Planning On A Sunday

If 2012 were a person I would think that it was on some kind of performance enhancing drug. I am amazed, and frightened, by how the days seem to just fly by. I feel that I am getting left behind! I try my best to be industrious and do as much as possible in the course of a day, yet I feel it's never enough. I'm not being lazy although it feels that way. I wish a day would last longer for once so that I can keep up!

Yet another week has gone and another work week starts tomorrow. I was able to take a short walk today and take some photos of (yet again) the Sunday market at Blå. It's more alive this time, another sign of spring. What they are selling there hasn't changed though, mostly cutesy things which are nice to look at but aren't really that useful :-) But I left with some pictures so I didn't leave empty handed. Like I said it's getting more and more difficult to take pictures in Oslo as I know this city so well and not a lot excites me anymore. Since I am  saving up for a Nikon D800 (therefore no short weekend trips overseas yet) I might have to do with visiting the neighboring towns around the Oslo / Eastern Norway area to keep myself motivated.


I have spent the rest of the day planning and contemplating. I am still at a loss as to which lens to get! But after exhausting the resources available on the Internet, I have decided that I just might get a zoom lens to go along with the D800. The Nikkor AF-S 50mm F1.4G lens is very affordable so it will not be so difficult to save up for that as well.

The problem with zooms for full-frame cameras is that they are more expensive. Full-frame cameras are very unforgiving. Get a sub-par lens and the camera will expose every imperfection. And the Nikon D800, with its 36.3 megapixels, will probably be the most unforgiving camera yet. In a way I am glad I will not be the first to get this camera. Hopefully by the time I have saved up enough money for it, a lot of photographers would have already acquired and tested the camera to see which lens would perform well with this beast. It is going to make a lot of lenses obsolete, that is for sure!

I have decided to get the AF-S Nikkor 24-120mm F4 VR G lens, which has received very good reviews on many photography blogs. It's sharp all across the focal range and I like that it has a fixed F4 aperture as I've never really been a fan of variable aperture lenses (I am a control freak). And since this lens has VR I can still be able to take pictures in relatively low light environments without having to worry about camera shake. It will not be cheap though, costing NOK 8,295 (PHP 62,000!). But as Ken Rockwell says, the poor man always pays twice, so it's better to put this on my budget rather than purchase a sub-par lens and not be satisfied in the long run. This brings my camera budget close to the NOK 30,000 mark that I have set, but still much, much lower than if I were to buy a Leica M9-P! With this lens I could go about my business. I can cover Stockholm Pride on a cinch with this lens. And if I want to take portraits with a shallow DOF I can always shoot from a range at 120mm.

I have also considered the AF-S Nikkor 28-300mm F3.5-5.6 ED VR lens. This one though has received mixed reviews. Some like it for its versatility while the others loathe it for its optical imperfections, especially when stopped low. I am not sure I would want to risk this lens on the Nikon D800! It works well with the D700, a 12.1 megapixel camera. But the Nikon D800 might be too much a camera for this poor fellow!

I was also worrying about how the Nikon D800 is going to make my computer choke. Or worse, it will totally kill it. I just read that shooting RAW with the D800 at full resolution will yield files that are over 70MB huge! My 3-year old MacBook Pro is already choking sometimes when processing RAW files from my Pentax K-5, and those are roughly just 20MB in size each! A new MacBook Pro is DEFINITELY out of the question! And honestly, so is an iMac, for this year anyway. I still have a Philippine trip in December to plan and save up for. So I will need to upgrade and speed up my poor MacBook Pro a notch. Well it's not really poor, but the 250GB hard drive is just a 3200rpm model, so it balks when handling huge files. Here is what I intend to do.

Upgrade the memory from 4GB to 8GB. I found that 4GB modules sell for NOK 649 each, so I will need two of these. This should take care of the memory-intensive processes like using Nik Software for de-noising and sharpening.

I will need to replace the paltry 3200rpm hard drive with a Solid State Drive (SSD). These are still quite expensive, but I found that a 256GB model sells for roughly NOK 2000 here in Norway. This should stop the bottle neck I am experiencing when handling large files. Coupled with the memory upgrade, the 2.66 GhZ Intel Core Duo processor should have an easier time tackling RAW files.

This upgrade will cost roughly NOK 3,000. But a new iMac will cost between NOK 15,000 to NOK 19,000 so it is still quite unrealistic to purchase that for now.

So many plans! I usually get scared when making plans because if they fail I end up getting disappointed and depressed. If you've read the first posts in this blog you already know that I have had my share of heartaches! But I believe I am stronger now, and as long as I work hard I will manage. I feel I deserve it. I've come a long way since last year, and I don't feel anything wrong with following my passion, which is photography!

So that is it for this week! Now I can finally sit back, relax and enjoy the few hours left of the weekend. Here's hoping that everybody will have a wonderful start to the incoming week!