Rebel T2i Quick Tip -- Displaying Blinkies

I've been shooting with Donna's Rebel T2i a lot lately and one of the things I noticed is regardless of the shot I never noticed any blinkies when reviewing images on the rear display. This seemed odd to me so I started doing some experimenting by deliberately increaing exposure compensation to cause the highlights to be blownout but even when the image was almost completely white nothing blinked. The image blow shows the view of the screen. Observe how exposure compensation is set to +1 stop yet there's no blinkies.

I searched through all the menus, the manual, and did some Google searches and never could find a setting for the camera to show me blinkies. I finally gave up and called Canon Support and within a matter of minutes I figured out what was going on. Seems the T2i doesn't show blinkies when viewing images in full screen mode which really sucks, IMO since even my old Rebel XT would show me blinkies when reviewing images.

If you want to see blinkies you have to use one of the different view modes as shown below. While it's nice to see the histogram and additional information I really don't like that the image is so small but at least I can see the blinkies now. If you look closely you can see the reflection of my Canon PowerShot D10 in the image.

I guess I really shouldn't complain too much about this because Donna primarly shoots with the T2i and I shoot with a 7D and it does show me blinkies when reviewing the images.

So there you have it. If you were like me and having a hard time figuring out how to check for blinkies on a T2i now you know.

Lens Pro To Go Camera Gear Sale

I got an email from my buddy Paul at Lens Pro To Go and they are having their annual summer sale on rental gear. I guess it's a good thing I don't have an extra grand sitting around burning a hole in my pocket or I'd buy some stuff.

Here's a link for Stuff For Sale at Lens Pro To Go. I have rented and bought from Paul many times in the past and recommend him without reservation. If you buy something tell him I sent you and let me know what you ended up buying.

A Pair of House Finches

In addition to the Eastern Bluebirds that are nesting in our backyard this pair of House Finches (Carpodacus mexicanus) are regular visitors to our backyard as well. The female, shown below, was shot using Donna's Rebel T2i (I've been shooting it a lot lately) and my EF 400 f/5.6L lens. Exposure was 1/180th at f/5.6, ISO 400. She really enjoys splashing around in the bird bath and feeding on sunflower seeds.

Below is the male House Finch. I really like his red coloring. This guy can eat sunflower seeds faster than anything I've ever seen. He's also very vocal so I always know when he's around. For some reason though he likes to try and drink out of the hummingbird feeder. He'll fly over to it and try to stick his beak into one of the tubes but he can't get anything out. This picture taken with my 7D and EF 400 lens. Exposure was 1/250th @ f/5.6, ISO 400.

Mr and Mrs Eastern Bluebird

Meet Mr and Mrs Eastern Bluebird. Mr is on the right and Mrs is on the left. These are the birds that are using the birdhouse in our backyard. This is one of the few times I've managed to get a shot of both of them together. He had just given her a small bug or something so she could feed one of their young that has hatched already.  What's interesting, to me anyway, is this shot was taken at 8:30 PM and I had the ISO cranked up to 3200 on the 7D. Sure there's some noise in it but Adobe LightRoom did a great job of cleaning the image up. This was taken with my Canon 7D and EF 400 f/5.6L lens 1/90th of a second. Camera and lens were mounted on a tripod -- no way could I shoot this handheld.

Picture of the Week (POTW) #4

Picture of the week for the period 4 Jul - 10 Jul 2010. This is what you get when you pile your brother, your wife, your daughter, her boyfriend, your brother, his wife and his son into a Honda Pilot and you're on your way to Norfolk Virginia to watch a movie early Sunday morning.


This was taken using Donna's Canon Rebel T2i and Quantaray 18-200 lens. Focal length was 18mm, 1/60th of a second at f/4.5, ISO 100. The camera was sitting on the dash of the Pilot and the shutter was triggered using the build in timer.


Pictured from left to right you have -
Front Row - me and my brother Lew
Middle Row - Lew's wife Dodie, our daughter Steffanie, and my wife Donna
Third Row - Steffanie's boyfriend Justin and barely visible is Lew and Dodie's son Stefan.

Finally

Finally
Originally uploaded by zackojones

I have a tripod and ballhead that will support my massive camera setup :)

Interesting EF-S Lens Tidbit

Recently I read an article that said when using an EF-S lens on a crop bodied camera (Rebel series, 40/50D, 7D, etc) that the 1.6x crop factor still applied. For some reason I didn't think it applied as the EF-S lenses were designed specifically for the crop bodied cameras. I had thought the EF-S 10-22 lens was just that, 10mm on the widest setting and 22mm fully zoomed. Turns out this lens is really 16mm at the widest setting and 35mm fully zoomed. We currently own 3 EF-S lenses so their true focal range breaks down as follows:

EF-S 17-85 is 27.2mm at widest setting and 136mm fully zoomed.
EF-S 18-200 is 28.8mm at widest setting and 320mm fully zoomed.
EF-S 55-250 is 88mm at widest setting and 400mm fully zoomed. (No wonder I like this lens)

So there you have it -- just one more thing to keep in mind when lens shopping.