Photography
Once in a while, I dabble in photography. It's way up there in the list of potential hobbies since I can dupe the wife into letting me spend money on upgrades ("But dear, think of how great pictures of you will turn out if I only had this new lens!"). I'm too lazy to host the pictures myself, so what little I've done is on Flickr
Current Toys
- Olympus E-3: My second DSLR (after my first E-330 was stolen). I'm quite pleased with it; particularly with its auto-clean and live-view features, although I'm deadly envious of full-frame sensors like the Nikon D-700 for their low-noise profile.
- Zuiko 50mm f2.0 Macro Lens: My favourite lens to date. This one practically never leaves the body. Even though it's a prime (no zoom), it's nice and bright, sickeningly sharp, and produces great close-ups and portrait shots. These are some examples of macro pictures I've taken with it.
- Zuiko 12-60mm f2.8/4.0: A really nice sharp wide-angle that I picked up as a replacement for the 14-54mm that got nicked.
- Zuiko 40-150mm f3.5/4.5: My first telephoto lens upgrade. This is a nice compact lens (given the focal length), but doesn't do as well in dimly lit situations unless I have a tripod.
- Nikon SB-800: An even better compact external flash. Overcomes the Olympus flaw of not having a PC-style connector. The best part is its highly sensitive optical slave in SU-4 mode which means in most situations I don't need an extra PocketWizard receiver as a trigger. Obviously I can't use fancy TTL functionality, but I use my lights in completely manual mode anyway.
- PocketWizard Plus II transceivers: One to hook up to the camera's hotshoe and the other to trigger one of the SBs. The remaining SBs do great as optical slaves.
