After getting a new lens, the Tamron SP AF28-75 F/2.8 and tried it out for a couple of months, I must say that I’m impressed. First I was a bit disappointed with the sharpness at 2.8, but when doing some tests comparing it to my Canon 17-40mm f/4L lens, the Tamron blows the L lens out of the water when it comes to shapness. But the lens is noisy, and the build quality feels a bit cheap. Another annoyance is that the focus ring rotates when focusing. But I can live with these negative things, the image quality and price makes up for that. One has to watch out when buying this lens apparently. The quality varies from one lens to another, so make sure to test it before you put out cash.

It looks like I’m going to New York on a photo assignment in a couple of weeks. It’s just supposed to be over a weekend, but I’ll try to pay for an extra couple of days myself. It just seems silly to sit through sixteen hours of flight just for a couple of days. It feels a bit intimidating to go to a city I never been in before on an assignment. An art director will join me, so hopefully he/she knows more about New York than me. But to try to take great looking pictures in just two days is something that will be hard to do. Just to try to find great locations for the pictures. But I have decided not to let poor confidence stop me, so I just have to manage.

I just sent an email to my friend Mats who lives in Wisconsin,trying to persuade him to come to New York. He’s pretty busy right now, and with this short notice, but you never know. We always have fun when we meet.

I wish I had more money because a New York visit is perfect for buying new lenses. I’m thinking of a 24-70/2.8L Canon lens. It’s almost $400 cheaper than in Sweden. I’ll have to look around to see if I have something to sell.

Went out with the family today to the airport at Arlanda. Soon got bored photographing landing airplanes. Managed to get this one with both the moon and an airplane. Tacky!

I usually use Nik Sharpener before I print photographs on my Epson printer because it really makes the pictures snap sharp. But after upgrading my camera body to a Canon 20d something is wrong. Nik Sharpener has a great feature where it checks your settings to ensure that your picture and print size has resolution enough to print a sharp picture. But if I open up a picture that I took with my Canon EOS 300d body (a six megapixel camera) and set it to a specific size and resolution, Nik Sharpener tells me that it’s optimal size and that the picture is going to be sharp. If I open a picture taken with my Canon EOS 20d body, and set that picture to exactly the same print size (but naturally with higher dpi because this is eight megapixel body) I get a message that the picture is being printed at 260% of the optimal size, and that it’s going to be blurry.

I’m guessing it’s a bug in Nik Sharpener.

Searching the net, I found this great photography site. If you want to check out some wonderful pictures, go here.

After checking out the winners of the World Press Photo of the Year 2004, I realized that the best pictures are in the sports category. And I hate sports. Weird.