Stringendo's photostream

Photo courtesy of Chris Waiting

I was an early adopter of digital compact years ago, but found it made me so lazy I stopped wanting to take photos. Then I broke my hand in 2004 and had to miss a sailing trip, so a friend suggested I go along as unofficial photographer. I dug out the old Zenit manual SLR that my dad bought me when I was a teenager. Learning to use it all over again reminded me of the joy of photography .

Eventually I succumbed to the lure of the DSLR and bought the Canon EOS 400D when it first appeared in the shops in August 2006, plus a couple of decent lenses. And just over a year and a couple more lenses later, thinking that photography is here to stay, I upgraded to the 40D.

So, my current kit includes:

Canon EOS 40D
Canon EOS 400D
Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM
Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 EX DC Macro
Canon 50mm f/1.8 Mk II
Tamron 90mm f/2.8 Di Macro 1:1
Tamron 18-250mm f/3.5-6.3 Di ll LD Aspherical (IF) Macro

Mount converter to allow Helios screwmount primes (see below) to be used on EOS cameras
Circular polariser for Sigma 18-50mm
Graduated neutral graduated filter
Canon 580 EX II Flash unit
Sigma flash bounce diffuser

Mamiya C330 Professional F medium format (120/220) body with 80mm and 180mm lenses

Minolta Dynax 404si SLR with basic kit zoom
2 x Zenit EM manual SLRs with Helios prime MF lenses @ 35mm, 50mm, 135mm
Pentax Espio 200 35mm compact with dodgy light-leaking zoom
Olympus Trip 35mm compact
Sony Ericsson K800i
Bencini Comet S (125 film manual compact from late 1950s)

Cheapy (free with a magazine!) Velbon tripod

Lexmark P4350 printer-scanner
Plustek OptikFilm 7200 negative/slide scanner

Programs I use:

Adobe Photoshop Elements 5 with Camera Raw plug-in
Canon DPP (DSLR bundled program)
Photomatix (HDR program)
Noise Ninja

I'm always happy to chat photography, or a whole range of other stuff. I'm friendly and I don't bite, so if you want to add me on MSN or Yahoo Messengers or even AIM sometimes (see below) then be my guest and come say hi.

And if anyone has any bright ideas for how I can earn something from photography in order to start paying back some of this expense, do let me know...