Gear-a-holic

Hi my name's Will and I'm a gear-a-holic . . Ok so I'm not as bad as some but here is a bit of a review of my photo gear that gives me a fix and fuels my addiction.

• Canon 50D
• Canon 30D
• Canon 300D
• Canon 10-22mm (I love this lens!)
• Tamron 17-50mm f2.8
• Canon 100 f2.8
• Sigma 50mm f2.8 Macro
• Sigma 70-200mm f2.8
• Canon 50mm f1.8
• Sigma 17-70mm (more or less unused)
• Canon 18-55mm (unused)
• Canon 430EX Speedlight
• Nikon SB-24 Speedlight
• Nikon SB-25 Speedlight
• Nikon SB-22s Speedlight
• Manfrotto 055PROB tripod with joystick head
• Manfrotto 785B Modo Tripod
• Olympus lightweight tripod
• Light stands, umbrellas and remote triggers
• Polorising filter, shutter release, CF cards, ND filters, Grad ND filter, Batteries etc.
• MacBook Black to process it all

How did it all start?

Well years ago when I was in year 9 I started with a compact film camera and grew to love taking photos, particularly of wild places, and the more I took the better I got and the more I liked it.

Fast forward a few years when after a year of engineering placement at uni when I had some $$ I thought about upgrading to a new digital camera. This brought on much research into high end compact cameras reading review after review, I wanted something that I could take landscapes and sports shots with. Eventually I gave up and got talked into buying a 300D kit, so begins my camera addiction . . .

My upgrades from there were a long time coming, but after I finished my degree I started to add to the kit. Frist what I didn't have a loved, W I D E, with the 10-22, next, sports 70-200 f2.8 for volleyball, then the 50mm macro to give me a 10-22 + 50mm macro hiking kit. Then I added a flash with the 430EX and then with the prospect of a sports job I upgraded cameras to a 30D and picked up a new mid-range zoom, the Sigma 17-70.

So that held off my addicitons for a while untill I discovered off camera lighting and of course now needed a lighting kit to go with my camera kit! So flashes, light stands, radio triggers, umbrellas and a bunch of home made stuff and I had a pretty good set-up for doing still life and portraits and all sorts of things, the one day I was doing some still life photos and my 50mm macro died! So I jumped online and found out I could get a 100mm macro from the US cheaper than in Australia, so out came the credit card . . . again! In the mean time the 17-70 proved to be very good for still life close-ups!

Further upgrades have slowed a little, I was not particuarly happy with the focusing of 17-70 for more distant subjects so I went and got a tamron 17-50 with has been very nice though I still have some doubts about it's focusing. Then when I started to get some wedding work I got myself a Canon 50D. The main thing that I wanted over the 40D was the lens micro adjustment for a couple of my lenses however it didn't prove very useful as they were backfocusing at one end of the zoom range and front focusing at the other. So I'm not entirely sure it was worth it, image quality is said to be not much different to the 40D with similar noise levels and 15MP chews through the memory, but time will tell and and the autofocus live view has been useful a couple of time.

So yeah, I guess that is my camera journey to date. Did I make some mistakes, well probably, there are some things I'd probably change a little but hopefully my experience is useful in your own decision making. I'm looking at upgrading some lenses and pondering full frame so the journey isn't over yet . . .

High ISO on Canon 30D

I just got back from Hullabaloo, an awesome swing dance exchange (big dance event over several days) in Perth where I had a great time dancing up a storm and even managed to snap a few photos.

My kit for the trip was:

• Canon 30D


• Sigma 17-70mm


• Canon 50mm f/1.8


• Canon 430EX

to give a versatile and light weight kit to shoot scenery, people/group snapshots, portraits and even some dance action shots. Anyway let me get onto what this is all about, pushing the camera to the limit.

At a few of the events I decided I couldn't be bothered using the flash despite it being very low light so I put on 50mm, set the camera to ISO 3200, f/1.8 and a shutter speed of around 1/40 to 1/60 and snapped away.

Here are some of the results (click on thumbnail for larger image):

Basically you are limited by the single focal length and shallow depth of field, particularly for group shots, and a steady hand & still subjects is required but it produces some nice shots. I did a little noise reduction using the photoshop filter and usually left them with a fairly warm colour balance that I think suits the mood a little better.

I haven't yet tried printing any of these shots but I think they will work ok as 6"x4", and, well, that's about it. Just a little case study.

When considering the quality it is worth nothing that even at these settings I was underexposing between 1/2 to 2 stops, the bottom one might have been even more. Now these shots may not be high enough quality for you or just not to your taste, but it shows what is possible and produces some different images that stand out from the crowd.

Thanks to (in order from top to bottom): Robbie, Kat Sherrard, the mask, Corinne Allen & Ben (who are glowing after dancing hard!), and Lexi for looking awesome and letting me post their photos.