So, we’re currently in the first stages of deciding where to go on holiday this year. Along with this comes a decision on what photography gear I’m going to be upgrading or getting rid of. This time last year, it was the Sigma 30mm for my trip to NYC – which, coincidentally, is for sale if anyone’s interested. The reason is that this year, I hope to get enough money together to make the final push in terms of my photography-gear-ambition: go full-frame.

All of this leads us neatly onto the title of today’s rant. I had enough spare cash last year to afford the Canon 35mm f/1.4L. I got it used for precisely £610 including delivery; however, I distinctly remember checking the various websites and the price being around £850 brand new.

Cut to today’s recession. The same lens, from the same retailer, will set you back an eye-watering £1133.99; or, equivalently, an increase of about 30%. Ouch.

The reason is that Canon, like all of the other big camera manufacturers, is a Japanese company and hence all stock needs to be imported to the UK. With Gordon Brown doing a sterling job of devaluing the pound (see what I did there?) by borrowing at an alarming 40% of our GDP, the yen is the strongest it’s been in a long time. Essentially if they don’t put the prices up, their profit margin will be significantly decreased on UK sales.

So my plan is now scuppered, because it involved selling the 10-22mm which is very dear to my heart, and replacing it with a stunning 16-35mm f/2.8L II. Which I can no longer justify because that same lens has also undergone a 30% price increase.

Damn it.

9:20 pm | Posted in Photography, Politics, Ranting, Whining | 1 Comment » | Show comment » | Hide comment » |

Due to popular demand, my photoblog theme — the creatively named Reflection — is now available for download.

Update: Reflection 1.1 has now been released.

I was quite shocked by the amount of people that said they wanted this thing. I thought it was actually okay, but not good enough to publish. However people seem to think otherwise so I decided to put it up.

Design-wise it’s all very simple. There’s a heavy amount of AJAX behind the front page, but it’s handled in a graceful way should JavaScript not be running. Everything on the site uses mootools for any AJAX requests or effects, which is a cracking little library. By far and away the best 3rd party JS library I’ve ever seen.

Anyway. If you want it, go grab it and tell me what you think.

5:33 pm | Posted in Photography, XHTML/CSS | 107 Comments » | Show comments » | Hide comments » |

After a week of toiling over JavaScript, Mootools and a heap of other IE rendering bugs, the finished photoblog is finally here! You might also want to check out the cool mosaic feature which shows all the images I’ve posted.

Now unfortunately I ran into a few problems, and so the photoblog is now running on a separate instance of WordPress, but that’s not too bad. In fact, the user tables are shared so that if you do have an account here already, it will automagically work over there as well.

Anyway, go check it out. The plan is now to integrate it a bit more tightly into this blog right this minute, so enjoy.

3:08 pm | Posted in Photography, Site Development | 3 Comments » | Show comments » | Hide comments » |

Finally! It’s out – and it’s amazingly wonderous.

I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to upgrade my 350D to something a bit better to complement my lens collection. The amount of new features sounds pretty amazing:

• 10.1 megapixel sensors with DIGIC III processor.
• Much larger 3.0″ LCD. Loving this, since it’s about twice the size of my existing screen.
• 6.5 fps in continuous drive mode for up to 17 RAW images. Over double my current 3fps capability.
• 14-bit RAW files and sRAW will be nice. Need to confirm that the 14-bit is preserved when converting over to DNG as in my workflow.
• LiveView for previewing on the LCD. Kinda useless really but cool that it can be streamed through to a computer.
• Some basic weather-sealing – great! Unsure as to whether the camera will seal with the L series lenses like the 1-series cameras though.

Plus a load more features… auto ISO, wireless file transmitter support (super cool), quieter mirror, interface improvements… Can’t wait! Unfortunately… have to wait until November/December but with an RRP of £900 I’m waiting for the price to come down. Considering the guys in the USA are only paying £650 it’s a bit annoying really.

6:40 pm | Posted in Photography | 2 Comments » | Show comments » | Hide comments » |

I’m not about in Coventry at the moment, but I will continue to update the blog. With a bit of luck, some photos should be coming up soon since I have (another) new toy.

