Canon EOS Kiss X4 / Rebel T2i / 550D Low Light Test: Rice Fields and Small City Japan

My apartment in Japan is surrounded on 3 sides by rice fields, is close to the Shinkansen, and in a small city. It’s pretty awesome.

Equipment Info:
Canon Rebel T2i
http://amzn.to/9uxM4y
Canon Kiss X4 (Japan)
http://bit.ly/c2Yq0Z
Canon 50mm f/1.8 II lens
http://amzn.to/amxGME
http://bit.ly/9u7QsG (Japan)

These were all shot on the Canon 50 mm f/1.8 II except the next to last shot, which was shot on the kit 18-55 mm. The sun had just set and I decided to see what the camera and lens combo could do in low light. All of these were shot in ISO 100 except the last shot of the spider which was ISO 400, I think. I don’t know about you, but I think the results are amazing. Absolutely no grain with very little light source. The spider shot has a tiny bit of grain in the render, but the raw has none. Also, that white circle is the crescent moon out of focus. There was no color correction or filters used in this video.

All the sound was recorded on my Zoom H2 in surround sound mode. Yes, the rice fields are PACKED with frogs and they are THAT loud, sometimes more. Usually the Shinkansen is the loudest thing in the area, but they almost drown it out. The song playing in the background plays every day at noon, 5 PM, and 9 PM throughout the entire city. It’s called “Nocturne for Kitakami”.

My original goal that night was to attempt to film or photograph the bats that were flying like crazy around my apartment the night before, but that night they weren’t flying in too much of a group. My goal is to somehow get a good picture of a bat before I move from this place.

Feel free to ask any questions! More tests soon!

The Return

I swear I didn’t mean to neglect this thing. It took me forever to decide on and find a blog layout that I was happy with. The previous one was WAY too busy and sometimes even hard to read. What’s the use of having content of it’s difficult to deal with? I’m absolutely in love with this layout and it’s going to be really easy to edit and expand upon. The banner at the top with all the links is going to change a lot, but my goal is to make it interactive. I’m still learning more CSS and such, so the overall blog design isn’t going to change.

As for videos, I have SO MANY VIDEOS coming it’s not even funny. The one above is my first youtube video in awhile. After I finished that I was busy working on Current TV VCAMs. (There will be another post about that made today) I’m still trying to decide if I want to make another channel for vlogs, keep them on my main channel, or just cut them out completely. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

No matter what happens, you can still keep in touch on my Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, or Flickr.