New Camera - Canon EOS Rebel T6

I have a Canon EOS Rebel T6 DSLR now.

The T7 is currently the top of the line right now but I wanted to get an intermediate camera. Some professionals use this model too but they are able to manipulate the settings much better. When I first wanted a digital camera, the T6 was the best, now I have one after the wait. I bought it on Amazon and it came in a kit with a box full of accessories including memory cards, remote, tripod. strap, bag, various lens attachments, and much more but most importantly it came with a Canon 18-55mm lens and a Canon 75-300mm lens.

About two years ago, I started photography on black and white film with the Canon AE-1, probably the best selling camera of all time. I learned how to take pictures in black and white as well as how to manually use the camera by adjusting the ISO, aperture, and shutter speed.

Our black and white film Canon AE-1

I watched some YouTube tutorials about photography and the Canon T6. Although I haven't shot on film for a while, the process started coming back to me. As they say in digital photography, "film is free" so I took lots of shots in adjusting the different settings as I took pictures.

Naturally, I am going to continue practicing with this camera. The next steps for me are to:
- Learn the manual settings for artistic shots
- Use other lenses for better shots
- Take pictures and set up shots with a good composition
- Learn how to finish pictures in post-production with Photoshop, Lightroom, etc. (yes, I'll have to start taking pictures in the raw format instead of .jpg)

So far, I have lots of test pictures with Ethan but that is mainly for lighting and focus; just trying to get the settings down. Next I want to take photos of Toby. This will help me learn the appropriate shutter speeds for fast moving objects. I like the feature of the T6 that lets me take multiple shots at once so that I get multiple pictures per second.

As you saw on the last post, I got lots of pictures of fireworks. This was my first time photographing fireworks with a real camera.

*don't pay any attention to that grease stain on the patio under the tripod; I just cooked burgers on the grill in that spot and apparently you can tell from this picture

Here was my set-up in the back yard. I'm shooting on a tripod with a 75-300mm lens because the fireworks are half a mile away. I'm also shooting manual in bulb mode for the first time. I never shot in bulb mode on my AE-1 because I didn't want to waste rolls of film practicing and write a log for each picture. I also normally take pictures with the viewfinder but am shooting with live view and photo preview while on the tripod.

Again, here are some good shots. I stopped shooting with the 3, 8, 10, 30 second shutter speed settings and just switched to manual bulb mode because the fireworks were unpredictable and I took the shot for the best duration of the activity whether that was 5 seconds or 20 seconds. I tried various settings: the ISO for 100 or 200, and aperture f11 to f18. At the end I felt the best settings were bulb mode with remote, ISO 100, f16.

Fourth of July 2017

I had a nice Fourth of July holiday this year. I took the day off and was able to spend time with my family. There is a park behind the house where the town holds its holiday celebrations. The town's Fourth of July celebration is the biggest that there is.

There are bands, food vendors, other vendors, games for kids, kayaking, water fountains, and everyone's favorite, a fireworks show at night. We were able to take Ethan out, but because he is so little we only stayed at the park for a short time. It was over 90 degrees and everyone was hot. We had to stay in the shade and even cooled off in the air-conditioned pavilion for a short time. Next year he will be able to enjoy it more.

When we got home, I cooked up some salmon burgers and rice with mixed vegetables. The above picture isn't a good composition but I was in a rush. I finished cooking at 8:40 pm and the fireworks show started at 9:00 pm. All I had set up was the tripod in the back yard and chairs. I still had to unpack my lens for the camera and get the settings right for pictures after eating. I was in a hurry.

At 8:55 pm, I went to the back yard and could hear the show about to begin. They played some patriotic music and then the fireworks show started at 9:00 pm. The whole show was set to music. They played the usual Neil Diamond, Katy Perry, and Toby Keith songs in addition to others. 

Here are photos I took with my new Canon EOS Rebel T6 DSLR digital camera. Blog post is coming on this but I've only had the camera for a week and am shooting the fireworks show in manual mode so don't be too critical of the shots but here are some good ones I took of the half hour long show. 

 

 

Tea Drinking

I'm a tea drinker now. 

You may recall me writing last year that I had stopped drinking coffee at work. Well I still like the ritual of drinking a hot beverage while at work if I am sitting at my desk. It is a way to help me relax. I am also the type of person that always has to be doing something, so if I am reading a report or something else, I had coffee to give my hands something to do, the hand-to-mouth fixation.

Tea at my desk in the afternoon. Green tea for lunch and a flavored tea from the morning.

Well I stopped drinking coffee. I was already drinking chilled green tea with lemon juice when I ate lunch so I decided that I would replace coffee with tea. I tried a variety of brands and different types of tea. After about a year of experimenting, I finally decided what type of tea I liked.

Normally, I'll drink tea three times a day at work if I'm not at a meeting or otherwise busy. I'll have a tea once in the morning before lunch, a cold tea with lunch, and then another cup after lunch. So we already established that I drink chilled green tea with lemon juice at lunch (I prepare 8 reusable bottles on the weekend for the week’s lunches). I don’t mind what brand of green tea I use, I just use regular green tea and then squeeze the lemon juice into the pitcher and mix it up.

Regular green or black tea was not going to work for me. I don’t add cream or sugar or honey or lemon to hot tea. I wanted something that I could keep at my desk so I could drink when I wanted it without other ingredients. After trying different flavors of tea, I decided that I liked a fruit blend with the tea and that I absolutely hated any kind of tea with rose in it. We had been making iced tea infused with peach or blueberry so this seemed to work. Once I realized that I liked a fruit blend, I tried different types including berry, peach, pineapple, citrus, etc. I liked the citrus but many of those came out too weak and didn’t keep the flavor. Pineapple, peach, and plum weren’t that good – just not my thing. It turns out that I like a berry flavored tea.

Now I thought that I liked green tea exclusively. Well it turns out that while green tea is my favorite, I like to drink a strong black tea in the afternoons. I like a soft green tea in the morning and the full flavor of black tea in the afternoon. 

Regarding my preferred brand of tea, it is the Republic of Tea. This brand has lots of flavors I like and the recipes are better than any other I’ve had. I’ll order a variety of tins from them and am able to keep mixing up daily flavors to prevent any one blend from getting old.

Republic of Tea flavored teas that I have been drinking recently.