One problem with SLR photography is that you are constantly tempted to buy new lenses. I've been pretty good at restraining myself so far. In the year that I've had my camera I've only bought two extra lenses, and both of them put together cost me less than $200, since my Dad bought most of the Peleng 8mm fisheye as a Christmas gift. This week, however, I noticed that the Canon EF-S 10-22 was on sale, and I couldn't resist any longer.

The 10-22 is an "ultra wide angle" lens at 10mm, and a good group photo lens at 22mm. This weekend I wanted to take a picture that demonstrated the wide angle capabilities of this lens. I wanted to find a sweeping landscape to photograph... but Waterloo doesn't offer much at this time of year. Molly suggested I go up to Bearinger Road and see if I could get a sweeping shot of the University of Waterloo's North Campus. It was completely overcast today, but I headed out anyway. While I was up there, I was captivated by this enormous hydro tower, and the hydro lines flying off to the horizon.

I set the lens to 10mm and decided to see how close I could get to the tower while still keeping the entire structure in the photo. As you can see I managed to get within a few metres, definitely demonstrating the ultra wide angle of this lens.

Shot with my Rebel XT + 10-22mm lens at 10mm, ISO 100, f/8 for 1/200 seconds.

Comments

Congrats on your new lens.  Where did you buy it?  

Well, it went on sale at Henry's, so I decided to shop around and see if I
could get a better deal elsewhere.  I could have saved around $200 bucks if I
had bought a used one from the Fred Miranda forums, but I decided to shell out
for a new one.	  

Before I went to Henry's I decided to drop by Bent's to see
if they were willing to have me back as a customer.  Turns out they have
realized the error of their ways and are now trying to win back customers, so
they offered me the Henry's sale price plus a little bit extra off, plus 100
free prints, plus $30 on a Bent's Customer Card.  

It probably helped that I
also picked up a Speedlite 430EX while I was there, and asked them to notify me
as soon as they got a 70-300 IS in stock.

How do you like the 430ex?  Also, I've heard some great things about the new
70-300 IS, you should be very happy with that lens.

I haven't had much opportunity to use the flash yet, aside from about 30
experimental shots in my room yesterday to get a feel for metering, bouncing,
flash power, and shutter speeds.  

I still have a lot to learn about flash
photography.  The automatic flash exposure stuff is weird... I just pick any
shutter speed and the flash makes sure I get enough light.  I'm sure it will
take me a while before I can learn how to use the flash effectively in
different situations.

I'm sure there will be a POTW on the subject soon.  ;)

I just picked up my 70-300IS today.  I can't wait to get home and try it out. 
Apparently the only downside is that some copies are blurry at long focal
lengths when you take pictures in the vertical (portrait) orientation.	I'm
going to test mine tonight, but I'm not too concerned as I don't think I would
be using the lens in that way very much at all.

I haven't used my flash that much either; mostly because I really disklike
flash and prefer natural light.  The other reason is that I wasn't too
impressed with the results.  Of course it turns out its because I had no idea
how to use flash.  But I finally managed to get that all figured out and
working.  It also turns out Canon has made some interesting decisions regarding
flash exposure.  Generally I don't bother with any of the automatic modes and
stick mostly with M mode and manually set the flash exposure values.  With the
420ex, it has no manual controls on the flash, so I usually use flash exposure
compensation a lot.

There are couple of really good resources for flash, check
out:

http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/

http://eosdoc.com/manuals/?q=NEVEC


I heard about the portrait orientation issue, too bad, thats the only
thing keeping the lens from being a total winner. 

Those are great articles (sorry my word wrap mangled your URLs... they should
be fixed now).

I read the first one a few weeks ago, but I need to read it
again now that I actually own a proper flash.  It has a lot of information and
it didn't really sink in the first time.  After reading the second article
briefly today, I can see why you might want to stick with manual flash!

hey mike!  (nice shot).  you should put the date & time a comment is posted...
maybe next to the name.  just curious...!

p.s. have you noticed reduced
spamming on your guestbook/comments page?  i had to take my offline a while ago
b/c of the ~10 posts a day about enlargement drugs! :-(

Hmmm, good idea.  I will try to work that in sometime.	The comment spammers
haven't found my POTW comment forms yet... I'm afraid to put the one on my main
page back up.  If it starts to be a problem again I might put up one of those
"please type the numbers and letters you see in the image" things as a
verification step.

There.	How does this look?

I just want to test out the new date and time for myself. I'm also jealous of
your new lenses! One of these days I'm going to teach myself photography skills
like I said I would 7 years ago. I suppose if you want to put positive spins on
things, then I've had 7 years practice in "setting up the shot." 

Ah, I should specify the time zone... there, that's better.  Kind of strange
that the server I'm using is giving me Eastern Standard Time.  I thought it was
located on the west coast!