One photo a day in October - Day 24

Yesterday I went to a joint birthday party - Sam and Marie were both celebrating their 30th birthdays and their daughter Sian was celebrating her first.  And what a great party it was too. They hired a room in a pub near their house in Hillsborough which made for a great location (beer was on tap and I took great advantage of this!) Of course I got my camera out and took some snaps:

Marie


Sam and Marie


Sian and Sam


You can see more snaps from the party here if you want.

Sam's sister Debbie is a photographer and I got taking to her.  She shoots with a 40D, 17-55 2.8 IS and most impressively of all, a 70-200 2.8 IS.  Best of all she let me put her 70-200 onto my camera to let me have a play.    And I really wish she hadn't because I *SO* want one now!  Here are a couple of examples.  Bear in mind that it was very dark in the pub and my camera was set to 1600 ISO.  With f/2.8 the best shutter speed I was getting was 1/20 or 1/30.  This should have meant that I wouldn't be able to safely hand-hold this lens without getting lots of camera shake.  And the lens was very heavy.  Also bear in mind that I had consumed some beer so my hands weren't as steady as they could have been.  So it it just goes to show how amazingly good the IS is on this lens.  Oh and did I mention that I want one?

105mm


135mm


As well as taking snaps of the party I wanted to get my required stranger portrait of the day and I succeeded.  First of all I shot this photo of Peter, a friend of Sam's (but crucially a stranger to me until that evening):




The second stranger portrait was a shot of Marie's granddad.  By the way he has a plaster on his chin because he cut himself shaving:



And that last one will become my entry for yesterday.

I'm off to Fright Night soon so expect some ghoulish portraits on here later!