First, a short story. The reason why I shoot with a Canon dSLR, the EOS 350d / Digital Rebel XT, is because last year I spotted an EOS 50e film camera going cheap at our local Sunday Morning car boot sale. The 50e had an EF lens, which I knew would work with a digital body, so I got it for a song and planned on buying a second hand digital back and using the 50e’s lens on it.
That lens was the EF 28-80mm f3.5-5.6. When I got my 350d from eBay, the 28-80 served me well, but a few months ago the Auto-Focus started to stick. I’d line up a subject, press the shutter release half-way down and nothing would happen. I’d have to fiddle with the front element to free the AF, and the camera would focus, but this quickly became a pain and I stopped using this useful little zoom.
I’ve since expanded my lens collection with the 50mm f/1.8, the 28mm f/2.8, the 75-300 f4-5.6 and numerous M42 lenses, but I’ve always missed a general purpose walk-around zoom for those times when I don’t want to be lens juggling with a bag full of primes.
Being on a tight budget means that a new lens would be out of the question, so I kept my eye on eBay looking for a Canon zoom going cheap, and I got the 35-105mm for about £36. It doesn’t get the greatest reviews, but we all know that to get the best out of any glass you need to use it a couple of stops down from wide open and not at the extremes of the focal length.
I’ve been out with the Canon EF 35-105mm f4.5-5.6 quite a few times now, and I have to say I’m impressed. It seems like a solid piece of kit, that as long as you know its limitations (the aperture mainly), you’ll be able to make very nice photographs indeed. Lets look at some of the shots I’ve taken so far.
(Remember that these are not test shots. These photographs have been edited in Adobe Camera Raw, Photoshop and Nik Silver Efex Pro to produce a final image.)
Being a budget lens, the 35-105mm is a bit plasticky. This at least means it’s light, so as a walk-around lens you’re not going to be getting neck-ache. It’s biggest drawback is the slow aperture. f/5.6 at the long end is not that much light, so high-ISO’s or a tripod are the order of the day to avoid camera shake.
Auto-focus is responsive enough, if a little noisy. The front element rotates when focussing, so If you’re using a Polarising or a Grad filter you’ve have to re-adjust them after you’ve focussed on your subject, but that’s common to most cheap zooms.
Let’s get back to the main strength of the 35-105mm – its focal length. You’ve got a great range, from wide to telephoto, although on a crop-sensor body like my 350d, the wide end has a 35mm equivalent of about 55mm, which means that I’ve got to get my 28mm out if I want a really wide angle of view.
Where I thought this lens was superb was when I put it on my 50e Film SLR. Being full frame (duh!), the 35mm is really wide, and I enjoyed walking around shooting with this lens on the old Canon Film SLR, and I can’t wait to get the film developed.
Obviously if you’ve got the cash I’d recommend a newer IS or Image Stabilised lens, but if you’re on a budget like me, these cheap Canon Zooms are a practical solution. Hey, at this price, if it breaks it’s not the end of the world anyway.
My technique for grabbing a bargain lens on eBay is simple. Do some research. Decide on the focal length you want and how much those lenses are new on Amazon, so you don’t get sucked into over-paying for a second-hand one. Set your budget, then every night do a search on eBay, looking at items ending that night and newly listed. If you see a newly listed without any bidders, send the buyer an email offering to “buy it now” at a reasonable price. If you’ve got to get involved in an auction, use a service like Gixen to bid for you at the last moment so you don’t get involved in a bidding war. I’ll say it again, always know what the equivalent, new, lenses are going for on Amazon so you don’t overpay for an old lens when you could have got a new one, with a warranty, for a similar price.
At the end of the day any lens is only as good as the photographs it produces, so click on the link underneath the picture below and have a look at it, at its original size. The shot was taken on a tripod and I think the overall quality is good enough, especially the detail in the parts of the Fort you can see at the end of the moat.
(The photographs below have been processed with Adobe Camera RAW, Photoshop, and the black and whites have been created with Niks Silver Efex Pro.)
You know I like to cover cutting edge technology over here on the robnunnphoto.com blog, so here’s a little beauty I got from our local car boot sale for about fiver a few months ago – the Olympus Mju 300d Digital Compact Camera. It’s from 2004, but it’s small, weather-resistant, takes nice enough photographs, and fits in your pocket.
