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Me and the 50D

Ok, not quite Christmas… maybe early birthday.  There was such a good price on the Canon 50D over at my local Vistek store that I had to run out and get one.

This is a pretty sweet camera.  I’m too busy running around taking pictures of things to actually put any effort into this post.   Once I’ve had a good change to check out the 50D, I’ll post my impressions and my best pics.  Until then…

While saving up my spare cash to buy a Canon 50D for my birthday, I’m taking the time to brush up on some of the basic (and not so basic) skills one should learn when getting serious about photography.

One of the topics that can stump a newbie is hyperfocal distance.  With the switch to digital photography, many people have forgotten or have not even learned what hyperfocal distance is.  To understand what hyperfocal distance is, you first need to understand depth of field.

When you focus your camera lens on an item, there is a zone or field in with everything is in focus.  When you stop down (make the aperture smaller / ƒ number bigger) the depth of this field becomes larger.  This depth of field can be quite small with macro or telephoto lenses; shorter lenses, like a wide angle lens, can have more depth of field.

Now that we have an understanding of depth of field, why is hyperfocal distance important?  If you like to shoot landscapes like me, this concept really comes in handy.  If you want to keep my foreground subject focused and also have the background in focus, you need to adjust my depth of field so that it extends from the foreground subject to infinity… and that in a nutshell is hyperfocal distance.

So, how do you determine distances, aperture settings, etc. to properly set the hyperfocal distance on your camera?  I’ll discuss how and provide some useful resources in Learning About Hyperfocal Distance, Part 2.

Lady Slipper Orchid

Digital Photography School has a great article on how to shoot wildflowers.  It has a eight tips on how to turn out good photos.  One tip that I have experienced first hand is to “wait for an overcast or cloudy day”.  This seems counter-intuitive, as some of the nicest, warmest photos are shot during the “golden hour“, but these bright colors can appear quite washed out in direct sunlight.

I am looking forward to using these tips this spring.  There is a natural area about 15 minutes from home that has about 16 of Alberta’s 26 species of orchids, and I have only been able to capture 2 of them.  Some of these flowers are very small, so every little advantage helps.

For more tips, check out PhotoNaturalist.