Just received my radiopopper JrX transmitter and 2 receivers. Will go home and try them out.
The Transmitter Receiver combo runs $120 and the extra basic receiver rand another $70. So enough to power two strobes cost $201 with shipping and handling. That's almost $300 less than the cost of a similar setup with pocket wizards.
Took a little time to visit the golden gate bridge yesterday while in San Francisco. I wish I had been there before the sun went down, but I still like what I got. Here is my favorite.
Best viewed on black:
color version
and I just had to add the black and white version since I know people are split on which they like better...I am personally torn on which I will put on the wall.
I'm a little behind on this, but I had an opportunity to get onto the sidelines of the Georgia Tech vs UNC game last month and I wanted to share the experience here.
from the sidelines you can get up close and personal
Renting Appropriate Gear
Let's just say that I wasn't adequately prepared to shoot the game. The best I could muster was a borrowed tamron 70-300mm f/4-5.6 and my 5D Mk II which only shoots at 3.9 frames per second (fps) and has a poor autofocus system. If I wanted to increase my chances of getting great shots I would have to make some adjustments.
I decided to pick up a different body and a bigger/faster lens. I rented a Canon 1D Mark II N from 35 Atlanta which ran me $50 for the day. And I went to PPR (read review here) and picked up a canon 400mm f/2.8. The lens cost $85/day but PPR has a weekend rate, so I got it from Friday-Monday for only 1 day's charge (although they did put a $9,500 hold on my account ).
I know, I know, I don't have my lens hood on....
I picked the above gear for the following reasons. The 1D gave me 10 fps, better autofocus, is weather sealed and gives me a 2nd camera to use. The 400mm lens gives me an extra 30% zoom over the 300mm (plus a 1.3 crop on the 1D). It allows in 2-3 times more light meaning a faster shutter speed. It has better quality optics and a faster focusing mechanism. Oh, and the 400mm is big and looks cool!!
The Experience If you ever get the chance to shoot a college or pro game, DO IT! At least once. It was such a different perspective. The crowd was loud. You could almost feel the plays instead of just watching them. Very cool.
As for shooting, well, there were a few things that I tried and that I may try differently next time. I found myself following the ball most of the game. it's not a bad plan, but sometimes you can't get from the quarterback to the receiver fast enough to capture the catch, so sometimes you'll have to read the play or just stick to a player in advance and hope he gets some action.
I also stayed on one side of the field most of the time. Because of that I missed a few touchdown shots, but was one of the few to have a good perspective on a botched snap. So that's hit or miss too.
most photographers were on the other end of the field when this happened
And, for me, a lot of it was trusting the gear. Just pointing, praying and holding down the shutter release. Things happen so fast that you just have to trust the camera to focus correctly and hope that 10 fps is enough to capture the right moment of the play. This is where the good gear probably landed me 4 times the number of usable shots.
I also learned 2 things about my monopod. First, make sure you have a very strong one if you've got 20lbs of camera gear on top. The top latch on mine was loose and slid down the whole game. Second. Don't bother with a head on there. I had my Giottos MH-1000 Large Ball Head on there and it was just added complexity that was too much with such a large lense.
Summary
So the experience was great, I got lots of fun shots from it and I would do it again in a heartbeat. The ~$100 to rent the gear is a little tough to swallow, but I walked away with the types of pictures I was hoping to get. If you have the opportunity, go for it.
Oh, almost forgot, I did slap the 5DII onto the 400mm at one point and managed to record an interception in HD, that was a bit of luck for sure. Have a look:
Morgan Burnett Interception vs UNC 2009, from field-level
As with most things, flexibility in photography is key. You never know what challenges or opportunities may arise and being able to adjust can save a shoot or make one better.
Two weeks ago I woke up around 3am and went north to get some long-exposure star trail shots. The weather showed clear skies and only the full moon was a problem. Around 4 I started setting up and getting my test shots. Then I saw them. The first 2 clouds roll across the sky and, behind them, a wall of unending clouds. So much for the weather forecast.
Now I could have just gone home, but I decided that instead of stars I would stay and try to get a time-lapse of those very same clouds instead. Because of that willingness to adapt, I ended up with a pretty good sequence, take a look. And always remember to keep on shooting and make the best of what you're given.
