Only now managed to get the time to reply to this! Thank you and everyone else for making the photography one of the most pleasant places to hang out on the forum. Bought a lot of camera gear this year. Hopefully next year some of it will get used!
happy festivus ! me: literally been over 12 months since I checked ocau - wonder what I’ve missed... Not much looks like :’( feels like not much really happened in the world of camera tech. And having a kid really put a good control over my camera GAS. but ditto your post - good times had and made some good friends.
A bunch of really nice Canon RF lenses have been released/announced in the past year or so, but most of them are far out of my budget/cannot be justified. Really hoping the 3rd parties step up and follow up their awesome EF lenses with that native RF mount.
No good; I had no idea Camera Lane and the JB camera store had also closed, the former having relicated to Spotswood. Popped into Michael's briefly today and did think to myself that it was looking a little run down to be honest; just a poor vibe overall. DD was pumping, fwiw. The camera store strip on Elizabeth St used to be my favourite part of town; sad to see it wither.
I realise that DD isn't typically cited for amazing customer service, but at my time grabbing camera gear while in Melbourne (and Brisbane for that matter), between places like Michael's, JB and DD it was DD that were actually helpful, had stock and I bought from.
From my experience in store they are pretty good, but online I will never use again....still waiting on goods I ordered at end of financial year sale...
DD are the only store that hold sensor cleaning kits in stock; on that token, I wet cleaned a sensor this morning for the first time ever and it was bloody easy as - took a single go and less than 20 seconds.
One of those things that are super scary, and then you do it and are like "what was that worry all about?".
So this hasn't progressed well! DCW keep pushing the lens arrival back. First was 5-10 days. Then it was Mid-Jan and now it's 1st Feb. Georges are a useless bunch of pricks to deal with and don't know when the Sony cards are back in stock. But want to have me instead take some slower marginally slower Sandisk's for $80 more each.
Did my first outdoor concert over the weekend and it was pretty fun, though I think I would have really appreciate a smaller and lighter set-up than the Tamron 15-30mm and 70-200mm f/2.8 VC USD lenses I was mostly using. Would really love RF versions of the E-Mount Tamron 17-28mm and 70-180mm f/2.8 lenses for example.
Yeah waiting to see what comes out for Z-mount before i consider it a viable option. Like Canon sure the glass is amazing, but it aint cheap
The RF equivalent lenses are awesome... But just priced way too much, out of my range. That RF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM for example would be some awesome as a walk-around telezoom
Wow UHS-II SD cards are fast! My 2x 64gb Sony Tough SF-G64T cards finally arrived from Georges (they can't have liked selling them for $102 each...) and just threw some random 400mb TIFFs onto it with the card reader and they scream! MacOS only just gets the time to pop up the transfer dialogue before it's done.
Pretty impressive new release from Sony.....is the going to be the replacement for the A9 or a completely new line? Sony Just Destroyed the Competition With New Sony a1 Mirrorless Camera | Fstoppers
That is the ultimate question. I am hoping they settle on 3 lines but that is probably asking a bit much considering they have 4 variants in the A7 line.' Some great kit coming out in that release though... especially seeing it work it's way down in iterations for future releases too.
After waiting for months my x-t4 and 16mm-55mm f 2.8 arrived today. First impressions are not great. ( all compared to my g9) the ergos are rubbish, tracking autofocus is a bit rough even on static subjects. It also feels a lot more plasticy than I anticipated. I hope it takes good images when I get to test it...