Two:Thirty AM

I will admit right off the bat that I have a photo and laptop bag obsession. There, now that’s out of the way. :) I have been eying this particular bag for a while due to it’s large amount of storage and it holds a 15″ laptop on top of all the photo gear. This bag is generally around $150 – $200. Price was really the only reason I was holding off on the purchase. Fortunately I was on eBay and found a seller with a Buy It Now auction that was accepting offers. I offered $90 not thinking they would take it, and they did! So now onto the bag itself.

You can easily hold 2 SLR bodies and around 6-8 lenses in this bag. You can customize the whole inside with the velcro padding. There are also several zippered pouches inside for storage. On the outside there are even more zippered storage areas. There is also a tripod holding system that can fold down and secure a tripod to the back.

The bag is very comfortable to wear. It has 2 very padded shoulder straps along with a chest strap and waist strap to secure it to your body. The zippers on this bag are big and easy to zip. I wore this pack for a photo hike that was about 5 hours and it was great. Everything was safe and secure with no issues. One thing I would like to see however is a memory card pouch on the shoulder strap that is easy to get to. Other than that, it is an all around awesome bag for your photo gear.

Well the HTC Hero has finally made it stateside..kinda. Instead of the
next gen looking Hero, we got the crappy knockoff version at Sprint
that looks like every other phone. It came out today, so we stopped by
the local sprint store to check it out. I didn’t really care too much
about the handset, nothing too special there. More important is the
Android Sense UI. The UI is beautiful, however feels very clunky sadly
:( I think it is a problem of a phone UI finally outpacing the hardware
it was designed for. Is this phone a winner? Probably, if you are with
Sprint. Am I switching from my iPhone? No. I am thrilled however that
this type of innovation will fuel competition in the mobile sector.

I recently went on a photo shoot with a friend of mine to the abandoned town of Drawbridge, CA. I needed to rent a lens because I recently sold the majority of my lenses with my old Nikon D40 camera body. This only left me with my Nikon 35mm f/1.8. A fantastic lens for sure, but not quite the right tool for the job. Since a lens like the 24-70mm f/2.8 is upwards of $1600, renting was the way to go for sure. This particular lens is talked about like a god, so I had to see what all the hype was about! I rented it for 3 days for about $50. Not a bad deal at all. The very first thing I noticed about this lens was the weight; it is hefty! It weighs about 2 pounds, compared to my Nikon D90 body that weighs about 1.3 pounds! Having a solid f/2.8 from 24-70mm is fantastic; I found this lens to be very versatile for my shooting. This lens actually stayed on my body the whole day. The autofocus on this particular rented unit felt like it might have been slightly out of whack, but when in manual focus it was pretty damn sharp. I realize this lens is probably better suited for an FX body, but even on my DX D90 it was a wonderful experience. I can see why everyone talks about this lens so much! If you have the almost $2000 to shell out, this lens should be in your bag!

On a side note, if you have a Nikon D90, you know it came with the LCD protective cover. LEAVE IT ON! During this last shoot, my plastic cover got scratched to all hell, not even sure how it happened, but if the cover wasn’t there, my LCD would be wrecked! So if you have it on, keep it on. If you don’t, put it on now! If your particular camera model doesn’t have a protective cover, research to find one that will suit you. You won’t regret it. A new $10 cover is always better than a permanently scratched LCD.