This weekend, Betsy wanted to look at a couple of horses out in Gold Country. We stayed at an old hotel in Columbia State Historic Park, which is a mostly functional gold-rush style town. They're definitely more interested in convenience than accuracy (e.g., they have indoor plumbing and electricity) but the boys enjoyed it and it at least shows you what it might look like at a high level.
I brought along my new EF 70-200mm 2.8 lense, which is big and heavy but takes good pictures. I like especially the 2.8f aperture, which allows you to have extremely narrow depth of field. I did get about fifteen minutes to wander around and do kid-free photography, and took this picture:
(Canon Rebel XTI, EF 70-200mm/f2.8 lens, ISO 100, 1/15th sec., f2.8)
Definitely learning a lot about depth of field, especially with autofocus. My old lens would do f3.5 maximum open, but zoomed in at its top of 135mm (which was most of the time) the widest open it could manage was f5.6. I'm also very happy that the extra two stops means even more low-lighting condition shots are possible.
Bottom line on this lens is that it's really heavy, but takes great pictures. Now, though, I need to get a good smaller lens (maybe the EF-S 17-55?). My old lens went down to 28mm, so I never felt like I had to carry two lenses. Personally speaking, I think Canon's missing a slot in their f2.8 lens lineup - I'd love to have something more like my old 28-135mm lens in an f2.8 for when I just want to grab the camera and go without hauling a bunch of other stuff.