New and Old

I got a couple of new toys today. The first allowed me to get the shot below. I don't have a macro lens for my Canon Digital Rebel, but I do for the AE-1 Program (pictured below). When Canon changed to the EF lens mount for its EOS cameras, it meant that the older FD style lenses would not be compatible. For a short while, Canon made adapters, but that was a long while ago. However, third party manufacturers still do and I just received mine in the mail. There is no auto anything when using the adapter and there is a loss if one f-stop, but with an FD f 1:1.4 lens, I can afford it. And of course, now I can use the macro, the zoom, the extension tube and all the other FD lenses as well.



The other toy I got was Apple's Aperture. This photo management program does so much more than I have yet learned to, but I am anxious to get on it. The Aperture product manager from Apple gave a free seminar on the main features at Sacramento State yesterday. As a token of Apple's appreciation, all attendees received a free, fully functioning, non-demo and "not for resale" version of Aperture. That's a $150 value - and money I probably would have spent on this package eventually. Below is the same shot with a few tweaks. I was just playing around - I have no idea what I did. The cool thing is that the original "master" has remained unchanged. All of the alterations are saved in a much smaller file and applied when the image is rendered. I think I'm going to like Aperture.