Photo updates

I must confess that reading photography blogs and forums has been much more influential than any conventional advertising could be. Here's what I've bought so far:

Film processing

I mailed out two sets of film for processing: one to York Photo and the other to Snapfish. It turns out the prices I'd listed were out of date - they're actually 0.23 (24 exp) or 0.17 (36 exp) per photo, which is still cheaper than Snapfish by $1 per roll.

The Snapfish mailer is nicer (tear-resistant plastic vs. wrinkly paper) and their order form is better laid-out and easier to understand. I mailed the York envelope out on Saturday and the Snapfish one today, so we can compare turnaround times. In the end, I expect it'll come down to the quality of their prints and, more importantly, their scans.

On a side note, I got $50 of free scans from ScanCafe, so I'll probably be doing 4000 dpi scans for all these negatives.

Close-up filters

I got a set (+1,+2,+4) of close-up lenses from Adorama. They're unbranded but seem okay to me. Then again, any distortion would have to be pretty extreme to be noticeable at the viewfinder.

On my current lens (Nikon 28-80mm, f/3.5-5.6 AF-D) the normal close focus overlaps the far focus with the +4 close-up lens, which seems to render the other lenses useless except for stacking onto the +4. So I'd say that buying a single +10 close-up lens would probably be a better idea than buying this set.

A new lens

I bought a Nikon 50mm f/1.8 AF-D lens off eBay for $90 with shipping. Hasn't arrived yet, but I'm excited. It's 2 stops faster than my zoom lens (f/4.5 at 50mm), so I should be able to take pictures of my aquarium at 1/30 shutter speed with ISO 400 film. It should also have nicer bokeh than my zoom lens, which turns out-of-focus points of light into slightly asymmetric donuts.

Of course, the downside is that it's a fixed focal length. I think I'll have to use it for a while before I can say how much of a constraint that turns out to be.