Canon EOS 60D Sample Pictures

A young rider smiles in the late-day sunlight. By shooting from a low angle, I was able to remove all background distractions. The number of lines intersecting the image border has also been minimized.

When at the game park, finding good backgrounds can be challenging. Having enough focal length can give you another option for eliminating the background completely. Simply zoom in. In this case, the wide end of this lens' focal length range was adequate and the pattern of zebra stripes becomes the picture.

Ricketts Glenn State Park, PA has so many beautiful waterfalls that I could spend weeks shooting there. This shot is of one of the larger falls deep in the valley during an especially strong flow. My daughter was shooting with me on this day and was complaining about how loud the water was.

The 13-foot Oneida Falls is easily one of my favorite Ricketts Glen State Park waterfalls. I typically time my RGSP daytrips to coincide with cloudy weather to prevent contrast issues with bright sunlight reaching the forest floor. Add a little rain and it chases the other visitors away (they are sometimes hard to clone stamp out of images). Well, this day I was a little over-optimistic on the "little" part of the rain. A storm came up and dumped perhaps 2 inches of water on me. I was prepared, but could not shoot during the deluge.
 
When the rain slowed, I shared the entire Falls Trail with practically no one. And, many of the falls had a streak of color in them due to the heavy runoff. I'm always looking for something different, so ... perhaps the rain was not too heavy after all.
 
A B+W XS-Pro circular polarizer filter was used for this picture.

Moving in close with a wide angle focal length emphasizes the foreground subjects - the pumpkins - and de-emphasizes the background subjects - the house. The deep blue sky is courtesy of a circular polarizing filter.
 
A shutter speed of 1/250 was not needed for this shot, but I was shooting moving subjects (guess what they were) before and after grabbing this shot. ISO 200 is so clean that there is nearly no consequence for this setting.

I love patterns in nature. In this shot, the mums provide the pattern with the color roughly splitting the image into thirds - with the odd-colored flower near 1/3 of the distance into the top and right of the frame.

Zoom out to 8mm, move in close and get low to give your car a new look. Perhaps a cartoon look.

In my mind, there is only one thing to do when a cresent moon and a great sunset coincide. Take pictures of course. Where to place the moon in the frame becomes the big question. I liked how the brighter red clouds running through the bottom of the frame balanced the more-left positioned moon.
 
This picture shows how big you should expect the moon to be in your 250mm APS-C sensor format images. Full frame DSLR owners would need a 400mm focal length for the moon to be reproduced at this size.

It is easier to get a kid to smile if they are in a tree. It is also easier to get them to hold still. I needed a still subject for a portrait at the 1/60 shutter speed. If you put them in a tree, you are of course responsible for their safety.

I know – sorry about the creepy subject. Sometimes these situations just fall into my lap. My wife, using her unmistakable slightly panicked voice, called me to our finished basement to eradicate this little monster. Upon arrival on the scene, I decided that the 3.25" (82.5mm) dark fishing spider would make a great subject.
 
As I said in the review, the Sigma 18-35 has been a great lens to have available for around-the-house use. I grabbed it, a Canon 600EX-RT Speedlight, a Speedlite Transmitter ST-E3 RT and a small softbox and returned to the scene of the home invasion. As I gathered the gear, my stress level was being increased as my wife learned that I had left the hairy creature alive and unattended.
 
Fortunately, the spider remained findable. Since the carpet was not the background I wanted, I slid a piece of printer paper under it. That was of course much easier to say than to do. I grabbed and arranged two white (to not introduce a reflected color) plastic storage containers to hold the downward-directed softbox above the spider.
 
The above picture was captured at the 18-35's minimum focus distance. I released the spider outside as the carpet would have needed cleaning if I had squished it as requested. My wife swears that the same spider was back on the window, though outside this time.
 
Note that the EOS 60D has an integrated Speedlite transmitter and could possibly have fire the remote flash without the ST-E3-RT attached. But, the softbox can get in the way of the transmitter's light, preventing the remote flash from functioning. Radio-fired wireless flash is awesome.