Ever wonder what difference, if any, there is between the AA batteries you put into your flash? Well, I did, so I decided to test a few different kinds out and see what happened.
How The Batteries Different
The main differences between the batteries are:
Chemicals Used - the power in a battery comes from chemical reactions, there are different kinds and they affect the next 2 items as well as weight and cost
Rechargeable - some batteries can be rechared while others cannot
Storage Capacity - some batteries have more storage capacity than others yielding more pops from your flash per charge
Which Batteries I Tested
I tested 3 different Alkaline batteries. These are the most common batteries. Then I tried out the Energizer Ultimate Lithium batteries which have a higher storage capacity. Then I tried a Nickel Oxide battery and, finally a rechargeable Nickel Metal Hydride battery with a 2000 mAh capacity.
The Video Review
The Results
Battery Type
Recycle Time
Storage Capacity
Cost For 4 Batteries
Energizer Max Alkaline
5.3s
450 mAh est.
$3
Ultralast Alkaline
7s
450 mAh est.
$1.49
Everready Alkaline
6s
450 mAh est.
$0.75
Energizer Ultimate Lithium
5.3s
3,600 mAh est.
$8
Sony Oxy Nickel
4.6s
1800 mAh est.
$5.29
Sanyo Eneloop Ni-MH
4.6s
2000 mAh
$10
My money is on the Ni-MH rechargeable. They are expensive up front, but they are much cheaper in the long run and have a terrific recycle rate.
I decided to replace my Kata DR-467 with a Lowepro Fastpack 250. This new bag is rugged, has excellent padding and a convenient side accessible camera compartment. Below are the good and bad features of the bag as well as a video review. Enjoy.
Positives
Side Access - convenient access to camera without removing the pack
Good Padding - excellent padding especially along the back
Flexible Storage - modular storage area can accommodate a large number of arrangements
Stylish - while not the main selling point of this bag, it doesn't look bad or conspicuous
Lots of Space - this bag can hold a lot between the two storage areas. Very nice
Comfort - this bag is comfortable even with a large load
Negaitves
Tripod Holder - a strap on the side to attach a tripod would be useful
Plateau Effect - the bag is a little deep, but that is a must given the size of a camera with battery grip
Attachment Points - having ways to attach straps or accessories would be nice
Bright Lining - the Kata's bright yellow lining made gear more noticeable than the light gray of this bag
Summary
This is a good bag, sturdy and functional. I don't see myself needing another bag for quite some time and this will serve me well in upcoming photo trips. I recommend this bag to anyone who needs a photography day pack.
Today a deer came by today in the middle of the afternoon. Very unusual, but what was the worst is that I don't have a telephoto lens since my gear was stolen. Thankfully 21MP can come in handy when your only option is to crop.
Here is a quick example to illustrate how tight you can crop in if you have to.
I may not even buy a zoom lens...ok, just kidding.
Chromatic Aberration. If you've been taking pictures or shopping for camera gear you may have stumbled across this term but, like me, you have never noticed its effects.
While doing some test car shots I got my first clear-cut example of chromatic aberration that would impact the usability of my shots.
What Causes Chromatic Aberration?
Wikipedia has a complete explanation of chromatic aberration, but here is a quick summery. When a lens refracts light onto a sensor or film some of the wavelengths of light can end up focused onto slightly different points. This effect is most evident in areas of high contrast.
Example of Chromatic Aberration
Here is a shot of a car with high-contrast chrome detailing.
Once you zoom in you can clearly see the pink and green aberration. In the left image. The right-hand image shows the image corrected with post-processing in Adobe Lightroom 2.
Correcting Chromatic Aberration
There are ways to correct this issue. Various techniques applied to the lenses can help prevent the spread of light agains the sensor. There are also post-processing solutions such as the lightroom solution above.
So now you know what to look for and can try to prevent and/or correct this phenomena and keep the shots clean and usable.
Little Kaylee had her first (of many) photo shoots. At 11 days old she was cute and we got some great shots of this little cutie. Here are some of them.
