I don’t have a lot to say other than that I am happy to have this lens and would happily recommend it to anyone seeking a walkaround lens with a long focal range. If you’re shooting mostly in the city you may want to consider the 18-270 instead of the 28-300 – I was photographing a parade recently and was wishing for a bit more at the wide angle. This event is more of an exception to the rule for my type of photography and I still got shots I am very happy with.

Next on my list of things to get are an extra battery and a photographer’s vest and possibly an extra 8GB SDHC card. Further down is a remote shutter release and maybe a bigger flash. Next year’s big buy will be a lens like the Sigma 120-400 or 150-500 and a doubler.

After a couple of weeks (I was reluctant to send my camera away) I sent a letter as they requested indicating the issue I was experiencing along with a printed photo of the ducks shown above (click the photo and look on the chest of the duck and you will find the red dot in question). I live relatively near the repair depot and so it arrived the next day (mailed the 8th, arrived the 9th). On the 11th they sent me an email indicating that they evaluated my camera, found the problem I described and accepted it for warranty repair.

The camera was shipped back to me Monday the 15th and it arrived the next day. They returned everything I sent including my letter, the photos and the proof of purchase. They also included a letter stating “…it was found that dust became stuck to the image elements”. They also made electrical adjustments, inspected and cleaned the camera. It certainly was cleaner than when I sent it.

I took a few test shots and the red dot appears to be gone. Dust on the sensor. How embarrassing. All in all I am happy with Canon. They responded promptly to my requests and handled the servicing in a timely manner.

For my next lens I want to get a longer lens. Previously at the top of my list was Canon’s 100-400mm lens at about $1450 or so. Sigma has a 150-500 lens for about $940 (It was about $880 fairly recently). As usual they each have their pros and cons but I am likely to get the Sigma in place of the Canon. It may be quite some time before I get this lens which I intend to use mainly for wildlife. My current “long” lens is a Sigma 70-300mm which has been producing good results for me and I intend to keep it around as a backup lens.

I am becoming more comfortable with the Canon XSi and have thus far used only the Sigma 70-300 lens for February. I have realized that I have been spoiled by my Canon S2 and S5 and would really like a “walk around” (basically means general purpose) lens that has the same kind of flexibility. The good news is that Canon has such a lens and it is called the “EF 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6L IS” – this is an image stabilized lens unlike the Sigma lens and has a much wider zoom range (28-300 vs 70-300). The bad news is that it costs more than $2000.

I have also been told about another lens that would be better for the wildlife photography I like to do. It is also a Canon lens and it is the “EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM“. It is another image stabilized lens and the 100-400mm indicates that it has longer zoom reach than the other lenses. What makes this lens even more attractive is that Canon has a 1.4x and 2x  extender. This means with the latter extender that lens would effectively be a 200-800mm lens – fantastic for long range wildlife photography. The lens itself is about $1400 and the 2x extender is shy of $300. I would likely get them together. Since both are way out of my reach at the moment and my 18-55mm kit lens doesn’t really cut the mustard for me as a walk around lens I am eyeballing the “EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM” which will give me some overlap with the 70-300 that I already have. It is also just under $400 making it easier to save up for than the $2000 lens above.

My Trek-Tech monopod (I have the Go! model) has been phenomenal with this camera. I need to do more practicing to hold the camera steadier on top of it and I need to find the stronger magnet that came with the monopod and put that on the camera since the lighter magnet really is made just for lighter point and shoot lenses and I will go ahead and put that back on my S5. I think I know where the kit bag is for the monopod. My only complaint with the monopod is that the magnet for the cap which sits on top of the magnet when it is not being used to support the camera became unattached to the cap and so now I use the thing capless. I’d prefer not to do it that way but I also don’t feel like going through the trouble of replacing the cap. Before I bought the monopod I’d read some complaints that the locking nuts on the shaft which prevent it from telescoping when you don’t want it to come loose after a couple of miles of walking. I’ve only seen them come loose once and that was months ago. I love this thing.

I have left out a bunch of details such as what I did on the individual “expeditions” in order to not make this a long and boring entry and will hopefully go into detail on them later. Now to see what March brings!

