Got my new Canon T3i today. Still trying to figure out all the tricks to it, but I’m still happy with some of the results of day #1 of shooting with it. After spending some time reading the manual and clicking around the house, I took it with us to Jeannine and Joel’s to meet baby Megan.

I did a bit of cleanup to this shot. Not because of a bad picture, but because the carpet was way too messy and it was distracting. Lightroom’s heal tool came in handy to “clean” the carpet.

I love this shot. Best one of the night.

Jeannine and Joel have an awesome barn off beyond the edge of their backyard. None of the shots I got were that fantastic, but this one looked much better once a bit of Sepia was added.

Don’t let my expression fool you. I’m a sucker for babies. My wife took this shot with the “Green Square” full auto mode. It came out pretty nice. The handling of auto white balance is way better than on my old 300D.

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All in all, I’m thrilled so far. Just the startup time alone is worth it. The fact that the images are gorgeous doesn’t hurt either. Still feel a little weird not shooting RAW, but the files are almost 25 megs a piece – it’s just not worth it for stuff that’s not super-critical. I just don’t have that kind of HD space on my laptop.

Of course, shooting JPEG means I’m bound to the white balance gods. But, so far the results have been decent, and for anything that’s been off, Lightroom could more than handle fixing it up enought to look natural. I’m sure once I get used to the camera, I’ll be able to compensate while balance without thinking.