Ahh that sucks. I wanted to buy the sb-600, but considering that I need to learn manual flash TTL, I opted out for either Vivitar 285 or LumoPro 120. Which are pretty cheap and good quality. I want to eventually upgrade to Nikon, but for the price of one sb600 I can have two of these flashes. No point in burning money for manual flash by buying fancy Nikon ones at this point. Sometimes I regret even getting a Nikon system. Seems that Canon is a bit cheaper with lenses which already by standard AF-S. But ohh well can't go back now, I suppose.
I had a cheaper brand flash that was a speed light copy basically, it had all the features of more expensive ones but obviously not the build quality, only dropped it the once and the zoom got stuck so it would be constantly trying to zoom the flash in and out and not actually fire.
What do you have, SB600? I never really had the urge to dive into flash photography that much, besides thos occassional uses but seeing some pretty cool photographs done by Dustin Diaz, totally changed my heart. I have so many ideas for cool photos now, that I am so eager to get that strobe outfit done to start shooting when I still have the summer and people willing to help out with modelling. Check out some of his stuff. http://photography.dustindiaz.com/
I bust my off camera flash, must get another one, there so much more useful, especially with bounce and swivel. Carnival pictures are here http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?t=159117 all done with the 1.8 50mm
I also like Tokina 11-16mm 2.8 but unfortunetlly it's not that sharp. I think I will just pick up a wide angle prime. BTW you should get at one point 50mm 1.4 . It's unbelievable how awesome it is for portraits. It's bokeh is out of this world. After I bough my Sigma 50mm 1.4 I still kept my old Nikon 50mm 1.8 for light travel and general photography. Tomorrow I am going to possibly get a strobe to get my feet wet in flash photography. Looking forward to the pics from the carnival.
Just saw that sigma minimum focuses at 20cm aswell, pretty impressive. Though my 50mm officially is 45cm I get the focus beep at much closer when shooting flowers.
I love my 50mm prime f1.8, great for portraits but not for groups. Problem with the 10-22mm is it wont be great in low light and of course no bokeh. Sigma do a 20mm f1.8, 20mm is wide enough for most work, your talking almost 400 uk sterling though. I'm off to a carnival today in town, should be perfect for street photography I reckon as there will be many cameras about, plus the winding route means I can get to it at several locations during the parade by just ducking down a few side streets.
I am just concerned with the AF speed. According to Tom Hagan it's slower than Nikon 70-300mm. It would be nice having such a lens but the AF speed worries me. Hmm maybe I will look into Sigma lenses. Currently my most used lens is 50mm. But I still need something wide for portraits of full pose of people. I thought about the 10-20mm from Sigma but I am still not sure, it seems kind of slow. I thought that building system would be easier than this.
That said you could probably get a newer used VR lens of around the same range for same price.
If its in good condition or even better new then get it, there solid lenses and age does not really matter when it comes to lenses, so long as they don't have any fungus or **** on the lens elements or something.
