After a pretty feeble haul of Christmas presents (really, a Shiatsu massage machine?) I felt compelled to bolster my horde of gadgets… by buying a new camera!

I agonised over whether I should buy a Canon 5D Mk II — a beast of a camera — or save £1500 and buy the 450D. It didn’t help that the mid-range option (the 50D) was thoroughly lackluster and had almost no features that I might require. A higher shooting speed (6fps), hooray. So, I went with the 450D which was still a huge upgrade over my old camera.

Surely it’s more about the lenses anyway; the camera is just a light-tight box at the end of the day. In fact, it seems you need incredibly good glass to make the most out of the new digital cameras with massive 15 megapixel sensors. At that kind of resolution you discover all sorts of chromatic aberration that wasn’t otherwise visible.

(Talking of lenses, did you see the new 10-22mm Canon EF-S lens? It seems to beat every existing ultra-wide-angle lens at… well, just about everything. I guess designing glass to focus on anything less than a 35mm frame must be child’s play for the Canon engineers.)

Anyway, with the new resolving power granted upon me by the 450D, I can finally create HDR photos, like you see below. I’ll try to keep the abuse of Photoshop fairly low though, I promise.

I really shouldn’t be left alone with a copy of Photoshop, chocolate biscuits (cookies, if you’re illiterate) and my muse, Eric the blind cat.

And for the non-Americans: there’ll be just enough irony that’s hilarious to us… and invisible to them. Tune in on Monday.

(Or possibly a goose. But I think it’s a swan.)

Yesterday’s entry (the one that features my first ever poem) had a lovely photo in. But of course I took more than just one good photo, duh!

So… for about 10 minutes I tried to get a swan to sit still. It’s a lot harder than you might think. I tried soothing noises (perhaps I should’ve podcasted this entry, so you could judge just how soothing my ’swanish’ is), I tried arm-waving and then sitting dead still, playing dead. I even tried shining the light from my phone, hoping it would transfix him with mortal fear.

No dice. He just wouldn’t sit.

I almost got him! But, as you can see, it’s a bit of a shit photo. Alas.

But, my friends, do not despair for I have some pretty ones to make up for it!

First, the sunset that I was actually chasing (you’ll need a properly-calibrated monitor to make out the detail of the field):

(Beautiful, eh?)

This is about 20 minutes later but from the bottom of the valley so there’s a lot less available light. You can see how the sky could lead into the photo I showed you yesterday! I like the water lilies!

Finally, just as another example of what you can do with a little digital trickery, check this out:

This photo isn’t real (you’ve already seen the original, further up the page). But it’s still beautiful right? I wonder which one would sell better…