About Douglas

07MY08: 57. Engineer by training & practice. Photography has become an intense hobby for me in the last 6 years or so. I'm pretty much self taught, so far, by shooting, reading, seminars & frequenting sites such as this.

Equipment: Canon 20D usually fitted with a Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens. I shoot a lot of macro images of flowers; typically with Canon's EF 100mm f2.8 macro lens. Have a couple other lenses, flash, etc.

I capture RAW + JPEG and process using Photoshop Elements. Recently more JPEG but use the RAW image for critical work or when I want maximum dynamic range & pixel information.

I became interested in photography in the early '70s when I had to take a photography lab. as part of one of my Metallurgical Engineering classes in college. We used 5x7 & 8x10 bellows cameras on slides or microscopes with film packs. We also had to learn how to process the Tri-X Pan sheet film in a well equipped dark room. I was hooked & bought my first camera; a 35mm Nikkormat EL SLR. My interest ran high & low for many years after that. I jumped to digital with a Canon G3 point & shoot and in 2003 the 20D. In the last 3 years I have really started to use the capability of the 20D along with picking up a lot of experience with Photoshop Elements on the processing side.