Below are a few photos from the day; hope you enjoy!

Full-frame vs. Circular fisheye lenses
Nearly all SLR users are familiar with fisheye lenses, but many may not realize that over the years, they’ve been split into two categories:

• Fisheye lenses
  These lenses give a definite curved look to straight lines, with their pronounced barrel distortion. But even used on a full-frame camera (or a traditional 35mm film camera), they cover the entire frame, corner to corner, with a diagonal angle of view of 180 degrees. Traditionally, these ultra-wide lenses have been around 15mm or 16mm in focal length.
• Circular Fisheye lenses
  These are much more rare in today’s digital SLR world, but have been used for decades with traditional 35mm film SLRs.
  Circular fisheye lenses (such as the EF 8-15mm f/4L USM shot at 8mm on the full frame EOS 5D Mark II camera, above) capture a 180-degree angle of view in every dimension, creating a literal ‘circle’ of an image in the center of the frame. Note that for this effect, a full frame sensor camera is necessary. These lenses have even shorter focal lengths (around 7~8mm), and produce a small circular image in the center of the frame, surrounded by black, unexposed area on the outer areas of the frame. Like any fisheye lens, they certainly bend straight lines… but unlike the “full-frame” type, they generate an image whose outer edges are circular, and cover a 180-degree angle of view in every dimension, not just diagonally.

That alone would make this lens interesting, but what is even more interesting is this lens also offers a traditional fisheye effect on cameras with smaller sensors (also called “cropped sensors”). Traditional fisheye lenses made for full frame cameras typically are pretty unexciting on small sensor cameras because these cameras don’t “use” the whole lens. Some manufacturers make fisheye lenses specifically for small sensor cameras, but these lenses do not work on full-frame sensor cameras. Now with this new lens from Canon, photographers like myself that have both types of cameras are able to get a fisheye effect with just one lens. VERY cool.

If you’re looking to find out more about this lens, check out this article on Canon’s Digital Learning Center or you can get more information about it on Canon’s website.

Here are a couple images of the lens.

In my opinion, fisheye lenses can offer a very unique perspective to certain scenes, but it’s easy to overuse it. I tend to look for scenes with symmetry that I can accentuate with the distortion. It’s a great tool to have in your camera bag because it does something none of my other lenses do, but I tend to use it sparingly. I have the original 15mm Fisheye lens; here are a few images I’ve taken with it:

Canon is expecting to ship this lens in January 2011, so look for it then!

Back when Margot and I were planning our wedding we talked a lot about different possibilities, whether it was having the reception under a tent or in a barn, we thought about how fun it could be to do something a little untraditional. Getting married can be stressful enough, and the more we looked at the options, the thought of planning everything ourselves and the mounting costs of the location, catering, rentals, etc, seemed too daunting a project for us.  We chickened out.  In the end we kind of took the easier route and had our ceremony and reception at The Candlewood Inn in Brookfield. While I don’t think either of us have any regrets (The Candlewood Inn is beautiful and they did a great job), I think we both still think it would have been really cool to go the less traditional route and come up with something really unique.

This past June I had the pleasure to second shoot a wedding for Matt @ BSC Photo.  When Matt was telling me about the wedding, he told me that is was at a park in New Haven, and that the reception was planned for Saturday night with a ceremony following Sunday morning.  This seemed a little odd, and certainly untraditional!  Turns out, it was a really nice, unique wedding.  Saturday night consisted of dinner, drinks, speeches and dancing; Sunday morning consisted of a low key ceremony in the park followed by brunch.  I don’t know how this couple came up with a schedule like this, but it really worked out for them because most people were out of the park by the time the reception started on Saturday night, and there were very few people there on Sunday morning.  It was like they had the whole place to themselves, and since it was summer, they had the coolest parts of the day (and some of the best light).

While an untraditional wedding may not be right for every couple, it can certainly be an option for the couple willing to put in the extra work to make their day a little different.  It can also be a way for the budget-minded couple to put together something unique while cutting some corners from things found in more traditional weddings (like elaborate cakes, 3 course meals, etc). So whether you’re planning a wedding on a beach, a wedding in a barn, or even a more traditional wedding, don’t be afraid to make it your own.

Below are a just a few details from the June wedding I mentioned (photos were taken by me, copyright BSC Photo).  I plan to post more on my blog from this wedding soon, so stay tuned!

Tim

Here’s a few pictures from the day – I hope it looks as fun as it was to be there.

Some photos from the day below – hope you enjoy!

Tim

More to come!

He’s come a long way in a year!

Thanks for having us over to help celebrate, we had a great time!

Anyway, we decided to head up on this past Saturday to check out the races that day. I’ve never shot any kind of real motorsports, so I was excited to try my hand at it. For the majority of the photos, I used my Canon 7D and 70-200 f/2.8L IS. Shooting this kind of stuff is really nothing like how I normally shoot, so it was nice to step outside of my comfort zone and try something new.

Below are a few photos I was especially happy with, or you can see the rest of the gallery here.

Hope you enjoy!

Tim

Below are a few images from the day (click an image for a larger version). You can also see a gallery of their wedding highlights here.

Enjoy!

(click any photo for larger view)