Like I hinted in the last post, there was a break-in, and, let me tell you, they got it all.
On June 4th I was going down to the Virginia Highlands part of Atlanta to meet someone for dinner. While I was down there someone knocked out the back right passenger window and took the my gear bag from the back seat. Now let me back up and give you an idea as to why it was there and what was in it.
About 2 weeks before the theft I received my new Kata DR-467 laptop/camera bag. Since I wanted to make sure the bag would hold up to use when fully loaded, I had been taking my gear to work with me. I had this thing fully loaded. Macbook, 30D, 24-70mm, 50mm, 430EX, 70-300mm, batteries, memory cards, everything. You can see the fully loaded bag here in a bag review video I was working on.
Now why was I stupid enough to leave this gear in the back seat? Well, needless to say, leaving your gear in your car is not the safest thing to do. I had intended to put the bag in the trunk once I got to my destination, but it started to rain and I didn't think about the bag in my back seat when I got out. As you can see from the video, the bag doesn't look like anything special. It could have been a bag full of dirty clothes, but that didn't stop the thief from taking the risk and scoring big.
The lesson here it to always keep your gear out of sight and as hard to get to as possible. When you loose it you'll always think of what you should have done in order to keep your gear.
The Outcome
Well, I'll cover this in further detail in later posts, but my insurance company ended up handling my claim and I was able to reacquire my gear after 2 months going without. I'll discuss the new gear and the insurance claim process next so that you can learn from my experiences.
Well, I haven't had a post for almost 3 months now and I've missed it, but let me shed a little light on what has been happening and share my outline for the near future of this blog.
Jun 4th I had a break-in and all my gear was stolen from my car. Now I'll go into details later, but I have been reluctant to post while the insurance claim was being worked over. Also, without gear there hasn't been much shooting going on to talk about.
Now that things are finally getting back to normal I hope to cover the following topics in the coming weeks.
The Break-In - how it happened, and how I could have prevented it
Insure Your Gear - why insurance can keep you shooting when life ties to stop you
New Gear Reviews - I've got new gear coming in, I'll review it all, bags, lenses, bodies, tripods...etc.
Future Schedule - what the upcoming Shoot Schedule holds
I'm certain the lack of posts by me affected very few people, but the coming weeks will be filled with a lot of useful information that any photographer should have in the back of their heads. Learn from my lessons.
Had another shoot with Casey Holloway over the weekend. We got a lot done and she was, as always, extremely easy to work with.
The overcast sky was great for shooting and it was wonderful that the rain held off. We managed to get through 5 outfits over the course of the 5 hours or so that we were shooting. Below are some of the best shots.
Ok, so there is a balance between having your files on hand for whenever you might need them and running out of hard drive space.
I was sitting at 4GB of hard drive space left free and thought it was about time to move older pictures onto another drive.
Since I break down my images into year and month I can not only keep my folder structure in line, but I can easily select the least likely images to be used and move them to another location.
There are two factors with Lightroom that make this so easy to do. First, if you move a folder, lightroom will gray-out the folder letting you know that it isn't there anymore. Then you can tell Lightroom the new location of the folder and then everything will be good to go. Secondly, when the external drive isn't connected the preview images can still be used. This means that if you have 1:1 previews on that you can basically continue to browse your entire library.
By moving 2001-2007 to a remote drive I freed up 30+ GB, room that I'll fill up in the next year.
Let me recommend Disk Inventory X to all mac users. This will graphically show you how your hard drive is being filled. It can show you the areas that lightroom is using and what areas would free up the most disc space if you moved them.
You can see how much space Lightroom takes. That yellow block is Lightroom catalog file.
So I am a Lightroom user and I plan to be a future 5D Mark II user as well. I have been worried that the move from 8 megapixels to 21 megapixels would be too much for my computer to handle. So I started to investigate what my options were to ensure I could continue to working on my shots quickly for a long time to come.
Ok, so my main computer now is a 13 inch macbook that I got in the spring of 2008. While this had initially been working fine for Lightroom, it had started to become sluggish and I knew that if things didn't change then I would never be able to work with larger RAW files. So what were my options?
So first I want to take a second to discuss some of the factors that affect the performance of Lightroom and why.
