I’ve now had that lens for almost a year. My final purchase was the EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM, which I bought at a discounted price at what I consider a reasonably good deal. After our US holiday I again used took some statistics and compared them to my previous to-date statistics. All things considered, the statistics look very similar, meaning my usage pattern has not changed much at all with the shorter zoom lens.

It’s quite easy to see here that with the lens now covering 24-105mm (instead of the previous 18-200mm), I’m running into exactly the same problem I previously had. That is, I frequently use the lens as wide as it can go and as zoomed-in as possible. The larger red bar on the right, at 110mm, basically covers the same usage pattern from the blue bars from 130-200mm.

So, what about the ISO usage? With a lens that is—in theory—faster, I should be able to use a lower ISO for a larger percentage of the time.

It seems two things have happened here. The first is that I’ve used the camera in a similar pattern to my previous usage patterns. the second is that I’ve been able to use the “in-between” ISO settings more. The ISO100 usage pattern drop is odd, but given how small it is, I don’t think it is anything odd. Perhaps I’ve been using ISO100 in situations where it was not the most appropriate setting previously, or I’m trying to capture images at higher shutter speeds.

For our upcoming holiday to the Balkans, I have purchased a different camera, with a sensor that is supposedly more sensitive at the same ISO settings are previous, and also has a capability of using much higher ISO settings, it will be interesting to see what my usage patterns look like after this next trip.

Before looking at numbers or usage, I decided whether I wanted to simply replace the unit I have or buy something else. As I am primarily purchasing a lens for travel, having one lens is still a must. As patient as Justine is when we’re out and I’m taking photos, I just couldn’t imagine adding the requirement of swapping out lenses to the mix. Ideally, I’d have two cameras and two lenses, but this is not a realistic proposition for me, at least right now.

I like the lens I have now, it gives me the ability to frame shots in camera (which many purists call lazy, but when you’re visiting somewhere once, I just want to be able to get the shot and get it right) and the long zoom range helps out with that foreground or background blur I so love. A wide aperture would also achieve that but since I need a lens with a wide range of focal lengths it’s not as viable. So, how do I use my “main” lens? Do I exclusively use it zoomed in to get the lovely bokeh — as all the cool kids call it — or do I only take wide shots? The numbers will obviously be skewed by a few factors, such as taking shots intended for use as panoramas (though if I had a wider lens, perhaps I would take fewer of those), as well as re-factoring and re-shooting with slightly different settings.

All the statistics were generated from my Lightroom database, using the free ImageReporter application to give me the numbers. I then plotted the data using Google Spreadsheet. Roughly 24,000 shots were used, with 15,000 of those being from holidays and the remainder other usage. I figured seeing all my usage, as well as holiday and non-holiday would give a good snapshot of how I use my lens. I only selected photos from my Canon ESO350D and the 18-200mm lens I use almost exclusively.

To start, I had a look at how I use the ISO settings. I figured this would give a good indication on whether the lens I use is fast enough or if I have to compromise at a higher ISO. Of course, if I carried a tripod that would also sort out frequent use of high ISO.

So, it seems in general, I tend to use ISO100 a large amount of time, stepping down to ISO400 and ISO1600 as needed. The stepping down is presumably due to light conditions and having a faster lens would probably compensate. I find it interesting I only step down in such large amounts though, so I’ll try to use the “middle” ISO settings when I can.Moving on to what I really wanted to see, we have each major focal length plotted against the percentage of time I use it.

From this chart, a few things are evident. When on holiday I actually use wide angles a lot more than I do when not on holiday. This is not something I expected. It is also interesting to not the sharp from after 130mm. I suspect this is because once above 130mm I would just use 200m. Whether the 200mm is mainly used for bokeh or for bringing the subject closer is a more difficult thing to assume. Excluding the 200mm range, it’s obvious that around 75% of the time — at least when on holiday — I am using the 20-100mm range, meaning that a shorter zoom lens could quite possibly be satisfactory. The benefit possibly being that with a shorter zoom range, the same amount of money may buy me a slightly better quality lens.The lens I had previously been intending to purchase — the Sigma 18-250mm Optically Stabilised HSM — still seems like it could be ideal. Adding in an HSM motor and optical stabilisation is of immediate benefit, and the longer range may possibly be useful while on holiday. Of course, given that I tend to use half of that means that a lens in the 17-120mm range would be perfect. Sigma sells an 18-125mm unit, but it seems to be exactly the same as the 18-250mm one I’ve been eyeing off as far as image quality is concerned. I think a 17-70mm lens (which both Sigma and Canon make) may be a little shorter than I would like, but close to 70% of the time I am using that range so perhaps it’s a good buy for me. Canon does a 24-105mm lens which may be a little expensive but in any case, the wide is not quite wide enough as is evidenced by the high usage at the wide end of the spectrum.

