I’m not sure how to preface this one, so I’ll just lead with the goodies.

(Five years ago, 2004, in Wales at a festival called ‘The Big Cheese’…)

Those ears have a great story attached to them, which I will tell you one day, but not quite yet as it involves a very young boy that I made cry.  I have to work out a way to tell the story without making me look like a bastard.

OK, next, guess who this is:

(Last week, 2009, on stage…)

Recognise the ears?

Anyway…

In more important news (what isn’t more important than me dressing up in some kind of silken sarong and parading infront of an audience of hundreds?) I’ve done a little bit of springcleaning about the place. I finally got around to overhauling my ‘portal’ site: http://mrseb.co.uk. The old version was actually made just after the first photo in 2004 so I figured it was about time I updated it. It now has links to all things Seb, my blog, my Flickr stream, my shop on Etsy and, perhaps of more interest, a writing and photography portfolio.

The photography portfolio looks great, and if you want to show it to friends and family, please do so! Or if you know a magazine/newspaper editor… show them.

My writing portfolio is a little more nebulous as my writing style is still so new, so mutable. I’m improving and changing every day so I need to move bits in and out of the portfolio to keep it contemporary — but again, you might find it (and my experience) of interest. Also, if there’s something I’ve written (either on here, or if you’ve read other stuff by me) that you think ought to be in the portfolio, tell me!

Oh, and I forgot the most important bit! You can now be my  fan on Facebook. You probably won’t appreciate how hilariously uncomfortable this makes me, actually asking for fans. Unless you’re British, in which case you might understand. It pains me to the very core to ask you to be my fan. But as they say, you have to ask or you don’t get. So be my fan.

I’m going to go and blush in the corner now! I have Americans again this weekend. I’ll see you all on Monday, hopefully with most of my sanity in tact and a row of shrunken heads as trophies.

[This photo contains a lot of pretty photos. Just scroll down if you don't want to read stuff.]

Before your very eyes the format of this blog is shifting. Tuesday will now be, ’til the day I die, the day I forget to charge my camera battery, or the apocalypse, ‘Photogasm Day’ (I reserve the right to change the name at a later date if it no longer suits the image I am trying to project…)

Let me tell you about the new format for Tuesday!

First, I’ll link to the new installment of whatever photography project I’m working on — which is 52 Weeks at the moment.

Then I tell you how my current photographic projects are doing. 52 Weeks is going well! I think Abi and I are both surprised that we are a) actually keeping to the Monday schedule and b) still friends. There have been a few touch-and-go moments when she’s got all diva, but mostly things have been plain-sailing! For next week, I have a great homage to Halloween planned. All I can tell you now is that it’ll involve a large pumpkin and my face. It could go monumentally wrong. Those self-portraits you see at the bottom of the page may turn out to be the last known examples of what my face looked like before the Pumpkin Incident.

Next, to excite and tantalise, I’ll tell you about any upcoming photographic stuff. Which currently… is not much. I’m pushing my boundaries though. Pointing my camera at things I wouldn’t even have glanced at previously. I have promised a few local girls (I know that makes them sound like prostitutes, but they’re not — at least as far as I know) some portrait work. Or at least photos of them. Not necessarily portraiture. And I actually want to get out on the STREETS and take some photos there, the cut and thrust, the back-alleys. I suppose I should go into London to do that, or Brighton. There’s this whoooole area of photography (photojournalism, candid portraiture) just waiting to be… shot…  and I’ve not done much of it at all — and I really should do more of it! You saw some stuff in the summer (the Ray Ban Kid), and a few last week, but other than that… not much. So you might see some pretty-local-girl photos in the coming days and weeks.

Talking of local, I also want to get some more of my photos hanging  in nearby cafes and cinemas, or galleries.

And finally, in each and every Tuesday Photogasm, there will be lots of juicy photos: ones I’ve taken in the past week, or shots I’ve dug up from the archives. Enjoy!

Note: Some of these haven’t made it to Flickr yet. Consider them an ‘exclusive’. Also, in the bird photos, are those crows, or something else?

(This one came out really red for some reason… not sure why. It’s over-exposed I think, and not perfectly-sharp. Not that I’m complaining… it’s cool! The leaves in the top right are almost the right colour, incidentally.)

