James is 6

My incredible nephew celebrated his sixth birthday over the weekend. I brought along my new camera, the Canon EOS M, to test it out. Family members, enjoy the pictures. Camera enthusiasts, I've included some of the settings for the pictures.

Shot on program mode, ISO 400, 22mm lens, 1/60th, f 4, flash

The tiny flash included with the kit has impressed me. I shot this across the room and both these kids have ridiculously blue eyes that normally turn red. It hit them with plenty of light to stop that from happening.

Shot on program mode, ISO 400, 100mm macro lens, 1/60th, f 4, flash

I also purchased the lens converter, which allows the point and shoot sized camera work with all of my bigger lenses. I wanted to see if the flash would reach past a longer lens with a lens hood on. To my surprise, it did.

Shot on manual mode, ISO 3200, 40mm pancake lens, 1/60th, f 4, no flash

Typical portrait of James these days. The 40mm lens is also new, because I wanted another tiny lens to go along with the camera. Loving the results so far; it's crisp and fast.

Shot on program mode, ISO 400, 40mm pancake lens, 1/200th, f 11, flash

My brother decided to photobomb this picture. Thanks, bro.

Shot on manual mode, ISO 800, 40mm pancake lens, 1/80th, f 2.8 no flash, window light

I was blown away by these shots; beautiful results that I would've gotten with my DSLR. Having super cute kids to photograph doesn't hurt either.

Overall, my first impression of the Canon EOS M is that I'm liking it. It's nice to get sharp pictures from a smaller camera. I'm still going to use my DSLR for important shoots, but this is a great alternative to my point and shoot camera. The battery life on the camera is a little short. I've used it 3 times and it needs to be recharged. Granted, this camera only has the LCD display for a viewfinder, so that is eating up the juice pretty quickly. I'm used to having multiple batteries for each of my cameras, so this isn't going to bug me much. The focus is a bit slow at times. I'm still playing with the auto assist beam on it and I'm not sure if that will help it focus better. The good thing is that with my other lenses, I can flip on the manual focus to get around it. I'm still undecided on the touch screen LCD. While it's nice to be able to touch the screen to tell the camera where to focus and to take a picture, I've noticed that I accidentally hit it often. It's a minor annoyance which can be disabled, so again, not a big deal.

fr EYE day

it's fr EYE day and I'd like to give a shout out to my incredible nephew, to whom this eye belongs.

Happy (early) Birthday, James!

Last Summer on Earth at Mohegan Sun: Barenaked Ladies

One of my favorite cassette tapes I used to blast in my Ford Tempo had Moxy Fruvous' Bargainville on one side and Barenaked Ladies' Gordon on the other. When I thought of one Canadian band, I always thought of the other. Just like everyone I knew, I loved the live recording Rock Spectacle and Stunt, but for some reason, I'd never seen the band in person. While their new effort Grinning Streak didn't win me over the first few listens, I told myself to go into this with an open mind. Barenaked Ladies are a live band and they did not disappoint me.

Being the headliner, they had the most impressive/annoying to shoot against light of the night, but it wasn't half as bad as some of the venues I've shot in. Jim and Ed move all over the stage, making it easy to get engaging shots. The entire band jokes with each other, and it really comes through in the pictures. I particularly love the high key black and white photo of Ed, but for me, my personal favorite is the black and white shot of Kevin. I try to focus on each band member equally to find a moment in three songs where they are reaching a peak. Some musicians are not fond of photographers, so I try to remain as inconspicuous as possible. Concerts don't always allow for that direct connection between photographer and subject, but in this instance, it did. I was firing away while Kevin looked the other way, then he noticed me. He looked directly into my lens with a happy little grin as though he appreciated the fact that I wasn't with the rest of the pack of photographers shooting the front man.

I wished that I could've shot more than the first three for BNL more so than any other band because they really hit their stride in the middle of their set. The medley had amazing moments and Tyler stepped out from behind his drums in the encore to sing lead. Still, I'm happy with the pictures I got and to have finally seen BNL live. Photographing them was just icing on the cake.

 

And of course, I leave you with shoes!