Photo shopping

A week ago I bought my camera. I looked for a nice bag for the camera but I couldn't find anyone. Last week, here in Hsinchu, I went to Nova and there I found (and bought) a very nice bag. I also asked for close-up lens but they didn't know what I was talking about, that was kind of frustrating.

After coming back to home, I realized I forgot to ask for UV filters, but as in the weekend I was going to Taipei, I decided to take a look there.

Sunday afternoon in Taipei, I go to Nova. After asking in some photography stores about filters and close-up lens, I finally found one that sells the lens. They didn't have the original canon lens, but they had a japanese lens, pretty much cheaper than the original ones. So ok, I bought the lens, the filter, and as I spent considerably less money than I thought I'd spend, I also bought a tripod.

So far, my camera bag has:

Canon 500D

EF-S 18-55 IS

UV filter

Close-up lens x4

Tripod

The photographer

New camera, new skills to learn. After reading some material on internet and taking some pictures in my dorm, I decided to go outside to shoot some pics.

I thought sunrise would be a nice time to catch some interesting pics, but knowing that waking up early is really painful (for not saying impossible) I decided to stay awake all night and then go out.

I went out to take a walk with my camera at 6:30 in the morning. I could get some good shots but the light was really low, and with a maximum aperture f/5.6 the shutter speed was always too slow for taking the photos without a tripod. The only choice I had was to increase the ISO speed to 1600 or even 3200, getting steady shots but with the con of some noise and lesser color quality.

Some rocky mistakes I had were in general taking a picture without changing the settings from the last shot (for example, taking pictures in the lake, I realize after 10 shots that the ISO speed was fixed at 3200). But in general I think the quality and composition were good for the first time I shot the camera outside.

Back at home, I downloaded the pictures and made some tweaks with Photoshop. The results, on my facebook (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=12975&id=1787400491&l=18aa9feefa)