Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

I wrote up a review of the Lego Star Wars II game for the XBox 360 over at geekdad. This is the most popular game at our house at present and I think is a particularly good one to play with your kids.

Earlier today when reviewing the EF 50mm f/1.2 lens, a commenter asked what I kept in my bag. I’ve written a lot about the different gear that I use day in and day out, but not a comprehensive “what’s in my bag” post.

I’m pretty anal about my gear. It goes with me pretty much everywhere. I think as a photographer so many of the best shots happen spontaneously. I’ve kicked myself too many times early on for not having my camera gear with me. So now it goes with me everywhere. To work, on the weekends, in my car, I always keep my gear with me. I try to do this 100% of the time.

The actual bag that I use is a Lowepro bag. It’s a really nice laptop camera combo bag called the CompuDayPack.

So, here’s what’s in my bag.

1 Canon EOS 5D digital SLR
1 EF 50mm f/1.2 lens
1 EF 24mm f/1.4 lens
1 EF 135mm f/2 lens
1 EF 100mm f/2.8 macro lens
1 Canon EF 1.4x II extender
1 8 GB SanDisk Ultra II compact flash memory card
1 4 GB Transcend compact flash memory card
1 CameraMate CF Card Reader
1 Canon RS-80N3 Remote Switch (cable release)
1 Canon CG-580 battery charger
3 Canon Li-ion battery packs
1 set V-Moda Bass Freq Modaphones
1 box 100 Moo cards
1 Verizon EVDO card
1 MacBook Pro
1 incase MacBook Pro case
1 pen
1 small notepad

My favorite lens to shoot is the EF 135 f/2.

I shoot every single day and each day dump the contents of my shoot onto my MacBook Pro’s hard drive. I process some of these images and then about once a week dump the folders of each day onto an external 750GB Seagate hard drive. I’ve got about 5.5 terabytes of storage at present. I highly recommend the 750GB external USB Seagates.

Gear at home that sometimes comes out with me, but is not included in my bag are

1 SLIK 611-800 Tripod
1 Bogen-Manfrotto 725B Digi Tripod
1 Canon EOS 10D camera
1 Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens
1 Canon EF 70-200 f/4 zoom
1 Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom
1 Canon Speedlite 550EX flash
2 MacBook Pro power adapters
All the hoods for my respective lenses

All of my lenses have UV filters on them. Most recently I’ve been buying Hoya Ultras which are a little nicer than standard.

In terms of where to buy gear, my number one recommendation is B&H; Photo. I also think Costco is a pretty good place to buy a camera body because of their very flexible return policy.

I hate buying at most camera stores here in the Bay Area. The selection is generally not very good. Maybe it’s just me but I also haven’t found the service terribly good at most of them. I’m not going to name names but given the store markups over what you can buy online typically it’s just not worth the hassle for me.

Wow! Got a note today from Pisco Bandito sharing with me this mash up that he did with one of my more popular Flickr photos.

I think his version is a lot better than mine and adds to my original in new and creative ways that I never envisioned.

Creative Commons makes this kind of sharing and derivation possible and it’s one of the things that I appreciate most about the license. I believe that so much creativity in the world is built on past creativity and this is a perfect example.

So I’ve played with the Canon EF 50mm f/1.2 for about three months now and figured that it’s time that I formally review the thing.

The first thing to note about this lens is that it’s expensive. Damn expensive. Now, while money, like a lot of things, is relative, at a price of about $1,400, most people are really, really, really going to need this lens in order to spend that kind of money on it. If you are the type of person where money is no object, then this lens is for you. It’s better than the 50mm f/1.4. No need to read anything more on it. Just go buy the puppy. Of course, if $1,400 is no object to you, then you probably already own this lens.

But… if you are looking for value in your lenses as well as quality, then I’d have to recommend against the EF 50mm. While the EF 50mm is the best 50mm lens that Canon makes at present, I don’t feel that it operates enough better than the non L Series 50mm f/1.4 to justify the difference in price. The f/ 1.4 50mm by the way, costs about $300.

The main reason that I wanted to upgrade to this lens was the fact that I was not entirely happy with the autofocus in the dark on my 50mm f/1.4. At f/1.2, this lens, along with the Canon 85mm f/1.2 have the maximum aperture of any lens currently offered by Canon. Because I shoot in low light a lot, I was excited about the potential of this lens. Unfortunately for me, this is where I felt the lens did not live up to its promise.

