Pick a lens, any lens...

...and use just this one lens, for an entire day. Now, I'm not talking an 18-250mm... because I'm sure we could all survive (if we really had to!) with a standard walk-around lens alone... I mean choose a macro, or a fisheye, or a super long telephoto... the type of lens that is usually reserved for quite specific subjects and/or events. I've read of this before, in a 'tips and tricks' section of one of the magazines I subscribe to, and this week I finally tried it. My project, so to speak, was to spend the day with my Lensbaby 2.0 (http://lensbaby.ca/), and what a project it was. The focal length is about 50mm, and the aperture is fixed according to which disc is used - making the shutter speed completely my responsibility. Add into the mix the fact that I particularly enjoy photographing my friends while they are engaged in some sort of sporting activity... and you have a very interesting day of picture taking! It took a few tries to gage the distances I needed to frame things properly, and moving back and forth from shade to sun resulted in two or three practice images each time to achieve the right exposure. Overall, it was quite a bit of fun, and in the end I came up with a few really neat pics. You should try it sometime!

Cheers.

Photo Browsing...

I've talked before about the RAW formats that can be used on my camera. And I decided that I prefer to leave my camera setting on Pentax's 'PEF' as opposed to the generic 'DNG'. The only thing I've always been a bit disappointed about, when it comes to the Pentax Photo Browser/Laboratory, is that when going through an initial viewing/editing of my RAW files, there is no delete function in the browser. This means that I either have to mark the files I do not wish to keep and batch delete them later, or close down the viewing window and delete the pictures one at a time. Very time consuming. So. Imagine my excitement when I recently downloaded Picasa 3... and found that it will browse my RAW files AND allow me to delete as I go!! It is fantastic!! Not to mention, it is free!! I still use the camera software to do my final editing, but Picasa 3 has cut my pre-edit time in half at least. How convenient! This great Google-based tool will view pretty much any RAW files, and it also has some basic editing capabilities which work well in a pinch. Considering that it doesn't cost anything, it's an impressive little program and I highly recommend it!
Cheers!

http://picasa.google.com/