Christmas came a little early for Andy and I and the two of us have already exchanged our gifts. I was lucky enough to get a new 50mm, f/2.0, macro lens for my camera. I’m still experimenting with it but loving how much light the larger aperture lets in. Although having such a shallow depth of field makes it really difficult to focus on a subject that moves as quickly as Cameron! I’m thinking I may have to bump it up an f-stop when shooting him. Still a wider aperture than I could get with my other lenses!
The macro lens allows me to get a really close view of details, like this picture of Cameron’s eye. Not the greatest example of lighting, due to the shadows from the window shutters, but I love how the direct sunlight in his eye really shows off the color of his eyes.
Another little Christmas gift to myself was this nifty little flash deflector. Mostly I try to take pictures in natural light, but seeing as it’s winter, natural light is a little hard to come by. Especially for the ubiquitous Christmas picture of family, since our family get-togethers are invariably after the sun has set. I knew that an external flash was not in the budget right now, but I really hate the harsh lighting and shadows of the pop-up flash on the camera.
I found out about this $20 little tool called the Lightscoop on a photography message board. It’s basically just a mirror that bounces the flash off the ceiling instead of into your subject’s eyes. As soon as I got it, I couldn’t wait to try it out, so here are some test shots comparing no flash to pop-up camera flash to flash with Lightscoop. I took all of these pictures in manual mode, with the settings recommended by Lightscoop – f2.8, 1/200 shutter speed, ISO 800, +2 flash exposure compensation. I took them in a setting that normally would warrant flash use, in other words, with not great ambient light.
Here’s the first shot, with no flash. Notice how dark it is!
Next shot is with the pop-up camera flash. The colors are yucky and there are some harsh shadows. 
Final shot is flash with Lightscoop. I think even Cameron knows that the lighting is so much better! Looks much more natural. It would be great to have an external flash someday, but for now I think Lightscoop was a good investment! 
