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-330: My first DSLR. I'm quite pleased with it; particularly with its auto-clean and live-view features.
- Zuiko 50mm f2.0 Macro Lens: My favourite lens to date. This one practically never leaves the body. Even though it's a fixed focal length (no zoom), it's nice and bright, and produces great close-ups and portrait shots. These are some examples of macro pictures I've taken with it.
- Zuiko 14-54mm f2.8/3.5: The stock lens that came with the body. It's a great lens for scenery, and those wider-angle shots. One of my flaws as a photographer is that I typically need to focus on the "fill the frame" mantra, and the 50mm macro helps with that much more.
- 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.
- Olympus FL-50: A nice compact external flash. The only drawback is that it doesn't have a PC-style connector, which means it has to be triggered via the hotshoe. This isn't a big problem; it just means you have to fork over an extra few bucks for an adapter.
- 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 the FL-50.
