My cameras!

It's no secret that I love taking photos. I feel like one would have to like taking pictures in order to have a daily style blog, taking photos becomes part of life. One of the questions I get most is what camera I use for my outfit photos, and so I thought I'd give you guys a little peek at my fleet of cameras!

First off, here's my main squeeze: my Canon DSLR, a Rebel EOS T2i. It's a wonderful camera, I'm totally in love with it. It shoots full HD 1080p video in addition to still shots, which is one of my favorite features and my reasoning behind wanting it in the first place. I really enjoy shooting little videos with it. It's really fun to be able to switch lenses and the quality is quite wonderful.

I have a few lenses that I use with it. The one that I use most of the time is my Canon 50mm f/1.4. I recently just got a wide angle Sigma 24mm f/1.8 lens which is quite fun to use. I like having a lens that I can use in more close situations. With the 50mm I have to be a bit further away from my subject in order to fit them in frame. With the 24mm I can be very close. The self portrait above was taken at an arm's length away! Plus, it still has the shallow depth of field that I love. I also have a Tamron 90mm f/2.8 macro lens and a Canon 28-80mm lens, both of which I rarely use. The macro lens is fun for getting close up shots, and it's really incredible how close you can get! It's almost like a microscope!

One of my favorite cameras to shoot with is my polaroid but since film is both incredibly difficult to come by and rather expensive, I haven't been able to use it in quite some time. I've been really wanting to get an instax mini so I can take instant photos again. I also have an SX 70, and it's one of my absolute favorite cameras.

My mom gave me this Olympus OM-1 that she got when she was a teenager. She used it for her darkroom photography class in college. 30 years later I used the same camera for my darkroom photography class, which was at the same college in the same darkroom where she took her class! I adore this camera, not only for the nostalgic feelings attached to it, but also for the beautiful images it captures. The photo below of Daniel was taken in 2006 when I was taking my darkroom class, so it was developed and printed all by hand! I loved developing and printing my own film. After I took that class I wanted to someday have a darkroom of my own! Perhaps someday I will...

Last but not least, my Holga! In college I knew a friend who had a Holga and became smitten with the square photos it took and the vignetting that the plastic lens produced. I've always loved the raw nature of toy, disposable and polaroid cameras, and I think the Holga might be my favorite. I also like being able to take double exposures. You can also shoot 35mm film in a Holga, which turns out pretty cool. I've done it before but haven't been able to get prints of the film yet.

As far as editing photos goes, I use both Photoshop CS4 and Picnik. I need to invest in some photoshop actions like some Totally Rad Actions or Mandi's Actions. I think those would be fun to play around with. There's more information on how to edit photos in the Indie E-course and I'm in the process of working on a mini e-course focused on photography, specifically outfit photos for bloggers. I get a lot of emails and questions about it, so I figured it'd be a great topic for a mini e-course! Would you guys be interested in that?