The straight lines of architecture show the 8mm perspective very clearly. Architecture also shows barrel and pincushion distortion readily. The barrel distortion is not too dramatic in this shot, but I'll show a tighter-framed shot below that makes this issue more clear.

Animal pictures often look best when taken from the animal's level. I'm a good bit taller than this dog, so I was down very low in the snow for this shot.
 
I planned the position where I wanted to take this picture from before getting there - to get the light and background working together while preventing unnecessary tracks in the snow. The dog and I moved together to the position where I instructed her to stay. She happened to alertly look in the right direction for this shot, but the plan was to throw something in that direction to get the alert look.

I happened to be photographing this morning glory flower when a spider showed up to hunt for its lunch. A close focus distance and a relatively wide aperture result in a soft look to the image - with the backlit spider sharply contrasting its perch.

ISO 2000 was called upon to get an action-stopping 1/1250 shutter speed during this low light soccer action.

Zoom out, move in close and shoot upward for a new look at a sign.

For this shot, I positioned the sun so that it was shining through a small opening in the snow-covered fir tree. Using the rule of thirds, I positioned the tree about 1/3 of the distance into the frame.

ISO 12800 was called upon to get an action-stopping 1/1250 shutter speed during this low light soccer action. I seldom will trade motion blur for low noise, but perhaps that would have been a good idea for this shot.

Shawnee Falls is one of many beautiful waterfalls in Ricketts Glen State Park, PA. I was near the edge of a ledge for this shot. This position allowed the layered rocks on the right side of the image to grow in relation to the rest of the subjects in the frame.

This picture was taken using only the Christmas lights for illumination. A camera-level tripod position provides a normal perspective with the windows oriented vertically within the frame.

A young soccer player gives the ball her biggest kick - reflecting the effort in her face.

Sometimes the background makes the picture. I was taking a silhouette shot of the front two horses and their girls and timed a frame so that the third horse would be framed in the background.

A late day sun casts a warm light on these backlit grass plumes.
 
An 85mm lens with a maximum f/5.6 aperture does not create the most strongly-blurred backgrounds, but with a close subject and a distant and carefully-selected background, a very smooth image is the result.

The Canon EOS 60D's Vari-Angle LCD makes it easy to shoot from right on the ground. In this case, shooting from the ground allows the grass to add interest in front of the concrete entry to the stone barn.

I decided to line up the pair of tree trunks along the left side of the frame while the large rock formed the base for my image.

The clearance rack at your local (cheap) formalwear store can be a great source for you portrait wardrobe. The kids spend hours playing with the dresses, but the best part is that they want to have their picture taken after putting on their finishing touches.
 
When using a wide angle lens, do not get too close to your subject. Perspective distortion can deform their pretty faces. But a wide angle advantage is that it is easier to work above your subject. In this case, getting over the subject allows the big dress to become the background.
 
This is an ambient window light portrait.

Using a narrow aperture at a short macro focus distance will leave much of the image out of focus. Sometimes this is desirable.

The clouds opened up just enough to show the Milky Way during this 20 second exposure. While the clouds show a noticeable amount of motion, 20 seconds is short enough for the stars to retain most of their roundness at this focal length.
 
The Sigma 18-35mm Art Lens is very sharp, even at its very wide f/1.8 aperture. It is a very good choice for your night sky photography. With this lens and a stable tripod, shots like this one are very easy to capture.

A Golden Retriever looks over its back. By shooting from a more straight-on position, the ultra-wide 8mm focal length does not distort the size of the dog's head as significantly as head-close positions.
 
I was trying to keep the background trees away from the dogs face in this shot. I should also note that 1/50 is a very long exposure setting for always-moving dogs. It worked this time as the dog was intently studying something.

You can train the kids to pose nicely for pictures, but horses? Forget it. This one is rudely sticking its tongue out at me. :)

For a unique view of a parking lot light and pole, I held the camera directly against the bottom of the pole and framed the light so that the pole ran through the lower right corner of the frame and the lights were positioned toward the top left.