The photos over at my Webshots albums has crossed one million views in the last week or so. I don’t check up on it every day so I don’t know exactly when it happened. They have also gotten more than 25,000 downloads. Pretty impressive for a bunch of photos I haven’t updated since March of 2008.

My photos at Flickr don’t get anywhere near the number of views that they do on Webshots. The interaction I have with other flickr users counts far more than a bunch of views and I am glad I went through the trouble of (nearly) duplicating the Webshots albums into flickr sets. I did dump some photos from the flickr sets because although they were interesting when I first started photography they aren’t interesting now. And I still have some old film scans to upload to flickr. I know where they are, they just aren’t easy to get to.

I took a small handful of photos during the recent snows here and uploaded 4, but I am hoping to do more this weekend which will be sunny. I haven’t decided exactly where I will go yet so it will be a surprise to all of us.

I got into photography to get myself out of the house and go do and see the things I want to do and see. I didn’t really want to do them on my own because I wanted to share the experience with someone. Between the camera and Flickr (and Webshots before that) I started to get out to see things because I could sort of take the world with me when I uploaded the photos.

It helps and it does do the trick most of the time. But sometimes I feel unmotivated to get out and go because at the end of the day I am still doing these things alone. Lunch means looking at an empty chair across the table. A “hey, look at that!” moment sometimes doesn’t translate well as a photo. I can’t really share the way a place and a day can just “feel right” through photography. I still come home to an empty house.

The camera has improved my life, there is no question about that. But you can’t cuddle with a camera, you can’t share happiness and sadness with a camera and you can’t lay out and follow plans for the future with a chunk of electronics and glass.

The supply of me exceeds demand for me so I will have no one to give anything to on February the 15th. Again. So I hate Valentines Day.

I did very little with my camera this week. I had planned to go to Bombay Hook Wildlife Refuge in Delaware at the suggestion of dartdoctorde when I was asking for places to go on the flickr Maryland Wildlife Group for good wildlife photos. There seems to be a lot of migrating birds from the North wintering here in the Chesapeake Bay area. This coming weekend is forecasted to be slightly warmer and may have better lighting conditions than this past weekend anyway so it may work out for the best.

I am using Windows Live Writer which is a blog entry editor and I see an Insert Map function so I am going to give it a try here. The red Pushpin below shows where Bombay Hook is.

As conditions improve and things start to warm up I should be getting out and about some more. Hopefully other things in my life will improve to enable me to go more places and get better equipment. Adding a woman to my life would probably help the improvement process but that seems to be elusive.

It was cold and a bit windy so I didn’t hang around long. I tried to take a few photos of the city as well and found that it didn’t seem to want to focus at the 70mm end. I tried to take photos of the State House, the Navy Chapel Dome and the old signal towers across the harbor and the camera did not want to focus. I couldn’t tell what it did focus on. It focused on my target fine when I zoomed in to the 300mm end so it wasn’t a stabilization issue. It may just be a thing of learning what the requirements are for using an SLR.

The lens certainly does seem to have some good reach and I was able to get some good shots with it. None came out as sharp as I would like but that may be an issue of stability. It was windy and cold and the camera is heavier than I am used to so it was difficult to hold it perfectly steady. Even with my monopod there was side to side wobble. I put the monopod in tripod mode and there was still quite a bit of wobble.

I know I have quite a bit to learn about SLR photography yet and I expect to see some improvement as I learn what settings to use in what conditions. I tinkered with the macro mode a bit as well and I am looking forward to trying it out later in the year when the insects come out and about.

I am happy that I was able to get some kinds of shots I would have missed with my S5 because this set up focuses quite a bit faster.

Tamrac has a bag that look like they might fit the bill. The Aero 80 Photo/Laptop Backpack. I wish it had space for a tripod. Although I carry my monopod with me where I would go with this bag, I would like to have the option to bring the additional stability of a tripod.

A company I have never heard of before called Naneu has a bag that seems comparable to the Tamroc bag above except that it also has a spot for the tripod. The price of these two bags on B&H Photo and Video (where I purchased my Canon XSi and associated items from) is within a couple dollars of each other. The Tamroc has more reviews on it and that helps my confidence level a bit.

I am going to wait a week or so before I get the bag, but so far it is looking like the Tamroc Aero is at the top of the list.