My way of shooting photos isn't one of the most economical it seems.

I've grown very much fond of the Dual-ISO capabilities of the Magic Lantern, but it seems that every time I extract photos from my camera, as I prepare the photos for editing, I end up using over double the space it would take if I were only using the original RAW .CR2 files from my Canon DSLR. I am effectively making DNG copies from them.

At the moment I'm down to 25 GB free on my terabyte HDD.

I could delete the CR2-files but I'm not sure if I want to, I'm very keen of keeping the originals too. One never knows when they might be needed. I've occasionally noticed the Dual-ISO programming doesn't always work, and the camera saves a regular CR2 file instead, so I want to keep those too. It's a hassle I know but I've become used to it.

The only way I guess I can redeem the situation is to buy another hard drive, or get myself a back-up disk or a server. But those are a bit too steep in price for me at the moment. (I don't think powering down on Steem would be a good idea, as I just had invested in it, and the price dropped well below what I had put in it.)

Yeah, well. While writing this post, the photos were pre-processed and I took a look at them...

ONE sharp photo?

Man I hate that lens.

My car – the only photo that passed.

Body: Canon EOS 550D
Lens: Super Carenar MC ƒ=35mm 1:2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/100s
Aperture: ƒ/11.0
ISO: Dual-ISO 100+200

I suppose I need to take the lens for another spin soon. Hopefully it'll be a bit cloudier then so I don't have to shoot with quite so fast shutter speeds. Most of the photos got exceedingly bad because I had to use over 1/3000s shutter speeds because it was too bright outside. Even if I had managed to focus right, the quality would still have been crap. (I also desperately need some neutral density filters for these snowy days, if I want to have any kind of shallow depth (or bokeh) in the shots.)

Figures... I might as well delete them all now that they were ruined. To save some space.

What did I learn from this?

Well one thing for sure, Dual-ISO may prove bad if it's a very bright day. For one, ISO 100 would've been enough, I know that much. Using Dual-ISO also meant I couldn't even chimp the photos to see if they were good or not, since the Camera can't display the photos right. Had to move them to the computer to see the results. Other thing was the 35mm is fiendishly difficult to focus unless it's set at a ridiculously tiny aperture. Not fun lens if you ask me. But put the thing on a tripod and use the live screen to focus, that's when magic happens. (I've witnessed this first hand.)

Anyway, time for me to take a nap before breakfast.

[Previous post: How am I feeling today? (Generic blog post / rambling)]