When looking for lenses, I read and read and didn't want to accept any compromises in quality, so I settled on fixed focal length lenses. The following is a list of my few lenses and my flash:
- Canon EF 24mm f/2.8 This is a great wide-angle lens. Useful for landscapes and distorted perspective close-ups.
- Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 Hard to pass this lens by. It cost $65 new and has very sharp optics. Wish it was build a little better (it's all plastic) but I've owned it since 2001 and it hasn't broken.
- Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro This macro lens is my favorite lens so far. It allows up to 1:1 magnification and has been said to be Canon's sharpest lens under $3000. Focussing is fast, but not necessary since I tweak the focus on close-ups anyways.
- Canon 420EX Speedlight This isn't the ideal flash for my EOS 3, but the 550EX (the flash designed for the EOS 3) is a little pricey for what I need and use it for. The 420EX has served me well and I love it.
My Pentax P3n was given to me by my mom and is now my secondary and travel camera. It is built like a tank and helped me learn what all the controls do. It is manual-focussing but has aperture- or shutter-priority modes so it's not 100% manual which is a huge relief. Here are the Pentax lenses and extender I use:
- SMC Pentax-A 35-70mm f/3.5-4.5 A very handy and small walk-around lens.
- ProSpec 80-200mm f/3.9 lens Never heard of ProSpec but they made this constant aperture zoom lens that is actually very good. I bring this one to the zoos.
- Vivatar Automatic Teleconverter 2x This teleconverter is a piece of crap but it does allow me to extend my 80-200mm lens out to 400mm for some decent photos.
I also use a the following miscellaneous gear:
- Bogen Manfrotto 3021 BPro Tripod Can't take 400mm or macro photos without a tripod. This is one of the most popular tripods for amateurs and I love it! Simple to set-up, relatively light, and solid.
- Bogen Manfrotto 486QR Ball Head I had trouble deciding on a ball head or pan-tilt head but eventually settled on a ball head for it's range of motion. I have no complains about this one. Both the ball head and tripod can support up to 13lbs.
- Films and transparencies: Agfa Ulta 100 , Fuji Superia X-Tra 100, 400, 800, Fuji Velvia 100F , Fuji NPH 400, and Fuji NPC 160. I will probably end up using more and more Fuji films simply because the local Wal-Mart uses the Fuji Frontier developer which I've heard great things about.
- MacPro computer: 2.66GHz dual dual-core (quad-core) Intel Xeon processor with 3GB FB-DIMM ECC memory. Spectacular computer.
- I scan photos and slides with my Canoscan 8400F which I recommend highly.
Notes:
- Shopping for lenses is a maddening experience (ask Min-Ah). This information was taken from Photo Zone. The exact information is no longer online, but I printed it to .pdf and it is available at my Photographic Files area for download.
