DSLR and First Impressions

I have not posted anything for a while. No, I do not intend to give up blogging. I was very busy with my work at the end of the last year. I did not have enough time even to go to take shots.

Also, I bought my first DSLR camera. I was content with SX10; I just wanted to move forward. I gave up smoking; therefore, my wife could not stop me. I am joking. Of course, she could. However, we had a deal about giving up smoking. In short, I have a Canon 500D (or Rebel Ti1 or Kiss X3) camera kit. The kit contained Canon 18-55/F3.5-5.6 EF-S IS lens. Many people say it is not worth buying this lens. However, its price was very low because of the kit.

My first impression was rather ambivalent. I liked the focus related functions of the SX10. Now, I have small black dots, which turns into red if the get the focus. By default, all of these dots are active. It means that the focus will be set on the closest object. Is not it very useful? As soon as I could, I made only the central AF point active. It gave me a bit more comfort. Changing the active AF point is not difficult. I am able to do it with viewfinder on my eye.

So, I had only one lens. It is indeed limited possibility in comparison with the SX10. All serene! I like landscape shots. I mentioned I was very busy; therefore, I could take my camera late afternoon. Soon, I realized that my old tripod is not suitable for the new DSLR. The moving mirror of the camera made the tripod shake. Yes, there is a mirror lockup function. I did not know of this feature that time and it is not the most comfortable method the prevent camera shake.

I tried to take shot holding the camera with AUTO ISO settings. It gave unbelievable good result. The shot above was taken with ISO 1600.

I liked the colors also. The shots taken with 500D contain more colors than I could achieve with SX10. One of my favorite shots was about the benches of course.

The colors were great. The sharpness is another problem. In certain conditions, the image can be sharp using this lens. In certain conditions... I read interesting articles about the unbelievable great sharpness of this lens. It is called “To people saying 18-55 is not sharp enough.”. You can read it on flickr. The author of the article showed some captures as an evidence. The only problem is that images having small size are always sharp. Examining the shot in its real size, hmm, well, maybe, the sharpness will go away. From the other hand, if this kit lens were so great, nobody would buy more expensive lens.

I like these lens and I have some nice shots taken with it. Just, I suppose there are better lenses.