overcoming your gear: let's call it sharking (and, a giveaway!)

I’ve stood there in shops, staring through glass at glass... coveted glass.

$1599.99. $989.99. $1249.99. Even if I did have the money, how would I ever choose? I need a macro as much as I need a wide-angle. Instead my camera bag is filled with hand-me-downs and compromises, an extremely limited selection of what are generally considered the most ineffective, inexpensive, kit-grade lenses Canon has ever produced.

The Canon EF 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 II lens is a very inexpensive starter lens with a low build quality. As long as the person using the 28-80 knows its optical shortcomings, that designation may be fine. Otherwise, they may permanently be turned off by its performance. Its optics are mediocre at best, making it nearly impossible to get ultra-sharp pictures. The price is cheap, and so is the lens; the overall workmanship and quality is low.  ~ The Digital Picture

Lately, that’s the one I use most often for nature shots, including the one above.

Build quality of the 50mm f/1.8 is very cheap (as you might expect). This lens feels more like a toy than a piece of optics, with plastic contruction right down to the lens mount.

There is not much to this lens. There is no distance window or markings. There is barely even a focus ring - and the tiny ring that is there is barely usable. Only five non-rounded aperture blades are used in this lens, leading to poor bokeh (image quality of out of focus areas).  ~ The Digital Picture

That’s the one I use for portraits, though I'd give it a better review than that.

And that’s pretty much it. A lensbaby for play, as-yet unmastered. A 10-20mm wide angle that’s slow, tough to focus precisely, and distorting around the edges. All mounted to a camera body that’s widely considered to be the beginner point for SLRs. Except it’s been my starting point for years.

I have never used a good lens, let alone a great one. The same goes for a camera body. I’m afraid to even pick one up for the sake of mortgage payments.

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Our village is filling up with summer residents, rich folk from the States, England, all points in Europe. With the onslaught of Porsche SUVs comes an onslaught of boats that eat money, sails that literally sparkle, crews outfitted in matching gear.

We’ve got a 40-year-old Shark, adopted, a family of small boats not seen much around these parts. Justin’s spent years sandblasting the keel, replacing the bulkheads, poring the internet for used sails.

"It’s so demoralizing," he said after yesterday’s race. "We came last. I can’t compete with those guys. They’re laughing at us. I don’t even have a roller furling for the jib. The rigging is from the 1960s. There’s no way I can race that boat. I don’t know why I bother."

Later, when the race results came in, Justin was shocked to discover that he hadn’t actually come last. He’d beaten two boats of the fleet. Two better-equipped boats designed to go fast. He beat them because he’s a good sailor. Not because of his boat, but in spite of it.

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I feel the limitations of my gear every time I reach for my camera. Clunky, lightweight, noisy, imprecise. I see it when I download, my best-case focusing turning out about as well as I imagine others’ worst-cases.

But every now and then, someone who knows about cameras looks at my images and says, “What do you shoot with?” and I tell them. And in that moment, I get... props.

None of this is a competition, but indulge my metaphor: when it comes to light-bending and composition and storytelling with my camera, plenty of people are ahead of me. I’ll never catch them—not with this glass. But I’m not DFL, either (to borrow from the nautical, Dead F*cking Last).

And for now, I’m content with that. I’ll keep pushing, nudging, compensating, overcoming, until $1249.99 falls from the sky into my lap.

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Hello Giveaway!

It’s random giveaway time from our friends at Hello Canvas.

Leave a comment here between now and Tuesday at midnight, and you could win a 20x24 canvas of your photo of choice from Hello Canvas! The prompt: What’s your relationship to your gear? Does it define you? Delight you? Confine you? What are you most grateful for, and how do you see your stable of lenses and equipment evolving in the next year?

Also, winners from our Hello Gorgeous mini contest will be announced on Tuesday. Wheeee!

