Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Nikon guy goes Canon for vacation


(My Vac Day 12 blog post is below this one.) I love my Nikon lenses. I've been a Nikon guy for 22 years. So what was I thinking when I bought a Canon XSi 450D last year? I bought it for astrophotography. When we were preparing for this 2 week vacation, I originally planned to take my Nikon D90 and an array of lenses. When I envisioned myself lugging around the D90 and 3 or 4 lenses at the various theme parks, I cringed. Decided to take the XSi instead since the body is smaller and lighter, and I only own 2 lenses for it. What could go wrong?

The XSi has done fine...until today. The main dial stopped working. It temporarily stopped working a few days ago, but later it worked. Today, however, it died. Rotating the dial does nothing to change the aperture and/or shutter speed. Back when I realized I was going to take the XSi on this trip, I ordered the battery grip. Thank goodness I did. The grip comes with a dial for vertical use, so I can use that to change the settings.

The lens in the picture above is the wonderful Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 super wide-angle lens. The lens hood you see pictured didn't come with it. That's a replacement. You see...the one time I let someone else (Cynde) carry the camera, the Tokina lens hood vanished...somewhere between the 10th and 1st floors of the Disneyland Hotel on the day of our checkout. I've hauled that camera all over Arizona and southern California and not once did I knock the hood off. Cynde has the camera for 5 minutes and *poof* the lens hood vanishes. You'd think we could just retrace her steps and find it, right? We tried, and no luck. So when I visited OPT, I was glad they had this hood. Problem is this hood threads on, which means I can't use the UV filter in conjunction with it unless I want severe vignetting. The other lens I have is the Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8. It includes a nice 1:2 macro feature at 75mm f.l.

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