I’ve finally managed to process my photos from the Goodwood Revival Meeting of 2008. I say “finally”, but its only really been a few days. However, I’ve processed them over a few times, and then started again and tried again. Quite simply, for some reason, the photos I’ve taken this year I don’t feel are actaully all that good.

… And I don’t know why… Perhaps I’m out of practice. I’m not all that happy with my camera/lenses lately either, and although “a bad workman always blames his equipment” is a very true statement, some shots that I took on the day are simply down to faulty equipment - I’m sure of it! My kit is getting on a bit to be fair, and its seen some action!

Anyway, here’s some of the “best”

Hm? Average…
And the rest of ‘em are here

Photography? At night? On this blog? Surely not…

Well its currently 2.42am and I’m sat next to my girlfriend as we both write up on our blogs about our evenings worth of night photography. Sad, eh? Not at all …

Anyway, a few photos from the evening below. I’m quite pleased considering I haven’t been out at night with my camera in a very long time now. Also, I’ve finally done it - managed to grab a long exposure of an emergency services vehicle with its “blues” on! Good times.

I’m ‘appy with that!

In desperation of trying to get back into the Photography / Blogging scene, I’m looking into buying some new camera gear quite soon. Its been over a year since any new purchases for anything camera/photography related, so I think its time to treat myself…

Before I begin I’ll run through my list of current equipment…

• Canon 400d - the camera itself, with battery grip
• Sigma 10-20 f4-5.6 EX - my “walk-about” lens although it being very wide
• Canon 70-200 f4 L - telephoto white beast
• Canon 50mm f1.8 - the infamous nifty-fifty
• Peleng 8mm fisheye - a bit of fun

And although that pile o’ stuff isn’t all that bad, I keep finding that I have a distinct lack of a true “walk-about” lens which I can use for most situations. The Sigma 10-20 is very wide, and the 50mm doesn’t zoom, so what are my options?

I do enjoy wide-angle photography and since I’m on the 400d body with its 1.6x crop, anything above 18mm is not wide enough. I’m also only interested in buying either Canon or Sigma lenses, and currently am swayed toward the Sigma-way. Sigma’s 17-70 f2.8-4.5 Macro lens seems like a good option - its starts off wide enough, and zoom’s up not bad either. Starting at f2.8 is nice & big, so low-light situations should be good, along with it being a macro lens. A good all-rounder I hope?

The Sigma 17-70mm

With the walk-about lens pretty much out of the way then, its time for a telephoto lens upgrade too. My faithful Canon 70-200 isn’t providing quite enough zoom as I need now-a-days, and plus I wouldn’t mind changing over to Sigma to have a near-complete Sigma line of lens’s. I’d love to get a 400mm-up zoom lens, so what does Sigma provide? Their 50-500 f4-6.3 -or- 120-400mm f4.5-5.6 -or- 150-500mm f5-6.3.

The 50-500mm is pretty damn massive, as is the 150-500mm. So really that only leaves the 120-400mm from Sigma. I’ll be happy with that.

And the Sigma 120-400mm