Been prepping and packing today, ready for an early doors departure tomorrow morning. Flight from Heathrow at 10am, bouncing over to Newark and then onto Charlotte. Stef and I are being hosted by GFM staff snapper Helen Hopper for the duration, which is very kind of her and we really appreciate it. If you're coming for the first time, you'll meet her and be as impressed as I am.
Stef was choosing his weapons yesterday (as he is taking part in the NPW contest - but doesn't yet know it!) out of the various bags of kit. We only have the one DSLR now, an *ist Ds so he's used to that. But lenses....? The 18-55 kit lens, yep good choice, a cheap and cheerful all-purpose bangabout bottle. Not my choice but hey it works. What else? He rifled through and instantly fell in love with the K17/4 fisheye: <http://www.bdimitrov.de/kmp/lenses/primes/ultra-wide/K17f4-Fish.html> ...despite it being bastardised for Canon use! (it has had an aperture- lever-ectomy so can only be used in stop-down metering mode) but after a quick lesson about depth of field he's already an 'F8 and be there' guy and waves the wide about like he's got the copyright on it! Poked around for a while, picked up the odd prime: 28, 35, frowned and discarded without a thought. Looked at the K15/3.5 rather suspiciously for a moment although couldn't try it out as I haven't converted it back to K mount yet. "That's one hell of a mother," he said. I was never this mature at 15. Not even at 20. The final choice is an excellent one: Tokina 90mm f/2.5 macro: <http://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/sold-items/53674-sale-sold-tokina- x-90mm-f-2-5-macro-excellent-condtion.html> <http://tinyurl.com/atx90macro> ...which is rather heavy but if you're gonna have one prime lens that'll do 1:1 macro, is reasonably fast, and doubles as a good portrait lens, you could do a lot worse. In fact he tried the A*85/1.4 and was mightily impressed but wasn't keen on the weight. Didn't believe me when I said he could stub out a cigarette on the front element and it wouldn't harm it - not that he smokes of course - but the lens does ;-) For carrying capability, he selected a LowePro Micro-Trekker - no tripod! Well, youth has no patience. He's a run and gun type, i can see it right away. He'll be all over the animals I suspect, little time for the subtle studies of light and shade over a breath-taking scenic like us old farts eh. I won't be shooting stills, the R-D1 will be staying at home sadly - the Mrs has demanded she be able to use it in recompense for being allowed to come out to play. What she doesn't know is that it will be up for sale in a couple of weeks as I have a massive tax bill to pay. I will be shooting some video - so if you're coming along expect to see me leaping about looking like a right old eejit, and I might even ask you if I can film an interview with you about your GFM weekend. You'll know it's me as when I put the camera down, i still leap about like a right old eejit. Beer just slows me down slightly. Just read Paul's email about him not coming along and while disappointed I won't get to meet him (again! this is my 4th time) he has of course put his daughter first as any of us would and so I'm sure we'll be thinking of him. I'll raise my brew in honour. In fact i'll hoist a glass to the vast majority of people reading this who won't be coming along. I'm very very lucky. I remember years ago reading stuff like this about people going along and my heart leapt at the thought of going as well, and then sank at the prospect of not being able to through time, money, or both. For those of you with those thoughts now, I will be thinking of you as it is the most humbling experience to be amongst great friends and great experience, with a common passion for making pictures. See you real soon, and be back on list in a week. -- Cheers, Cotty ___/\__ || (O) | People, Places, Pastiche ||=====| http://www.cottysnaps.com _____________________________ -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
