Half Moon Bay Kid: 1/2000s f/4.0 ISO200 200mm +1ev, Canon 30D, Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS

One post a month is a little sparse, don’t you think? I’ve been very busy, but did get a chance to break a lens and get some great beach photos at Half Moon Bay.

I broke my 50mm f/1.8, aka the Nifty Fifty. It’s a cheap, plastic lens, at $70, but it’s the fastest I have and it takes great picures, so that’s a loss. I left it on a table top with my camera, picked up my camera, and knocked it to the floor with the strap. It landed on the lens cap and pushed it in a way. No obvious damage done, but it’s wrecked. At apertures wider than about f/5.6 there is a noticeable halo, and at f/1.8 the images are a ghastly smear. Something inside has been jarred and is no longer aligned. I took it apart, but the construction is such that there really isn’t anything to fix. Worth sending to Canon?


Half Moon Bay Surfer 6: 1/4000s f/3.5 ISO200 200mm +0.7ev, Canon 30D, Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS

Half Moon Bay had surfers testing the waves. I really needed a longer lens (or a 1.4x teleconverter), but my 200 did pretty well. There was lots of light and I could take short exposures at low ISO. I particularly like the lack of aberrations taking photos with a lot of contrast, like the one below.


Half Moon Bay Surfer 1: 1/6400s f/4.0 ISO200 200mm +1ev, Canon 30D, Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS

I took almost all the photos with +1ev, and in many cases simply went manual in order to prevent the reflections from causing the metering to change the exposure as I tracked across the bright reflections.

The lens I think I want to replace the 50 is the 85mm f/1.8. I borrowed one for WWDC this year and liked it very much. Light, much smaller and lighter than the 70-200, and great at wide apertures. But I need the economy to get a little better (or at least my economy) before I buy any new toys.

Tags: Blogging, Lenses, Canon, Broken