More from Uvas

It takes me an average of 15 minutes a photo to work out the entire pictures..

Focus on green leaves and grass, water streaks, rocks, bridges etc, skylight on individual basis and then apply all the elements to the landscape photograph.

This is no different from the teeth whitening, red eye reduction, skin wrinkle removing, eye lash sharpening and putting these elements in a portrait photo.

Still feel it is too long. Have to figure out how to automate some of these tasks!

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Uvas Canyon

We visited Uvas Canyon State Park near Morgan Hill last Sunday with the Cousins. Was in two minds to go on Sunday as there was an early flight to catch on Monday morning, but went anyways.

We walked around for 5+ hours through the park and covered multiple waterfalls and walked along creeks. It was a very pleasant day and we thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon enjoying nature.

This was my first trip with the Canon 5D Mark II with the L series lens and most importantly the Manfrotto tripod.

The pictures have improved by leaps and bounds compared to the old broken tripod and the 400D + sigma lens combination. Not that those were bad photographs but yours truly has learned a lot of tricks since that trip two years ago..

Here are a few pictures.. (the second and fourth Images are HDR composites of 5 images taken at -2.0, -1.0, 0, +1 and +2 Exposures respectively and then tone adjusted in Photoshop)

Seriously thinking of getting a photo site..

Any suggestions?

Bang on Target

More matching dresses, courtesy of the local Target store and the kids school for making their own "tie-dye" shirts..

Goes without saying that the kids will give me one good pose and one "kurangu" (monkey) pose for every photo shoot.. Apparently that is their norm.. the photographer just found out about this today.

They make great models. Was worried that the 5D has developed a focus issue of sorts but after cleaning the lenses and mounting pins carefully, looks like there are no big issues..

Whew!

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Portrait lens

Photography forums usually tout an 85mm prime lens or a 100mm prime lens as "the" portrait lens to swear by, but the 70-200 f2.8 L with the extender 2x ii gives me amazing sharpness and fantastic Bokeh even in cloudy situations..

The little one posed for me a few minutes ago (originally brought the camera out to catch the backyard squirrel jumping off the trees but it proved too difficult for a hand held shot and that brought out the model) and junior joined in briefly for a shot..

This lens is so cool that I am having issues deleting shots off the hard drive to save photos! Want to keep every shot.

Tomorrow evening.. Hornets! Found a nest near the front yard and two big hornets. Will see how they pose..

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Arrival of the Extender

The 70-200mm f2.8 L was to be accompanied by a Canon EF 2x ii Extender which is actually a tele-converter that makes the:

70 -200 f2.8 into a
140-400 f5.6

It did not arrive with the lens before the long weekend trip but made its debut today.

Tried it on some usual subjects in the backyard and it is fantastic.

A shot of the backyard baby squirrel with the lens set to 200 mm (equates to 400mm zoom)..

Very happy.. no, make that ecstatic!

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