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So I was out looking for something to contribute to the 24 Hours of Flickr project and I swung by Cameron Park Airpark. Nothing like airplanes in the garage to fill a frame… but I digress…

I swung up to the fence along the runway just for the hell of it and I just happened to look up and there was an airplane on approach… but it looked funny. There was something sticking out the plane’s nose!

This other guy there yelled over to me, “Did you see that?!?!”. Uh, I thought I did. “He’s too low, he’s not gonna make it!”. Right there my brain went into photojournalism mode.

Of course I haven’t shot news in 20 years.

20 years ago, there were two knobs on your camera and you just knew they were set to 1/500th @ f/11 and you were shooting Tri-X. You focused yourself.

Today, you have a small computer in your hands that makes decisions you might not make. As the plane was coming in I discovered the difference between “single-mode” and “continuous-mode” autofocus, I was set for “single-mode” (actually “auto” but it it didn’t seem to care) and I’d get the little *beep* telling me it was all focused and then I’d pause to compose the frame and by the time I actually shot, the damn plane would be out-of-focus. Funny how that works.

I figured it out and the later frames are better, but damnit, that was annoying. I think next time, if things start happening fast, the best idea might be to spin the little knob to the idiot icon for “sports-mode” and just go with that.

For what it’s worth, the pilot did just fine. He came in low, somewhat slow and touched down nicely at the very end of the runway. He certainly had more of a handle on his equipement than I did :).

Ok, so my birthday was a few days ago and I’m just now getting time to pontificate about it. I got some very cool swag this time around thanks to the wonderful B&H wishlist feature.

From the wife and kids I got a Nikon SB-600 Speedlight (a “flash” to most people) and an MB-D80 battery pack.

The strobe (er “flash”) is just way cool. It has this wireless mode that lets you just set it somewhere off camera and it knows what to do. Back in the day I hardly ever used a strobe on-camera if I could avoid it. Now not only are there no cables, but through the magic of god knows what, all the automatic gobledy-gook works too. Simply amazing.

The battery back was kinda frivolus, but kinda not. I have big hands and the D80 alone never felt quite right. The battery pack adds enough to make the camera feel right, and it makes you feel like it’s an F-series behemoth to boot :).

But wait, that’s not all….

Today I bought my gift for myself. I got the Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED-IF AF-S VR DX Zoom-Nikkor (man what a name). It turns out that good old Action Camera got two of these insanly hard to find beasts in last night and I got the second of the two.

I haven’t had the chance to shoot much with it yet, but I’m thrilled to note that it visually appears sharper than the 18-55 kit lens that came with the D80.

All this has made the little D80 into a wrist snapping monster that interestingly just barely wedges into my old Domke F3 bag.

Niiiice.

Twenty years ago I walked onto my Community College newspaper and said, “I want to be a photographer.”

Thus started a long and sordid affair with photography and newspapers in general, although these days I try pretty hard to hide it :). It’s been 10 years since I ran a roll of film (what’s film grandpa?) through a camera.

Slowly the photo itch has been returning, tho I blame some people for subtly helping it along.

I’d been eyeballing the Nikon D80 and with the unexpected arrival of the Nikon F, it’s been downright impossible to ignore so today, under the auspices of looking for an old NIKKOR-S 50mm to match the F, I headed to Action Camera in Roseville and while they didn’t have any NIKKOR-S’s they did have a D80 :).

So now I’m hooked. I dug out what remains of my old gear, including my prised AI Nikkor 180mm f/2.8 ED and my old F3HP, and blew the dust off of them as well.

I guess we’ll see where this goes, no?