Don White (lost83)'s photostream

Born in Toronto and moved to Vancouver in 1981. I visit Toronto yearly and the best time of my visits are when the flight attendants tell the passengers to prepare for landing in "Vancouver". I like Toronto very much but to me Vancouver is 'out of this world' special.

My introduction to digital photography was in mid 2003 when after a few days of research I bought a Canon A70. It was a good camera but six months later I felt I needed something more advanced so I bought a Canon G3.

At the same time I started following the "Digital Photography Review" web site and had been avidly following the long line of newly released digital cameras. So, just before the Sony R1 was discontinued, I bought it in mid 2006. Due to the superior quality of the R1's RAW files I stopped taking jpg's.

Two year later I bought the Canon A720 for it's macro capability, something the R1 was lacking. I soon investigated CHDK (Canon Hackers Development Kit) which when properly installed on the memory chip, really 'opens up' this decent and inexpensive point and shoot camera. The CHDK on-line manual is (when I last looked) 57 pages in length. I particularly enjoy the battery status and RAW picture file capability.

Soon afterwards, I started to burn out. I have so many photos stored on DVDs and in my computer's hard drive, that I was rarely going out taking pictures.

Having bought an Olympus E-PL1 camera, I'm once again taking many photographs.

My favorite shots are those taken low to the ground or water. In order to capture the reflections off the water, I hold the camera by the neck strap with my left hand. While kneeling on my left knee, I position the camera using my other hand just beyond the bank and as low as possible, without falling in. Although I can't see the LCD I position the camera as best as possible and then trigger the shutter button with my right hand. Sometimes the results are useless but usually it's a pretty good shot. Rotating/leveling the photograph and cropping are needed most of the time.