A lot of people who shoot crop DSLR's (i.e. most average people) always hear this notion of a "nifty fifty" or the necessity to get a standard 50mm prime lens. But what I realized is that everyone who is getting a 50mm prime to use on a crop DSLR is not actually getting a 50mm prime in the traditional sense of what the significance of a 50mm prime means (that is, in 35mm film camera terms). Instead, they're getting something more like a 75mm, 80mm or 100mm prime depending on the crop factor of your DSLR (1.5x, 1.6x or 2.0x).

So recently when Clarissa surprised me with a 25mm prime for my 2.0x crop camera, I am now truly able to experience a "nifty fifty." (1.5x or 1.6x users would need something like a 30mm or 35mm prime to more closely match the "fifty" field of view).

And my initial reaction to using the standard prime was that it's a lot harder than I originally thought. 50mm is in this range of not very wide and not very telephoto. Initial impressions left me thinking that it was kind of in a no-man's land. And this is a sentiment that I never really heard from anyone before because everyone using 50mm lenses on their crop Canon and Nikon DSLR's aren't actually having the true 50mm experience.

But I came across an article about the so called "Faithful Fifty" here that gave me some insight about how to start using this lens: The Faithful Fifty

The key note in this article to me is where it says:

Learn to see. Wide-angles embrace complete scenes, telephotos pick out detail. The normal just... sees. The Fifty is the human-scale lens, so look for things on the human scale. If you can see something easily, chances are that so can the Fifty.

Indeed after playing around with the lens a bit more myself, I began to realize this. Looking at a scene, what you can see with your plain old eyes without shifting your eyes to scan around is what you can easily capture with the field of view that the 50mm prime offers (again in 35mm terms).

The 50mm prime forces me to either get closer to the scene, or take a step back. It forces me to make that choice, whereas a wider angle lens pushes me to always take wide shots and a short telephoto pushes me to always take telephoto-ish shots. It seems to me that the standard 50mm allows you to instead push it into either being a "wider" shot or a "short tele" shot. And that requires more decisiveness, rather than letting the lens dictate the composition.

It's interesting and I'm looking forward to trying out this lens more.

Wow, what a year. This year alone, I've lived in three different cities across the US and Canada, spanning two states and province and covering a distance of over 4000 km.

I spent 4 months in Apex, North Carolina (near Raleigh) working with a customer. It was the furthest south of the border that I have ever lived. It was also the nicest furnished single-bedroom apartment I have ever stayed in. There I attended Sovereign Grace Church, and had a good time fellowshipping and eating Mexican fast-food. I racked up Aeroplan miles and status segments as I flew to Buffalo every other weekend to get a rental car to drive up to visit Clarissa As a result of the frequent flights, I will enjoy Air Canada Prestige status for 2012. To be honest though, I'm not even sure how that benefits me. I think I might be allowed an extra bag for free now on Air Canada flights, which is nice (though, lounge access would have been nicer ).

I spent 7 months back in Streetsboro, Ohio, where I continued working a variety of projects and continued to attend The Chapel at Tinkerscreek. This was an amazing small church where I felt at home during my stay south of the border. There were some sad times, but with those sad times came reminders of God's sovereignty and of him working out everything for his glory.

Finally, with what started as preliminary discussions at the beginning of the year, I finally arrived in Edmonton, Alberta at the end of November. And as such, I have rounded off the year by spending 1 month in Edmonton - the furthest north I've ever lived. I started attending the South Edmonton Alliance Church, and have been blessed with welcoming friends!

And of course, perhaps the biggest event in 2011 overall: Clarissa and I became engaged

And together we look forward to an exciting new year in 2012.

This past year has been a year of waiting. While I definitely enjoyed my time in each of North Carolina and Ohio, I knew that it was just a waiting phase for when I would be able to move back to Canada to be with Clarissa. So now that we have achieved that, a major milestone is complete and we are eagerly awaiting our marriage next year, as the Lord would allow.

I praise God for holding everything together over this past year. It's not that everything went perfectly; of course there were ups and downs. But the downs gave us the ability to reach even higher highs, which is only be God's grace.

Happy new year everyone

Did I mentioned that I moved to Edmonton?

It's cold here!

Ever since moving to the US, I slowly realized that were are a number of pop music songs that I used to hear a lot in Toronto on stations like z103.5 or 99.9 Virgin Radio. But I'd never hear them on the radio in the US (e.g. on Cleveland's 96.5 Kiss FM, which I'd consider equivalent to z103.5).

Whenever I'd drive back home to Toronto, I'd hear those songs again.

And then as soon as I returned back to the US, I wouldn't hear those songs anymore. I kind of missed them actually.

Today, I realized that those songs were all by Canadian artists. And that's not to say that the music is bad. If anything, I rather like it.

Although to be fair, I believe that I've probably heard at least one Canadian artist in the US. That would be Justin Bieber. But that's hardly exciting.

I remember when I was gathering information for preparing my exchange application to NUS. The engineering professor in charge of engineering exchange at UWaterloo talked about how he didn't really care so much about people going on exchange who already had some sort of international exposure (referring to my friend with me who grew up in a different country all together). The people that he really wanted to go on exchange are people who grew up and lived exclusively in the GTA all their lives.

Being away from Toronto for the past while, I've found that I've actually come to appreciate the times I get to be back in Toronto. There is a certain familiarity that it brings. I suppose, having grown up completely in Toronto's suburbs, I never really knew anything else until now.