The winner of the Hello Canvas 20x24 canvas print is Bekkah of Through the Lens, our 68th commenter. Congratulations, Bekkah! And thanks so much to everyone for sharing your thoughts on gear, both today's and tomorrow's (and wishlists).

on doing something different

Until now I've been fits-and-spurts with my camera. A hundred (or two, or three) at once. Every couple of weeks if even that, fifteen or twenty shared on flickr at the same time. A daily photo practice? Distant. Deluded. I figured I'd try just the same, starting with a photoblog that might, maybe, lend a little more accountability than flickr.

Daily practice on the mind and days later, we notice bright blue eggs in a robin's nest tucked into a nearby cedar. And so we started with regular peeking. Three days ago they hatched. Three days ago I put my camera by the front door. Two days ago I saw this. Today I saw this.

In the spirit of today's most excellent giveaway, I'd like to know: what have you done differently lately in your photography? Are you playing with ISO or white balance? Do you have some new actions, a coveted lens? Did you take a course, discover some new inspiration? Or are you just trying out a new practice?

Comment here between now and midnight Thursday 5/ 20 for a chance to win a 16x24" fine art print of one of YOUR images on the famed watercolour cotton rag paper by Hahnemuhle, courtesy the wonderful (and internationally-shipping) Atlantic Photo Supply, one of the oldest and most reputable labs in Canada. This is the paper I use. It's beyond gorgeous. You'll see your photography in a whole new way, with one of these prints.

The only question: will you keep it for bragging rights, or will you gift it to some lucky loved one? Go!

Congratulations to Erika, our 93rd commenter! You've won the fine art print. Atlantic Photo Supply will be in touch to make it happen -- can't wait to hear how it goes. Anyone who is interested in the cotton rag paper of Hahnemuhle -- the favourite of the printing artists at Atlantic Photo Supply -- can go here to order any print you like and have it internationally shipped. Thanks everyone for playing along!

receiving line

I'm still hungover. The wedding was Saturday. It's Monday morning. And it wasn't even so much the wine, despite me being a human champagne composter (waste not, want not). It was the truffles and the cream cheese tarts and the bruscetta and the cake and the cheeks sore from smiling. Everyone's cheeks were sore, I bet. An abundance of happiness to the point of facial cramp.

With a pro photographer to take care of a short burst of family portraits, my lovely cousin asked me to be the candid sneak throughout the day, and so I was. I'm so carried away with editing that I'd entirely forgotten my Shutter Sisters turn, and so I rifled through the ones I've done so far to share one with you.

I love it because it is so very her. Quick to laugh, generous of spirit. Which is infectious. Which is why I've still got a headache, but happily so.

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Today, share with us your captures of weddings and other special events, and tell us a little of how it felt to be behind the camera on that day.

on the virtues of nerve

There's a lot happening right now.

The kind of happening that involves an audience that might witness me and think what's she doing up there? and I don't get it. That's what I imagine, anyway, when I can't sleep. Or maybe it's that I can't sleep because of what I'm imagining. I'm not sure what comes first.

In early April life presses through the earth speculatively, a front line subject to nature's yea or nay. We see wick green budding among brown and marvel could it be? and the smart ones among us throw salt over left shoulders and knock on wood, because the universe counters brash optimism with unexpected snowfalls.

There's a respect due for that front line. For how bold yet how delicate it is. For how it emerges into a chill, into a lack of guarantees. But it emerges anyway, ready to be noted.

That in itself makes a statement.

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Today, show me your spring as well as your nerve.

pop!

Maddie turned one and gave me a gift: exactly the photograph I wanted.

Has this happened to you lately? You've got a vision, simple or elaborate. You can see the shot in your head. The subject is malleable, the light is good, and click. And click click click click, all the while fearing to breathe in case you jinx the moment. You end up with several of the same composition, from which you choose between subtle tweaks of expression, angle, framing.

And there it is. Exactly what you wanted.

Today, share a recent victory with us. Not the spontaneous or the happenstance, as much as we love those. Show us the shots that you designed and created, and that came off just as you hoped they would -- the photographs that make you feel like a storyteller.