You seldom have too much focal length when your subject is a small bird. Even 300mm on an APS-C body (frames like 480mm on a full frame body) left plenty of room for cropping in this short-distance (about 9'/3m) shot. I opted to retain the interestingly-shaped branch in this case.

A trio of pink tulips and their green leaves stand out against the the interestingly colored rock background.

With an 11mm lens on an APS-C body, you can include both the shaded side and the direct-light side of the grass in your frame. Notice the color gradient across this image. The viewer's eye will be drawn to the higher contrast area of the photo - the subject's head shadow.

Adams Falls is the easiest of the major Ricketts Glen State Park falls to access. Simply pull into a parking lot and walk down over a steep bank.
 
Of course, easy to access means lots of people access it. Arrive just after a rain storm on a weekday when school is in session for the best odds of having no people in your way.
 
Otherwise be patient. Or, use a telephoto lens.
 
A B+W XS-Pro circular polarizer filter was used for this picture.

Believe it or not, I didn't put the spiraling blade of dried grass in the dog's mouth. She found it herself. The focus distance is very short in this image, but the ultra wide angle focal length takes in an expansive view and keeps the background in reasonable focus even with an f/5.6 aperture.

It's late, your tired, she's tired - but you must capture the beaming expression before the memory begins to fade. You grab a flash with a tilt-swivel head (the small Canon Speedlite 320EX in this case) and go to the fast-shot-go-to location in your house (a hallway in this example). Direct the flash toward the white wall/ceiling and you have very nice lighting for a fast portrait.

girl sits on the floor with her Golden Retriever. Lighting is from ambient daylight coming in large windows. The f/2.8 aperture makes this lens well-suited for indoor photography.

While f/1.8 is a very wide aperture, 18-35mm is a relatively wide angle range of focal lengths. This means that creating a strong background blur with a mounted APS-C format (only) DSLR camera requires a close subject. You can see a mild background blur in this mid-distance 35mm example.
 
Note that I was using a 1/8000 shutter speed for this shot. Not all cameras have this extremely fast shutter speed available.

I live near the Susquehanna River and spend a lot of time on it. It is a beautiful lazy river, but I find good images of this water to be elusive. I have relatively few. This of course means that I need to keep trying harder.
 
On this morning, I was chasing fog. Unfortunately, it lifted before I arrived at my choice of destinations.
 
Moving to a nearby location, I was able to make a handheld panorama of some nice clouds that showed up after the fog lifted along with their reflection in the mirror-like calm water. A centered waterline is often to be avoided in landscape images, but they can work well when reflections are being captured.
 
I used a CPOL filter to add some pop to the clouds during capture and reduced the sky exposure slightly in Photoshop during post processing. Photoshop was used to merge the multiple images.
 
This image was captured about 1 mile north of McKees Half Falls, but note that there is no good place to pull off of the highway here. And I was precariously standing on a steep rock slope to clear the shoreline vegetation.

An 11mm focal length gives you a unique perspective on a clump of tree trunks - the nearest trunks become very large in the picture while the distant trunks appear much smaller - with a small portion of sky showing between the trunks.

A perspective of a dog that you do not often see. Fortunately, the dog is just playing.

I often see pictures of reflections, but don't see swimming pools used as the reflector very often. Here some landscaping and a sunset reflect on the surface of a still swimming pool. The reflected light takes on a strong low-contrast blue appearance.

Lens distortion (not to be confused with perspective distortion) is typically most visible in straight lines running long the edge of the frame. At 11mm, the Tokina 11-16mm Lens show just slight barrel distortion (most noticeable at the bottom of the windows) in this image.

To give your viewer a sense of presence in the scene, move in close and use a wide angle focal length. At this close focus distance, even an 18mm focal length can create a strong background blur at f/1.8.

Aiming an ultra-wide angle lens straight up can often yield a pleasing image. In this case, I used the base of the Pink Oak trunk as my tripod and shot upward. The 60D's Vari-Angle LCD made framing easy even from this shooting location and direction.

