Hold It Right There
Ben stopped by the office to see a couple of friends and brought some new photographic toys to show off. Biggest and baddest had to be a 70-200mm zoom with vibration reduction for use on his D70. I had never used one of these lenses, which use some kind of magic engineering to counteract the shakes. When it’s working, the image in the viewfinder is rock-solid. Very spooky. Now you, too, can have nerves of steel for only $1800. You’ll have muscles of steel in short order as well; it weighs a ton. Good thing there isn’t any such animal for Leicas. I wasn’t envious over the lens so much as I was envious over having $1800 to blow on toys.
He also showed me a little gadget that stores the images—80 gigabytes worth. Since he shoots exclusively in RAW mode, he’ll need the room.
He’s heading to China this weekend for an extended vacation, and I’m sure he’ll take lots of pictures with this rig. He promised to have a gallery up by August, but considering the time it will take to convert and edit each RAW image, I’m thinking maybe September. Maybe.
In any case, have a great trip, Ben. Bon voyage!