lindsey holland

Unless you find a good deal on used equipment I think you will need to spend more than your budget allows for a competent light, soft box, stand, etc.

I’m aware of that and am considering used equipment as well as cheap new kits, for example there is a wide choice of Elinchrom strobes used on eBay compared with, as another example, the Interfit F121 kit as a budget option.

 

There are further options such as rhe Elinchrom ranger to power the strobe outdoors, and further issues to do with which strobes will/won’t connect via remote.

 

I am asking specifically for equipment recommendations and advice re priorities.

Hi, I’m rebuilding my photographic gear after a break. I was professional for several years in the noughties but can’t now remember which gear we used for portraits and fashion shoots. We had three strobes then, one very powerful and two less so, but I’m looking for a simpler setup.

 

I’m thinking of a basic single strobe set up, with stand, softbox and remote trigger. I’ll use it for relaxed portraits, mostly of artists, so am aiming for fairly natural lighting effects. Ideally some shoots will be outdoors but most will be indoors.

 

For now, I’ll be using a Canon 5D Mkii and the Canon 85mm f1.8 although my plan is to upgrade in the coming years as and when I can. I also have a speedlight.

 

My absolute maximum budget for the light kit is £150 (it’s a birthday gift to get me started again). It’s about $185 US but I’d be buying the gear in the UK.

 

So my main question is which strobe head/kit/items do you recommend as top priorities? This could include buying used gear.

 

And secondly how do you recommend I power the strobe for outdoor shoots? Is there something I should buy at a later date for this?

 

Thanks in advance for your help!

Alas, none of them are 16GB. I could only get that spec by adding more to a non Retina as and when I can afford it.

 

Do you really think the 8GB on the new models is, or will become, annoyingly inadequate?

I've now found a non Retina 2012 15" which has been upgraded along the lines of the one I mentioned above, and also some 2012

Retina 15" models which are within my budget but which aren't maxed out. So ... I'm back to the original quandary: which

would be better: a non Retina 15" which I could upgrade or a new/newer 8GB RAM Retina one with all the new

technology but without the ability to add power should I need it?

 

(Edit: Thanks, Barry. I have paid attention to what you suggested. I'm wondering whether that will be the general consensus).

Gah! That's not good. Thanks, Eric.

 

Any other ideas will be very welcome!

I need a new MacBook but can't decide whether I'd be better with a maxed out, used 2011 model or a fairly basic new one with the Retina

display and Haswell processor, but which I couldn't upgrade.

 

The 2011 one I'm considering is the 15.4" screen version. It'd would come with a 256gb SSD, 12GB RAM (and the option to boost this to

16GB), a quad core i7 2.3ghz processor, and I could add an extra hard drive by removing the optical drive. It also has a few months of

AppleCare left on it and it's within my budget.

 

My budget for a new one limits how much I could upgrade from the basic model. I could just about afford a 13" Retina model with 8GB

RAM and a 256GB SSD. Without AppleCare. And that's allowing for an education discount through the Apple Store, and even for their

refurbished prices (if a 13" Retina with 8GB RAM ever chooses to appear!). I'm concerned that a MacBook with this spec wouldn't be very

future-proof. On the other hand, Im not sure that a used 2011 machine is very future-proof either.

 

I previously used a Mac Pro for large volumes of photography work but I've changed careers since then. As such, I won't need to

regularly dump hundreds of RAWs onto this new machine. But once a photographer, always a photographer. I do want to give myself the

freedom to work on smaller volumes of images, graphics, and possibly short videos, if the need arises over the next few years. I also

need to be a lot more mobile now, hence I'm looking at laptops rather than desktops. Other than the occasional image work mentioned

above, I'll use it for everyday tasks (lots of writing, reading, and watching videos). It'll be my main/only computer.

 

What would you do? Is there another option which I'm missing?

