andrzej_maciejewski

<p>Hi Steve,<br>

Excellent lenses and agree with your final selection. I was thinking, that the two: 17-40 and 24-105 would be the most useful for your trip.<br>

If you don't mind to give us your feedback after the trip. Which lenses were the most usefull for you? I would appreciate this very much. I have Canon system as well.<br>

Andrzej</p>

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<p>Anatole - thx for reading my memo. By all means, I do not pretend to be an expert in political and economic matters. I only express my concerns and ideas. I am 54 now and I think I have seen quite a bit of history in various regions of this planet. Plus I am an avid reader of history. Unfortunately this forum is no good place to elaborate about modern politics. It is a photographic forum and it should remain such. My pessimism is substantiated by number of observations in this day and age of our civilization. I will only address two things to show my concerns.<br>

- election of politicians to our governments. It is well known that, and I mean it, the size of budget of election candidates relates to their success in given election. And who do you think contributes the most of monies for this purpose? The middle class members, the poor ones or the banks and corporations? And why would they give so much money if there was no profit to be hoped for later on? Isn't this a form of buying laws and rights for specifically small and selected groups of people? Isn't this a mechanism to start wars that would be beneficial to certain people at cost of killing so many others. Consider Henry Kissinger and his Nobel Price for Peace in Vietnam. Isn't this a joke? This man actually caused the war to be prolonged and decided on massive bombing innocent civilians in Cambodia and further disasters in this region. Study this problem on your own and you will realize the truth. If you think that the governments are independent of rich supporters you are living in Utopia. The truth is that our governments are controlled by rich and super rich individuals. And why there is such a fear of communism or socialism? Have you asked yourself about this? If there is a poor and corrupted system, inferior to our capitalism then we should not be afraid of that system, right. Everybody can see for himself/herself what this system gives. On the other hand, existence of a competitive system would give us, the middle class and poor ones better conditions of life. This is quite natural. So why to go to war with them? Why to kill people and eliminate the competition? The answer is only one. We are told to remove competition, before we even understand what it means, so our situation will be worse and we become subject of manipulation and have no other option.<br>

- our legal system. Many of readers would already admit, that yes, we have a problem here. Yet the justice is our utmost hope for solving our problems. And we are deprived from that hope as well. If you don't believe me, go ahead and write about this issue and you may get overwhelmed with evidence that you may be wrong. Or may be our photographic community is somehow immune to legal issues.<br>

Someone may say, Andrzej is crazy. What Canon or Nikon has to do with politics? I will only add one thing. The success of modern powers e.g. Great Britain, USA is strictly related to industrialization. And everything possible was done to make sure that competition would be eliminated so the powers can grow and control more and more. If you don't agree I would be happy to read what you have to say.</p>

<p>I realize that some of you do not understand the complexity of industrial production in various countries. By all means I do not claim to be an expert in the area. This problem, however, has to be viewed with deeper understanding of structures involved.<br>

Spectrum of agreements include:<br>

-simple outsourcing, where company is having separate deal with local authorities in a third world country. For example, China. This is a very old model of capitalist system and China has been the target since England established this model more than a century ago. It is linked with abuse of workers, lack of proper compensation, lack of health care, terrible pollution and other environmental consequences. This model is also related to corruption of local authorities, "buying the laws and rights restricted to the poorer ones", and has nothing to do with helping undeveloped nations. As far as I know there is no capitalist owner of a company who is establishing production in a given country for the purpose of helping some people. Do you have any doubts about that?<br>

-international cooperations with controlling quality by specializing in given area of production and respecting all human rights and concerns of the environment. This was a Western European model OEEC since 1948 and communist response to that, the RWPG or so called Comecon since 1949. Currently, the new European Union, the EC, is continuing on the pathway of the previous OEEC.<br>

As you can realize, simple outsourcing is a model that is driven mainly by profit to the owner. If sales are down, the factory is closed and who cares about the workers and their families and the environment. Apparently, treating workers in a just way cost money. Whatever is cheap but still good in quality is not the final answer to the question if all the other elements related to employment and production were met to our satisfaction. We have so many individual opinions that there is no simple way to settle on unified agreement. In other words we are very much divided in our opinions and there are reasons to keep it this way.<br>

So, when somebody makes a statement about equipment being produced in some countries, I always wonder what that person has in mind. We always look at the cost and quality. These are our main determinants to make decisions about purchasing. I doubt that we customers can make any impact on those other issues that are so important to the people making those items. We are not coordinated enough to do anything. Mass media can spread some rumors and expose some issues but the are not to be trusted fully as well. They do not have concerns of long standing quality controls and human rights etc. They thrive on sensations and affairs and striking developments. That how news media are.<br>

I hope this helps a little to understand this complex issue.<br>

Andrzej Maciejewski</p>

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<p>Thx to you guys for your ideas. Sigma just announced new lens 18-250 OS to be fitted for Pentax as well. As you may know, Pentax's K10D, K20D have body image stabilization. This would be, I guess, the first lens that would allow combination of both stabilizations. This is to be available in March this year. let see how this works.<br>

Andrzej Maciejewski</p>

<p>Does anybody know what would result from combining digital camera with shake reduction on (e.g. Pentax K20D) and a lens which is also image stabilized? If there was such a possibility. As far as I know there is not a combo of this kind yet.</p>

I was told that bears are really hungry right now. You do not need to face many, one is enough. Moose indeed is much more dangerous than bears. Especially now when they have small ones. Be careful and probably don't go alone anywhere in Alaska. Having loaded revolver .44 if you are out in the country is very smart.

Good luck.

Andrzej Maciejewski