This last one is the first of my ‘50mm landscapes’ — an entirely new concept for me. Landscapes… but with a telephoto lens. Makes things feel more… compressed? Compact? More detail, less negative space. Incredibly hard to take too… but I think this photo proves that the concept works, so I’ll be taking some more!

And that’s this week’s Photogasm.

[Lots of pretty photos if you scroll down. If you fancy some ranting on photography, read on...!]

As I write this it’s 4am… so, again, excuse any mistakes I might make. I feel fairly coherent, but it’s just the silence before the storm. The sleep deprivation will catch up with me in a moment and I’ll start jibber-jabbering about useless bollocks. Oh, I might start writing chiefly in British-English too, but that won’t be a problem, a’ight? It actually takes quite conscious effort to write in universal English that everyone can understand! I don’t think I’ve written ‘bloody’ even once in the last year of blogging — that’s how dedicated I am to making my blog accessible…!

The photos this week come from the last four days — I was at a LAN party, if you didn’t already know. I had a go at photo journalism. Or simply ‘people photography’ I guess.

I’ll just come out and say it: I find it so, so hard for me to point a camera at someone. Perhaps because I hate people pointing cameras at me, and I’m a deeply sympathetic person. I’m quiet, because I hate noisy people. I don’t waste other people’s time, because I hate it when people waste mine.

So… to circumvent this… I usually try to ‘work my way into’ someone’s presence. If I want to take a photo of someone, I’ll simply hang out with them for a while. And then slowly… I’ll just fade into the background. Once people are comfortable with my presence it’s much easier to take photos. This can take some work, as I’m rather foreboding — I am very much a ‘foreground’ person, as opposed to the background-occupying grey-clothing types. It’s not through choice either. I’m just 6′5″ (197cm!!), hairy and stick out like a sore thumb.

There’s probably some ‘knack’ to taking photos of people. Getting people comfortable with you pointing a camera at them must be a large part of the trick. Me being comfortable at doing the pointing is probably the other major factor… but hey, I’ll get there. I just need to take more photos of people! Easy!

These photos should give you a rough idea of what a LAN party’s like. They tell a story, I guess.

I have some other ‘bonus’ photos (of me!!) that I will throw up later today, as I want to keep this post purely LAN-oriented.

Now time to rest the ol’ noggin so that I can write legibly tomorrow…

Love ‘n bubbles, dunked and dolloped,
-S

P.S. You can hover your mouse over each photo for my notes/observations.

(Is that a boy or girl? I am still undecided…)

Photos! Of PEOPLE!

They, the victims, probably didn’t know at the time that they were going to end up on my blog, but, well… I’m not going to give you their names, and they’re all pretty people, so… it should be OK! One of them will likely be a celebrity in a year or two, so hopefully, when that occurs, I’ll be able to make a little money from the photos…

This week’s been pretty crazy. Again, the weather has been shit, so the photography has been hard work. Yesterday’s ‘Mad Mexican‘ had to be done with studio lights and reflectors, something I’m not very comfortable with. But I have to learn, so perhaps it’s good that England is currently the Land of Eternal Twilight. (Seriously, I woke up at 11am yesterday and it was actually DARK… ugh.)

But yeah, crazy: money is starting to roll in. Photography and writing work is continuing its slow but incessant dribble. Job offers and the like. Out-reaches from the tech and games sectors. It’s still early days, and I did think this would happen, but I didn’t think it would happen quite so quickly. Oh well. Certainly not going to complain…

This week’s photos come from a crazy school fair. Unlike most school fairs that occur at the peak of summer, this one’s in the winter. I don’t know why. Probably so that you can partake in the delight of roasted chestnuts and listen to the deep, throbbing lull of the tuba around the camp fire (really). My mother lured me to it by promising that people would be prancing around in weird outfits and there would be mad-sights a-plenty. But… alas… there weren’t. Just normal-looking people going about doing normal things, like… talking… and eating food.

There was a fun little event however, where literally hundreds of children made gingerbread houses. You paid a few pounds and got given a bag of gingerbread slices, a pot of white icing and a cup of candies. You then had 20 minutes to fashion a house of gingerbread and tacky, ’structural’ icing before you were man-handled out by harried-looking staff. The rooms (there were 3!) were then prepared for the next batch of keen gingerbread architects extraordinaire.

