Current camera collection; Ritz Camera stories
Sunday, July 30th, 2006
I’m pretty proud of my current collection of camera gear. It’s not complete, nor is it the best available. I can’t afford that; but, what I have purchased so far I think is the best for my purposes and budget. Sites like Fred Miranda [fredmiranda.com] and PBase [pbase.com] have aided in my assorted purchases throughout the past few months.
Here is the current list of products I have in my possession now. The first few are for nostalgia purposes, and aren’t really used any longer. I just wanted to make a longer list. The items listed below are in purchase order (because you know I’m just too nerdy not to organize a list).
- Nikon N60
- My first “real” 35mm camera. I’ve since come to realize that it was very limited in what it could do, but for the time it was more advanced than I was accustomed. It took me quite a while to master it, but I greatly enjoyed the immediate improvement in picture quality over the one-time-use quality cameras and 110 film I had used before. I bought a bag for it (some Focal thing), but it’s just not really good enough to mention.
- Sony DSC-S50
- My first digital camera. 2 megapixels, swiveling LCD, and yes, even a movie mode (even if it was limited to fifteen seconds of “high quality” video at a time). After putting the battery in a non-Sony charger, I can’t get the camera to stay on for more than ten to twenty minutes, a drastic reduction in life from its original claims of up to two hours. More cameras should have those swiveling LCDs, although I heard something about Canon having a patent on those things.
- Canon EF 50mm f/2.5 Macro
- My first Canon lens. If you didn’t notice already, I purchased this lens before I got the camera (since this list is chronological and all). One doesn’t fully understand the magnitude of this until realizing the order of purchases: I had this lens for several weeks before I was able to buy the camera. Think about having to own a lens that one can’t actually use. That’s pain. That’s agony. That’s torture, especially considering how fun the lens can be. Oh, and yes; I know that this one doesn’t shoot life-size, while the EF-S 60mm can. I don’t want to use EF-S lenses, in case I ever go full-frame. And yes, I know many think that’s stupid.
- Canon EOS 30D
- Not much needs to be said about it: it speaks for itself. I’ve heard a lot of reviews about it claiming that the money spent on its few extra features over its predecessors makes very little financial sense. I can understand that mentality for current 20D users, but not new Canon photographers: the camera’s great! Throughout the space of time between me purchasing the camera and now, I’ve purchased ND2, CPL, Fog, 1A, and MCUV Haze filters, with Star, ND4 Gradient, Sunset, Gradual Blue Cokin filters. I just don’t want to list them. Oh, and helpful hint: don’t put two Cokin filters into one case. I learned that the hard way. Two ruined filters (what one loose piece of debris can do) and forty dollars later, I exited a wiser man.
- Lowepro SlingShot 200 AW
- Some have suggested Tamrac’s Velocity 9 instead of this bag, but that thing looks gooo-ooo-fy. This one elicits “cool”, and is at a great price. I happened upon this bag by accident: a regular customer at Ritz Camera was returning it due to its size restrictions. Because of my recent SLR purchase, I didn’t have enough to fill even half the bag, so it was a better purchase for me. I returned the bag for the customer, and purchased it the next day (along with a bunch of other stuff – oh dear, the bill).
- Canon EF 135mm f/2.8 Macro
- Everyone at work (and even my family, for a bit) seemed a little underwhelmed at the “Softfocus” feature of this lens. I was sold on the sample photo on Canon’s site, even though it wasn’t that great of an image! I needed a telephoto anyway, and this seemed to fit. However, having an extra slider doohickey thing on the lens made it more worthwhile to me. Who can’t have enough of those?
- Canon EF 24mm f/2.8
- By now, one should have noticed my intention to purchase primes for this camera. While I enjoy the convenience of the zoom (okay, I’ll admit it, I miss it), I wanted to have great sharpness at a price I could afford. Primes were it. This one surprised me with its wideness. It very often feels too wide – and to think that things get even wider!
- Manfrotto 680 (with Manfrotto 3229)
- My first monopod. I don’t use it often, but it’s come in handy at times. I’ll use it more in the future, I’m sure.
