My Family and I wish You and Your Family a Very Merry Christmas!

My family and I wish you a very, very merry Christmas! We consider you part of our family and hope that your Christmas 2013 is filled with great meaning, great memories and, as always, great images!

The photo included with this post is from my annual Christmas tree photography session.

The tree itself is part of our family tradition and getting the tree is a large part of the fun. Each year I tell the kids that we need to get a smaller tree, but each year the kids convince me to get a bigger tree than the year before. This year, the kids somehow convinced me to cut down and take home our tallest tree yet – an 11' (3.35m) Frasier Fir. Needless to say, this tree carried on a Hitch Haul across the back of our SUV made a rather wide load. But it sure looks great in the house.

Each year, our Christmas tree must be photographed in all of its glory. This photo was captured with the Canon EOS 5D Mark III and Zeiss 15mm f/2.8 Distagon T* ZE Lens. This is a 30 second exposure at f/22. Diffraction causes the image to be soft at this aperture, but at the reduced 650px width shown in this post, you can't tell. But what you can see is the f/22-caused star effect coming from the angel on top of the tree. I of course have wider aperture captures of this composition for other uses. Shooting with a level camera (estimated at a 5.5'/1.2m height based on the height of the vertically-centered tree) allowed the right-side window frame to remain parallel to the frame border.

In addition to wishing you a "Merry Christmas", I want to take time out to thank so many of you for making end of year support donations to the site. These are an important part of what keeps us going. Thanks for them! And of course a big thanks also for using the links on the site for your Christmas shopping!

Merry Christmas!

Posted: 12/24/2013 10:25:16 AM ET   Posted By: Bryan
Posted to: Canon News, Sony News    
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