Tangledlines

wow, some amazing shots there Clive, nice work!

If you are just replacing the range of the kit lens and don't want to spend alot i'd get a Tamron or Sigma - 17-50 2.8, I think they both make lenses in that range for around the 500-600 dollar mark, the Canon 17-55 IS 2.8 would be my ideal pic since it's got canon USM and is "L" quality sharp but it's also close to 1200.00 so it may be more than you want to spend. I second a vote for the sigma 10-20 (i have one and it's a great lens but not a good all purpose walk around lens, it's almost fisheye like at the wide end so it's more of a specialty lens, but I really like and it's very sharp and has great color/contrast). Personally I don't think you can beat a good prime lens (once you get used to the sharp images of a nice prime lens it's hard to pick up a zoom lens), a prime forces you to be more creative, but it is restrictive and I would only add it to your lens line up once you have the 18-300mm range covered as a bare minimum. Tamron and Sigma both make decent lenses, Sigma are far nicer in the quality of build compared to the tamron and I personally don't like the slight red color cast that most Tamron lenses seem to favor (I have a Tamron 28-75mm 2.8) neither Sigma or Tamron will focus as fast or as accurate as a good Canon USM lens especially in low light and this isn't a huge problem for most things but if action or low light photography are your type of thing i'd stick to Canon L lenses if possible since that is where you will notice the big difference. I would not worry too much about filling a 55-70mm void, zoom with your feet and fill the void that way, do yourself a favor and pick up a Canon 28mm 1.8 or the Sigma 30mm 1.4 (my fav), a Sigma 10-20mm and replace that 70-300 with one of Canons 70-200 L series lenses, good glass makes all the difference

I bought HDMI cables from Memory Express for like 30 bucks each... if you look around you can find them without paying the hundreds of dollars that places like Future Shop wants. You need to go HDMI though to really get the benefit of the HD, as well if you are using an upconverting dvd player, the upconvert will not work without using the HDMI.

yeah a circular polarizer, also had it on in the bottom pic, just forgot to adjust it properly....oh well. Polarizers are great, you can't compensate with photoshop

it wasn't photoshopped blur, the lens is a 30mm f1.4, that photo was taken at f1.8 - 1/2000 at ISO 100 - the depth of field at 1.8 is pretty thin

the fish pic was taken with a 30mm prime lens, the other 2 taken with a 10-20mm

just some pics from this last weekend.