As a quick update, my Sigma sold for £110 inc. P&P, so somebody is getting a nice lens for a good price there. I had hoped to get about £130, but there we go – market depreciation does indeed suck the big ones.

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Continue reading “Jessops are not winners”…

12:12 am | Posted in Photography, Whining | No Comments »

Well, with the arrival of the 100-400 my Sigma 70-300 APO DG Macro is now a bit obsoleted, so I’m getting rid of it. If you’re interested, check out the eBay listing.

10:04 pm | Posted in Photography | 3 Comments » | Show comments » | Hide comments » |

Well, I haven’t really got around to playing much with the lens but I’ve taken a few test shots: they will be up shortly. But, to give you an idea of the scale of this thing, here’s a picture of it taken next to my old Sigma 70-300mm APO DG – shortly to be for sale if anyone’s interested…

It’s a fabulous bit of kit. The IS is really quite something, and I’m not sure how I’m going to live without it on any future glass I buy. Next on the list is the 24-105mm f/4L – I think I’ve been thoroughly bitten by the L bug. Damnit.

Other than that, I’ve had another exam, Fractal Geometry. It went pretty well: the exam was easier than last year’s paper and I managed to do about 60% of that without too much trouble. I’ll post a full breakdown of the exams after I’ve finished Information Theory on Saturday morning. And then there will be much cheering, for I shall have finally finished my year.

11:11 pm | Posted in Exams, Photography | No Comments »

Well I haven’t updated in a while, but so far I’ve had three exams: both have been pretty damn good, and I guess I’ll post some critique on those a bit later. However, to cut to the chase and far more important stuff, I received my first Canon L-series lens a couple of days ago, and it’s ace.

I finally decided to pull the trigger and ordered the 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM from the legend that is kerso, selling lenses on eBay and POTN for amazing prices. Also, Canon is offering a £50 rebate on the 100-400 until the end of June: all in all, it’s not hurt my wallet too badly as the supervisions and other work have pretty much paid for it.

Photos are coming soon, but unless I post this entry now I will forget for a very long time.

8:01 pm | Posted in Photography | 1 Comment » | Show comment » | Hide comment » |

Well today I did what I regard as one of my first “proper” photo shoots, for my aunt’s school production. It went reasonably well; with my dad, managed to organize 50 kids into a good group photo. Took around 500 pictures, and I’m pretty pleased all in all.

Hopefully I’ll post some of the photos up reasonably soon, but there’s a lot to get through!

Update: Going through the shots in Lightroom at the moment. Probably 20% useable, which is much higher than I expected! Really, really pleased with some of them, although there’s always room for improvement.

Biggest problem at the moment is dealing with the noise level. The majority were taken at ISO 1600 due to lack of light, but running it through Neat Image seems to deal with that somewhat. Hopefully some actual shots tomorrow evening.

10:55 pm | Posted in Photography | No Comments »

Well, revision is going as well as can be expected (read: not so well) and it’s essentially keeping me off the interwebs at the moment – although CS:Source is also a reason for that. However, I’m hopeful that at least some of the exams will be good.

Within the next few days, I’ll hopefully have the time to post another entry that some people will hopefully find useful. I’ve got a project presentation on May 9th and I have slides that I’ve created using Beamer and LaTeX. So I’ve managed to set everything up so that I can use my phone as a bluetooth remote. It was ace.

Tonight I’m shooting at my aunt’s school production. Hopefully, I’ll get some good photos and also a bit of video recorded. But it’s more of a run-through for the final night more than anything else at the moment.

Also had my first supervision of the final term today, and as it transpires, my new group has not received 6 of their 9 assignments from last term and only had 3 supervision – I’m a little unsure as to precisely why this is the case. However I’ll try to pick up the pieces and help them along for their final exams this year.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Photos may be uploaded tonight, assuming that any of them are decent enough to put on here.

11:23 am | Posted in Exams, Maths, Photography | No Comments »