I enjoyed my commercial photography project last week. Three full days of making fun photographs at a school, followed by two packed days of really intense post processing. I stayed busy over the weekend with a marketing project, two great swim practices and a lot of book reading. By the end of the workday today I was ready for a little break from the business of photography so I grabbed some toys and headed out to pursue my long overlooked hobby ---- photography.
As a balance to my recent, near worship of the somewhat diminutive Sony RX10ii camera I chose my oldest full frame Nikon, the D610, with a battery grip attached, and the densest lens I own; the Sigma 50mm 1.4 Art lens. My primary intention was a brisk and meandering walk through the ever-changing downtown area and my secondary pursuit was to grab a few frames with the 50mm to see some apparent indication of optical quality and thereby help me justify its thousand dollar price tag.
My walk was successful. The combination of tools (both bought used) cost me about $1700 and holds up well. I was considering jumping on the recent medium format bandwagon but realized that for about $48,000 more dollars I might (might!) get about 3-5% more usable, handheld quality out of the investment. An investment that will dive down in value faster than thirty feet per second, per second.
My eyes may be getting old and tainted by years of compromise but frankly I'm not sure I would see much of a difference between the latest cropped frame medium format camera and the mundane Nikon full framer when we post their respective images on our websites at 2100 pixels wide.... But I sure would miss the money and the opportunity loss...
So, cool (used) lens+recent (and still pretty cool) camera = happiness x 2
You can click on these images if you want to see them bigger....
One of the original Craftsy Photo Classes and
still one of the best!
I met Lance a couple of weeks ago in Denver
and found him to be really fun and knowledgeable
this class reflects what he teaches in hands-on
workshops in Ireland and Iceland, as well as
cool places around the U.S.
How to make what we shoot into a cohesive
train of visual thought.
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