On January 12th I dragged the family bright and early on a Sunday morning to a camera fair in the hope of picking up a bargain. I've never been to one before so was expecting a bunch of bearded old men in wool jumpers and smoking pipes. Actually it was quite an interesting event, only a handful of beards and the odd woolly. I took along a few old bits that I didn't want in case I could use them as trade in or pass them on to a good home and set myself a limit of number of bits to bring home and a price limit. The first is important as given half a chance I would come home with a mass of bits I don't need much to the wife's annoyance.
I was after 2 things; a Nikon 80-200 f4 Ai-s and a good everyday lens for the Canon 300D. I had set a limit of £150 for the Nikon and £100 for the Canon lens, thinking I would only find one of them. after going round all the stalls twice and drooling over some lovely Hasselblads and old Nikon bodies I found a 80-200 f4. It was a little grubby, but the optics appeared fine with no signs of mould or scratches, the zoom and focus movement was lovely and tight, I tried one in a shop a while back and it really slapped about, this one had a few very slight scuffs on the body but was otherwise good. It was up for £75, given my prior research this was a good price, so I took the plunge offered the guy £70 and it was mine!
Having got this for half what I expected I thought I'd try to find a lens for the Canon as well. we kept looking and found a sigma 28-200 f3.5-5.6 DL still in its box. I know nothing about this lens, but it was in excellent condition and the guy wanted £50, it was also exactly the sort of zoom range I was looking for as an everyday walkabout lens. I decided that for £50 even if it wasn't up to much it was worth a punt, I could always stick it on e-Bay. As it turns out its OK, so its not the sharpest thing, didn't expect it with that range, but its range is ideal for what I want, so a bargain by all accounts.
At that point we called it a day we got what we came for and that's a good point to leave before I started buying everything else! We had dragged some friends of ours along as well, as he's a bit of a good photographer and decided that as the weather was getting brighter we'd head off for Ely to get a nice lunch and take some pictures.
I'll post some pictures taken with the new lens up here as soon as I've taken some!
Links:
Ken Rockwells review
Good technical write up
Camera Fair info
I was after 2 things; a Nikon 80-200 f4 Ai-s and a good everyday lens for the Canon 300D. I had set a limit of £150 for the Nikon and £100 for the Canon lens, thinking I would only find one of them. after going round all the stalls twice and drooling over some lovely Hasselblads and old Nikon bodies I found a 80-200 f4. It was a little grubby, but the optics appeared fine with no signs of mould or scratches, the zoom and focus movement was lovely and tight, I tried one in a shop a while back and it really slapped about, this one had a few very slight scuffs on the body but was otherwise good. It was up for £75, given my prior research this was a good price, so I took the plunge offered the guy £70 and it was mine!
Having got this for half what I expected I thought I'd try to find a lens for the Canon as well. we kept looking and found a sigma 28-200 f3.5-5.6 DL still in its box. I know nothing about this lens, but it was in excellent condition and the guy wanted £50, it was also exactly the sort of zoom range I was looking for as an everyday walkabout lens. I decided that for £50 even if it wasn't up to much it was worth a punt, I could always stick it on e-Bay. As it turns out its OK, so its not the sharpest thing, didn't expect it with that range, but its range is ideal for what I want, so a bargain by all accounts.
At that point we called it a day we got what we came for and that's a good point to leave before I started buying everything else! We had dragged some friends of ours along as well, as he's a bit of a good photographer and decided that as the weather was getting brighter we'd head off for Ely to get a nice lunch and take some pictures.
I'll post some pictures taken with the new lens up here as soon as I've taken some!
Links:
Ken Rockwells review
Good technical write up
Camera Fair info
No comments:
Post a Comment