So I took photos of the gingerbread houses, the making of, and the frivolity that ensued. And I also snuck in a photo of a really cute child. Here we go:

All natural light/straight out of the camera, incidentally. The opposing windows made it rather hard to get a good photo actually. Lots and lots of reflected red/yellow light from the furniture/curtains/cakes — fun!

It is with a heavy heart that I bring you such ill news: Wednesday blog entries have now begun their solemn, shuffling gait towards the Great Blog Graveyard in the Sky.

That brings us down to just Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, with occasional posts on Friday and Saturday (but Dollhouse was axed, so I’ll have to find some other pretty girl to canvas the pages of my blog with…)

But all is not lost. This gives me more time to spend on photography and the preparation of travel plans. I have some big, longer-than-a-month-abroad ideas that I need to put serious effort into. It also gives me a little time to work on non-bloggy writing like short stories and novels. I’ve been looking at writing a novel for a while now, but with my commitments both here and over on Download Squad, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day or strength in my fingers.

Thing is… I’ve written a lot this year. It was actually my New Year’s resolution, to write every day. Originally that was ‘a blog post every day’, but obviously with commitments and jobs ever-changing, I’ve had to spread the love a little.

Did you know that I’ve written 422 blog entries this year? At an average of 800 words per entry, that’s 337,600 words. In the last 6 weeks I’ve written 40,000 words at Download Squad.

Throw in a few thousand email, comments on other blogs and forum discussions… and I think I’ve written over 500,000 words this year. Maybe more. That’s five big novels or ten crappy female novellas.

No wonder my fingers ache…

So this is me retiring Wednesday from my blogging schedule. I’ve intended to for a while — the plan was always to have a big blog post on Monday followed by photos, news commentary or random bits of wacky stuff throughout the week.

And hey, instead of writing, I’ve spent today updating the various indexes on the site. If you’re new here, it’s well worth giving the Index of Topics a look-see, or my collected Travel Stories if you prefer thrilling tales of excitement, woe and adventure. The sidebar has also been updated, which is your quick index to all things juicy. Oh, I’ve also got a bonus photo for you, because it’s now December, the festive season of giving and sharing and all that stuff.

I think this week I’ve taken more photos than any other period in my life — other than when I’m travelling of course, but it’s not really comparative. When I travel, my camera’s nearly always out — this week was my first taste of what being a working photographer might actually feel like.

The whole ooh-I’ll-just-grab-my-camera thing was obviously aided in the most part by the snow we’re currently experiencing. And the winter sun… my God, the winter sun. I assume the spectacle of the low-angle sun has something to do with our latitude — we’re fairly far north here, so in the winter, when it’s late, the sun hits the sky at a very slight angle. The colours, the pastel hue, the glorious gorgeousness that results… well, just wait and see.

Then, after that, we have the pretty girl that I’ve mentioned a couple of times. I finally turned my hand to available light portraiture, and God it’s fun, and really, really hard. You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to try it! (Photography’s a bit easy, y’see, so I yearn for anything that can spice it up a little!) I’ve taken a few photos of people in situ over the years, mostly family and very close friends, but never a proper session — just me, my camera, and her. When I arrived she hadn’t even got dressed, or done her make-up. So we chatted. I had some idea of how the patter would go. I’m good with people; charismatic, good at instilling reassurance, safety. But this was my first time, so I really had no idea what the frack to do. I kind of knew what was expected of me, a bit like sex in that regard, but I had no idea what she would do, or how it would actually play out. How about this? ‘Er, yeah! More of that!’ How about if I do something like…? <click> Props? Shall we try props? Smoking? <snap> Change of outfit? ‘Sure, I’ll just make some tea…’

And so it went. If I was using my film camera, I would’ve churned through quite a few reels. 2 hours passed way too quickly; and not once did I say ‘yeah baby, yeah!’ despite the temptation. I think I got very lucky with the model; I’ve been thinking about making her my muse. Every artist needs a muse, right?

An eclectic mix of photos follows, but I believe you will find every single one of them both delicious and easy on the eye. Each image has some notes attached; just hover over them.

(Yes, the pink you see on the horizon was even more beautiful in real life. Are you jealous?)

(I’ve been working on my black/white conversion, as you can see.)