<p>Tripods.... if he gets a new one, I doubt he'll be wanting to pay Giotto prices at this stage. Despite wanting a really good camera set up, he's really not serious enough for that. I think he does have a tripod - not a very good one but sufficient for his needs at the moment. He doesn't hike much, to my knowledge - far more inclined to drive to locations that are easy to reach.<br>

My own tripod set up is a Manfrotto with their grip action ball head. I love it! Cheaper than a Giotto, too. If I had a serious telephoto lens, I'd need to upgrade it, but it suits my current kit perfectly.<br>

Anyway, I'm still trying to convince him to pay out for a decent quality polarising filter...!</p>

<p>Well, after much initial confusion and technophobia he's ordered a D90 with a 16-85mm lens and he's considering a 70 - 300mm lens as well. <br>

Thanks for all of your advice! He did view this thread and found it very helpful.</p>

<p>:) My mistake - FL also means Fixed Lens to me! Sorry!<br>

I'll have a chat with him about the various options you've all suggested. Thanks for your ideas!</p>

 

<p>f8 with kit lens on a tripod... the problem with it is that I know what he's like. There's no way that he'll want to lug a tripod around all the time and while he's interested in landscapes, he'll also want to use it for other, more general purposes. <br>

He's really wanting to spend out on something really good now. Not much point in buying a sub-par lens that he'll have to trade in before long. <br>

He definitely won't want a FL at any point.<br>

The 24-105 L is a superb lens, and the 24-70 L is also extremely good (although I have had to have mine recalibrated once because it started to back focus). I just don't think he needs to go quite as far as L series, what with him not being a pro.</p>

<p><a href="../photodb/user?user_id=1521325">JC Uknz</a> - He already has a prosumer camera which he's looking to replace with a DSLR. Also, teleconverters wouldn't offer anything like the quality he's after. He should be able to get quite a good piece of amateur DSLR kit with £1050/$1750.<br>

I definitely think the T2i, or something similar, with some good glass is an option for him. Using the standard kit lens at f8 really wouldn't work though. Don't think he'll want to use f8 all the time! <br>

I'm wondering whether a used lens might be a better option. He could probably pick up a 24-105 L series for £600 used, and a t21 for about the same. That comes in a little over his budget, but it probably wouldn't be a problem for him. But it's possibly overkill in terms of him really needing an L series lens. <br>

Can you recommend any slightly cheaper lenses which perform surprisingly well, and which might fit with his requirements? Maybe something that's just one small step down from the L series? </p>

<p>That's what I'd usually advise - spend on glass, not on the camera body.<br>

I'm not sure, in his case. I do think he needs a good standard zoom, rather than a prime. If anything, he could skip the telephoto.</p>

<p>I'm looking for advice for a friend, who's just about to buy his first DSLR and lenses.<br /> He has a budget of around £1150 ($1750). He's been keen on photography for a while but until now, he's been frustrated with a prosumer camera (the Canon G11). <br /> His main interest is landscape photography but he's also keen to have a zoom for wildlife. Of the two, his priority is the landscapes.<br /> He's been looking at either the Canon 50D or the Nikon D90, and is inclined toward the latter, at the moment.<br /> Another friend, who's a photographer, has recommended the Nikkor 18-200mm VR to him. He found a kit comprising the D90 and this lens for his £1050/$1750 budget.<br /> I'm a photographer myself, and I hear warning sirens when someone mentions an all-in-one like an 18-200mm. I have Canon L series lenses myself and, as a pro, anything that doesn't quite cut it isn't an option for me, so I'm not too genned up on other lenses. But all the reviews I've read have suggested that the 18-200 does indeed have quality issues (fairly serious barrel distortion and edge blurring). <br /> So... my question is, what would you suggest for him? He's happy to buy a standard (but good) lens for landscapes and to wait a while before buying a bigger zoom. Primes really wouldn't suit him. What do you think?</p>

Alberto - Thanks. I'd thought that southern Laos wasn't particularly interesting scenically (all the images I've seen have shown a rather barren, flat landscape). After reading your post, I'll look into it further.

Thanks to everyone. I now have my gear all ordered. In the end I've chosen:

 

An Asus EEE PC 701

A 250GB WD My Passport Essential USB 2.0 portable external drive.

My current trusty Freecom 160GB Toughdrive.

 

The plan is to back up onto both drives each night, so we'll have two copies of everything. I'll then carry one drive while my husband carries the other.

 

We'll also only wipe the CF cards if absolutely necessary. I'm happy to have plenty of external drive space, as we'll be able to back up our horribly amateur but nonetheless fun camcorder footage as well!

 

The EEE PC and the 250GB WD drive came to a total of £239 with next day delivery, from two different stockists. Going by the current conversion rate (which is currently fluctuating more than normal, of course) that would be $378.