In my opinion, the 50mm f/1.2 does not do a very good job autofocusing in low light. Even when I’m able to get a focus lock in low light with the 50mm, I find that at the f/1.2 aperture I have to be so precise to get the perfect focus that I need.

The 24 f/1.4 that I own autofocuses in the low light much better. And any light advantage between the 24mm f/1.4 and the 50mm f/1.2 is not noticeable to me at all. The jump from an f/1.4 to an f/1.2 just isn’t that much difference.

If you are looking for a fast, low light lens, I’d recommend going with the 24mm f/1.2 over the 50 f/1.2.

In non low light situations the EF 50mm does a great job, but then again so did the significantly less expensive 50mm f/1.4. In better lit situations the autofocus on the 50mm is very fast, much faster than the 85mm f/1.2 that I’ve tested in the past.

Overall, the 50mm f/1.2 feels much more solid than the 50mm f/1.4 — it feels like an L series lens complete with that ever so fashionable little red strip — it is also of course a much larger block of glass. To this end, I feel like I’m getting better shots, but I’m not 100% sure.

One advantage of the smaller f/1.4 is that it’s a lot less weight to carry on a camera. I still use my f/1.4, primarily when my kids go out shooting with me and need a lighter camera.

I’d be interested in the thoughts of anyone else using this lens. Do you like it? Is it enough better than the f/1.4 to justify the price for you?

Anyways, there are my thoughts on the EF 50mm f/1.2. A good lens, but not a great lens, not as good as the 24mm in low light in my opinion — and probably not enough better than the 50mm f/1.4 to justify the price difference. I do enjoy shooting with it though and if you’ve got money to blow then by all means, go for it.

Sifry’s Alerts: The State of Technorati, April 2007: One of my favorite things to read are the “State of the Blogosphere” reports that Dave Sifry puts out. They provide a great overview of the overall popularity of blogging and are an excellent update on how fast this thing called blogging is still growing.

Today though Dave gives us a different update. Instead of an update on the blogosphere, he gives us an update on Technorati itself. As the leading blog search engine, as the blogosphere has exploded so has Technorati. Despite newcomers like Ice Rocket and established players like Google entering the blog search game, Technorati has still stayed on top.

Dave says that Technorati though is becoming much more about media search these days that simply blog search.

I use Technorati every day. The Technorati link to my own blog sits on one of the coveted bookmark launch buttons on my browser.

I’ve played around with Google blog search but by and large like Technorati better. I find it more complete. But more than just being complete, Technorati continues to develop really cool tools for bloggers as well.

Do you know what my favorite recent Technorati tool is? It’s the Technorati Link Count Widget. If you haven’t tried it yet you should check it out. Some of you may notice that at the end of some of my blog posts there is a link that says # blog reaction. What these are links to a Technorati page specifically for that permalink. I think this is helpful because it helps me find people that are talking about specific things that I write on my blog, but it also helps my readers if they are interested in a particular post and want to read more about what others think about something.

Does Google have anything like this? Not that I’m aware of. They do have a feature in blogger that is supposed to do something like this (I think), but it doesn’t work very well.

By providing valuable add on features like the link counter, Technorati continues to deliver value to bloggers even beyond the basic blog search.

The other thing I’ve been impressed by is the people that work for Technorati. Of all the tech companies that I’ve dealt with Technorati has some of the most community minded people you’ll ever meet. These are some of the smartest people around as well. I’m sure Google has lots of smart people too, but I don’t see Google doing quite the same community outreach that I see Technorati doing.

Scoble has a post out today on Technorati as well. He says that Technorati does a better job searching for “videobloggingweek2007.”

Thanks for the update Dave and keep up the good work.

Prime Lenses – an Introduction digital Photography School has a nice primer out on the basic differences between prime and zoom lenses. For those of you who are unfamiliar with what the differences are, this is a good place to start.

I shoot primarily with prime lenses. I’m frequently asked which lenses are my favorites and I’d have to say that in general (even as expensive as it is) I’d recommend Canon L Series lenses. My favorite is the 135mm f/2. I also like the 24 f/1.4 quite a bit as well. I’d concur also with this article that the Canon EF100 is a great (relatively) attractively priced macro.

TrevorCarpenter.com ? Photowalk: Carpinteria Tide Pools Trevor Carpenter is putting together a photowalk to shoot the Carpenteria tide pools this afternoon. I won’t be able to make it from San Francisco, but if you are around there and want to do some shooting, by all means, check it out.