Aperture gif animation

I was helping my sister decide which lens to buy for her camera the other day, and in going through the different options, I decided to show the benefits of playing with apertures, and what a difference these can make. In doing so, I took a series of shots from f22 - f1.8 (with my Canon 50mm f1.8).

This is a shot set up, with all the same settings, bar the adjustment of the aperture, hopefully this shows how much fun it can be to play with different apertures. I don't know about any other photographers, but my camera is 90% of the time set to aperture priority mode. I think getting the right depth in a photograph, is very often the key to turning good shots, to great shots. I think this also demonstrates how, not only at 1.8, can you knock the background out, and focus on the foreground, but get a totally different shot from f16 - f22, and create the star effect in the streetlights.

I've since turned this little tutorial into a small gif, which hopefully shows how different f stops create these different images:

Canon EF 28mm f2.8

I got a copy of a Canon EF 28mm f2.8 for my 500d this weekend, so took it out and about to see how it was (it was purchased second hand, so you never know what it will be like). My cat's are very poor at posing for pictures, they're not really fans of me sticking a camera in their face, this little fella didn't seem to mind as I photographed him crawling his way up our hill though. Very nice lens, more comfortable to use as a walkaround prime lens on a cropped sensor comparted to the "nifty-fifty" I own. Still worked very well, considering I looked up the manufactures code to see when it was made, and happened to be 1988!