Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM Lens

We picked up a Canon EF 85mm lens this morning to use strictly for portraits. We’re pretty happy with it. It’s fast at f/1.8. Here are a couple of test shots.

This was taken with a Canon T2i at ISO 100, 1/320 with one 430EX2 speedlite set at 1/16 power through a softbox as the keylight on the upper right and a sliver reflector on the left.

 

Setting the f-stop to 1.8 soaks up a lot of light, but the focus is selective. We focused on the eyes, but notice how rest of the face is somewhat out of focus. Stopping down will of course fix this but it’s good to have the option to focus on the eyes on your back pocket. Here’s another shot with the same settings:

I didn’t do any post-processing or cropping on either photo- that wouldn’t give a true representation of what the lens can do.

Using a doll can be a little creepy but is a great tool to experiment with lighting.

We’re very happy with this lens, but again, its primary use is for portraits. If you’re looking for a high quality, reasonably priced portrait lens (and you have a Canon DSLR) its hard to go wrong with the EF 85mm USM lens.

 

 

 

 

ColorStrokes Review

ColorStrokes Review

I saw a tweet about ColorStrokes, a simple photo coloring application so I thought I would check it out. It costs four bucks on the iTunes AppStore, so I wasn’t out much if I didn’t like it. I was attracted to is since I used to do a lot of hand colored black and white prints back in the days of film.

Here’s a snap taken with a little Nikon 3100:

 

The guy on the scooter waiting at the stoplight is really the subject, and the color helps bring him out and adds depth.

There are some issues with ColorStrokes that make it unusable for a serious tool. It’s crashed several times on my iMac. When saving a file sometimes the colors aren’t saved, so all your work is lost. When you pull an image back in, all of the colors are gone. This means that you have to color a photo in one session. Also, the undo function is kippy- it will sometimes undo something you colored two steps back.

Faults aside, ColorStrokes is worth four dollars and is useful for very small jobs, but is it a tool serious photographers can rely on?

Not a chance.