 

Ogus - that must have been a fantastic trip. Which of the Northern areas of Thailand do you most recommend? So far, we only have two of our four weeks planned: 4 days in Bangkok (one mostly flying), 6 days on Koh Phra Thong island, and 4 days in Kao Sok National park. After that we'll probably go to Chiang Mai and then disappear East in search of authentic culture, or maybe go to Cambodia, Vietnam or Laos. We're really not sure about that part of the trip - open to any ideas for good photographic material out there!

 

Thanks to everyone for all of your help with this question - you've been fantastic.

Thanks to everyone who's posted on here. I opted for the Asus EEE PC 701. I think this should work well, along with our two externals, stored separately.

 

Thanks again!

Just wanted to add - although a larger screen size would be nice, for this trip, the smaller the overall unit is the better.

I'm thinking of buying one of these very soon, to take on a 4 week trip. It'll basically be used to transfer

images from cards to external drives and ideally to review images. We'll have a fair amount of space on the

external drives, but a large internal drive would be good to have as reserve.

 

Other posts on here all seem to recommend the PC1000H, which is over my budget. Do you think there'd be a

problem with one of the cheaper models for this kind of work?

 

Thanks for your advice!

Jim - thanks. Memory Kick doesn't seem to be available in the UK though.

The saga continues...

 

It turns out that I'm not a computer-illiterate imbecile after all. The colorspace hasn't been ordered. The website I'd nearly ordered it from apparently stores everything you write into its forms, even if you don't tell them to process the order. Hence it sent me any email about the order status. I've now received another email asking me when I intend to pay for it. If every online store worked like this, what a confusing world we'd live in (have I bought it, haven't I bought it? Do I have early-onset dementia? etc).

 

Which brings me back to: I now only have tomorrow and Friday for something to be delivered to me. I'd come around to being happy with the colorspace and two externals. But I could get that laptop now.

 

How can this possibly have been such a complicated task?!

After all of this, you'll probably find this both amusing and unbelievable.

 

I'd been almost at the point of clicking the buy button for a 160GB Hyperdrive Colorspace - I'd filled all my delivery and payment details out, and then left the page open while I went to talk to my husband and have second thoughts about it all. After that, and reading a few more of your posts, I came back to the laptop idea, particularly since the Colorspace really does seem to be overkill, and the non-display ones (like the HD80) wouldn't get to me in time from. So, I closed the Hyperdrive order page and started looking at laptops again.

 

I just checked my business email account and found a delivery update from the Hyperdrive stockist telling me that it'being processed for next day delivery! Apparently I somehow processed the order instead of closing the window. How ridiculously stupid is that?! I've never had anything like that happen before. I think it's probably too late to cancel the order now.

 

Given my apparent inability to use a computer, maybe it's just as well I won't be buying that laptop:)

 

I'm still nervous about the single unit though. I think I'll be backing up to an external (which I already have) at any available PC as well.

Bob, Jamie and Malte - thanks. Yes, I'm thinking of taking this route. As it happens, I have a 5d Mk ii on pre-order (didn't get released in time, for me to take d**m it), so I'm well aware of the need for more cards soon. I'm just trying to save money before Christmas, really, and I have been needing another back-up device for weddings (had a close call when my super new-ish Mac Pro started crashing and wiping files from all open windows).

 

It's really good to know that there are DVD-burning cafes everywhere. My only concern regarding this is that I have 10 away-from it-all days: 6 on a remote island with no shops but with fantastic scenery, and then 4 in the jungle. But I can probably wing that with enough cards and that aforementioned, erm, discipline.

Barry - I meant to ask: which Hyperdrive do you use?

Before I go on to ask more questions... point taken, Eric and Marcelo; I'm giving it serious thought.

 

Bruce - this is what's annoying me. I'm in the UK. You have all of these fantastic gadgets over there in the US and I can't find them here! To make it even more annoying, guess where I'll be after Thailand?... Texas, for Christmas (family thing)... where I could have any of these things delivered easily.

 

Does anyone know of a Wolverine stockist in the UK? Google finds nothing. I'd read that they'd ceased trading actually, although that could be wrong. All of their products here certainly show as no longer available.

 

At this point, I'm either going to spend £150 on CF cards tomorrow or take my chances on Bangkok (unless in a moment of pique I click the hyperdrive buy button of course).

Thanks Amber - I'm looking into the Smartdisk. Where in Thailand did you visit?

 

Another option that's occurred to me is to wait until I'm in Bangkok and buy something there where it should be cheaper - so long as I can find the right thing. Does anyone know how feasible this would be?