Canon Rebel Xt Test - Introduction

I've been thinking about buying a digital SLR for sometime. A couple of my colleages brought theirs in to compare - both are Canon Rebels; Alex's is the newer. Alex suggested that I borrow his for a weekend to give it a try. I shot pictures indoors, with and without flash (bounced and straight on), and outdoors. I used IrfanView to convert the raw image files (CR2 format) to PNG format and then used Gimp 2.2 to convert to the JPEG that you are viewing. The nice thing about raw format is that post-processing (white balance, sharpening (if any), contrast changes, brightness changes, converting to logarithmic format, e.g., PNG or JPEG, ...) is done under relaxed conditions rather than shooting conditions.

The other reason to borrow a digital camera was to shoot pictures of some of our house plants.

We have two Zygoneria orchids that Lisa purchased as gifts for two friends. They were small and not in bloom so I looked after them to see if they would bloom. After about a year, Lisa got two in-bloom orchids (Phalaenoposis) as (temporary) replacements because the Zygoneria orchids showed no signs of blooming. They had grown a leaf or two and lost a leaf or two so weren't dying and weren't thriving. I moved one under the lights that I use to grow basil. The basil growing area (lights and table) has a light plastic drop around it so the air gets quite moist and warm. The one I moved had shown the least growth. After about another year or so, it sent up a spike of blooms.

Zygonerias are a hybrid between Zygopetalum (South and Central American orchids) and Neogardneria (I think, Australian orchids). The one we have blooming is a cross between two Zygonerias. The bloom looks like the picture I have of a species Zygopetalum. Zygonerias, like Zygopetalums, have a pleasant scent. Ours is scented only during daylight.

Zygoneria Small Medium Large Full Ref: IMG_3849

I also wanted to share a picture of our Giant Saguaro cactus, which I started from seed late in 2003. As you can see, it is now a mammoth 5mm tall. Nancy sent me the seeds after their trip to California and Arizona. I travelled with them for part of their trip through Arizona.

Giant Saguaro Cactus Small Medium Large Full Ref: IMG_3726

Other than that, there are outside pictures of "landscape" from around our yard, closeups of flowers, and a few attempts a pictures of birds on our feeders.

I'm also playing with a program to show pictures as large as possible on client machines without having to scale pictures on the client machines. If you try this work in progress, please let me know whether it worked for your browser and which browser you are using.

The pictures have more complete descriptions on the larger images. The toenail images just have the picture caption.

The full sized images are suitable for printing at 8in by 12in.

This site is best viewed using Netscape 7.1. It should work for Netscape 4.x and Internet Explorer 5.x and 6.x. Please let me know if you have problems.

Pictures from 2005-10.