Camera gear trading

It has been busy month. I sold two pieces of camera gear and bought one. No chances of getting rich, I spent much more than I got from sales.

First I decided to sell my old Canon EF 70-210mm f4.0 because I did not have use for it and I do not see it as a collectable item. I put an advert to www.gumtree.com and I got some contacts pretty soon. The idea with gumtree is that is local so no worries of posting and such. Eventually one guy came to check it and bought it. I think both parties were happy with the price.

The second item to sell was something I did not plan to sell. My Canon EF-S 18-55mm IS failed and I was then forced to sell it as a faulty lens. I thought there wont be enough interest in local level so I put an advert to UK eBay. That was the first time I tried to sell anything on eBay. I made an advert with very clearly stating the fault of the lens. I set it up a ten day auction without reserve with 0.99 starting price. It went pretty well, I got reasonable price and I sent the lens away.

As you might seen from my twitter feed, I bought Canon 550D with working EF-S 18-55mm IS lens. The main reason was its video features. I have been trying out various things and I am happy with the quality. However, it is not a point and shoot video camera. Practice is needed to get used to the controls and smooth handling. Couple test videos can been seen on Vimeo.

Now I need to find someone to buy my old Canon 450D body. Two bodies are nice to have but I think there wont be too much usage for the old one. Maybe I will try gumtree again.

Vivitar 35mm f1.9, Amanda De Luxe 135mm f3.5 and SMC Takumar 55m f1.8 review

I finally received my M42 to EOS adapter ring with AF-confirm. The first thing was naturally to take some test shots with my vintage M42 lenses mentioned in the previous post. So how did these around 30 or more year old lenses perform?



The setup was very simple. I placed two teddys on a paper and placed a YN-460II flash on their right. The flash was triggered with YN RF-602 radio trigger. The camera used was Canon 450D and it was placed either on a gorilla pod or a tripod. The shutter speed was set to 1/160s and I changed flash power based on the aperture setting. Each lens was focussed using camera's live view.

Of course the setup is not ideal as the camera angle and amount of light was not fixed but it should give some idea how each lens performs. The test photos can be seen in my flickr set: M42 Bear test

The first lens to test was Vivitar 35mm f1.9. I hoped it would to perform well as I am planning use it indoors a lot. The focal length nearly matches 50mm in a crop sensor camera and the f1.9 makes this lens fast. But with wide open aperture it is clearly a bit soft. Luckily sharpness improves at f2.8 and onwards. Unfortunately I did not have Canon EF 35mm f2.0 to compare - I guess it would be sharper wide open.

The mysterious Amanda De Luxe 135mm f3.5 was next. This lens was softest of all three and lacked contrast all the way. Well, I did not expect too much...

Finally it was time for tiny SMC Takumar 55m f1.8. This multi coated lens was supposed to be pretty sharp and it did not let me down. Already at f1.8 it produces surprisingly sharp results and at f2.8 it is very nice.

I am not disappointed as none of the lenses was total disaster. Compared to their price they are good enough and SMC Takumar 55mm f1.8 seems to be excellent. As soon as possible I will take them outdoors one day and try out more. In any case I will keep them all untill I run out of storage space.

Becoming a strobist - YN RF-602 ordered

I ordered Yongnuo RF-602 radio trigger with two receivers yesterday. The reason for ordering this set is that I do not have any way of using my existing Canon 430EX II flash off camera. I was thinking buying a remote TTL cord but I dropped that idea after reading about radio triggers.

There are many different brands for radio flash triggers. Some are quite expensive like Pocket Wizards and some are cheaper. In my case I did not want to spend too much so I took a look at the eBay selection. Most cheap triggers like Cactus V2/V4 use 433 MHz frequency but Yongnuo RF-602 uses higher 2.4 GHz frequency. This should give longer range and better reliability based on reviews. RF-602 might be a bit more expensive but 40 GBP for a transmitter and two receivers is not too bad.

At the moment I have only one flash but I am trying to figure out what kind of flash should the second one be. It should have manual power control, reasonable power rating and low price. I do not need any automatic features so there is no point of buying another Canon 430EX II. Yongnuo produces flashes matching my requirements and they are pretty cheap (27-30 GPB ebay). Other option could be a second hand flash unit but popular models are hard to get.

Hopefully my trigger package arrives soon. Waiting new gear to arrive is always difficult...

Canon 500D introduced

Today I realized that my less than a year old Canon 450D is obsolete. Canon published new Canon 500D which replaces 450D in their product line. But after checking the specifications and preview from dpreview.com I did not rush to a camera store to pre-order it.

The camera shares same form factor as Canon 450D so there is no improvement in ergonomics except the new and sharper LCD screen. The internals of the camera have received some updates including a sensor with more pixels and a processor allowing video shooting. But the video shooting is clearly limited compared to 5D mark II and there is no possibility to connect external microphone. 

The only feature I really would like to have from Canon 500D is its ability to shoot on higher ISO settings. I haven't seen any example shots with ISO 1600 or 3200 yet so I am curious how noisy they are compared to 450D's ISO 800 or 1600. Apart from this I think there is no need to upgrade for 450D owners - especially after checking 500D's price tag.