Foto Friday - 7/13/12

This is my seventy-seventh Foto Friday post. This is an exciting day for Foto Friday because the posts for Foto Friday are going to be slightly different from here on out. It'll be a good thing with a name change, some themes, and... A NEW CAMERA! Keep reading this post to find out more. The pictures today are from Fourth of July and raspberry picking. Full set with all 39 photos can be viewed here.

Coral has really been a delight to the entire family. She is such a good baby and hardly complains at all. Even when she does cry, it doesn't really bother me because she has the most adorable crying face and sound. She's been sleeping pretty darn good and just set a new record of eight hours straight!

For the Fourth of July, we did what we normally do and went over to Bethany's parent's place for grilled burgers and dogs. We had a very sunny Fourth, which was nice as the weeks prior have been nothing but depressing. As you can see, my dad goes all out for the nation's celebration.

We played a couple games of croquet out in the front yard. Later, Julie had the chance to get her swimsuit on and play in her kiddie pool with a couple of the neighbor kids.

July 4th is Bethany's birthday, so this was her cake this year. Cute idea with raspberries and blueberries circled with sliced almonds to make patriotic-colored flowers.

When it got dark, we went over to my parent's house to watch firework shows from their driveway. They have a good view of the Des Moines fireworks show every year. Snapped a shot of their neighbor's lighthouse.

As I like to do every year, I took a bunch of long exposure shots while playing with fireworks. Always have fun doing this.

Last Friday was Bring Your Kids to Work Day at Microsoft, so I brought Juliana in to spend a busy day with me. They made special guest badges for the kids with their favorite cartoon characters on them. Right now, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is her favorite show, so she got her favorite character Pinkie Pie on her badge. I am happy to admit that I think the show is pretty good, too.

On Sunday, we went raspberry picking with Tawnya at Picka Farms in Puyallup. The fruit is certainly in season now as I tasted some of the best raspberries I've ever had.

Juliana also enjoyed eating them straight off the bushes. The weather was so nice and has continued to be so all week. Looks like it'll continue into the weekend.

Alright, now for the exciting news. Bethany and I made a deal that I would buy and use the Panasonic Lumix LX3 for five years before I purchased a new camera to replace it. Preferably with a DSLR. Well, with Coral here, some extra savings in the bank, and my continued thrill for photography, we decided to get a new camera now. I did a bunch of research and asked a lot of my photography friends for advice while shopping around.

In the end, I bought a Canon EOS 5D Mark II. It's just about the best consumer DSLR camera you can get and is highly regarded by most photography fans. The 5D Mark III came out recently, but considering its $3,500 body-only price tag, I wasn't ready to justify spending that much on a newer model. The Mark II is more than capable to accomplish my needs.

It also takes full-HD video at 1080p 30fps or 720p 60fps. My LX3 only did 720p 30fps, which still looked alright, but the 5D's quality should look much better. There have been a few films and TV shows that used this camera, or even the 7D which is the model right below mine. For example, The Avengers, Captain America, House, Iron Man 2, and Act of Valor. I'm not saying that my videos are going to look Hollywood quality, but it certainly has the potential if I learn some things about editing and color correction.

I bought a 50mm f/1.4 USM lens to go with my camera for starts and received everything I needed to start shooting yesterday. Ready to see a sample?

Haha! So, if you're a photographer, obviously you can tell that I have a lot to learn about my camera. Give me time and these pictures should get better.

Here's a small comparison picture I made between my two cameras. (You can click on this picture to make it bigger.) Keep in mine that this is without proper white balance, color correction, or editing, but already you can see more details in our lovely model, Kirino-chan. Plus with the 50mm 1.4, her face is completely in focus providing some beautiful bokeh behind her. With the LX3, the highlighter pen, ethernet cable, and box are still fairly in focus.

Let's zoom in on Kirino's face and look at the difference in megapixels. (You can click on this picture to make it bigger.) Obviously the 5D (21.1MP) holds up much better, which will allow for better cropping capability than I had with the LX3 (10.1MP). I also want to be clear in saying that this is not exactly a fair comparison since the LX3 is considered a point-and-shoot and the 5D is a full-frame DSLR. Still, it gives you a good idea of the quality you can expect moving forward on here.

Not only is the camera a big change, but starting in two weeks, I am changing the name of Foto Friday to Foto Phriday. I probably should have used that title from the beginning, but I didn't really think about how much more clever it was. I also plan on starting some fun photo events like a Photo365 project where you take a picture every single day. Or another black and white photowalk. There's also this great Adobe Photoshop Lightroom preset called "Silver Lining" that I just adore and plan on doing a complete photowalk of some sort applying only that effect. So definitely stay tuned, subscribe, do whatever you need to do to see Foto Phridays. To see more 5D first samples, or more from Fourth of July and raspberry picking, view the full set.