My lens buying addiction (LBA) and why it stops now!

I haunt eBay looking for lenses at reasonable prices. I have bought several at great prices over the years since I got my first DSLR.

Many sit, unused, on a shelf. Many have been sold. And, yes, a few were unusable due to fungus, scratches etc.

I use, in no particular order, a Pentax 55-300, a Pentax FA43mm Ltd, a Pentax 50mm manual lens (25 years old and still producing great image quality), the Pentax kit lens 18-55mm (non Weather Resistant version) and until recently, a Tamron 70-300.

I needed (wanted? lusted after?) something wide, something medium, something macro (truly macro, not just close-focusing), something long, all with image quality to die for - well, don't we all?

So I was thinking, which are the most respected lenses in those classes for a Pentax camera? And which , of the ones I selected, were the ones I could afford?

Here is what I came up with:

Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6 EX DC Lens - wide angle, made for digital with a great reputation (for those examples that work properly!)
Pentax 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 AL WR - wide to normal, weather resistant. It's the default kit lens, but it is a good lens from f4 up, far superior to other kit lenses out there.
Pentax 50mm F1.7 - a "nifty fifty" normal that is, even after 25 years, one of the top 50mm pentax lenses ever produced.
Pentax 55-300mm F4-5.8 - short telephoto to long(ish) telephoto - a lens that always punches above its weight class.
Sigma 70mm F2.8 EX DG Macro - macro and 105mm equivalent (it's designed for full frame cameras).

I did the maths, took a heart attack at the total price, then logged onto eBay, and in an orgy of selling, made enough money so that I could add just a bit and get the missing lenses from my line-up.

I chose the Sigma 10-20 over the Pentax 12-24 F4 because it was £160 cheaper and scored only marginally less in reviews. I was concerned over the reports of "dud" lenses (not sharp across the lens, back focusing, front focusing etc.), but when I dug into it, I found that the vast majority of reports were years old, and it is a known fact that Sigma are trying much harder these days.

The 18-55 kit lens is weather-resistant, a good lens and a good all-rounder for urban areas (and I already owned it).

The Pentax 50mm is a superb portrait/ normal (75mm equivalent in full frame terms) and produces excellent image quality - and I already owned it.

The Pentax 55-300mm is a great all-round lens when there is plenty of light, and can be a great walk-around lens. It is relatively cheap, being a consumer grade lens, but it does have excellent image quality - and I already owned it.

The Sigma 70mm has, in most peoples opinion, too short a working distance for insect photography, but that's ok, as I don't particularly want to photograph insects - I like flower macros which don't move (and don't bite or sting, either!). it is also a noted portrait lens with superb sharpness and colour rendition. It has review scores marginally better than the closest Pentax equivalent (the DFA 105mm Macro).

All in all, I am pleased with the spread of these lenses, the usefulness of them all, and the image quality of them all.

So my LBA stops now. Really. I mean it. No more!

Here are some macro shots of household items using the Sigma 70mm - and one of a "normal" shot.

For those into setups, here is the setup used to photograph the household objects:

Natural light only, from the window at the left.

A comparison of two purchase experiences.

New Item - Purchase one
I needed a new chair for my computer usage. I am 18+ stone and hard on furniture. So when I was working for someone else I would buy what are known as “operator chairs” - chairs that are specifically manufactured for 24/7 use by corpulent computer cowboys.

Now I am at home, it was time to replace my 7 year old “office chair”, so I started looking for suppliers who sell operator chairs. My usual supplier that I had used for many purchases was out of stock and had a backorder notice with a 2 week delay noted on the web site. Not to worry, there were at least three other suppliers on the search page.

I chose 925 Furniture arbitrarily, and proceeded through their fairly pedestrian web-site. It was a bit worrying that there was no indication of stock availability, but I thought “Hey, they must not advertise a product when they are out of stock” ‘cause anything else would be really silly, wouldn’t it?

So I completed the sale. I received two emails, one which said they would be in touch asap about my order and one from SagePay, their third party payments processor. All good so far.

