Thursday, February 21, 2008

Total Lunar Eclipse


Total Lunar Eclipse
Originally uploaded by theowl84
This night there was a big show on the sky. A total lunar eclipse over Graz, Austria. But when I got up at 3 a.m. I was very disappointed. There were clouds all over. So I went back to sleep until shortly before 4 am. Again, I went to my window and looked outside. I could see the moon, but only a slice of it. Then it disappeared.
A few moments later it was back on the sky. All clouds were gone and the moon turned red. That's what I wanted to see. I kept taking pictures for more than one hour until the earth moved away and the sun touched the moon again.
Interestingly, as soon as the moon started to reflect the sun's light, the clouds were visible again.

This was one of the days where I was happy to have my Canon EOS 400D camera with all the lenses I have got. For this picture I used the Vivitar 400mm f/5.6 with and without a 2x Minolta Teleconverter and my Canon EF 28-105mm USM lens. I needed to set the ISO to 800 most of the time as I the earth turns very fast when using a 800mm lens.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

My Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens


Beautiful Sunset on Schlossberg
Originally uploaded by theowl84
I was asking myself if I really need a fixed focal lens and if so, how much it should cost. After almost a month I decided to get myself a Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens. I didn't want to get the cheaper f/1.8 as I read that it's build quality isn't that good. And in addition to that I already have a 58mm filter, so the f/1.4 was a perfect fit there. Another plus was the USM focus, which I am used to from my Canon EF 28-105 USM lens. I don't want to miss that anymore.
So I decided to go for that lens. As it isn't that much cheaper on the used marked, I got mine from Amazon.
Last weekend I went on a photo trip with my Canon EOS 400D and my new lens. I tried it out in various situations. And I have to say, I am impressed by it's sharpness, how fast it is in both light and focusing speed and when using it with the 400D's x1.6 crop factor, you can use it for almost any situation.
The thing that I love most about it is that it allows digital zooming on my computer. As almost every pixel is sharp, it's no problem cropping the picture to about 10% of size and still get a good quality picture.
If you like to view more of the pictures I've taken with the lens, take a look at my flickr-page.