December 12 If you don’t think contemplation on a new lens is appropriate topic for this blog, you haven’t been reading me long enough. Recently, every single one of those pretty pictures you see posted here comes through one of my three lenses. And, alas, the more one works with better-than-average, (but still below-pro) tools, the more one thinks about gradually upgrading. Woe are the trials of an expensive hobby. One of the lenses I’ve had my eye on for a little while is the Canon EF 28-135mm F3.5-5.6 IS, generally regarded as one of the “must-have” sub-pro lenses for the series. It would be a quasi-replacement for the stock 18-55mm I currently run in that I’d still cart that one around for the semi-wide angle stuff, but the 28-135mm would likely takeover the niche of the everyday, walking around lens. As I mentioned before, yes this is just an expensive hobby. Emphasis on both ‘expensive’ and ‘hobby.’ I’m not making any money on these photos (inasmuch as you can’t count the eight dollars and twenty-five cents I’ve earned from two years of stock-photo sales) and don’t see much of a future as a pro photographer right now. Maybe a retirement project, but then I’m only thirty-one. So how can I justify this, you might ask? First, it is my only expensive hobby. I’m not really into cars or big stereo systems. I appreciate them, don’t get me wrong, but I do just fine with my little hatchback and an iPod. Second, I’ve been volunteering with the Fringe for three years now, setting aside a week of evenings to wander around the shows and snap photo assignments. I love it, and not only foresee doing it for a long while, but I’ve been promoted to a team leader for 2008 and been given more responsibility. It’s not that I need to set an example or anything, but I’d like to lose a little less drool this year while hanging out with other photographers with nicer systems. Third, they are photos. Sure, you can get nice pictures with a digital camera that costs less than half the price of one of these (relatively cheap) lenses. But it’s the nuance — the subtlety — the higher refinement and control of the light and image that takes SLR photography to such another level. But photos are useful in and of themselves and require little justification. That, and I don’t have a video camera. |
|
Tired of your anonymous pic? Put a face to your comment.
Comment avatars can be set up at en.gravatar.com.
It's free, fun, and secure. And then we'll all know who you really are!
seventy to three hundred >> Late last week, after a few long weeks of sporadic, idle research, Karin and I paid a visit to the local London Drugs where I purchased a new lens for the camera. The problem with buying something like a lens is this:
Ibts and Epices, Episode 9 of 25 >> Fragments of something larger? Whatever. If it was supposed to make sense to you, you’d understand it… The apprentice puzzles. “What do you see when you look into the night sky?” “I see nothing. I see perpetual darkness. I see a
zoon.. >> Coding innumerable lines of PHP last night forced my fuzzing eyes to veto the monitor for nearly an hour. Muddy bits occupied the gaps in my soles, but so what? Camera and I caught the next flight of stairs to street-level
Ibts and Epices, Episode 7 of 25 >> Fragments of something larger? Whatever. If it was supposed to make sense to you, you’d understand it… A squat block of quarried stone (one of thirty-eight) serves today as a table for a seller of (precisely) eight knobs of polished tin, four empty