* * *

This is just a small sample — I surprised myself with just how many good photos there were from just two hours of chatting, faffing and photographing. There’s a couple more (my favourites) up on Facebook, and I’ll probably throw some up on Flickr over the rest of the week.

I guess the obvious question is: who wants to pay me for a PHOTO SESSION?! In the comfort of your own home! You make the pretty (?) while I make the tea!

Merry Christmas! Or Winter Solstice! Whatever!

As the last few days of 2009 and the decade dribble lazily through the hourglass’s pinch of incessant, unstoppable time, my focus turns inward. I’m not prone to introversion — really, it’s sometimes a little worrying how little I stop to care; least of all care about myself. Obviously, the delicious irony is that the moment I try to think about why I don’t care, I stop caring and think about something else. I guess it’s something deep-seated; or perhaps it’s just not good to care about all the small things?

God knows I’ve done OK so far, without the over-analysis, without the stopping-to-think. Water off a duck’s back. Don’t stop in a storm or you’re liable to get drenched. Maybe nothing bad has happened to me because I’m not waiting for it to happen? We make our own luck, right?

2009 has been a fantastic year; the best of my exciting quarter decade [oops -S] of living. I feel incredibly grateful to have shared it with all of you. I have this blog to thank — or blame — for almost everything that happened to me this year. I have this blog to thank for good, for bad, and for the ugly.

I have a lot to write, and not a lot of time to do it in (damn Christmas), so I’m afraid this will spill into tomorrow’s entry, and maybe even Thursday.

From the top then:

The Good of 2009 (#1): The Blog

Let me gush for a moment; don’t try to stop me [it's late as I write this, so I might ramble]. I’ve been writing for years — but probably not as long as you think. I stopped writing creatively back when I was 16. No real reason: my interest just moved on to other things. I kept a LiveJournal through university, mostly for my family, but it wasn’t particularly deep nor was it well-written. This year… I have begun writing properly, for the first time.

Seriously, before this year, the last thing I wrote was an exam for GCSE English, aged 14. If you look back to the beginning of this blog — way back in January 2009 — you’ll notice that my, er, control of the English language has improved! I can’t read back without wincing; it’s a bit like looking at old photos with bad haircuts, I guess.

Anyway, at the start of the year I gave up my previous job, website design and programming, with the intention of writing. I didn’t really have any other ideas at the time. I just wanted to write.

Basically, I feel like I have something I should share with the world. Writing is a very good way to do that. Speaking is even better, but people that know me in real life will tell you that I’m already good at the speaking thing. I’m rambling. My hope is, by reading, that you feel slightly better off than if you didn’t read.

The Bad of 2009 (#1): No Girlfriend

Yes yes… cry me a river…

It’s now been, shit… three years since I had a girlfriend? No, it must be two… surely…

Anyway, it’s been a long time. If fault must be ascribed, I suppose it’s only fair that it should sit squarely on my shoulders. I mean… I could’ve been more proactive in the whole girlfriend-seeking thing. My mother usually chimes in around now to say ‘Seb, you won’t get a girlfriend if you never leave your room’ and she’s not wrong. If this was a New Year’s resolution thing, I’d probably be saying, at this juncture, that I need to get out more. Fortunately, it’s not yet New Year, and these aren’t my resolutions… so I won’t be getting out more.

I simply like my own company a lot more than that of other people. Sad, I agree. Perhaps I haven’t met the right person yet? (This is to do with friends too: I have no friends, thus no girlfriend.) Obviously I have to go out to have a chance at meeting the right people. Catch-22 (which is a good book by the way, if a little crazy; reading it at the moment).

Perhaps I should just travel more. I didn’t travel enough this year. Or maybe I shouldn’t work so hard so that I can get out a little more and recover the friends I once had. I do hate general ‘out’ places though: pubs and clubs are so banal, so pointless. Cinemas are a little better. Restaurants are great — but you have to get to the restaurant stage. It’s hard for me to describe, without you being inside my head, the actual issue. I won’t bother right now — let’s just leave it at ‘I like my own company’.

But I’d like someone to snuggle. Definitely. And maybe some sex. But more the snuggling. Actually, it’s more so that I have someone to bounce my crazy plans for world domination off, but let’s keep that one quiet for now.

The Ugly of 2009 (#1): Working Too Hard

Ah the double-edged blade of effort. What is too much effort? And what is not enough?