Hard Drive Hard drives can affect performance some and it has to do with how fast Lightroom can get access to your files. A drive with a faster spin rate will read/write images faster and Solid State Drives (SSD) can also improve that read/write speed.
This is typically a factor in slow Lightroom when a drive is close to full because finding space to write content is harder to do with a full drive.
Processor
The processor can play a huge difference when working with RAW files. This is because your computer has to work hard to take that sensor data and turn it into output for your monitor. The larger the RAW file size, the more work the processor has to do. The faster your processor is, the less time that it will take to do that work.
The processor also come into play a lot when you are using the develop module since your computer has to apply a lot of changes to an images for those development changes to show up.
Memory (RAM)
I mention a fast hard drive will help speed up Lightroom but you're going to get nowhere near the speed that your memory will give you. The problem is that when you run out of RAM, your computer has to start using the hard drive to save that information. So, the more memory you have, the more you can do before you have to move to the big/slow/ugly hard drive.
A friend and fellow photographer Rhonda Dixon clued me in to a free webinar being offered by Photographer's Edit, an online image editing service. Their objective was to show how they work through images and how they are able to quickly and efficiently process a large number of images.
Here are the main points I took from the series.
Cut Down On Ratings
I've heard this point made before but was bad at implementing it. I used 2,3,4 and 5 stars all to mean different things. The process of culling images and setting all those ratings usually means that I analyze every image 3-4 times. For a shoot of 300+ images that can easily mean several hours just to rate images.
Photographer's Edit suggested (as others have) to just have a pass/fail system with the belief that you either want to use a picture or you don't and there is no middle ground.
So, as a small local business there are two main ways to expand your client base. They are referrals and advertising. Last month I decided to launch some advertising and now, with over 1,000,000 online impressions delivered, I want to share the results as well as the thinking and process behind the campaign.
Most photographers, at some point, face the decision about how to manage and edit their photos and I was no exception. That decision almost always includes Apple's Aperture and Adobe's Lightroom.
Once you have dozens of shoots or thousands of pictures, the ability to find what you are looking for quickly becomes very nice to have. And having a way to incorporate editing into the management workflow can save a ton of time.
My workflow consisted of folders for each shoot and editing the images with a combination of Canon Zoom Browser and Photoshop. That worked for a while, but tens of thousands of images from dozens of shoots over 5 years, my strategy started to become less than ideal.
I decided to weigh my options and come up with a better solution. I downloaded both a 30 day trial of Aperture and Lightroom and put them both to the test managing editing and using my images.
Finished editing the shots from the engagement shoot from last weekend. I got more great shots than I thought I did when I left the shoot. This was a nice non-traditional shoot and Jose and Alejandra were a pleasure to work with. We shot from 11 am till about 7:30 pm (taking a lunch break). Wound up with ~700 shots.
Here are some of the shots that were the best of the set.
It was about time that I got some new business cards to hand out. I had ordered from VistaPrint twice before and still have around 400 old cards in boxes on my desk at home but they either use the free template or they pointed to a more specific domain (WineCellarPhotography.com). So, to be more up to date, I decided to order new cards.
My objective was to keep the design simple. Past designs had more information than was needed and, I believe, hurt the effectiveness of the card.
I made a tweak to the homepage to better highlight services instead of products. It is my hope that this presentation will allow visitors to get to the important content more easily. You can check it out here.
The section now has featured shots displayed as a slide show to make seeing samples easier. The slide shows are Airtight Auto Viewer slide shows created right from lightroom. That makes creating them a convenient part of my standard image work flow.
Got done with Cole's pictures from the weekend. He sure is a cute little guy. I am looking forward to shooting again when he is a little older and a little more mobile.
Anyway, take a look and enjoy. There will be more to come in the future.
For my photo shoot of Stephen Whitfield, I was going to need to get a wide angle lens since I no longer had my 18-55mm. I was unable to borrow a lens from Brian, but I took his advice and decided to rent a lens for the weekend.
Brian recommended Professional Photographic Resources (PPR) located in downtown Atlanta. I was able to send in my membership request the night before I wanted the lens and they were able to get me in the system the next morning.