- Canon 580EX
- To put it bluntly: I want another one, or at least a 430EX. I can’t wait to have a slave flash. The off-camera shoe cord makes for some great, easy lighting opportunities, but shooting with two flashes means twice the fun!
- Apple iPod Video 60GB
- Okay, so it’s not exactly camera gear. Still, it goes with me when I’m taking pictures (along with my Sony MDR-NC6 noise-cancelling headphones). Having all my music with me is great.
- Lowepro Rezo 160 AW
- I have a bunch of other bags (that I won’t bother listing here), but this is one of the main ones I’ll be using alongside the SlingShot. While I like the SlingShot, I find that it still isn’t fast enough to easily get to filters, since the only space I had for them was in the top compartment that isn’t angled for side access. Therefore, this bag was necessary. The All Weather feature is pretty much a requirement with my bags. Just in case.
- Manfrotto 3021Pro (with Manfrotto 484RC2)
- I looked at RRS plates and ball heads, and Gitzo tripod legs for my camera; but, after seeing the $900 price tag attached with the package, I went with the Manfrotto instead. The 3021Pro has a very similar feature (albeit harder to access) that was present in the Gitzo legs I wanted: horizontal positioning. I can relatively easily switch between vertical and horizontal shooting to fire shots directly at the ground. It makes for easier macro product shots.
- Peleng 8mm f/3.5 fisheye
- I just purchased this today! This is going to be so much fun once it gets here. Oh, I’m giddy.
- Wolverine 60GB FlashPac 7000, 7-in-1 Portable Data Storage Device & Media Reader
- First off, wow: that’s a long name. But secondly (and most importantly), I just purchased this today, too! That’s two gifties in one swoop, and all for me! Yippee!
Okay, so the main reason for that whole list was for me to announce that I bought stuff.
Next order of business is story time. I have a few more Ritz Camera stories that I wanted to share, and both are from today. I have to write them out now before I forget them. Ever since the war, things have been hard for me to remember. *cough*
A customer asked me to help him retrieve images and video from his mini DVD-R disc. He said it was damaged, and that he attempted to clean it. While before it was cleaned it had readable data, after it was cleaned it was being ignored by the camera and any reader he used. In a grave voice and with supreme confidence, he informed me on his cleaning method of choice: his dishwasher. Yes, that’s right, because he thought the disc was “dirty”, he put the little platter of silvery informational goodness into his dishwasher. Whether the chunk missing from the data layer was from the rinse cycle (I sure hope he used Jet Dry) or from beforehand wasn’t ever discovered, but we all had a good laugh in the back room after the customer had left.
A few hours later I was mentioning I had sore lips, and that my stick of lip balm/analgesic wasn’t working to my satisfaction. After a(nother) uncomfortably formal request by a coworker to kiss it away, things turned to that coworker’s roomate, who is single. The roomate is supposedly “into church”, shy, and focused on non-recreational dating. So, in the eyes of everyone at the store, she was perfect for me. The deal was made even sweeter when something was mentioned about her liking to read manuals, or something to that effect (an ongoing joke is that I’m strange for enjoying the time I spend reading manuals – which I do, and I see no problem with it). Oh, and this roomate is “gorgeous”. So my lab coworker is egging me on to talk to this girl. While I’m standing dumbfounded, mumbling out “I really don’t want to get into this right now, guys”, the sales coworker says the roomate is in flight school. So I try to make a joke, and ask if she’s also reading anything about skyscrapers (considering the problem Ritz Camera had with another woman who was “into church” – long story). The lab coworker jumps up, laughs, and asks the sales coworker if the roomate is Indian. We both stare at the lab worker, and ask him if he failed his geography class in school. He blushes a bit and waves it off, saying that Iraq and India are pretty close. Incredulous, I let him know that no, they aren’t all that close, and two, the men who crashed planes into the World Trade Centers weren’t from Iraq, either. He finally got it right on the third try.
Okay, so the last one wasn’t all the funny being told in text form. But, he pretty much dared me to write about it here, so I did.
On that note, here are a few other images taken the same day I took the “Image of the Day”. It’s been a while since I took these images, but I finally made time to place them up here.
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