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Canon Rebel T2i: My First Attempts

I haven’t yet decided what to specialize in with regard to my venture into photography. Hey, I’m into it purely for the fun. I’m not about to embark into the professional realm. If I was, I’d probably buy something better than the Canon Rebel T2i. But still, even hobbyists tend to lean into some specialization, e.g. landscapes, or portraits. On second thought, I might just let go of any specialization pursuit and simply specialize on fun.

This early though, I found myself setting my tripod and Canon Rebel T2i in the front yard and taking close up pictures of my wife’s plants and flowers. The pictures in this page are all from her little patch of flower plants. The ones with the dark background were taken using my son’s black t-shirt draped on a chair behind the flower.

From this development, I seem to be taking an interest in macro photography. But I think it’s too early to tell as I’m still beginning to explore the art of photography. Perhaps, next thing I’ll be trying out would be some landscapes. I have always found a beautiful sunset view somewhere along my route on my daily commute home after work. I got to make sure I’ll immortalize one of those amazing sunsets in my gallery soon.

Macro, portrait, landscapes, underwater… these require special lenses. And some of these lenses often are way more expensive than the camera (body) itself.

Well, for the time being, I’ll have to make do with the lens that came with the Canon Rebel T2i kit, the EFS 18-55mm lens. The lens is of course not just any ordinary lens. It works nicely and I have even read some reviews in praise of the EFS 18-55 kit lens. As I have not even touched any other lens, I have no basis to compare them except from what I read on the net. Like I said, for the time being, I’ll just try out my present set up and see what it can do.

Oh, here, by the way, is another one of those pics I took while whiling away my time as I waited for my turn at the dentist on my latest appointment (last Saturday).

As these Canon Rebel T2i pics are going to add up as time goes by, I have created a subdomain site on which I’ll be dumping all my photo outputs in. I’m still looking for a suitable wp theme though. You can check it out at Pictures Of.

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My New Canon Rebel T2i

Just got my new Canon Rebel T2i yesterday evening right after work. This is not just ‘my new camera’. It’s my very first DSLR camera ever. I’ve had cameras before but all of them were the point and shoot kind.

I don’t know if it’s their standard procedure but I feel that the store clerk may have read through me clearly when, prior to the payment at the cashier, he invited me over to a table and gave me a demo of the Canon Rebel T2i – from assembling the sling, taking off the lens cap, down to how to press the shutter. I didn’t know my ignorance about dslr cameras was that transparent. I thought I sounded pro when I dropped some pro-sounding words, e.g. when I inquired about available macro glasses (intentionally using the word ‘glasses’ instead of ‘lenses’, as suggested by Scott Kelby), and carbon fiber tripods.

Well, I couldn’t contain my excitement I couldn’t sit still while I waited a little over an hour to fully charge the new (partly charged) battery at home. I devoured the manual and run smack into technical photo jargon, e.g. aperture priority, shutter priority, white balance, etc. It particularly took some time to get the confusion out of aperture value and actual aperture ‘open-ness’.

Needless to say, I took some shots at the nearest things I could shoot at. Here are a few of them.

These are some of the things I found inside the box (except the Scott Kelby book).

My daughter’s Minnie Mouse on the wall.

I took a lot of pictures without taking thought about choice of subjects. Hell, I took pictures of the trash bin, my toes, the laundry bin, the inside of the cabinet, the kids, my wife, you name it.

Today, while I waited for my turn at the dentist’s office, I took the liberty of taking some shots inside her receiving room.

As of now, I’m still shooting mostly with the mode dial set to P (Program AE), where the camera sets the shutter speed and aperture automatically. Even now, I’m still exploring the rebel. I’m setting my mind on messing up with apertures and shutter speed and manual focus soon. And I’m looking forward to the free photography seminar the sales clerk at Canon told me about, which he said is tentatively set around the second week of November.