The Dedringers

Saw a band called The Dedringers at Shoeshine Charley’s Big Top Lounge on Friday night. These guys are quite remarkable. Reminded me of a young Rolling Stones. Definitely worth checking out if you have the chance.

This is also a personal favorite in terms of my concert photography. The lighting in The Bigtop is challenging to say the least so a little more effort, even desire is needed to squeeze something usable out of the venue.

This shot embodies everything I love about this kind of photo op. Great (if relatively unknown) band in a small venue playing to a small but appreciative audience.

Good times!

I Think I’m Learning Japanese

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to visit Asia. China, Japan, Korea…something. Cynthia has always wrinkled her nose and frowned at the idea so I wasn’t holding out much hope.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved the trips we have taken and I figured I’d be fine never going east.

Still, whenever the opportunity presented itself I’d revisit the subject. When a travel show would come on we’d watch it or I would mention that someone I knew just went or came back from somewhere.

Sometime earlier this year Cynthia caught a show on one of the learning/history/travel channels about life in Japan and something clicked. All of a sudden she was very interested in the idea of going there. We bought some books and she’s done her research and now it in the pipeline. If we can afford it, we’re planning for spring of 2010.

Cynthia’s also decided she would also like to learn Japanese and has signed up for language lessons. She in a beginner course and it remains to be seen how far she’ll take it.

She’s made flash cards of the first 40 Katakana characters she has to learn this week. I’m rooting her on the best I can and who knows, I might learn something myself along the way. I now know what the Japanese language is composed of Katakana, Hiragana and Kanji characters. That’s more than I knew last week.

Iris

When I first started shooting with a digital SLR I was keenly interested in fast lenses for low light photography. During one of my early visits to the camera store my connection dealer friend Charlie showed me a used Sigma 20mm f/1.8 lens they had available. I jumped on it thinking it would be a great concert lens and give me a much needed wide angle that I was unable to achieve with my 50mm.

As it turned out the lens was a poor performer. Soft, even blurry stopped down to 1.8 or 2.0 making it fairly useless for my needs. Being the procrastinator I am, I never took it back or sought a refund.

Fast forward to yesterday and I decide to revisit the lens.

Keep in mind that the lens wasn’t overly expensive, but it wasn’t free either. I was thinking I might put it up for sale “as is” on EBay and wanted to have one more look at what the lens produced, image-wise.

Holy sharp focus, Batman!

The above shot was taken at f/1.8 and is a 100% crop only reduced in size to fit this page. If you click on the image you will see the full sized crop.

I’ve changed cameras since that purchase and have not tried the lens since then. What a difference a new camera makes. I am guessing that the lens just works better with the Sony A700 than it did with the Sony A100. It makes sense. This lens is rather old and may not have communicated properly with the first gen Sonys.

At any rate, I am very happy I hung on to it. I love prime lenses. I just love them.