Casey’s mug shot. She’s in big trouble. Okay, not really. But this is what she would look like if she WERE in big trouble.

Our friend Lou Ann purchased a brand new spiffy Canon 40D and was kind enough to lend me her old Canon EOS Digital Rebel. It’s clear that I have a lot to learn about how to use a DSLR, and how to do post processing. So this is the first of what may be come many “lessons learned” posts.

I took Simon out last night to play baseball with his Spiderman bat and ball. I took the camera along to snap some photos. This was at about 5:30PM, so the sun was low and the light was nice and soft. I learned two things last night.

1. Pay attention to shadows! Of about 70 pictures that I took, maybe 15 were keepers (in my book – others may beg to differ). Of those 15, I only thought 3 or 4 were worth posting for the world to see on Flickr (again, others may disagree!). Many of the pictures were discarded because of shadows. Either he was facing the wrong way and his face was in shadow, or more egregiously, my shadow was in the frame distracting from the picture. It’s something I didn’t think of at all and didn’t really notice looking at the camera’s LCD when reviewing pictures.
2. Despite the good light, I didn’t set the camera correctly to get the vibrant colors that I really want when taking photos. I didn’t do any post-processing initially, and everything looked a little washed out. Kelly responded to my twitter complaint this AM and suggested that I fiddle with the saturation.

I followed Kelly’s advice (thanks, btw!) and increased the saturation in photoshop to create more vibrant colors. Mouse over the image below to see the difference a little saturation enhancement can make (IE6 users won’t see an image – look at this one on Flickr. Oh and download a better browser).

So my question is this. While I prefer more vibrant colors in my photos, how much saturation is TOO much saturation? If I move that slider to the end of the spectrum, I can get an image that is clearly too saturated. My problem is that my eyes have a hard time distinguishing when that threshold has been crossed. Any suggestions?

Some really nice shots on this fairly new collaborative photoblog.

No, I’m not getting a DSLR anytime soon. But a guy can dream, right?

I’ve been experimenting a bit more with the light tent that I made a couple weeks ago. The past two nights I’ve tried to take pictures of these pillows that Kate made (which she obviously got better pictures of in the daylight). I’m flat out embarrassed by the pictures of the pillows in the tent, so you’re not going to see any of those. I think they might be too big for the space I’ve got to work with. So after much frustration with quilted items and vintage toys, I picked a new subject.

I lowered the shutter speed to 1/13 and that seemed to help a bit, although I might need to go even slower. I’m frustrated with the “grayness” of this picture. If I touch it up much more in Photoshop to get the whites brighter, it washes out the corners and the wires blend with the background. Any photographers out there have suggestions in how I can get my light tent photos nice and crisp like this one by Jeffrey Bail? Feedback of “buy a DSLR” is unacceptable.

LifeHacker, which I mentioned in my last post, pointed me to the Digital Photography School, a blog all about. . . er. . . digital photography. Go figure. It has a lot of great information for an amateur photographer like myself. And when I say amateur, I mean that in the most amateurish sense of the word amateur.

For Kate’s business, we have to take pictures of her products outside, because the lighting in our house is terrible. So when I found an article on how to make an inexpensive light tent, I was all about giving it a try. So two weekends ago, Simon and I went out and bought all the supplies, and I spent several hours on Saturday and Sunday putting this guy together.

So naturally I wanted to give it a shot. Since this will hopefully eventually be used for product photos, I tried a couple of eyeglass cases Kate made.

If I were using this as a product photo, I’d crop it tighter, but I left it as is to show the problem that I’m having with vignetting. It’s just one of several problems that I need to solve. In addition to lighting the top of the tent, I think I need to add some light on either side, as well. While my camera is great for a point-and-shoot, I think that I really would need a DSLR to get the kind of photos that I want out of this setup. However, I’m going to mess with the setting some more and see if I can’t get more satisfactory pictures.

The eyeglass cases weren’t the only test subject of the night. I also decided to give Laserbeak his five minutes of fame. Incidentally, this one was cropped, so the vignetting should be less noticeable.

This past Saturday Tim and I went to the Nats/O’s game thanks to the generosity of a co-worker who didn’t need his tickets. Needless to say I was torn. I grew up rooting for the Orioles, but I’m thrilled to have the Nats in town. I found myself, at various points in the game when one team would do something good, I’d cheer. Then a little bit later, the other team would do something good. And I’d cheer again. I also noticed that I wasn’t the only person in the crowd doing this.

I took the camera with me. The following series of shots was taken from waaaaaaay up in the 500 section (yellow seats) of RFK stadium. Good zoom!

We’re going to another game this Saturday, courtesy of another generous coworker. They’re playing the Dodgers, so there will be no rooting conflicts this time. It will be Simon’s first baseball game, so I guess that officially makes him a born fan of the WASHINGTON NATIONALS. Hear that everybody? A WASHINGTON NATIONALS FAN!

Not to go all Ken on you, but I am totally loving geeking out over the new camera that I finally picked up on Sunday. It’s taken some mighty fine pictures of Simon already. In fact, it’s taken almost exclusively pictures of Simon, but that’s only because he’s by far the most photogenic thing in our house. Yeah, we don’t get out much.

I’ve been waiting for this camera to be released for a couple of months, after our trusty A70 bit the dust. We could have picked up a less feature-filled (and cheaper) model, but I’m glad we waited for this one. I’ve been really happy with it so far, and I have lots to learn about how to use it to it’s fullest potential.

One benefit to the camera that I didn’t anticipate is that it takes fantastic little video clips. I don’t think it would serve well as a camcorder replacement for things like plays and concerts, but for the short little clips that we want to take of Simon and Casey, it’s perfect. I’ll upload some video in a couple of days for you to check out.

This camera seems to be the right middle ground between what we had before and upgrading all the way to a DSLR. I can’t wait to get outside at some point (maybe to Great Falls or downtown DC) and see what kind of pictures it will take outside.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that it is because of the generosity of both of our parents that we’re able to purchase such a fine camera. Thanks Mom & Dad (both sets)!