JURY IS STILL OUT

Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XS, FD-EF Converter, Canon 19mm Fish eye, ISO 100, f/22, 1/5 sec

  After 3 weeks of torture not having the opportunity and dealing with a poison ivy infection I finally got out Sunday morning and took some photos. WOOT!
  My friend Tim Owens and I took a hike into the Bald River Gorge and found one of the most spectacular waterfalls that I have seen.  This set of falls is called The Suislides and there is a smaller set of falls in front of them called Shallow Falls.  This stepladder set of falls might be my favorite that I have found in the Cherokee National Forest.  It has several smaller cascades around it and wading out into the river is safe and relatively easy.  I will have to revisit this spot several times because I had ideas for different spots to shoot from but just didn't have the time for hiking further into the gorge.
  Something else that was exciting about this photo excursion was that I purchased an FD-EF mount converter and could use the lenses for my old Canon T50 35mm camera with my DSLR. I purchased it from Amazon.com for $30 and can now mount my Sigma 18-55 f/2.8 and Sears 70-200 f/4 to my camera.
   Now there are some initial drawbacks to the converter. I can't meter through my camera through the lens or use auto focus.  The auto focus is not a problem because most of my shots are manually focused through Live View.  The metering though is something I still have to play around with.  The converter also crops the lens and shot as well.
  A friend of mine let me use his Canon 19mm Fish eye FD mount lens and I tried to utilize it at The Suislides. I had to use trial and error for exposure with the Fish eye and wasn't very successful. The fish eye let in so much light that I couldn't get the longer exposures I was looking for with the moving water of the falls. I was overexposing every shot. I had to turn the exposure on the photo above down in Camera Raw and it worked out fairly well.
  The jury is still out on the converter and my old lenses. I will try some more and keep all updated.
  Meanwhile, below is an additional shot of The Suislides with my digital equipment.  It is a 6 photo panorama from in front of Shallow Falls with The Suislides in the background.

Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XS, Tamron 28-80 lens @ 28mm, ISO 100, 6 image panorama, f/11-f/22, 1.6-2.5 sec.