The moral of the story is that having made a decision then deciding to put some further analysis into the decision hasn’t really made much difference. What I want doesn’t exist — at least in my price range. The big decision right now is whether to get a 17-70mm lens or the 18-250mm lens. Will I regret not getting the longer focal range, given that I use it around 11-12% of the time while on holiday? Should I just get the 17-70mm and take two lenses.

At least I’ve got some pretty graphs to help my decision along.

I did it while taking promotional photos for Chris’ new album that he’s trying to get “out there” (the photo on the triple J Unearthed website isn’t mind). Luckily, photo 9999 actually turned out rather well — not the best of the bunch, but more than acceptable. Speaking of taking those photos, we managed to get a reasonable number of different promotional shots, and even managed to design what I think is a pretty decent album cover.

I thought I’d got it fixed by selecting the sRGB colour space in the Adobe Camera Raw application which appears in Photoshop whenever I open a photo shot in RAW. This forces Photoshop to convert the photo to sRGB when it opens, but the original RAW remains in the Adobe RGB colour space which means all the extra colour information is retained in the original.

However, it still doesn’t seem to have resolved the issue. I uploaded a photo to Flickr earlier to test these changes out, and compared the photo side-by-side with the same photo in Photoshop, and there were definitely differences. They weren’t as pronounced as what I posted about the other time, but they’re still there.

If Firefox would just include support for the Adobe RGB colour space when viewing JPEG images, this problem would be sorted. For all my pimping Firebird and Firefox over the last couple of years, this is something really annoying.

Safari users are the only ones with Adobe RGB I think; possibly Opera but I’m not sure on that.

Since having my camera I have taken 7,014 photos, which is about 19 photos per day. Obviously not all of those are good; in fact there is a low percentage of “good” photos, but it’s obvious that I’m getting a lot more use out of this camera than the Kodak one.

Given the higher cost of the camera, lenses and other accessories, the Kodak camera still cost me less per photo than the Canon one, but since the Canon one is still in use it should cross over and start being cheaper per shot rather soon… unless I buy more bits.

Here’s to another great year with my beloved DSLR. Don’t forget to check out the photoblog!

I placed my order at 4:15pm yesterday to a mob in Tullamarine after another mob from Sydney declined my credit card because it expires at the end of this month (their loss, not mine).

Much to my surprise, one of the lenses, and the filters (just plain ol’ UV filters for now) for the two lenses I ordered were here when I arrived at work this morning! The other lens was not in stock (though I wasn’t told that until after ordering, which is annoying — haven’t had a response from the company yet) but at least I have the bigger zoom lens to play with.

Look for yet more photos as I play with my long one.

The 1GB Ultra II CompactFlash card is quite fast enough, though. I tested it out by taking as many photos as I could at random stuff, it met the test without any major issues. While it may not be good enough for sports photography, it seems fine for me.

The higher ISO speeds seem to be very useful thus far, and — without having thorougly inspected the shots — there doesn’t appear to be much distracting noise. Very useful for shots with less light!

Autofocus is quite good, only a few times it’s failed me. Although I like manual focus, the automatic focus does a pretty good job of picking up the same things I’m trying to focus on.

While it’s fine for taking photos, RAW mode is a bit of a hassle with taking photos, as is getting the photos from the camera without using Canon’s software (I prefer to plug the camera in, and have it copy all the photos across to a folder with today’s date), but I’ll get used to it.

Overall I’m glad I bought the camera, but know I won’t see it’s full potential until I buy a slightly better lens (and I don’t know if the either the Sigma 18-125mm or 18-200mm I was planning on buying will suffice, due to their slower apertures when zoomed — fine in daylight though, I’d say) and also get used to the camera, which I know will take a bit of doing.

Must use all willpower to not open the package until I’ve at least had lunch… perhaps it will be an early lunch today.

Update – 11:16: I couldn’t stand having it next to me unopened, so I opened the box, took the battery and charger out and am now charging the battery… Camera, lens and card are still tucked safely away, but this way I’ll get to play more!

My Kodak DC4800 has lasted me four-and-a-half years and taken around 4,600 photos in that time. I hope this camera does as well. In fact, the camera’s still a great unit and takes good pictures. It’s biggest drawbacks are the difficulty in macro (you have to use the screen, which means no macro when the battery is low), average zoom (never was quite enough) and… well… that’s probably it. The manual features were great and I’ve appreciated the use it’s given me. Not sure what I’ll do with it now.

I need to at least buy a filter for the new lens, though I also want a cheap tripod, remote shutter release and other, expensive lenses. I think the first one I’ll buy is their 50mm f/1.8 prime lens, followed by a large 18-200mm cheapy which isn’t super great, but it’s big!

