Some of you might have noticed that the last article on this blog was posted around half a year ago. There are lots of reasons for this - relocation to US, new toys, vacation, etc. However my recent acquision caused a lot of traveling around US which consequently pushed me to sharing my results/experience with you.

One might say that there is a ton of resources on the net for photo sharing, another ton for photo techniques, and a whole bunch of gadget reviews. What can I possibly say new? Well, if that's you attitude, then probably nothing. I'm sorry I took your time reading to this line.

I'd like to talk about Canon 50D and a few lenses EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM and EF 17-40mm f/4L USM. I recently bought this system and can't stop playing with it. It totally worth the investment. What was a nice add-on to the standard functionality is HDR-cabability. It let's you shoot sequence of photos with different exposure compensation. Lowest ISO is 100 (my favourite).

EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM is a standard zoom lens. Aperture can go as low as 2.8 and up to 32. Really good to shoot objects in motion and portraits. The drawback - images may come out flat.

EF 17-40mm f/4L USM is L-class glass wide-angle lens that makes dimensional images. Aperture goes from 4.0 to 22. I believe is a great gadget for landscapes.

To make really nice photos without over/under-exposure you might want to check out Graduated Neatral Density filters. I have B+W 2x. Some of the photos in my gallery are shot with this filter to darken the sky and keep it from overexposure. I also have Circular Polarization filter. This guy is eliminating peripherial abmient light and reflections. Really good to shoot in the bright environment e.g. sunny weather.

The last things I'd like to sketch up is post-processing. For the best quality please shoot in RAW format. Yes, it is heavy but it's the best you can have when you return from photo session and discover exposure/color problems with your image. Or better yet lens abberation.

For initial processing I leverage standard Canon Digital Photo Professional that comes with camera. It lets me get nice equally exposed images with the propert color saturation. Once I'm done there I open Paint.NET. I've no idea why people are paying a ton of money for Photoshop when they can get Paint.NET with the same functionality for free, unless they decide to donate which I really encourage them to do. This little tool lets you achieve the most of the photo effects listed here.

One last thing - don't forget to check out my works here.