Little Gators

More Canon XSi (450D) Photos

Yes, nothing like a New Toy to get the Old Boy out of a photo-slump. Pretty soon you'll be tired of seing these.

The rainbow picture was just a grab shot through my windshield on the way home Wednesday. The rest are from my walk from the Light Rail to work via Baltimore's Inner Harbor.

Canon XSi (450D) Photos

I got up an hour earlier today so that I could slowly wander the 3/4 mile from my Light Rail stop to work and take photos along the way with my brand-new Canon XSi.

Although I had my other two lenses with me, I stuck with the new kit lens, an 18-55mm EF-S IS (image-stablized) lens, in order to see how it performs.

I was very pleased with both the camera and lens; no doubt, some of this was due to the New Toy Effect. But several things jumped out at me:

First and foremost, compared to my old "original" 2003 Digital Rebel (D300), the camera comes to life instantly. The D300 took 2-1/2 seconds to "wake up." That is, when you first turned it on, it would take that long to be ready to shoot. Also, whenever it went to sleep to save power, usually after a minute or two of inactivity, it would again take 2-1/2 seconds to wake up. The XSi, on the other hand, comes alive instantly, both from a cold start and after a period of inactivity. All it takes is a half-press of the shutter button.

I've missed quite a few good shots, especially doing event photography, with the D300 because of the wake-up time. Now, it turns out this isn't something you need to buy the XSi for - each model subsequent to the D300 has had this: the XT, XTi, and now the XSi. It's a function of the improved image processing electronics since the D300.

On the other hand, one thing that is new to the XSi is Auto ISO. This means that I can walk around and the camera figures out, from the lighting conditions, shooting mode, and other factors, where to set the ISO "film speed." Before, I would usually set it at 400 and leave it there; for the sunny morning today, the XSi set it for me at 200. If I had continued taking photos indoors, it would probably have bumped it up for me as necessary. Very cool! This feature is something Nikon has had for a while, and it's about time Canon adopted it (I believed it first showed up in Canon's 40D.)

Canon Digital Rebel XSi

After almost five years of using my Canon Digital Rebel (the original model,) I just replaced it with a new Digital Rebel XSi (also called 450D.) Ben now has my hand-me-down Rebel, which still works fine.

I didn't get my hands on my new camera until arriving home from work today, so I charged the battery while I mowed the lawn, had dinner, and then took a few test shots.

Here's one of my first test shots. I wanted to see how well the Image Stabilization (IS) works - and it seems to work fine. This is the whole .jpg, untouched, shot at 1/20 sec and f/7.1 zoomed out to 55mm. This is equivalent to 90mm on 35mm, so normally, you'd want to hand-hold at 1/90 sec or higher, so shooting at 1/20 sec represents about two f-stops. The Auto-ISO function picked ISO 800 for this one.

Here's a 100% crop centered on the point of focus. Bear in mind that this looks much larger than the writing is in real life. Note that you can see the half-tone pattern in the background. I'd say the IS eliminated shake completely.

Here's the classic self-portrait-in-mirror that every photographer, from rank novice to professional, seems compelled to take.

I set the camera for ISO 1600, the camera's highest setting, to see if the images would be usable at this level of sensitivity. In this case, I adjusted levels in Photoshop to improve the color, but I did no sharpening. In general, I'd say this image is very usable. Exposure was 1/40 sec at f/5.7, with the lens at 36mm.


Here's a 100% crop of a portion of the ISO 1600 photo. Notice that even with the levels adjustment, the noise isn't all that bad. Don't forget, if this were an 8x10 print, you'd have to look with a very strong magnifier to see this level of detail.


For comparison, here is a 100% crop where Auto ISO set the ISO at 800. Exposure was 1/16 sec at f/5.7, also at 36mm. Here, I adjusted levels and used unsharp mask to first do contrast sharpening and then general sharpening.

So far, so good! I'll take some real photos over the next few days and report back.

Quackers - Riding the DUKW in Philly

Sandy, Mom and I headed up to Philly yesterday to visit our babies, Leah and Ben (now 26 and 22.) The kids wanted to go on a "Ride the Ducks" tour of Philadelphia for their recent birthdays, so that's what we did.

The "Ducks" are really WWII DUKW amphibious trucks - you can read all about them here. Several cities, including Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, and Bramson have commerical operations that take people on street-and-water tours. The Philly tour is excellent at 70 minutes long, with 20 minutes in the Delaware river.


Here, another DUKW off our starboard bow passes under the Ben Franklin Bridge as we head back to shore. Now, if you imagine the bridge not being there, the DUKW painted in olive drab, the sunshade gone, the DUKW being full of troops instead of tourists, hundreds more DUKWs instead of just the one, the weather being much, much worse, the water much choppier, shells exploding all around, and machine gun fire raking the water, why it would be just like D-Day.

As a child of the late '50s and '60s, I'm a big Three Stooges fan. So you can bet I was impressed when our DUKW tour guide pointed out the birthplace of Louis Feinberg, aka Larry Fine.

Being, to borrow a phrase from John McCain, "old as dirt," I actually saw the stooges, including Larry, live in 1962 at Gwynn Oak Amusement Park in Baltimore. The Stooges by then were already in their 60's but put on a fully animated show for us kids that, to our delight, showed no respect for their age.

Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk-nyuk-nyuk!

Capitan Miranda

Capitan Miranda is a Uraguayan naval training ship currently visiting Baltimore.

That's Southern for Seder...

Yes, this post is almost two months late - this seder was on the first night of Passover, April 19th. But I wanted to show off Aunt Andi's seder table - definitely the nicest one I've ever seen.

The exquisite job of napkin-folding was courtesy of my wife, Sandy, who flew down to Birmingham, AL, a day early to help Andi with preparations. The rest of us (Mom, Leah, Ben and I) came down Friday afternoon.

It was a short trip, but worth every second, since we got to see Andi and my Cyber-Uncle Joe, first cousin Brian and his lovely wife Lisa.


To mark this as an official seder, Mom supervised the baking of one of her famous mandeltorten; you can see Leah and Ben here as Ben takes a bite. It's amazing - covered with a thick layer of chocolate and raspberry jam between the two layers. The cake itself is made from almond meal, and therefore strictly Kosher for Passover.