Can a man of such young years, still without a solid career, even consider the idea of working too much? Surely these are the years when I should be working my (sadly) flat ass off to make a name and a position in the world for myself.

But at the same time, I am an artist, I am creative. All work and no play. So far I’ve got by with making sure work is creativity. With my new writing job (I’m now a lead/editor!), and an urge to actually get the cogs turning on a few grandiose machinations, playtime has taken a back seat.

I can’t help but think that kicking back and enjoying well-earnt and delectable pleasures is something I ought to do. I just don’t know if I should take a break now, or in another year. I’ve done so much this year that I probably shouldn’t stop now, but I don’t want to burn out.

* * *

More tomorrow!

[In the olden days I used to always have punchy, interesting titles on my blog entries. Funny how that's kind of died down. I wonder if more people would read if I try to be sensational...]

Yesterday I began an epic journey of introspection self-actualisation. I’m trying to digest 2009 by labelling the major milestones or stand-out points as good, bad or ugly. I actually made a list on paper (I was in the car), and I couldn’t actually come up with much bad stuff. Is it really too crazy to suggest that not a single bad thing happened to me in the span of a year? Hm…

Anyway, first, a couple of photos from the archives that never made it to Flickr or this blog.

(This is about 10 minutes before the ‘pond sunset’ photos that I showed you last week. I can’t begin to describe how much I love low-angled winter sun. Look at the shadow cast by the little mounds of snow on the ground! And gawd… the colour. THE COLOUR.)

(This is an odd one, taken at around 1am, just as the snow had finished falling last week. Broken bird table in the foreground, dining room window in the background. I like it; it makes it look like we live in a castle — but it’s a bit odd.)

The Good of 2009 (#2): The Arts & Critical Analysis

This is a good, meaty one. With my daily grind shifted away from website design, my mind seems to have opened up. Perhaps it’s the equivalent of travelling to another country, but mentally. I find myself contemplating the intricacies of concepts and ideas that simply didn’t occur to me last year. It’s not like these are new thoughts either: almost all of what I write here is old ideas, with a new spin.

I’m just infinitely more capable of turning an idea over in my head to analyse all of its facets.

I want to believe that my elevated ability of critical analysis comes from reading and writing, but it might simply be the culmination of travel and life experience. Writing here certainly helps — it’s no good having revolutionary, world-agitating ideas if you can’t put them into words.

It’s definitely led me into some dark and oppressive trains of thought too. I’d never really got the whole ‘epiphany’ thing until recently, when I was sitting outside, looking up into the cosmos and trying to catch shooting stars. Woah. This thing is… big.

The Bad of 2009 (#2): Intentionally Left Blank

I told you I was really struggling to find bad things in 2009. I guess we’ll have to leave it as simply ‘no girlfriend’ then. Let’s hope this no-bad thing is a trend I can continue into 2010!

The Ugly of 2009 (#3): Photography

Now this might be a little contentious, and I might simply be worrying about nothing much at all but… the photography isn’t doing as well as I’d like. I mean, technically, I am getting better with every frame I shoot. My digital darkroom process is, in my opinion, one of the best out there. It sounds big-headed, but it’s rare that I see a photo that impresses me more than my own. It does happen of course — but… I am not as amazed by commercial, successful photographers as I ought to be.

I look at magazine covers and shrug. Editorial photos… hit and miss. Even the old standard, the music magazine front covers… mediocre. There are still some stand-out photos of course, but they are rare. Why don’t I have their job instead?

But then I consider how lucky I was to get my writing job. Many people struggle for years or decades before they get a big break. I think photography (as fine art) is the same. It’s not like I am taking commercial/paparazzi photos. It’s not like I am taking portraits of figureheads or celebrities.

And then I look at a frickin’ copy of the National Geographic. I think, in total, over 10 years of reading NG, I’ve seen about five bad photos.

I’m lumping this one under ‘ugly’ because I’m simply not sure if I’m doing well or not. I have an optimistic feeling that my photographic efforts will pay off in 2010, but there’s a chance it won’t happen for years and years… and that’s something I should be prepared for!

I didn’t pick up a camera to be famous or successful though. I picked up a camera eight years ago because I wanted an excuse to push me outside, away from my computers. If I was still only measuring myself by that meter, it’s been a resounding success. Unfortunately, I’ve now had a taste of just how good I could be as a photographer… and now I want to be BIG.