I chose to pick up the 16-35mm f/2.8L ii usm. I have used this model before and wanted the extra f-stops as well as the wider focal length. The daily rate for the lens was $35 / day. But since I picked the lens up after 4pm on Friday I was able to get it for the weekend for only $52.50. Oh, and it should be said that they will either hold a check or put a hold on your credit card for the cost of the lens in case you damage or steal the lens. Nothing like a $1900 hold oh my card.
I picked up the lens without problem. Used them for my photo shoot and dropped the lens off at 8:30 Monday morning. The PPR staff was helpful, the service was quick and the price was good. I will keep PPR top of mind for all of my short term camera gear needs especially since they have a huge selection of lenses, bodies, lights and everything else you could imagine. They even have studios you can rent for the day.
As a photographer I am always looking for opportunities to practice and to try out new ideas. That can be hard when those ideas require someone to shoot so I thought I would give craigslist a try.
Stephen Whitfield, the model I found on craigslist
Stephen is an aspiring model. We met via Craigslist and he was a pleasure to work with and I think we were able to get some good shots for his portfolio.
It is every photographer's wish to know how to fully use their camera gear. The more you know how your camera works, the more flexibility you have when the time comes to capture the shot.
But, even without knowing your camera inside out, there are 5 types of subjects that can help make a great picture all by themselves. They are cute subjects, attractive subjects, foreight/exotic places, unusual shots and news worthy shots.
1) Photograph Cute Things
Ok, ok, so this is a very subjective, but cute things are...well...cute. People dote over babies, puppies, kittens etc. for a reason. A picture of something cute gets those feelings attached to it for free.
Finished editing and have posted my shots from the Casey Holloway photo shoot.
We went to Piedmont Park as well as spending a little time downtown for the shoot. Casey was great to work with and I look forward to working with her again when the weather warms up. More about Casey Holloway can be found on her peoplestore.com profile. More pictures after the break.
I'm a fan of Marshall Brain and his contributions to HowStuffWorks.com. Today I noticed traffic to my site coming from the how stuff works blog, and checked it out.
It is nice to have my post out there helping people, and I appreciate Marshall linking over. If you haven't checked out his or podcast, I highly recommend it.http://brainstuff.howstuffworks.com/
Always nice to see when a print is placed on the wall. I had made a frame and print last year and while I was in Virginia, I got to see it up on the wall. I think it turned out well. I got to see another print in Boston, but forgot to grab a shot.
This was an old ISO-1600 film scan that I printed on 24"x36" canvas and stretched. I think the grain and vingetting added the right amount of character to this print. And, what is most important, the owner likes it.
So the other day, December 18th to be exact, there was an article posted on digg.com entitled 34 Basic Tutorials To Get Started With Digital Photography. While the posts were good, although basic, I was more interested in contributing to the general knowledge with some of my posts.
Cross posting a link to a new blog post is nothing new for me, but this was the first time I could contribute to a top digg post. The digg article was for a post on PXLshots.com and I also cross posted my links on that post page in addition to the actual digg entry.
The traffic spike from those two sets of links resulted in a nice increase over my normal fledgling traffic.
Traffic spike on the day that the digg article was a top post.
Above you can see the spike with 142 absolute unique visitors. The next day there were still 50 uniques coming to the site.
From the 15th through the 25th, almost half the traffic has come from digg or pxlshots
It is my rule to only post a link to a blog that contributes to the overall information of the post. As this extreme example shows, it does gain some awareness for my blog, and, at the same time, I learn a lot from the articles I read.
Here's to a lot more photography posts making it to the home page of digg!
Got back from a very long and very relaxing weekend in Gatlinburg, TN for the 35 Atlanta Holiday party.
Ray and Erica did a fabulous job with everything. We had a white elephant gift exchange, tons of food and drinks, and even an Amazing Race style contest through Gatlinburg. Nothing like begging for change in Tennessee just so the team could eat at McDonald's!
I wrote a 4tay.com blog post 18 months ago about a pending spot in a flickr's 24 hours of flickr. I never posted anything about the actual book, so I thought it was about time.
