and try and stay in rooms where you can use it to lock the door. Or try not to let anyone know that you have it, and then keep it well hidden away in your bag.<br>

I never felt unsafe at any time, though we weren't in any of the big cities. In particular, watch your stuff on buses. Definitely keep your camera bag in your lap - not overhead, under the seat, on top of the bus, etc. If you're going to sleep, find a way to tie it to you.</p>

<p>I'm not familiar with a 7n, but I can tell you how it works on an 450d. In Av or Tv mode, your camera will be exposing for the background. So if you set it to that mode and do nothing else, the background will be correctly exposed and the flash will fill the foreground. If the background is dim and you use Av, this can result in long shutter speeds, which may not be what you want. You can increase or decrease FEC to increase or decrease the amount of flash to affect the foreground. FEC can be controlled on the flash, and probably on your camera as well. Either way is fine.<br>

If you use manual mode, you just set the exposure for however you want the background to look, and let the flash take care of the foreground. Again, you can use FEC if to adjust the foreground. <br>

Just play around with it for a few minutes and it should start to make sense.</p>

<p>I recently went through the same decision regarding the 17-55 or the 15-85 as a kit lens upgrade. Reviews suggest that the two have similar image quality, so it's really a trade-off between range and aperture. I decided that the wider aperture would be most useful for portrait and low-light, which is a pretty small part of what I like to do. Also, those are both things that I would generally plan to do, rather than just deciding to do when walking around with my camera. In those cases, I can just use a prime (I have the 28 f1.8 and 50 f1.8), which are both wider than the 17-55 anyway. With the wide aperture covered by the two primes, the extra range of the 15-85 seemed more useful to me, so I went with that.</p>