Eli Carling's photostream

Hello, and thanks for taking a gander at my pictures. Just in case it’s not obvious, no I’m certainly not a professional, I’m not an artist, and if I were I would probably have starved to death by now. That pretty squarely makes me a hobbyist. I have always had a great deal of fascination with the visual arts, though no great ability to make a worthwhile contribution. All the same that hasn’t stopped me from fiddling around, wasting lots of time, and spending too much money on toys I didn’t really need. These toys though have given me a “creative outlet” of sorts as well as allowed me to capture parts of my life. I have always enjoyed taking pictures in order to “capture” the memories of a certain place or time, but not until recently did I consider actually trying to improve the way I take pictures, and thus bother to start learning a bit about just what cameras actually do. Since then it has been a hobby for me that I have really enjoyed and made perhaps a bit of improvement in. I don’t get out quite as much as I would like or as much as I should perhaps and so the number of pictures I take suffers for it. But for me it’s more about just doing something I enjoy. And if anyone else besides me can enjoy the photographs that I take well then all the better. After all like everyone else a little praise every now and then doesn’t hurt. If you want to know more about me personally please by all means visit my website, it also has lots more photographs, and often stories to go with them, and while flickr is quite nice, I must say I am still partial to my own website (I have better backgrounds). www.EliCarling.com

What equipment do I have?

Film Cameras

Minolta Maxxum 70
Minolta Maxxum 5 (The 5 is a superior camera even though it’s a previous generation and one model down)

Lenses for Minolta
Tamron AF Zoom 19-35mm
Minolta AF Zoom 35-80mm Macro
Tamron AF Zoom 75-300mm Tele-Macro

Flash for Minolta
Minolta 5600HS

Film I generally use
Fujicolor Superia Reala 100
Kodak T400CN, B&W
Kodak Elite Chrome 100
Kodak Ektachrome 320T or 160T (Tungsten, also useful for night photography)
Kodak Ektapress PJ400

Digital Point and Shoot

Canon Power Shot A540 (handy when you don’t feel like carrying around 10 lbs of camera)

Digital SLR

Canon Digital Rebel XTI (a.k.a. the 400D)

Lenses for Canon
Canon Zoom EFS USM 10-22MM
Canon Zoom EFS IS USM 17-85mm Macro
Canon Zoom EFS IS USM 70-300mm Macro (For shame Canon 70-300mm, you produce sever artifacts in low light even with your lens hood. My el-cheep-o Tamron never did that even without the lens hood)

Flash for Canon
Canon Speedlite 580EX

Film I generally use
I love 8 Gb memory cards

Other Stuff
24 various colored stage gels used to cover the flash in order to produce colored light for night photography.
Sekonic L-385 Light/Flash Meter (its pretty nice I just wish I would learn to use it)

For all this stuff you’d think I’d be better than I am, oh well.