A little back story first. Flickr had a contest where they would print a book of pictures covering one day in time, May 5th 2007. Users would submit a single picture from that day and some would make it into a book.
There were 122 pictures chosen from over 6,700 pictures that were submitted, and I was one...hooray!!
It has been a year since touring Italy, but I am just now getting my pictures up here. I've made a book, posted them on facebook and on 4tay.com, but had never put them up here.
Well, now they are, feel free to have a look, I put up about 80 of the 1800+ shots I took.
I hope you enjoy them, I would love any and all feedback. And, for a better view, try looking at them in the 'gallery on wall' mode by clicking here: View As Gallery On Wall
Ok, so if you're an owner of a DSLR, you have either experienced sensor dust or sit in constant fear of exposing your sensor to this bane of photography. Digital cameras record an image by reading light that lands on the camera's sensor. Since no camera is air tight, it is possible for small dust particles to get inside the camera, land on the sensor and block the light from hitting the sensor. This results in typically dark spots on the final print.
sensor/mirror chamber on a typical DSLR
All digital cameras can get dust on the sensor, but DSLRs are more prone because it is so common for lenses to be swapped giving dust an opportunity to get inside the body and, potentially, on the sensor. Some high end DSLRs are weather-proofed via o-rings and single-body manufacturing techniques, like the canon 1D series, and certain lenses provide a sealed state when on the body of the camera, but, once that lens is off that dust can still get in as easily.
When is sensor dust a problem?
The first thing to note is that any camera that is used will most likely have sensor dust problems at some point. That's just part of the photography game, but dust is rarely a show-stopper.
Sensor dust is usually not seen in the field since camera displays are so small. It is typically after shots are downloaded that the presence of dust spots are detected. When I was in Italy last year shooting, I shot for 5 days before I even knew I had dust on my sensor. It wasn't until I had the combination of small aperture and solid blue background that I could even see the effects on my prints.
Florence skyline with dust spots
Sensor dust will be seen the most prominently in situations like the above where the background is one solid (typically light) color and where your f-stop is higher than say f-8. If your background is not solid and/or your f-stop is low, the spots will probably not even be noticed (even though you can bet they are still there).
With the rapid advancement of camera phone sensors, I keep thinking about the day when I'll rely more on my camera phone than I will on my SLR.
That day hasn't come yet, but it is getting closer. With constant reports on engadget about sensors of 8, 10, even 12 megapixels on a phone, advancements regarding glass and liquid lens technologies and ever improved storage capacity, change is near at hand. A wirefly survey listed here indicates that 19% of adults use their phones for primary picture taking. I would argue that the survey group is slightly skewed from the norm, but interesting none the less.
I've gone from the Nokia 6682 to the Blackjack II to the iPhone and they are still just a novelty to me. Good enough to capture a passed-out friend or the random royal blue Rolls Royce driving down the street, but if I were on a trip and all I had was my camera phone, I would just as soon not take any pictures.
Sample Pictures
iPhone 2MP
Sony Ericsson W760a 3.2MP
The Wish List
With the way things stand now, there just isn't a way I would use any existing cell phone as my primary camera. If I was concerned about getting the shot, I would make sure to lug along my SLR. Here are the things that would have to change with phones in order to make me a more devoted users:
Better Lenses digital zoom doesn't cut it, a minimum of 35mm-100mm equivalent optical zoom would be on my list
Larger Sensor I know sensor isn't everything, but to help overcome limitations, I decide to randomly pick 8MP as a good cutoff for sensor size.
No Shutter Lag when I'm about to catch a 'dude, watch this' moment, I can't afford to miss it because of shutter lag (read here)
RAW Format the user interface on a phone will never match a dedicated camera, so having the most flexibility in post processing is a must
Full Manual Mode I'm talking shutter speed, aperture, white ballance, ISO, everything.
Until those things are all standard, I'm just not going to trust my phone enough to make it my primary picture capturing device.
Wrap Up
With image posts on flickr still favoring point-n-shoots and SLRs by several orders of magnitude, cell phones have a long way to go, but they'll get there. Even now, work on all of the above is underway to improve lenses, enlarge sensors and increase storage. Given a little time, I think we'll all become accustomed to even wedding photographers using cell phones to capture the memories.
