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Weird week with several meetings cancelled due to colleagues and suppliers calling in sick. Well well, it’s the flu season I guess. I already had the “infamous” flu in the fall (and took the vaccine, just in case), so I’m hoping I won’t have any problems this spring, although it is supposedly not supposed to make any difference due to the different strains of viruses going around.
I was a bit occupied with my camera setup a little while ago, whether to change systems, or lenses, but now I don’t feel any rush with that. If I sell one or two of my lenses I might, or might not get a new one. Until then I’m just going to continue using what I have. No rush. It is by no means a bad setup. The K10D and the lenses I have are very good and produce far superior photos than 99% of all compact cameras, and many of the new DSLR’s too…
Now I am instead thinking a bit about how to make best use of the software I use. Both Photoshop and Lightroom are very powerful pieces of software, but they work best in different situations, so I have to think a bit about what I really do with my photos once I’ve taken them. Do I usually just correct the colour balance, tweak a few curves, or do I spend more time creating work with layers, and which software is best for organising my photos? This is what I’m going to get deeper into.
Today I’m a bit (or a lot) zoomed out. Had to work most of the night (from about 2 until 5), and then woke at about 7 (not sure), but I’ve been feeling a bit zonky all day, a bit too tired to sleep, but still needing to take a nap. I managed to take a 40-50 minute nap this afternoon which helped a bit, but it’s still not quite good. I guess it will be better after a proper sleep tonight. I had weird dreams too, which I’ve been having for the last few weeks. Trying to analyze those a bit and figure out if/what their meaning is…
Now I’m in the sofa, resting my head a bit, having a little coffee, which feels good. Tomorrow we’re off to see a concert. Looking forward to that.
Otherwise things are happening as they do, sometimes good, sometimes bad, but always something different, which is a training for me to expect the unexpected I guess… Life is like a box of chocolates… Time for a little coffee refill (only a half cup, I promise)…
This and the next week will be a bit more busy than usual. Not only do I have 24hr call from work 3 days each week but I also try to fit in a meeting with the photo club, a concert, and most importantly my stepdaughter Bori is coming home for the weekend. So, for starters I want to make sure we can spend as much time as possible with her, since she can’t visit very often any more after she moved to study at the University. Last time we saw her now was in the beginning of December. Good thing though that modern technology let’s us talk, chat and e-mail each other regularly 
So, the plan is as follows;
- Today; grocery-shopping right after work, then meeting with the photoclub. Interesting lecture about slide shows this time.
- Friday; Bori arrives.
- Saturday and Sunday; maybe some nice walks, or possibly skiing?
- Sunday evening; Concert!
- Monday; Bori returns home.
- Tuesday & Wednesday; business trip to Gothenburg for some important meetings…
And somewhere in between these things I hope to have as much time as possible to do other fun things too, maybe a few walks, chilling out on the couch and watching a movie or two? Doesn’t sound so bad, does it?
I ordered 3 dvd’s from Amazon just before Christmas, and when they hadn’t arrived in over 3 weeks I contacted customer support. They kindly asked me to wait another day, and reply if they hadn’t arrived by then. Since they hadn’t arrived then either I replied, and they informed me they would send out replacements, free of charge. Excellent! A few days later my dvd’s arrived, and everything was ok. Yesterday however I received another copy of one of the films, so I expect I might have gotten my original order, very delayed, so now I’m sending back the spare copies to Amazon. It would have been easy to do a quick-dirty and keep (or sell) the copies, but since I admire the way they handled the replacements, no fuzz, no argument I want to be totally honest and return the spare copies to them.
I realize I’m not wearing most of my watches, so I will have a go at selling most of them. I’ll definately keep those 3 that belonged to my grandfather (omega seamaster, omega pocketwatch and eweco blue sport), but other than that I would sell any of the others. Unfortunately most of them aren’t collectors items, unless you’re collecting a mix of japanese digitals, swiss mechanical and chinese automatics, such as me
Have a look at my page called watches, and if you’re intrested, just send me an e-mail, the price is negotiable
I’ve entered a few competitions recently, hoping to have a chance at winning myself a new camera, since I’m in a situation now regarding my current camera where I’m a bit uncertain.
I have a Pentax K10D which I won in a competition a few years ago, and with it I use my “old” lenses which I got when I used my old 35-mm camera. Those lenses were perfect at that time, a 24mm for nice wide angle shots, landscapes, indoors in low light etc. I also used a 50mm for nice portraits, and with a very large maximum aperture of 1.4 it lets it a lot of light, enabling very nice low light photographs.
Unfortunately though, since most digital SLR cameras until recently were only of the smaller sensor format (smaller sensor area than old 35-mm film), making all lenses 1,55 times “longer”, which effectively turned my lenses into a 37mm and a 75mm, which isn’t perfectly suited for either landscape or portait. However, sinces the lenses are of very high quality I’ve still made many good shots with them.
Now almost all of the major camera manufacturers are releasing DX (full format) cameras at the prosumer (pro consumer) level, which means you can use the full quality of your old lenses with your new camera. In most photographers cases the lenses they own are worth many times more than the price of the camera. Unfortunately Pentax is almost the only manufacturer who hasn’t released a DX-format camera, and they don’t seem to be going in that direction either. Canon, Nikon and a few other have already had several models out for a long time.
I have a few options now;
- Sell my K10D with all the lenses and peripherals and buy a new DSLR, probably Canon
- Try to sell only 1 or 2 of my lenses and buy another lens, better fitting the photos I want to take
- Sell my K10D with everything and get a good quality compact digital camera (not as bad an option as it might sound, since there are actually very high quality compacts too)
- Wait for Pentax to release a full format camera, and then save up money for it
It’s a bit tricky, since selling my old gear probably wouldn’t fetch super-good money (maybe halve of what it’s really worth), but on the other hand if I’m not happy with how my camera works then that isn’t good either, right?
What I’m going to do is I’m going to check around on forums and classified adds if there’s any interest for the system I have, and consider after that how I proceed. I might think about checking with one of my fellow club members to, who I know has a Pentax and might be interesting in buying one or two of my lenses.
Worth sleeping on.
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February 4th, 2010 | Tags: