Been very busy these last few weeks, so I thought I'd post an update while I have some free time. Besides, it's been over a month since I managed to post something.
Spring is here, so I cleaned up my backyard, mowed the lawn and prepped my vegetable garden. This year, we'll have 9 broccoli plants, 2 grape tomato plant, assorted lettuce, and 2 basil plants. As a bonus, I also planted a strawberry plant. Naturally, after I plant these it goes to 32 degree's Fahrenheit. With any luck, they'll be ok.
On the photography front, I purchased a used Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 EX DG Macro (That's it on the right) from a co-worker who upgraded to a Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S DX Zoom. So far, I'm really enjoying it and recommend it to anyone looking for an affordable zoom that opens up to f/2.8. You can see my photos I took with it here. At this time, my favorite is this one I took of a friend of mine. At f/2.8 he's in focus and the background has a soft feel to it. To make life better, at f/2.8 with my Nikon SB-800 flash on my D80, it's perfectly lit. At 24-70mm, It is, IMO, a perfect indoor party lens. For daylight Walkabouts, I'll still use my Nikon 18-200mm VR DX lens.
On a related topic, I'm using DXO Photo Optics pro more often. I find that for batch processing of photo's It's very convenient and often does a better job than I would in a shorter amount of time. It doesn't have my new lens listed yet, but I'm hopeful they'll add it to the list of supported lens. I'm not giving up on Adobe Photoshop, but I think DXO Photo Optics is an excellent addition to my tool set. Also, I've been backing up my photo's to DVD's. Since the beginning of August 2006, I've taken in excess of 10,000 photos. At 10 megapixels and in RAW NEF format, that adds up to a lot of disk space.
Music I'm listening to right Now:
"Shimmer" by Fuel from the "Sunburn" Album.
