There are good photo days and there are bad photo days. On Wednesday, I had a semi-good one, when I took the 300D for a spin in a nearby park. I brought a Canon EF 80-200mm zoom lens with me, nice if you’re planning to get a little bit closer to something without that something really noticing it. Said something might be stuff like birds or sunbathing babes. I know that you would of course prefer that I took pictures of the babes, but I’m a little bit out of shape these days, meaning that I can’t run as fast as I should be able to if I’m going to take that kind of pictures. Either that, or I have to get a better zoom lens. Besides, I post Cali es Cali shots for you every day now, that should be more than enough.

So, to sum it up, I ended up taking pictures of birds. From the little photography theory I know, taking pictures with a zoom lens brings up certain challenges. First of all, you have to keep the camera very stable, or the picture will get blurry. Using a tripod is preferred, but I didn’t bring mine. Second - I might be wrong on this one, I’m not sure - the higher the zoom, the more light you need. You can compensate by decreasing the aperture (thus reducing the depth of field) or increasing the shutter time (making it even harder to get sharp images), or increasing the ISO value (which might give you more digital noise in the picture). It wasn’t really a problem on Wednesday, because I was outside and there was more than enough natural light. The main challenge was to keep the camera stable and to use mind control to make the birds stand still for a few seconds.

I ended up with a few decent pictures, but nothing I’ll post here. I also went outside with the Rebel yesterday, but that was a really bad photo day.

Working from home today, the weather seems a little bit unstable and it’s not really necessary for me to bike down to the office today anyway.