Delivery is supposed to be Wednesday or Thursday so I know I won’t get much work done that day! If you’re wondering about the title, well, I can’t be bothered to explain it. Suffice to say it’s kind of relevant.

Richard, Lesly and I spent around three hours sorting good from bad, what we’d keep, what could be thrown out and what we could give away (and chuck out if no one wanted it). Most of the stuff that could be given away (since it was no longer useful to Deakin) was quite old but there were a few things worth taking; Lesly took an old computer (P200 I think) for messing around with as well as an external SCSI CD burner which wasn’t worth using as is, but could be worth salvaging to make an external burner; Richard took a couple of cables and something else good I forget; I only took an Axis 2120 Network Camera which hadn’t worked for the past two years and should have been thrown out.

When I got the camera home, I realised I’d forgotten about looking for a few extra things that come along with it, such as the stand and outside casing; makes no difference if the unit doesn’t work, does it?

After downloading the manual for the camera, I realised there was extremely little I could actually do to fix the problem. The problem was that the unit would power up (well, that’s not a problem) but the ‘network’ light wouldn’t light up to indicate a successful connection to the network.

I did the only thing I could do, and that was to reset the firmware to factory settings. It worked! Sort of. The camera could now be seen on the network, and I was able to give it an IP address and configure it to my liking. However, when viewing the camera, it would simply stop after a minute or two of viewing. Closing the browser and loading up the page would sometimes resolve it, other times you had to turn it off and back on.

The website had firmware updates for the camera; I had to apply two to get the camera up to the current version (the version jumped about 35 versions) and since then, it’s performed beautifully. I have configured the camera so it’s externally available, but other than testing it’s not available yet. I will post when it’s positioned and available for viewing.

A good find, since it was just going to be thrown away!

I don’t have a video phone since they’re too big and the coverage isn’t good enough to bother. The camera feature of my phone is used mostly for taking photos of funny things or as a last-ditch camera because I don’t have any others.

When I was getting some stuff at the supermarket today, I couldn’t remember whether Justine had asked me to get one thing or another… It was a capsicum or something, really uninteresting (just like this post!) Technology was the answer to my conundrum! Why talk and describe the two things when I could just show Justine what I was rambling on about?

Of course, I ended up getting a call shortly after I sent the message to clarify which things she wanted, so it didn’t really end up being very useful.

Thanks, technology!

In that vein, yesterday was Easter Sunday. Justine’s Dad’s family came over at around lunch time and we picnicked in our back yard (that’s the most attention our back yard’s seen in 12 months) for lunch.

A bit later, my Dad came over with his shiny new Canon EOS 300d camera, which is pretty fancy indeed. Nice unit, and I’d personally love to have one myself.

Not really much else to speak of, so that’s all I’m going to write.

Vodafone has now decided to stop subsidising mobile phones, and no longer offers contracts. I’ve looked at other providers, and to be honest they don’t seem any better than Vodafone (Optus’ rates are pretty steep and Telstra’s are worse, and Virgin’s aren’t that good unless others you call are on Virgin).

There’s no way I’m signing up for Three just yet, as I’ve heard an awful lot of horror stories about them and their “service”. For instance, I’ve read a lot of stories where the phone just stops working, and they refuse to fix it! Just today at work, someone spent about 80 minutes talking to their customer “service” trying to sort out a billing issue.

So yeah, Vodafone it is, I guess. What next? Well, must haves are Bluetooth, the aforementioned camera (VGA minimum, of course, video capture would be nice), decent phone book, good colour screen, I’m really after a flip this time around, decent amount of memory, and that’s about it.

Sadly, there’s nothing that actually meets all my criteria. The Motorola v600 looks good, as does it’s little (and cheaper!) brother (which, while missing some features, still has everything I want) the v500. Both are flips, which is a plus, but I’ve read some dodgy things about their contact handling and SMSing (it’s different to the “industry standard” T9). So, I guess they’re out. I don’t really want a Nokia but the 6600 and 6230 both have some pretty good features, though I think their design is boring, and again, I want a flip. Woe is me!

Well, there’s nothing that meets what I want 100%. In the end it will probably be a toss up between the Motorola v500 (or v525 as rebadged by Vodafone) or the Nokia 6230.

Thus ends another of the unexciting days of my life. Searching for another gadget to complete and define me.

I’ve decided to call my bonsai ‘Ted’, you can e-mail him at ted@bludger.org if you’d like, you probably won’t get an intelligent answer but e-mail away. I don’t why I called him Ted, as he’s a Dwarf Hinoki Cypress (chamaecyparis). I don’t have any pictures of Ted at the moment, but seeing I’m getting a digital camera Monday I should very soon. I’ve also decided I may get a more mature plant than Ted to practice the art of bonsai.

Goodbye!