Lens focal lengths from 16mm fish eye up to 420mm telephoto

On a fine Summer's day last year in my village, I decided to see what the range of every lens in my collection was. I took a picture with each one and combined them into this 50 second clip. . .

At the start, I used my EOS 5D MKII and the Russian Zenitar 16mm fish eye. After the 300 mm  I switched to my EOS 7D to make use of the crop factor which gave me an effective 420 mm focal length.

Since doing this test, I have sold my old 300mm and my 70 - 200 zoom. They've been replaced by the Canon EF 100 - 400L  zoom so I may have to repeat it again!

Thanks for reading.

200@f13

Due to difficulties in getting a passport for our little one this year, we decided to take our holiday in Switzerland.

I've travelled lots in this country due to my job but have rarely have I ventured into the Italian region known as Tessin. We booked a week's stay in a guest house in the village of Vellano. From here we had easy access to the major cities of Lugano, Locarno and Bellinzona.

Vellano is a tiny village of stone houses and bumpy streets. It is accessible by winding mountain roads and has stunning views of the mountains.

View from the hotel window

Typical street in Vellano

The big cities hold very little interest to me photographically except perhaps for Bellinzona which has three castles and a massive city wall that you can explore both inside and out.

In Lugano, I only took one small series of photos. These were of a typical (to me anyway) Italian style delicatessen.

Italian Deli in Lugano

More of interest to me personally were the old villages, churches and stunning scenery which abound in Tessin. I love old world / mediaeval scenery and buildings and in Tessin, I was amply rewarded.

Not really knowing what to expect, I took the following gear with me:

Eos 5d

Eos 7d

16mm fisheye

50mm f1.8

17 - 40 zoom

28 - 135 IS

70 - 200

420 EX II Speedlite

Benbo tripod

G-clamp mini tripod

This stuff weighed a ton and my back started hurting me.

At the end of the third day, I was looking at my images and realised that the vast majority were taken with the EOS 5d and the 17 - 40.

For the rest of the holiday I left all the other stuff out of sight in the boot of the car and only took this combination together with the Speedlite and the mini G-clamp tripod with me in a small

rucksack. My back feels normal again.

You've probably read this far and are wondering why this blog entry is titled "200@f13". The reason is this. The weather in Tessin was beautiful. Blue skies and lots of sun. When I have these conditions, I always set my camera to 200 ISO with the settings at... you've guessed it, 1/200 sec @ f13. Later when I am converting the RAW data I can select all images taken with this setting and apply the same small corrections to all of them. Normally the settings are a tweak of the highlight control to bring out any white puffy clouds and maybe a nudge of the shadow control to prevent the shadows going too black when I've been shooting in the midday overhead sun.

That's the technical bit done. If you ever have the opportunity to visit Tessin, I would heartily recommend the following places to visit or take pictures:

Gandria

Morcote

Sonvico

If you want to see any more of the images that I took, you can check out this link which shows the ones that will be included in Google Earth

There are of course many more places to see, explore and photograph and I know for certain that I'll be returning.

Thanks for reading.

Lens coverage

I often get friends asking me what type of lens to buy after they have bought a new shiny digital SLR. A lot of them have switched over from an old analogue model to a new digital body.

A friend asked me last week to recommend a lens for her. She found that the wideangle lens which came bundled with her EOS 550d wasn't wide enough.

"Would you recommend that I get myself a 24mm?" she asked

I knew then that she had probably previously owned an analogue SLR.

"A 24 mm lens on your camera would be equivalent to a 38mm on your old SLR" I told her.

"How is that?" she asked.

Well to cut a long story short. I explained to her about the coverage provided by the APS-c sensor in her camera compared to the sensor in my camera (an EOS 5d)

"Your camera's sensor magnifies the centre part of the picture by 1.6, where as mine uses all of the picture."

I showed her this little chart that I put together. The pictures were taken one after the other using the same lenses my EOS 5d and my new 7d. The figures in brackets refer to the magnification factor from the 7d, so for example, the 300mm on a 7d body is "equivalent" to a 480mm lens on my 5d.

This simple chart explains more than reading about it on the 'net.

She is now looking for a 16mm Sigma lens which will be equivalent to a 25mm wideangle.

When I bought my first digital EOS (a 20d), the widest lens in my arsenal was a 24mm. For someone doing architecture, this was useless, giving the coverage equal to a 38mm. I forked out for a 20mm but this was also too limiting, being equal to a 32mm. So I sold that lens and bought the very lovely Canon EF 17 - 40L. I also bought a full frame body to be able to use it effectively as the widest setting was only like using a 27mm!

This means that my lens collection now goes from a 16mm to a 300mm, but when I use both bodies, taking into account, the magnification factor, the focal length of the longest lens is increased to 480mm

Well. It's now nearly the weekend. Time to charge up your batteries and take some photos. As usual I welcome your comments and emails.

Have yourselves a great weekend.

Poppies

I took this last year in the next village to where I live. I really enjoy photographing poppies. I've set myself a small task. I'm going to try and get something a bit different this year and am going to limit myself to only using my fisheye lens.