* * *

I think I’m done here. But something might pop up on Thursday, we’ll see!

Yeah right, like I would make an entire post about something as dry as my new year’s resolutions! You must’ve realised by now that I rarely blog in that way. It’s more like a timeless classic ’round these parts of the Internet: if you picked a random entry from the archives, chances are you wouldn’t be able to place it. Chances are, it would be a rant that really has nothing to do with the day it was written.

Except for posts like these. There are cultural customs that one is expected to pander (cater?) to. It’s just not done to skip the Christmas greeting card or message of goodwill. It would be like not bringing a celebratory birthday cake to school, or not saying ‘bless you’ when someone sneezes in England. I’m could get away without singing Auld Lang Syne – but not telling you my new year’s resolutions? I’m simply not that cruel.

It’s often said that new year’s resolutions can be as wild or as crazy as you like, but they should be, by some measure, attainable. I think some people will say that it’s good to have a mad, seemingly-unreachable target — something you can’t possibly do in one year — but I think that’s more of a goal. A resolution is an agreement you make with yourself. It’s something about you that will change in the coming year. I guess they are little steps towards a grander goal.

I was thinking earlier (I know, scary)… and my mind turned to the subject of apathy. It’s a state of indifference, ambivalence — not caring one way or the other. Steak or pasta; who cares. We don’t start off like that, you know. From a very young age we know exactly what we want and when we want it. Spaghetti now. Toys now. Walking now. Learning to talk now.  In each of these endeavours we nearly always succeed. It’s a mix of parental supervision and guidance, and our own force of will — but we do it because we’re not aware of failure being an option.

But then we fail. We fall, we tumble, we hurt ourselves — we fail spectacularly, pick ourselves back up and carry on. But it takes its toll, those failures. Eventually we become apathetic towards a single cause — food, finding love, whatever — and then other causes, and eventually we wither away into nothingness.

All because of a few pesky failures that snowball. We make a mountain out of millions of mole hills and then we die. Mors ultima linea rerum est.

That’s basically life laid out in its entirety. There’s some other stuff in there too, but mostly it’s just a path, route, litany or culmination of failures.

What if we don’t fail?

What if we never hurt ourselves or suffer hunger or have our heart broken… would life then be really, really grand? I think so.

That’s the whole point of new year’s resolutions: ‘This is a list of things I will not fail at for an entire year.’ I suppose, if you’re good at it, those things could stick for ever, leaving you with a new list of resolutions each year. Slowly but surely you could become a better, happier person.

The key of course is making resolutions that are actually possible.

Back to the original thought: how many people are living a life they don’t want or are unhappy with? How many people wanted to be a fireman but aren’t or can’t? How about those that simply want to be in love, in a happy relationship, but haven’t succeeded? I can’t begin to imagine how empty that feeling of failure (or loss?) must be.

Make a resolution that you can keep, that pushes you towards something you’ve always wanted to be or do. Then take another step. And another!

In that frame of mind, here are my resolutions for 2010:

• Hang photos in a gallery, or exhibition of my work
• Write a kick-ass short story
• Find a pliable, wholesome woman to have my wicked way with
• Visit a new continent and experience new civilizations… to boldly go…!

Last week I said that if no one else wrote a review, I would — and as it turns out, there’s still just a bunch of previews but nothing substantive. Yes, it has 1080p HD video recording capabilities, yes it has a shiny-almost-Canon-7D-18-megapixel sensor… but no one’s commented on what it feels like. Specs are only a tiny portion of the story — so here’s a hands-on review of the new Canon 550D.

Note: Don’t expect a highly-technical review. No doubt professional sites like DPReview will get to that in due course. This is all subjective. There are no chromatic aberration graphs, or side-by-side comparisons. Just some test shots, some video, and my (fairly) expert opinion. I’ve also never done this before, so the format might be a bit weird. Stick with me though, I should cover most of the important stuff!

You can skip directly to the sample photos, if you want to see some evidence of the new CMOS sensor and metering system, or the gains in high-ISO performance.

