REINVENTING WHEELS (5/12/08) So a couple of things have come out of my being overwhelmed with wedding shots. First, it's not like this is a new field to anyone but me. There's software and there are specialized vendors out there who exist to make this profitable. I looked at a couple of software packages and went with the simpler, cheaper of the two. Breeze Browser lets me review, organize, and make online proofs straight from my raw files so I don't have to keep sync'ing my jpeg previews and raw masters. One key chord and I'm in Photoshop. At $69.95, it's a steal.

While reviewing the take in Breeze Browser and Photoshop, I realized that just about every blessed time I tried to use a fast lens in dim light, I blew the focus. My new backup primary DSLR has an aftermarket split prism focusing screen which helps immensely in my practice shots, but still... one fast autofocus lens would obviously save me a world of worry, especially since I'll be using two camera bodies and I can just park the fast lens on one of them. Canon's cheapest lens gets good reviews on this score: $95 for a 50mm F1.8 (Amazon's price) really can't be beat. It's not as killer sharp as the 200mm or 135mm F2 Nikkors are when they are dead on focussed, but they rarely are. It will be much sharper than the 55mm F1.2 Nikkor which is simply not sharp. An 85mm F1.4 used to be a very popular 35mm prime for weddings and portraiture, so it's a no-brainer to try the 50mm F1.8 on my 1.6x crop factor DSLRs where it behaves very much like (ta-da!) a fast 80mm lens did in 35mm days. At a third the price of the F1.4 and less than the sales tax on a new F1.2, what sense is there in not trying it out?

:: back to the slow motion blog ::