Life and My new camera the Canon EOS 450D

Firstly thank you again to all those kind comments left and apologies for not replying to them yet, I will do so and I promise I'll be visiting your blogs soon too. Life has been hectic. Firstly there was our belated House Warming Party which went really well even though the night before I got a tooth infection so didn't get any sleep couldn't eat anything because of the pain and no medicine worked... well apart from the medicine of drink yourself silly. I had a week of antibiotics, not being able to eat much and sleep and lots of pain. I've got to have a root canal done but for now I'm pain free. Then last week I had my son off school for holidays and my hubby took the week off too so we had lots of fun and days out. Hopefully now though I can get back to blogging and posting at others.



So yesterday I got a new camera. I wanted to upgrade from my point and click Olympus mju 760, which is a lovely camera but I want to be professional goddarn it. ;) I've spent the last few months reading articles, getting advise from family and friends and looking around. Everyone I asked advised me to either go for a Canon or a Nikon, the main reason why when I asked was "Well that's what the professionals go for.". It wasn't until I spoke to a nice young lady at a private camera shop in Romford that she explained fully and better than anyone else why. The reason? Even though a lot of the newer cameras coming out are getting great reviews? Simple. Canon and Nikon are well established, they have been round for many years and are likely to be round for many more. Because of that you pretty much can guarantee that you will always be able to get the attachments easily. She mentioned that the other week someone with a brand new Song camera had come in, they had bought it in the Sony shop but couldn't get any of the lens they wanted because the Song shop didn't stock them. Even though this particular shop didn't deal with the Sony cameras she said after after a few days they managed to track down what this person was after but it just shows that it's not that easy to get the paraphernalia. So that's why I ended up going for a Canon camera. Originally I was thinking of the Olympus E420 which is due out but after not being able to find out anything more than it was due out at the end of May and hasn't come out I decided to leave it.



So how is my new camera? It's wonderful. I was just a little bit nervous to use it, hell just to pick it up and touch it, it's isn't a cheap thing you know and I'm such a clutz at times. But pick it up I did, then I attached the lens and had a play around. There's lots I have to read up on and learn, I've never used and D/SLR camera before. I've so far been happy just using the auto focus/scene selection stuff which is helping me get a feel for the camera. Over the next couple weeks I'm going to devour the manual that came with it, all so many hundreds of pages of it and get practicing with the other side of photography.



Anyway as you can see I've added a few photos between paragraphs, these are all from my new camera. I'm sure I'll have lots more to add soon and other ways to manipulate them too.

One True Media

My previous entry was about Photo Books, this one is about using your photos and making videos out of them. There's a wonderful site called One True Media that lets you do this. You can upload the photos you want to use, arrange them in any order you like and then upload and use a song you like from your computer or one from their own library. At the end you have a wonderful little video to your liking that you can share with family and friends and you can order on dvd too. I created one last year of my son and his cousins on a day out we had in the summer. For those interested here it is.

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Photo Books

Firstly I would like to say a big thank you to those of you who have been kind enough to come visit and leave comments, they are very much appreciated.

Now onto Photo Books!

At Blurb they deal in helping you turn your photos into a Photo book. You can keep it private and have it ordered just for you or you can have it public and others can view and I assume buy it too, although I don't know if you earn commission or anything. Sounds like a fun way to store some of your favourite photos and you can add text and make you own cover and back cover too. Also they come in Hard Cover or Soft Cover. I think they are a very nice idea to have as maybe a keepsake of your child's life or that once in a lifetime holiday or just something that you like.

I've been toying with the idea of doing one for my son Callum and choosing certain photos at times of his life from birth to present day.

Fun With Photos

In this day and age there are so many sites on the old web that you can just upload a photo of yours to and they can change it into anything!! Yep anything! From a jigsaw puzzle to a business card to a poster or a movie magazine cover. Some of the ones I've used that I've found fun and easy are:

Big Huge Labs

Dumpr

Moo

Qoop

There are lots more out there but these are the ones I tend to play around with the most, plus they are all linked to flickr which is where I host most of my photos.

Big Huge Labs gave me and some friends an afternoon of fun on the net with the Motivational Poster Toy where you could create masterpieces like this:





Or there is the Hockneyizer Toy where you can do this creations:



With Dumpr I was granted creations such as these with the effects:


Amazing Circles:



Alien Vision




Moo I used to print up and have delivered the Minicards which I have so far used as tags on presents, to quickly write down my contact details on and I'm in the middle of creating a small mosaic with some. There are countless uses for them and the service and quality provided are top notch.

Qoop I haven't used and awful lot, I did use at Chrismtas time to play around with a Calendar but I never ordered it but it was an easy site to use.

Like I said there are lots more of these sites out there. If there are any that you use and would recommend feel free to let me know and I'll go check them out, I'm always up for a spot of photo playing.

Snow In April

Today really makes you think about global warming. Did we get snow at Christmas? No! Did we get snow earlier this year? Not really. Did we get snow this April? Yes!! The great thing that did come out of it snowing today was that Callum (now 4.5 years old) got to build his first ever snowman. The three of us were out just before 10am in the garden, building snowmen and having snowball fights. Here are some photos. It's still snowing and a certain young man is hoping it settles some more so we can go out again. The wonders and coolness of snow!

Shandy The Cat

For just over two weeks we've been catsitting. Said cat is 17 years old Shandy, she belongs to one of my sisters (Emma) but lives at my parents house. They went on holiday and asked if we could have her to stay. At the time we didn't think it would be a problem but between Callum constantly hassling her, Shandy's long white hairs everywhere and lots more it's been a bit of a nightmare. Today my parents get back and so tomorrow she'll be back home... and I'll be cathairless. Anyway on Friday night I realised I hadn't had the chance to experiment taking photos of Shandy so in my tipsy state I decided then and there to do so. Lesson learned? Best to use a tripod as your hands are nowhere near as steady once you've had a few drinks. LOL. Anyhow here are a few of the end results, not too bad but I think if I'd been sober I would have got a lot better.

Selective Colouring

You know that little thing where you have a black and white photo with a splash of colour, well that's selective colouring. Until last year I didn't know what it was called or how to do it but thanks to some wonderful people at Photography Blog I learned how to. There are many ways in which to do this but I've found a free software programme called GIMP which allows you to do so and then a talk through guide at Create Blog which is easy to follow.

Here are some examples of what I've done. I've posted the original photo and then afterwards with the selective colouring.





This photo I did using a trial version of photoshop, it involves layers and you cutting out from the original colour photo the areas you wanted (in this case my nieces red top, the Union Jack on my nephew's trousers and the orange in the back of my son's shoe), then changing the photo to B&W, creating a new layer, pasting over the colouring bits and merging together, well I think that's how I did it, was so long ago. Very long winded and you need a very very very steady hand. Still I like how this turned out and to me gives an age old effect to the photo that makes it feel timeless.

Another photo I did (this time using GIMP) was this one.





The GIMP way was a lot lot lot easier to use and if you made a mistake easier to rectify.

I have other photos I've done, all can be seen in my flickr account which is linked to at the side. I just need to find other colours other than red to selective colour.