Gear Used

Camera: Canon 550D (also known as the Digital Rebel T2i in America, or the Kiss X4 Digital in Japan). Costs about £700, body-only, or £800 with the kit lens. Due to imports/exchange rates, it’s a lot cheaper to buy in the US (about $800 for the body only).

Lenses: Sigma 50mm f1.4 (around £400), and the Sigma 10-20mm f4-5.6 (also around £400). I’m actually a bit of a prime lens snob, but I’m still waiting for an APS-C sensor 10mm prime lens… you hear me, Canon, Sigma? Anyway, both lenses are best-in-class… as long as you get a good sample (I’m not going to go into the variety of Sigma’s output here…)

Initial Impressions

Before the 550D, I used a 450D for my ‘every day’ and on-the-move photography (travel, mostly). The 550D is identical to the 450D — weight, shape, balance, etc. The body seems to have a slightly different finish, and the grip is a little ‘grippier’. In more detail:

(500D on the left, 550D on the right)

The trigger: The button itself is a little harder to depress; slightly more ‘clicky’. Not ‘hard’ to operate though, just a little more… affirmative.

The buttons in general: No doubt the change to the trigger is due to an overhaul of all the buttons on the camera. The buttons on the back of the camera are now flat, making them quite a lot easier to use (though they take some getting used to!) There’s also a new ‘record’ button up by the eyepiece, to go with the camera’s video capabilities. Personally I still have a few issues hitting the depth-of-field-test button, but I think that’s due to my huge hands.

Other bits: In all other ways, it’s identical to the 450D (and 500D, I believe). There’s a new HDMI output, below the USB output, and an audio input (mic) above — and also a microphone on the front; for the video capabilities. Oh, it uses a new kind of battery too, the LP-E8 — so you’ll need new batteries, and a new grip too (lame!)

Photos

[Sample images are at the end]

The most important bit! (Unless you’re buying it for the 1080p HD video thing, anyway — that’s a bit further down the page). Does the 550D take good photos? ‘Hell yes’ would be the easy answer, but let me break it down a bit.

Resolution: Yup, more megapixels — up to 18 million effective pixels now, or 5134 x 3456. The RAW files are about 25MB, so you might need to get a new memory card!

Image quality (IQ): Better than the 450D, but I can’t compare it to the ‘identical’ sensor of the 7D. There are reports of it producing very, very similar photos to the 7D, despite Canon saying that the sensor is ‘not the same’. Of course you don’t get the weather sealing, but at half the price and half the weight… who am I to complain. The 550D uses ‘gapless micro lenses’ infront of the CMOS sensor, increasing the quality and sensitivity of every pixel. This in turn opens up ‘extended ultra-high ISO’ settings (more on that in a second).

Shooting: Continuous frames-per-second seems about the same as the 450D, despite the new DIGIC 4 processor — the listed speed is 3.7FPS, but if you shoot in RAW-only mode it will reach 6FPS! There’s all the standard options — RAW, JPEG, RAW + JPEG, etc. — but there’s currently no RAW support for Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop. The Canon Digital Photo Professional RAW processing tools are OK, but lack the depth of Adobe’s Camera RAW.

Metering, auto focus, and exposure compensation & bracketing: While we still only get the 9-point auto-focus (damnit!), there is a new ‘iCFL’ metering system in use, inherited from the Canon 7D. Basically, each of the 9 focus points collect a lot more information that’s then used to more-accurately expose your photos. From my tests, it does seem to be better and more reliable  than the 450D — but it’s pretty hard to test empirically. The AEB (exposure compensation/bracketing) now lets you go from -5 to +5, in steps of 1/2 or 1/3 — pretty neat, if you shoot into bright lights a lot (stage/theatre photography, in my case).

Custom functions: Some of the juicy high-end custom functions make their Rebel debut:  ’ISO expansion’ and ‘noise reduction’. With more pixels rammed every closer together, noise increases and image quality generally degrades — enter TECHNOLOGY! How better to counter technology issues with yet more technology? First, there’s ‘ISO expansion’ that lets you shoot at up to 12800 ISO speed, i.e. almost complete darkness with a large-aperture prime. There’s also on-camera noise reduction that seems to perform a lot better than the on-computer equivalent — you can enable noise reduction for all high-ISO shots, or just for long exposures. If you’ve used a digital camera in the dark, you’ve probably noticed the noise that creeps in — these new functions go a long way to making digital cameras better for night-time photography.

