I recently had a chance to venture out on my own with my new lenses and do a little landscape scouting. Not having any particular destination in mind, I eventually decided to check out Chino Hills State Park (noteworthy for me in part because the western edge of the park is just a few miles east of where I work, though this time I visited it from the east entrance, along the 71 freeway).

New lenses are on the way, and I’m pretty excited!

I finally got around to ordering a couple of lenses for my Rebel XTi, both of which should be a marked improvement on the somewhat underwhelming kit lenses that I have now.

I was asked about what type of camera I used for the Joshua Tree photography I posted earlier.

All photos were taken using a Canon Rebel XTi digital SLR camera, either with the 18mm-55mm kit lens (which isn’t especially sharp or fast, but is versatile and works fine on a sunny day) that came with the camera or a 50mm f/1.8 prime lens (a common cheap-but-great-for-portraiture lens informally known as the “Nifty Fifty”).

I’ve been really happy with the camera itself, though I’m in dire need of some specialty lenses for it. Lenses, truth be told, have more to do with image quality than the camera body itself.

My main interest is landscape photography, so a good wide angle lens - which I don’t have - would help immensely in capturing wide vistas. The XTi, like most lower-end DSLR cameras, has a smaller image sensor than one might find on higher-end cameras. While this generally doesn’t impact image quality except in low-light situations, one side-effect of this is that on this camera there is a “cropping” factor of 1.6, effectively causing an 50mm lens to behave like an 80mm one.

Long story short, one of these days I need to get myself a lens with an extremely short native focal length - say, starting at 14mm or so. This would put me right in the sweet spot for landscape photography, which generally calls for focal lengths between 21mm-35mm.

On the other end of the spectrum, I also plan to get a good telephoto zoom lens. This is particularly handy when photographing things that you can’t get close to (a good example would be the rock climber in the Joshua Tree photos) or things that you don’t want to get close to (bears!). I spent much of our recent trip to the San Diego Wild Animal Park cursing my lens’ short focal length. Unfortunately, these lenses tend to be among the most expensive due to all those moving parts and expensive glass.

There are some interesting specialty lenses out there as well. One of particular interest to me is the Lensbaby, a bizarre-looking lens allowing for some interesting effects through the use of selective focus. This is something I would probably mostly use for artistic macro photography - for example, the close-up shots of flowers and cacti that I posted earlier.

The one unfortunate thing about DSLR photography is that it’s a pretty expensive hobby, especially with all these wonderful lenses you can buy. Alas, this has kept me using my kit lenses more than I would like. Even so, given the right conditions (aka. lots of light) they work fine.

As for the shoot itself, I’m very happy with it. Over half of the photos turned out, a success rate far better than I am used to. The lighting through much of the day was kind of challenging - overhead light is generally the least interesting to a photographer - but overall I think those came out nicely. Later on in the day the sun began to dip lower in the sky, adding warmth and contrast to the photos. It was around this time I experimented more with shooting into the light (tricky!) and the results aren’t quite as consistent, but it was an interesting exercise all the same.

Last weekend, Glenna, Paul and I attended E For All, the consumer-oriented half of what used to be the E3 Expo.

We had a good time, though in many respects the expo itself did not live up to the hype. There were a handful of big exhibitors in attendance (Nintendo, EA and Konami being notable examples) but many more opted not to - including the likes of industry giants Sony and Microsoft. As you can imagine, this put a huge dent in how many people showed up and the number of A-list titles on display.

The following video recap from Screw Attack more or less sums up the positives and negatives of the show. Granted, this is their first year out but I hope they put a stronger effort into recruiting the big names in the market to show up.

Even though it was definitely no E3 (which I’ve also been to in the past and enjoyed greatly), we did get to see a few good games. Here are my impressions:

Guitar Hero III

If you liked Guitar Hero II, you’re probably going to like this game just as much. There honestly isn’t that much new to it, though battle mode is a lot of fun and should offer Paul ever more ways to hand my ass to me in a Guitar Hero game.

Rock Band

Rock Band is similar to Guitar Hero, though it takes the game a step further by including drums and a microphone to the mix along with the usual lead and bass guitars - allowing for up to four players to get in on the action.

I personally feel that Rock Band’s presentation is much better in Rock Band, though, and the tour mode (single or multiple player) adds an element and feel to the game lacking in Guitar Hero’s comparatively simple “play down a list of increasingly difficult songs” motif.

