2010 gear goals
I finally got our Christmas decorations back into the attic this past week. Ugh. It had just been to frickin' COLD to attempt it before. Daily high temperatures are back into the low 50s, so that's winter weather I can handle. I feel like the proverbial groundhog poking his nose out again, albeit a few weeks early.
A couple of nights ago, someone broke into John's truck and stole "Sheila," his Garmin GPS unit. There was no damage to the truck, thankfully; we think they probably got in through the back glass. The police were notified and given Sheila's serial number. In the meantime, yesterday Danny and I picked up two new Garmin nüvi 265wt units at Costco, one for John and one for himself. Danny's previous GPS unit, a Sony, will go to me.
Lately I've been closing the book on my first year of photography, getting the RAW files backed up onto DVD-Rs and getting everything into a new workflow for the new year. I've decided to make Adobe's DNG format my new RAW standard instead of Nikon's proprietary NEF, and my photo laptop just spent the better part of two days making the appropriate conversions of all my Lightroom 3 Beta-era files to the new standard.
I spent all of last year paying off my car note and credit card debt so that I could get my braces and more photographic equipment. I just completely paid off my credit card this week, since I'd racked up a few small charges for Christmas. Now I'm proud to say I have zero debt besides my braces. However, I've been squirreling money away into my workplace's employee stock purchase plan. According to my calculations, between my usual monthly payment and the money in the stock purchase plan, once the current stock purchase term has matured in May, I might actually have enough to completly pay off the braces early! Right now I'm looking at buying my first really good lens: a Tamron 18-200mm f/2.8 that will sink me $750. I really want it in time for the Conductors run in March, so I'm considering going ahead and getting it soon, putting it on my credit card, using my modest tax refund as a down payment, and start paying on it a little each month until the braces are paid off, when I can really knock it out. My photo gear hankerin' for this year is to get two really great, professional-quality lenses (one tele and one wide), get some miscellaneous cheap gear I've been wanting, and then putting money back toward perhaps getting a full-frame camera in 2011 or 2012--right before the world supposedly ends, of course. The Apocalypse should be neat to cover in a photojournalistic style: Pat Robertson told me so.
Soon I should have something exciting to tell those of you who have been following my photo exploits thus far, but I don't want to do a big reveal prematurely. But if you just can't wait....
A couple of nights ago, someone broke into John's truck and stole "Sheila," his Garmin GPS unit. There was no damage to the truck, thankfully; we think they probably got in through the back glass. The police were notified and given Sheila's serial number. In the meantime, yesterday Danny and I picked up two new Garmin nüvi 265wt units at Costco, one for John and one for himself. Danny's previous GPS unit, a Sony, will go to me.
Lately I've been closing the book on my first year of photography, getting the RAW files backed up onto DVD-Rs and getting everything into a new workflow for the new year. I've decided to make Adobe's DNG format my new RAW standard instead of Nikon's proprietary NEF, and my photo laptop just spent the better part of two days making the appropriate conversions of all my Lightroom 3 Beta-era files to the new standard.
I spent all of last year paying off my car note and credit card debt so that I could get my braces and more photographic equipment. I just completely paid off my credit card this week, since I'd racked up a few small charges for Christmas. Now I'm proud to say I have zero debt besides my braces. However, I've been squirreling money away into my workplace's employee stock purchase plan. According to my calculations, between my usual monthly payment and the money in the stock purchase plan, once the current stock purchase term has matured in May, I might actually have enough to completly pay off the braces early! Right now I'm looking at buying my first really good lens: a Tamron 18-200mm f/2.8 that will sink me $750. I really want it in time for the Conductors run in March, so I'm considering going ahead and getting it soon, putting it on my credit card, using my modest tax refund as a down payment, and start paying on it a little each month until the braces are paid off, when I can really knock it out. My photo gear hankerin' for this year is to get two really great, professional-quality lenses (one tele and one wide), get some miscellaneous cheap gear I've been wanting, and then putting money back toward perhaps getting a full-frame camera in 2011 or 2012--right before the world supposedly ends, of course. The Apocalypse should be neat to cover in a photojournalistic style: Pat Robertson told me so.
Soon I should have something exciting to tell those of you who have been following my photo exploits thus far, but I don't want to do a big reveal prematurely. But if you just can't wait....