I’ve taken a bunch of shots today. I threw a few of them onto my Flickr account. You could have a look by clicking any of the photos over to the right.

I’ve done some (gasp!) research into polarising filters, and it appears that adding a polariser drops your exposure by as much as 2 stops (each stop represents double the amount of light let into the camera). This means that when I took my photos earlier today, I should have expected the drop in available light and opened the aperture by two stops, OR increased the shutter speed approximately fourfold. The camera did this for me, but I understand the concepts now, thanks to the wonder of the Sunny 16 rule…

I just spent a bit of time experimenting with my 24-105 zoom lens and the 77mm polarising filter. I wanted to see how much it affected sharpness and brightness of the image when fitted, so I put the 400D on the (crappy, wobbly) tripod and took some test shots from the front verandah.

First discovery - although the lens is very sharp wide open (f/4) at 65mm if you stick with a UV filter, I needed to stop down slightly to preserve detail with the polariser on. So, both test shots are at f/5.6 and the same 65mm focal length.

Here’s the shot taken with a standard UV filter (aka the lens protector). The shutter speed was 1/640 sec.

And here’s the polarised shot. It was taken a couple of minutes after the previous shot, but the shutter speed dropped to 1/125 sec.

I think the polarised shot has much nicer colour, and it hasn’t lost detail (which you wouldn’t be able to see at this resolution, but I’ve compared both shots at 100% magnification). The tradeoff is a 500% slower shutter.

Obviously this filter is going to be a very situational thing with this lens. Perhaps I’ll have more leeway with the 70-200 f/2.8 lens? I think I’ll pick up a polariser for the 50mm lens and see how that copes.

I carried my camera around in the car today. Kinda glad I did.

I just booked flights to and from Darwin for Emma’s (Crumpet’s sister) wedding. We’ll be heading up on the 2nd of July and coming back on the 17th.

Oh, we got a tent for Christmas (which claims to fit 3 people, so that really means 2 people and a can of softdrink). Now all we need to organise is somebody to look after our dogs for a fortnight. Bugger.

I took this picture tonight just after I ate my tasty, tasty noodles in Ivanhoe. I’m really hopeful that we’ll get some gorgeous shots in the Territory, especially when I pick up another zoom lens…

Thanks to the magical, mystical and all-around swell Sheol and his glorious advice, I have been credited $120 for the money I left at the ATM last week. I am a happy, happy clam.

Maybe I should buy a Wii to celebrate?

*hides from Crumpet*

P.S.: Oh, thanks Justin for your deposit, too. Am I spending the extra on tasty, tasty port?

I was just installing drivers for a new motherboard, and saw a fairly typical PC message. The driver CD started up and gave me the options of installing several drivers (sound, video, etc), and I chose ‘One-Touch Setup’.

The disc told me ‘You need to install the chipset drivers first. Do that, then choose the One-Touch Setup’.

Um. How the fuck is that ‘one touch’ exactly? Would it really have been hard to integrate the chipset driver install into the setup? I truly hate the PC world. AND YOU PEOPLE PUT UP WITH THIS SHITE!

This guy says what I’ve been noticing, Ze Frank never blinks. How does he manage this marvelous feat?

My camera is quite awesome.

Surely it cannot be denied!