What are your thoughts? Do you think cell phone picture quality is good enough? Can you see the difference between a point-n-shoot and a phone? Leave a comment below, I would love to know.
So, with the announcement in September of the canon 5d mk ii, one thing was clear to me, I needed to get some extra cash and needed to make some room in my camera bag for all the new gear I now plan to get.
My list of gear included 2 bodies and a bunch of lenses. I like the idea of having a backup body, so I decided to sell my canon Digital Rebel (300D) body and keep the 30D body. And, since the 5D is a full frame camera, I thought it best to get rid of any EF-S lenses I owned with the Rebel.
The Gear
I decided that my best way to get rid of all of my gear was going to be to to offer it up as a bundle. My bundle included:
Battery Charger
RCA Video Cable
USB Cable
Camera Bag
Canon EF 35-80mm lens
1GB and 256MB compact flash cards
Lithium Ion Battery
Canon Digital Rebel 300D body
Lens Brush
USB Card Reader
Sakar 2x teleconverter
Quantaray 28-200mm lens
Canon EF-S 18-55mm lens
Remote Shutter release
Misc Filters
Where to post?
Now that I knew what I was going to sell, I needed to figure out how I was going to sell everything. The two options that came to mind were ebay.com and craigslist.com. There were a lot of factors that made me reluctant to post on ebay. Things like seller rating, fees, shipping, minimums and the bidding system in general were all potential risks in my mind. Craigslist, on the other hand, was free, I set my terms for a price and I could target only local people so that shipping wouldn't be an issue.
It was because of those those issues that I decided to list my gear on craigslist. After all, it was free, so there was no risk on my part and I could always go to ebay later. One other benefit was how very easy posting to craigslist was. I was able to put in my email, a title, a price and some HTML for the body of the post.
The Posting
In order to promote my entry and sell the gear quickly, I decided to post a lot of pictures and to provide all the details of past use to let interested people know exactly what they were going to be getting. I took pictures of each piece of gear and I made sure to highlighted any wear/tear on the gear.
After putting up my post I received replies very quickly, within a few hours, but the first 4-5 were all scam posts. They would either be in poor english and/or would offer more money than I was asking to accommodate for shipping costs. The 6th offer turned out to be legit and I was able to sell everything to a local woman. I met her in person and received cash for everything.
The Result
In the end, the detailed posting helped me both sell everything quickly and get the price I was looking for. Now I'm $500 closer to picking up the 5D mk ii (which shipped yesterday). I have a few focal lengths that I'll have to buy new lenses to make up for, but I'm fine with making an upgrade.
I recommend selling on craigslist to anyone, just be realistic with your asking price and be as up-front as possible in your post. And most photographers should take advantage of their passion and get great pictures of what they are selling to put potential buyers at ease. Also, keep an eye out for scams.
That's all for this bog, see you all on the next one.
from 
. The lens cost $85/day but PPR has a weekend rate, so I got it from Friday-Monday for only 1 day's charge (although they did put a $9,500 hold on my account 
).
on there and it was just added complexity that was too much with such a large lense.
with a 
. This new bag is rugged, has excellent padding and a convenient side accessible camera compartment. Below are the good and bad features of the bag as well as a video review. Enjoy.
.
laptop/camera bag. Since I wanted to make sure the bag would hold up to use when fully loaded, I had been taking my gear to work with me. I had this thing fully loaded. Macbook, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
, batteries, memory cards, everything. You can see the fully loaded bag here in a bag review video I was working on.
user and I plan to be a future 
user as well. I have been worried that the move from 8 megapixels to 21 megapixels would be too much for my computer to handle. So I started to investigate what my options were to ensure I could continue to working on my shots quickly for a long time to come.
that I got in the spring of 2008. While this had initially been working fine for 
. I have used this model before and wanted the extra f-stops as well as the wider focal length. The daily rate for the lens was $35 / day. But since I picked the lens up after 4pm on Friday I was able to get it for the weekend for only $52.50. Oh, and it should be said that they will either hold a check or put a hold on your credit card for the cost of the lens in case you damage or steal the lens. Nothing like a $1900 hold oh my card.
