On these random photo hangouts, it gives me a chance to explore different photo spots (and eat at different places!) and practice with my various gear.  These are all digital cameras, but how a person goes about using each of them requires a little bit of mental juggling as far as their strengths and weaknesses and what kind of look you are going for.  By using almost everything in my bag, I keep the rotation going.  That is why I buy gear, to use, and have fun.  Keeps me from thinking about other things…

These are shots from my current “A” camera.  Manual Focus Canon+Nikon combo.  I miss some shots, but the act of pulling focus makes you earn the shot.  When you shoot wide open on a lens to get that artistic rendering, the margin for error is slim.  Manual focus does have an advantage, the camera is always ready to fire.

I never shoot a crazy amount with the infrared Sigma SD14.  Its slowness in turn slows me down and I have a pretty good hit ratio with it.  The way the lens and sensor combo sees life is just really unique.  The sharpness of the images is proof that we really don’t need any more than 4 megapixels.

Just your standard pretty Nikon images.  Autofocus is a good thing.  The bottom images are taken with the ABR800 ring light.

These images are from free lensing a C-Mount 25mm 1.4 in front of the Nikon 1 in Manual mode.  Until an inexpensive adapter comes out, simply holding the lens in front of the sensor to take a picture can produce some artistic results.

The J1’s pop up flash does trigger the optical sensor on the ring light.  I don’t have any decent results from it yet though.