After a heavy rain, R. B. Ricketts Falls in Ricketts Glen State Park flows strongly along with another small stream falling into the frame. The rain runoff also added a bit of color to the water. I recall this picture being taken during a light rain with some fog being visible here.
 
While this lens' wide aperture gains it a lot of attention, the image quality it delivers makes it an excellent choice for landscape photography.
 
A B+W XS-Pro circular polarizer filter was used for this picture.

With a wide angle lens, you can simply reach out and position your subjects as desired. In this case, the dog was not cooperating. So I grabbed her by the nose and took the shot. Actually, the dog was playing with me, but the story sounds good - and the technique indeed works - if you don't mind a hand in your frame of course.

This sunset was beautiful, but it was not a huge dramatic show. So, I used the distant mountain as a base for the image and then aligned a tree to fill the more-clear area of the sky. The result is a simple, clean image with some nice color.
 
I was working with the wide-open f/1.8 image quality of this lens when this picture was captured. The focus is on the foreground tree with the distant background going only mildy blurred.

Only short corn stalks remain in this winter corn field. The low sun casts long shadows in the snow from even these short stalks.

A unique view of something you are often trying to keep out of the frame. No hiding the camera model used to take this shot.

There is a very large log leaning against the 30-foot Shawnee Falls in Ricketts Glen State Park. Most captures of this falls include this signature log. And the log looks good in some images. But I'm always looking for a variations.
 
Access to this falls is limited by the steep rock, but using a slightly longer focal length allows the falls to be framed tight enough that the log, while visible, remains essentially unrecognizable.
 
A B+W XS-Pro circular polarizer filter was used for this picture.

Winter has set in, but the trunk of the Whitespire birch remains bright year-round. The Tokina 11-16mm Lens is a nice real estate lens.

Sometimes, you just have to go for a camera - and a kitchen stool in this case. The ultra-wide angle lens allowed me to work in a tight space and still get the big picture.
 
And here, we have a lot of legs on a bed - at least two horses, a sheep, a dog and a girl - and I'm sure there are many more under the various blankets.
 
The dog's closer position relative the rest of the subjects give it prominance in this picture. I'm not sure what to say about the flower stem that appears to lead to a flower that in the dog's mouth.

Melting snow peels back from a tree trunk. Clean melting snow is an oxymoron. But clone stamping can make clean melting snow a reality - turning it into a nice picture. A late winter sun provides some shadowing across the frame.

A girl stands behind her snow horse creation. Using an ultra-wide angle lens positioned close to the horse creates a perspective that makes the horse appear larger than it really is - in relation to the girl. The sky provides a clean background to the primary subjects.

A strong snow storm left tree trunks vertically lined with snow. A downward-angled camera position causes the essentially-straight tree trunks to angle outward in this picture. I wanted to keep the bottom and most of the sides of the frame free of intersecting lines (other than the shadows).

I discovered this beautiful field of wild mustard while exploring local roads - by taking a different than usual way home from one of the kid's events.

My oldest daughter loves mushrooms (she is now growing them in a box in our basement) and we enjoy photographing these marvels together. This purple mushrooms is one of my take-homes from an outing together.
 
For this shot, I rested the camera on my hands which were against the ground. I used the Canon EOS 60D's Vari-Angle LCD to make shooting from ground level an easy and comfortable task.
 
The Sigma 17-70's OS allowed me to shoot at 1/6 seconds without a tripod. Using a 17mm focal length from a close distance makes the viewer feel more like part of the scene.

The fall harvest provides great colors for still life photos. This is a found arrangement.

The Sigma 17-70 has a very short minimum focus distance, allowing unusual compositions such as this view of a large white mushroom. This perspective is made possible by the Canon EOS 60D's Vari-Angle LCD.

One thing in life that I have a hard time resisting is photographing a great sunset. When the sky gets dramatic, little additional is needed in the frame for a nice image. When the sunset goes big, ultra-wide angles are needed to capture the show.