Wednesday, April 30, 2008

A shopping wish list

I think every photographer is always hungering for another piece of gear. I'd love a Canon 1Ds body. I won't be getting one of those any time soon unless all the sudden I have a massive amount of sales on PhotoShelter. However I also have a reasonable shortish term wish lish:

  1. I want at least three flashes. I've got a Sunpak PZ40X. I have a used Canon 540EZ in the mail (picked it up for $50 shipped off Craigslist). I'd love another, perhaps with built in optical slave like the Nikon SB-28.
  2. Enough wireless recievers to control all of my flashes. Since I'm on a budget I go with the Cactus V2 triggers commonly referred to as Poverty Wizards on the Strobist Flickr group. While not having the reliability or range (without hacking) of Pocket Wizards, they come in at about 1/10th the cost or about $30 a set or $20 for a single receiver. A popular strobist shop, Midwest Photo Exchange carries them. I've got my first set and they work great for me, but I don't push the range, yet.
  3. I posted before discussing a Graduated Neutral Density filter. I'd love one of those for when the sky is just too bright. Yes, believe it or not, we do get bright skies in Seattle.
  4. A Canon "nifty fifty" 50mm 1.8 prime lens. Apparently, these things rock, especially when coupled with the smaller sensor in the "cheap" digital cameras. The 1.6x conversion gives them an 80mm equivalency which is supposed to be great for portrature. Not to mention that maximum (or is it minimum?) aperture is insane at the price range and the lens is made by Canon and sells for under $100. I'd be interested to see what working with a prime lens does for my shooting too.
  5. A mess of PVC and some fabric for my own backgrounds and light modifiers. For more info see the "Tinker Tubes" notebook and the original Strobist post that introduced me to this idea in the first place.

Not too bad of a wishlist I say. Probably less than $300 all said and done. For my pie in the sky wishlist... I don't even know enough about high end gear. I would like a nice image stabilization lens though. So if you have an extra you're gonna throw out, gimme a buzz.


Edit: I forgot, I also want a remote shutter release for my camera. Adorama has one for $19.95 shipped or I can snag one off ebay for a few bucks less.

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