Canon EOS Rebel SL1 / 100D Sample Pictures

The Pennsylvania capitol building and its surroundings provided plenty of architectural photography opportunities. The front of capitol buildings are generally "the" shot to get, but ... I liked the back better on this day. This was partially because of the angle of light available to me at the time of day I was there.
 
A B+W XS-Pro CP filter was used for this shot. The non-rotating filter threads on the EF-S 18-55mm IS STM lens making using this filter far easier than with the predecessor to this lens.

On this site, it is generally the camera gear that we drool over. Then my daughter decides to be a desert chef for the day.
 
To capture this photo, I used a wide aperture and a close focusing distance to generate a shallow DOF (Depth of Field). While this lens' MFD (Minimum Focusing Distance) is not very short and its MM (Maximum Magnification) spec is not very high, its aperture is very wide. Wide enough to yield a strong background blur in this example.

This is a newly-hatched IO Moth resting on a cedar tree trunk.
 
When photographing butterflies and moths at close distances, it is diffucult to keep their entire wing surfaces sharp. A narrow aperture and careful parallel sensor and wing alignment is key to this. Because this moth is somewhat rounded, I was still not able to keep the wing tips sharp at this focus distance even with an f/10.0 aperture.
 
Lighting is from direct late-day sunlight.

She put a tremendous effort into track season and the big district meet consumed most of the day. Upon arrival home, we were all very tired and wanted to do nothing. But, the results of her huge effort were in her hand and this was going to be a milestone we would all want to remember.
 
Fortunately, the little EOS Rebel SL1 was in a drawer for quick access. The EF-S 18-55mm IS STM Lens was already mounted and the 600EX-RT flash was next to it. I set the camera to manual mode with the settings included on this page, then attached and powered up the flash in E-TTL mode.
 
We quickly went to the strategically-painted-white hallway. I directed the flash toward the ceiling/wall above/behind me and grabbed a few pictures.
 
While the results are not studio-grade portraits, the quality is quite high for the tiny effort made to acheive them.

The Pennsylvania capitol rotunda is definitely a work of art. The biggest challenge to photographing similar architecture is often keeping the scene properly squared. Even with careful capture and a most-distortion-free lens focal length selected, post processing is sometimes needed to finish this task. In this case, I cropped the left edge of the image slightly to more-closely match the ride side.
 
A press conference on this day prevented my use of a tripod. The EF-S 18-55mm STM lens' image stabilization was called upon for aid in both keeping the picture sharp and also for framing assistance.

This small boat had taken some water splash prior to this photo resulting in many water droplets on the windshield, noticeable just beyond the dash. The angle of the sun caused them to become prominant in the image.
 
Since I wanted the dash and steering wheel to be the focus of the picture, I needed to remove the spots. If there were only a few of them, I would have simply cloned them out. Cloning out a hundred or so water spots does not sound like fun (and this picture probably would not be worth that task to me). So, I selected the effected area and used Photoshop's Dust and Scratches noise filter with a 12 pixel radius selected. The filter removed nearly all of the water spots and I lost very few non-water-spot details to this filtering.

Want your subject to appear tall? Photograph them from a low position. Want an exposure challenge under a full sun? Have the subject wear a fluorescent pink shirt.

The Canon EF-S 18-55mm IS STM Lens is not a macro lens, but with a 0.36x maximum magnification spec, it comes closer to being a macro lens than most other lenses. And mid-sized flowers framed tightly are not a problem for this lens.
 
Lighting for this picture comes from a late-day sun.

One of my life's best investments was in The Cook's Illustrated Cookbook. We gave it to my oldest daughter, Brianna, for Christmas a couple of years ago. The cookbook seldom left her side for the next year and it still gets lots of use. Brianna has become an excellent chef in that time – with deserts being one of her specialties.
 
Not long prior to this photo being taken, I showed Brianna a picture of a cake decorated as a flag using fruit and whipped cream. The investment in the education (the cookbook and the time Bri spent with it) and the inspiration of a picture came together to yield this cake.
 
The cake of course turned into a photo subject. This time the Canon SL1 was paired with the Canon EF-S 18-55mm STM IS Lens. While the lens was not the most drool-worthy, the subject sure was. The design was a few blueberries short of authentic, but the cake still looked great. And I can tell you that it tasted twice as good as it looked.
 
What inspiration are you finding in pictures? Are you generating inspiration with your pictures?

A black horse grazes in the late day sun. A black horse and a clear sky are two good reasons to chose M (Manual) shooting mode. Your light is not going to change (at least not quickly) and the large black horse is going to make the camera's auto exposure algorithm to over-expose the image. Dial in the right exposure and don't worry about it again until your shooting circumstances change.

Handholding a shot at 1/8 of a second, as exampled here, means relying on image stabilization – and good technique. Stabilization is extremely helpful, but you must still keep the camera very still while capturing the handheld shot. Then follow through with the steadyness until the shutter sounds are entirely completed.

A young girls trots her horse over pipes for training purposes – in the rain. The Rebel SL1 is not a camera I recommend using in the rain, but I didn't suffer any consequences for doing so this day. By shooting in vertical orientation, I could cover some of the camera with my hand while shooting. The Canon 300mm f/2.8 L IS II USM Lens I was using is better weather sealed. I don't have concerns using it under a light rain such as this.

An unusual cloud formation passes by a bright daytime-visible moon. The small, sharp moon balances the large, soft-edged cloud curving through this composition.