Forever Home: Retirement of an Old Friend

Saturday, September 21, 2013

Retirement of an Old Friend

After six years, 23 countries, and 45,353 pictures it is finally time for my old friend and camera, the Canon Rebel XT, to retire. She has served us well and will continue to come out of the camera bag from time to time, but she has worked hard and earned the right to sit back kick up her tired autofocus mechanism and enjoy retirement.

Stepping in to fill her shoes is an eager, if a bit over-enthusiastic, Canon 70D. She has more megapixles than we know what to do with, but her pictures are beautiful. The camera shop where we bought her also rents lenses, so to help ease the transition from old to new, we rented a fish-eye lens for the weekend and took both cameras out for a spin.

First, we tired out Fort Sam Houston, the supposed home of a group of beautiful historic homes. After some serious navigation fail, we gave up on finding them and settled for a stop in the Fort Sam National Cemetery. Hello picture 0001.

The next day, we decided to give downtown San Antonio a try instead. This outing was much more successful. The historic King William district provided us with plenty of beautiful scenery for a few side-by-side comparisons of the cameras and their respective lenses (on top is the 70D and on bottom is the XT with the fish-eye).

The fish-eye certainly gave us a wider angle, and the distortion added a fun perspective.

It was especially useful around the winding corners of the River Walk.

And it made taking self-portraits much easier (look at how we match - what goobers).

Of course, some of the pictures ended up downright goofy.

We decided that we won't be purchasing a fish-eye lens any time soon, but it sure was fun to play with for the day. The new 70D made it through her first day of shooting quite well once we figured out the setting that was turning all the pictures a weird orange color. Her pictures were crisp and properly lit, and the autofocus didn't stutter once.