Journey into photography

I bought my Digital Single-Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera with a lens kit of Canon 18-55mm IS. Canon EOS 40D is a great camera with various feature aiming for a serious hobbyist photographer, eventhough I am not that level yet I am trying hard to become one and maybe in the future might actually become a professional photographer.

When I got the camera, my first impression was that Canon EOS 40D is a rather bulky camera. Luckily my hand is quiet big so the camera fits comfortably in my palm. The camera came with a kit lens Canon 18-55mm IS, a very light and wobbly lens but I think it suits perfectly with the camera and with me while I learn how to use my 40D.

I used to own a SLR camera before but I never bought it since it was my brother's in which when he lost interest with it I took it from him. It was a Minolta X700 and I was very happy with it until it broke and cost of repair was the same as buying a new camera. But during that time I was very busy with work, I simply forgotten about photography until my wife bought a Canon film, point and shoot camera. But then when the pixel world exploded where camera was getting cheaper and pixel kept getting higher, the need to own a digital camera made us bought a digital point and shoot camera, a Nikon Coolpix P1.

Somehow or rather the interest came back and I started to learn back how to take photos and I suppose it is just like riding a bike, you can't really forget how, and not for long that I started feeling the limitation of PNS so I started looking for a better camera. So after a few months of surveying, lurking from on photo forum to the other, reading reviews from one site to the other I finally get a hold of my first DSLR, a Canon EOS 40D. Now, the new camera already changes my life, and I hope for a long and beautiful friendship ahead..

Later on, I bought a new lens Tamron Zoom Telephoto AF 70-300mm f4-5.6 Di LD Macro Autofocus to get a feel of using a tele-zoom for some reach. It is a cheap lens in comparison to other lens just a couple hundred dollars. But my justification of buying this is that I want to get to know how to handle this range of reach using el'chepo first before comitting to a more expensive one.

Bokeh is a photographic term that originated from a japanese word "Boke" means blur. It is a technique whereby a nice and creamy out of focus is produced when there is a main focused subject is used. Like the photo where the flower is the subject and the background is blurred, a bokeh. Some lens could produce a very nice bokeh but other may not, the blurring section may become a distraction to the main object.

People called photographing birds as a "Birding" activities. At first, I always think that with a proper gear you can be easily get into photographing birds. But when I finally get the chance to capture bird's photo, only then I realized it is all about passion. Eventhugh, with a more proper equipment like better lenses at least in a range of 400-600mm only you can get a really close up photos, the one like mine can achieve also with double the effort.

A camera like Canon EOS 40D is a cropped camera which is 1.6 times. This means that if I got a lens of 70-300, the actual zoom reach would be times 1.6 that is 112-480mm so having 70-300mm lens is not bad at all using a cropped camera. So taking photos of birds are possible.

"In photography, the panning technique is used to suggest fast motion, and bring out foreground from background. In photographic pictures it is usually noted by a foreground subject in action appearing still (i.e. a runner frozen in mid-stride) while the background is streaked and/or skewed in the apparently opposite direction of the subject's travel." -wikipedia.

As such to do a succesful panning the subject like the above photo, tha man riding the motorbike need to be sharp and can be seen, while the background is in a blurred motion. Most panning photo is best taken with a high speed lens to get the sharpness of the object while capturing the object on the move. I have tried using my cheap Tamron 70-300mm lens and it is really hard to get the subject focused all the time due to the slow focusing of the lens.