Skip forward to Monday afternoon. I have not heard from 925 Furniture, so I gave them a ring. Their lines were busy. I called back a little later. Chatted to someone who took my details (order ID, name, phone number) and said they would call back with the stock situation.

Two hours go by. I called again. I gave my details (name, phone number) and was told that they were waiting on a call back from the supplier ( I thought they were the supplier, but I guess I got it wrong…). Within 15 minutes I had a gentleman call me back to tell me that they couldn’t release the chair because they had redesigned the arms and they needed me to approve that change. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they probably would have contacted me that day, although by this time it was after 4pm. The gentleman assured me the chair was in stock and would go out asap on their standard delivery (which is buried in the terms and conditions on their web site and is stated as “2 to 3 days”).

Fast forward to Wednesday. I have had no tracking number, no dispatch notification - in fact no communication from 925 Furniture at all. I phoned and got the same person as last time ( I gave the details - again - and was told someone would ring back. Hmm…. ).

Two hours later, I had heard nothing from 925 Furniture. So I rang them again. I got a different person this time who said they couldn’t help me, and he would “take my details”. I am afraid I lost it a bit at this, and gave the guy a controlled blast describing the woeful track record of 925 Furniture with regard to this sale. Give the guy his due, he was professional, said he would make sure something was done and that someone would get back to me - and I had to give my details - again!

Some time later a gentleman did call back to say that the chair was being dispatched that day for delivery the next day, and that they deliver up to 5pm, but if it wasn’t there by 2pm to give him a ring and he would look at the tracking information. When I asked for the tracking number, he didn’t have it to hand, but did offer to get it for me and that he would call me back. Been down that route before, so I said don’t bother, and I was sure it would get here by Friday. ( I needed it by Friday as I had gifted my current chair to someone else and they were picking it up on Friday.)

Long story short, the chair arrived on Thursday - it was covered in fine dust and damaged. The dust I cleaned with a bit of effort, and the damage was to a cosmetic part of the chair that no-one would notice, so I wasn’t going to send it back and go through what I was sure would be “chair hell” for the sake of a broken plastic cover.

New Item - Purchase Two
I have been looking for new two specific lenses for my camera for some time now - a Sigma 10-20mm zoom and a Sigma 70mm macro lens. I have watched the second hand market for a while and these lenses attract quite high prices due to the demand for them (and their reputation!).

So after an orgy of selling on eBay I finally could afford to purchase these brand new. My lens supplier of choice is SRS microsystems I checked their web site on Wednesday and both lenses were showing as “in stock”. I made a phone call to check on the returns policy, and had a chat with Nikki (hope that’s the right spelling!) who cleared up the point, then went into the stock room, found both lenses and offered to hold them for me for the day. As I was going to purchase anyway, I said “Fine”. I duly ordered both lenses from the SRS website. It combined postage so I paid only one lot of postage, took my money and sent me an email detailing what I had ordered, the expected dispatch date and the expected delivery time almost immediately. Time was 12:40pm

At 13:40pm I received an email from SRS to say the order had been dispatched. At 14:05pm Parcel Force sent me an email telling me my purchase from SRS was due to be shipped that day on the Express24 service, the address that it was going to be delivered to and a tracking number. I also received the usual emails from pay-pal detailing the transaction etc.

I didn’t need to call and I didn’t need to worry. I knew exactly where my goods were. Now they are here.

I know that a chair and two camera lenses are not exactly equivalent, but we are looking at the experience of buying here, not what was bought - so I think the comparison is valid.

So, the question I pose to you is: “Which company will I use again?”

Give yourself a score of one if you said SRSMicrosystems, and a “Seriously, dude!?” if you said 925 Furniture.

P.S. 925 Furniture were asked to comment on this blog post a full 24 hours before I posted it. They didn’t respond.

A tranquil place

I am currently exploring National Trust for Scotland properties on days when I don't feel like sitting in the house.

One such day was last Friday. We went to Greenbank Gardens where I took a shot of this statue situated in a pond in a delightful walled garden.


(Details: 50mm f8 1/400 iso 100)

There are many more NTS properties I'll be visiting over the next year or so, and if I can find anything that I want to share, I'll put it here.