IGN has what is probably the most in-depth preview of the game to date, including information on the tour mode that we didn’t have a chance to see when we played it at E For All.

I have to admit, I am a bit more hyped for this game than Guitar Hero III, though I’m planning to get both when released. I also preferred the look and feel of the Rock Band guitar, though that is somewhat subjective.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Glenna and I had a chance to go head-to-head in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the upcoming continuation of Nintendo’s unusual and highly-addictive fighting franchise. Not much to say here except that if you liked the previous games, I think this one will be a hit as well.

Rayman Raving Rabbids 2

A sequel to the enjoyable launch title for the Nintendo Wii, Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 continues along the same vein (judging from the six European-themed mini-games we played). They seem to have improved the multiplayer experience, however, allowing up to four players to get in on the action at once - in the previous game, you usually took turns.

There were a few other A-list titles shown at E For All - Super Mario Bros. Galaxy and Metal Gear Solid 4 in particular - but not really a whole lot else. More notable were all the games that weren’t there in any capacity, some of which I really would like to see (Spore, LittleBigPlanet, Haze, Grand Theft Auto IV, etc).

One of the things I miss most from earlier times are 2D side-scrolling platform games, with classics such as Super Mario Bros. 3, Ninja Gaiden, Bionic Commando, Metroid and Earthworm Jim. I wasted spent many an hour trying (and occasionally, beating) these games.

In the quick move into the 3rd dimension in the mid-1990’s that came with the Nintendo 64 and Sony PlayStation, most of these types of games went away. While they were once the most popular video game genre by far, these side-scrollers are now quite rare (the exception being those on the Nintendo Gameboy and DS handheld platforms, though even there many are simply re-releases of older games).

While I understand (and appreciate) the appeal of 3D gaming - platform or otherwise - there is something about the simplicity of the older style which makes them easier to pick up and play. Each level had a beginning and an end, and usually it was fairly obvious how to get there (more often than not, all it took was going right). By contrast, their 3D successors usually involve a far less linear hunt for items and enemies in a three dimensional landscape. Enjoyable, perhaps, but not really the same thing.

There are some signs that the 2D side-scrolling platformer may be returning, however. Last year’s highly successful New Super Mario Bros. proved that the genre had some life left in it still. While it was for the Nintendo DS, it did show that with some updating the concept could be successfully brought to a new generation of gamer.

More recently, the Nintendo Wii’s Virtual Console has made many classic platform games available to a new audience and rekindled interest among those who played them in times past. Nintendo has even released another side-scrolling Mario game (Super Paper Mario), though it has some RPG elements as well.

While Nintendo has perhaps the longest and most well established history with the side-scroller genre, they’re not the only ones who are seeking to revive it. Even with its strong focus on graphical flair (at the expense of game-play at times, I would say), it is Sony who has successfully courted independent developer Media Molecule to develop LittleBigPlanet, a curious little side-scrolling platform game headed to the PlayStation 3.

In a departure from similar games from the past, LittleBigPlanet takes a “2.5D” approach in that it mostly functions along a single plain - but highly stylized with 3 dimensional elements. Players progress through levels in mostly typical side-scroller fashion, jumping from place to place and interacting with a highly manipulatable environment in order to traverse tricky areas. Sony has stated that the game will feature simultaneous cooperative game play, which is unusual for the genre but could be a lot of fun with a group of people.

Oddly enough, at this time it does not appear that the game features any actual enemies - the terrain itself poses the greatest challenge.

Another unusual twist is that players can modify levels on-the-fly during play, and then share those changes with other players online. This is the sort of promise that online-capable consoles have, aside from allowing developers to ship buggy software and worry about patching it later.

As the following video shows, the power of the PS3 is being put to full use to impressively model the physics associated with various items players encounter (ie. a soccer ball, rocks, strings, fruit, etc). Pretty impressive when compared to the sprites and bit-mapped scenery found in previous games.

While game options for the PlayStation 3 are still pretty slim, this game shows a lot of promise.

Not only could it show that it’s not only Nintendo that is capable of creating fun, unique and engaging games (though I suppose Sony did have to outsource this one, whereas most the best Wii and DS games are developed in-house), but it may also play a part in reviving a fun genre that faced a premature death.

There has not yet been any announcement of a release date, though it sounds like LittleBigPlanet is slated for release in the first half of 2008.