THE DAMN SHUTTER: The shutter is still loud enough to scare children from 100 meters. It’s a bit quieter than the 450D but not by much. Why does Canon give us such a noisy mirror mechanism when they’re capable of so much better? Lame.

Video

No doubt you’ve heard about the Canon 550D’s video capabilities. It was only a matter of time before the functionality dripped down from the 5D, to the 7D, and ultimately the 550D — you can now get a full-HD 1080p digital camera for just £700… crazy! And it’s pretty damn good at it too. Check out this little video clip:

Excuse the bed hair, but still — did you try it at 1080p? Full screen? (If your computer will even render it…) Anyway, the video functionality, in more detail:

HD, 1080p, 720p, etc: You can shoot video in all sorts of ways, with the 550D. Canon have learnt their mistake from the earlier video-shooting SLRs and given the 550D a full array of options: 1080p at 24/25fps (NTSC/PAL), 720p at 50/60FPS, and even a ‘digital zoom’ 640×480 resolution (which is kinda fun). Video clips are capped at 29 minutes and 59 seconds, which is 4GB at full 1080p.

Video quality (VQ?): I’m nothing more than an avid, amateur film maker, but the reaction of those that have seen my test 550D videos have been universally great. It’s simply flawless, 1920 x 1080 video. Just like usual film-making, the lens matters a lot. I’m not sure how else I can rate the video quality… it does exactly what it says on the box; that’s it.

Audio quality: The 550D has a forward-facing monaural microphone. It’s surprisingly good, though I haven’t tried it ‘at a distance’ — I can’t imagine it’s particularly directional. You can also hear a lot of noise from the wind in one my other videos. It was really, really windy though. Anyway, it’s more than enough for indoors and self-documenting work. There’s also an input for an external microphone (3.5mm jack).

Other bits: Video recording on an SLR is definitely a two-person thing. There’s no auto-focus, you see — well, there is, before you start shooting, but not once you press ‘record’. So you need a tripod, and depending on how bright it is, you might be trying to stay in a very shallow focus plane (look at my other test video to see how shallow the f1.4 focus is!) By default video recording is in ‘full auto’ mode, which basically chooses the ISO/aperture to match your framerate (24, 25, 50 or 60 FPS). You can switch it to ‘manual’, if you need to force a particularly wide/shallow depth of field.

Everything Else (appendix)

There are a few things that don’t really impact your use of the camera but are still worth noting, if only for a sake of completeness.

There’s a new LCD screen: It’s very nice, with lots of pixels and less glare than the 450 or 500D. It’s also the first 3:2 screen — i.e. wide-screen — so your images aren’t shrunk-to-fit any more! The new LCD screen is a real joy.

The digital menus have been enhanced: You can now access more ‘buttons’ through software — hit the new ‘Q’ button and you can change things via the LCD screen. Overall the menus are unchanged (though very busy, with all of the new video recording options), but with the new screen there’s some more real estate that is well-utilized.

Embed copyright info into your images: One of the smaller features to find its way from the higher-end Canon cameras is the ability to add your name and a custom copyright notification/message to every image your camera produces. It’s stored in the EXIF data for each image. Pretty neat!

Sample Images

I’ve only had the camera for a few days, so I haven’t had a chance to try every kind of condition yet. I’ll try to add more to this little gallery over the next few days and weeks. The various improvements to the sensor and the addition of some custom functions to the 550D are generally tailored towards more extreme use — low-light, especially. There’s also ‘Highlight Tone Priority’ (another custom function), but I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet — 7D users are reporting great results though, especially for candid/external portrait photography (weddings), so the 550D is probably just as good in that regard.

These photos are all taken on either the Sigma 50mm f1.4, or 10-20mm f4-5.6 lenses, and are straight out of the camera. Click for larger versions.

(Simulated fire, 50mm @ f/1.4, ISO-6400. Close up on the right)

Wide-angle night-time, City of London (The Royal Exchange), 12mm @ f/5, ISO-1600.

Just standard overcast light, 50mm, ISO-100, large aperture. Metering looking good.

Photo on the left looks a bit bright (but it’s accurate). Metering on the right looks pretty spot on, with dark/bright elements!

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If you have any questions about the camera, feel free to leave a comment — I’ll reply.