Meanwhile enjoy this one.

Pontifications from a Practising Procrastinator

It is easy to do good work that matters to you.

All you have to do is exceed the expectations of the person(s) that you are working for in those tasks for which you have taken ownership - those tasks that matter to you.

The difficulty in that for me involves starting work.

I can find so many things to do before I start to do anything productive that nothing productive gets done.

I have email coming in with pundits relating the next big thing, I have news feeds that have to be checked, I have RSS feeds for a gazillion sites guaranteeing that something will change each day. I have ebay stuff to do, I have pictures to plan and take, I have forums to check and contribute to, and I have housework to do too. On top of that I am now watching about 8 series on TV so I have to watch those when the wife is out (Sci-fi is not her thing!).

All of which is a great load of excuses for not doing anything that matters to me.

Deciding what matters to you when you are your own master is hard for me - I have always defined myself in terms of my employment - now I am not employed, I am a little bit undecided as to what I should turn my attention.

Which brings me to the point of all this navel-gazing.

"End Malaria" (Kindle link - non-affiliate) may be a strange title for a business book, but it contains some musings by some gifted people that are all about working smarter and happier. And a portion of each sale goes towards mosquito nets for Africa to help end malaria. That's a win-win.

Reading it may simply be another way of not starting something that matters, but it got me writing this blog post....

In the shadows...

I was inspired by this article at Lightstalking.com ( one of my "go-to" web-sites for photography related items ) to try some simple low-key setups and shots.

Here is one result:


and while I like this, I think it is just a bit too ethereal.

This one, on the other hand, seems much more natural.


And when I try to analyse why, I come down to the faint shadow of the apple on the ground - that tiny detail just seems to "ground" the apple in reality, where the porcelain doll above just seems to float....

Here is a set-up shot for those who are into that sort of thing.


Yes, it was full daylight and if that puzzles you, can I point you to the aforementioned article ?

Comments are always welcome.

A Community Project

Each year, around the middle of August, the town of Irvine in Ayrshire, Scotland holds a festival known as Marymass.

The Marymass Queen and The Four Marys for 2011 (The Sunday Church Service Procession)


The festival is claimed to have been around since the 12th century, and today it is intimately linked with the Irvin Carters Society which has been around as long as there were incorporated trades in the town.

This year a call was put out for local photographers to document the festival in a project called "Marymass Through the Lens".

I was one of the photographers who responded, and I decided to document as many of the "peripheral" events as well as to try and get some shots of the main parade.

You can see some of the pictures I am submitting for the final project here.

If you would like to see the program for this years events (all finished now) it is here.

This was a fun project, and I enjoyed doing it - hopefully it will continue in the following years as a record of one of Scotlands oldest festivals.

Events that I took pictures at:

Marymass Special Highland Games
Marymass Lawn Bowls Championship
Senior Citizens Folk Concert
The Shows (Fairground rides etc.)
Horse Judging and Parade
Open Chess Tournament (1 of 2 left in Scotland, so I am told!)
The Sunday Church Service Procession
The 10K run (and no, I was not participating!)
The Flower Show

I thoroughly enjoyed donating my time to this worthwhile project, and I will update this blog post as soon as an outcome of all the photographers work is known.

Golfers

In Scotland, we have Golf Courses. They are everywhere. Some are private, some are expensive, some are municipal and a very few are public.
All have one thing in common - passionate, funny, crazy, emotional users. On any day of the week. On every day of the week!
And usually they make very good photography subjects.
I had some spare time yesterday so I thought I would give my camera a scare and take it out of the bag and use it.

I shot about 50 or so pictures and here are three I thought were worth sharing:


When I played golf, I had the uncanny ability to find the only piece of "rough" in a green sea of fairways. These guys just reminded me of that!


And this guy looks like he is trying to send this ball into the middle of next week... (it ended up in the bunker!)


Well, what can I say? Just because I was looking for golfers was no reason not to snap this guy in fighting position!

Yesterday was the first time I had been out for a while, and I once again found that "absence makes the heart grow fonder" - meaning a break now and then can be a good thing!

Thanks for listening.