I’m not going to talk much about specifications in this review, your camera-phone probably has more megapixels, but check out the links at the bottom of the post for the technical stuff. Just look at the photo’s and ask “are they good enough?”.
The Olympus Mju 300d offers an equivalent 35 – 105mm zoom lens, with a variable aperture from f/3.1 to f/5.2, but I’m not really bothered about that. What I’m after is point and shoot functionality, which the Mju 300 has in spades.
Let’s start with the body. It’s got a shiny metal look (even though it’s mostly plastic) with the usual Olympus lens cover that also acts as the on-off switch. I like this. It means that the little camera can sit in your pocket quite safely, it doesn’t need a case, and it’s weather sealed to see off the odd light shower while you’re out shooting.
The Mju 300 Digital uses a li-ion rechargeable battery that has never gone flat while I’ve been out taking photographs. I charge it every couple of weeks, and that seems enough to cover the light use I give it. This camera is always with me when I don’t have my dSLR – in my jacket or trouser pocket, ready to fire into action if a photo opportunity arises.
I always shoot in the default automatic mode, the only time I go into the menus is to format the memory card. What I’m after with this point and shoot, is simple, intuitive photography. It’s refreshing not to have to worry about ISO’s, apertures and shutter speeds. I just let the camera do all the thinking.
The Mju does have a few things that you’ve got to work around. With such a tiny sensor and lens, perspective distortion seems amplified when you’re shooting wide and close to your subject. The viewfinder and led screen are really, really, small – you’ve got to squint to look at either, and worst of all it uses XD memory cards.
My Mju 300 Digital has a 16mb XD card, which’ll hold about 40 photos (!), but it can take up to a 256mb card, so I’ll have to get one off eBay or Amazon soon.
I feel a bit odd writing a review of this great little camera, six years on from its original release. Yes, it’s old tech and the viewfinder is small, but the form factor is great, and if I drop and break it I won’t be heart-broken, after all, it cost me less than the price of a CF mempry card to buy….
In conclusion, if you see an Olympus Mju 300 Digital (sometimes referred to as the Stylus), going cheap, check it works then snap it up – it’s a wicked little camera that will probably take better photographs than your camera phone, you can have it on you all the time, and you won’t worry about using it in difficult situations of if its raining.
When I first looked at the Navin Minihomer, I wasn’t that impressed. You’re reading the blog of a guy who used to sell GPS Satellite Navigation equipment for a living. I’m used to all the bells and whistles – 3d maps, voice recognition, bluetooth, speed-camera warnings and everything else. The Minihomer GPS Position Finder has none of this.
Then I actually used it. I charged it up with the supplied (power only) USB lead, set up the electronic compass, put in the time zone, then went outside and stored a location – my drive way. Then I simply walked around the block, watching as the Navin kept pointing me home, with the distance increasing the further I walked.
I took the Navin Minihomer on a business trip. I parked up at the hotel, recorded my position, then made my way to the meeting. That night I used the Navin to point me the right way back to my digs. Very, very simple and very, very reliable.
Think about this: You’re going on a photowalk, perhaps visiting a city or part of the countryside you’re not completely familiar with. You park up, get off the train or at the bus stop and use the MiniHomer to record your position. You wander off, shooting away, perhaps using the remaining four memory points to record way-points of where you are going. When you’re done you’ve got no idea about the way back, so you just turn on the Navin and it’ll point you in the right direction back to where you started.
Don’t get me wrong, this little GPS device isn’t like a Garming eTrex hiking Sat Nav. It won’t record a “bread-crumb” trail for you to retrace your steps exactly, it just points you straight towards the positions you’ve recorded with an arrow on the back-lit LCD screen, but it is very easy to use and it’s small enough to fit on your key fob so you’ll never lose it.
With the right reference material you could use the built-in electronic compass to point towards where the Sun is rising so you’ll be ready for that shot. You can also download software (at a small extra fee) from Navin’s website to use it as a GPS Data Logger, so that you can geotag your photographs.
In conclusion, the Navin Minihomer is a great little GPS gadget that is small enough to attach to your key-ring, that can be with you all the time, that you can use to store your position so you can find your way back. Simple, straight-forward and easy to use. Recommended.
Twenty photography tips I’ve borrowed from all sorts of sources….
