The West Ring

The main benefit of having spent so little on the 350D is that I was able to buy an extra lens now rather than having to save up for it. However, that didn’t mean my budget was boundless so some research was needed.

The two obvious contenders (on price alone!) were from Tamron (55-200mm f4-5.6 and lots of other letters… ) and Sigma (70-300mm f4-5.6). A judicious bit of JFGI-ing found some user reviews and there was a definite consensus in favour of the Tamron.

Later that evening I was flicking through a back issue of Digital SLR Photography (cheers, Stephen!) and found a review of zoom lenses. The Tamron won that test too, so we ordered one. Being, as I am, a novice, it was also useful that intro to the review talked about crop factor, and explained why the 55-200mm was a better choice for most than the 70-300mm.

Don’t expect an in-depth review from me when it arrives next week, though!!

But the memory cards aren’t Had ordered a couple of 2GB Sandisk Extreme III’s from Play on Sunday night and they’ve not arrived yet. Luckily we knew someone who had a spare going, so popped over to see the Outlaws to collect it. All 64Megs of picture storing goodness! So I’ll not be using raw just yet…

Mr Gorgeous, just because!

Sorting through my photographs to upload them to the new (and improved ) website has triggered the desire to do a bit of photography. Not just taking snapshots, which is what most of mine are, but actually to try and take some great photographs. And not just of the hounds…

Not wanting to sound like a bad workman, but I know that to achieve that aim I really need a new camera, specifically a digital SLR. My budget is fairly limited so the obvious starting point was to look at eBay, where I was slightly surprised how well D-SLR’s hold their value. And then I looked at the prices of lenses!

I had been researching furiously during the week, but my biggest problem was not knowing what I wanted! Should I buy a new camera plus kit lens, or go secondhand and get an extra lens or two? And if I were to buy a new one, what make? One piece of advice I had been given by a colleague (thanks, Stephen) was to chose a make and stick with it. That way any kit I buy would be usable after upgrading. After reading various articles on t’interweb I was siding with Canon 400D, but most of them mentioned that the grip was slightly too small for comfort. So, I popped into both Jessops and London Camera Exchange in Guildford on Saturday to get hands on with it and compare and contrast with the Nikon D40x. It has to be said that the grip is slightly too small, even for tidgy-handed me, but it’s not enough of an issue to rule it out.

Once I was back home it was time to jump back on eBay. Still not knowing whether to buy new or secondhand, mind you! I placed bids on a few cameras, but they all went beyond the price I felt comfortable with. The upside of course was the complete lack of auction fever. It was quite heartening to know I was being very rational about it all. After these failed bids we (checking with the boss is always good policy) decided that a new Canon 400D was the right choice. Rather than just going off and buying the nearest available one I compared and contrasted what was available both on eBay and other online stores. Some of the eBay ones were refurbished ones with only 90 days warranty, so they were ignored.

I decided to take a break from it all and went to feed the dogs. In that short space of time, Jennie not only found the Canon Outlet eBay store but spotted, bid on, and won a 350D! Yes, she did actually check with me first, but when I heard the price it was a no-brainer. When I’d previously been looking the 350D was on average £80 cheaper than the 400D, and I had decided the 400D was worth the extra. We got our 350D for £223, and that’s nearly half the price of the newer model! (And no silly postage charges, only £5.99)

Ok, this is actually a refurbished product, but this doesn’t necessarily mean it was broken and repaired, it could just be one that was opened and returned, or a demo. Whatever the reason, it’s been fully checked and has a year’s Canon warranty, so that’s good enough for me! And being that cheap, it leaves me a bit of money for another lens…

I have been making full use of the fantastic new tool within Gallery2 which allows you to publish straight to the web from XP, and uploaded five more albums. It is really simple: highlight the pictures in Explorer and click on “publish…”. Within the wizard that it opens you can create and configure albums on the fly, and have it resize the pictures for you. Brilliant!

Anyway, the pictures are here.

As you can see, I have made changes to the template here for the homepage, despite saying I wasn’t going to yet! However, the change was forced on me I wanted to increase the picture size when blogging a picture from my Flickr account, but it was just too wide for the old template. So, I spent a bit of time looking around at some templates, and found this: Cutline 3 Column Split, by Chris Pearson.

This came with a default set of header pictures, and good though they were, they didn’t fit us. I had a trawl through some of our pictures looking for suitable ones, and quickly created a selection. I know I probably shouldn’t, but I must say that I do like the one on the homepage. I think it successfully evokes the sense (joyous mayhem!) of a walk with the lurchers. The first person to name all the humans and hounds will receive a prize.*

Jennie has also created some fine header pictures one of which is currently in use. I think I’ve read something about a plugin to randomly display them, but I’m not sure whether to look into it as I already have the random Gallery picture. Let me know whether you think I should!

*Remember:- prize value may fall as well as rise.

Lily Practising “Wait”, originally uploaded by Iain@Flickr.

I have now created the gallery. It is currently just on the default template and I haven’t even begun to investigate my options. I’m sure it’ll be fairly plain though! (Not through my lack of creative juices, but because I don’t want to detract from my marvellous photography )

Note – the links (above and right) are currently set to open in a new window because there isn’t a “Return to homepage” link on the gallery yet. Just another item on my to-do list!

Not that anyone is likely to care, but this is Gallery v2 and it was v1 that I had on my old site. How does it compare? Well, it was far easier to install for a start! It was almost just a case of creating the database, uploading the zip file, extracting and stepping through the install wizard.

Right, enough waffle – it’s playtime!

Just to keep him happy & show that I can be a geek too

I had previously said that I was going to keep the Blogger front page, but have since changed my mind. After posting that, I tried to make some template changes and found some limitations with Blogger when publishing via FTP to my website. So, I took another look at WordPress and wasn’t quite so scared by its complexities.

This doesn’t mean I’m going to start to do anything too flash (due to a complete lack of creative juices!) but it does mean that I can make changes when I want to. The priority remains building a Gallery.

Iain’s edit – this was me testing on Jennie’s behalf. Currently Shozu don’t have a version of their app for LG phones. It would seem the only way to moblog via Shozu is to send the pic as an MMS/email, resulting in the generic title. When I get a chance I’ll look into alternative methods.