Mokka mit Schlag » Photography

I’m still trying to make up my mind as to which DSLR to buy. I long ago decided on Canon, and the Rebel’s a little small and a little too low on the megapixels for my tastes. In my price range, that leaves the 50D and the 5D Mark II (or equivalent older models, but I like newer toys. :-) ). The primary difference between these two are:

1. The 50D is an APS-C sensor with a 1.6x Field-of-view crop. The 5D is a full 35mm camera.
2. The 5D has 21 megapixels vs. 15 megapixels on the 5D.

I like to take pictures of two things: birds and bugs. (For family, friends, and pets I can use a point-and-shoot.) Keeping that in mind what makes sense?
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For my insect photography, I’ve been reading a lot of books and web pages about closeup photography. They usually suggest three things:

• Diopters, a.k.a closeup lenses
• Macro lenses
• Extension tubes

I haven’t tried extension tubes yet, but I did buy myself a cheap set of macro and closeup lenses. However, I discovered that the directions were distinctly lacking. Furthermore, none of the books and web pages I consulted explained what these did or how to use them in words I could understand. So today I ran a few experiments to figure out just what they did and how to use them. Since flying insects in the park aren’t exactly a reproducible test case, I set up my tripod and took some pictures of a flower on my dining room table with different lenses. Here’s what I figured out:
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Buy an extra USB cable for your camera. Buy an extra charger too if the camera doesn’t use standard AA batteries. Put these in your travel bag. Leave the original USB cable plugged into your main computer, and the original battery charger plugged into an outlet at your home or office. Using the same cables and adapters for home/office and travel is a recipe for disaster. Sooner or later you will leave one behind.

When you take the battery out of your digital camera to charge it, leave the battery compartment open:

That way you won’t walk out the door with a camera with no battery.