Remember the new camera I bought when Lauren was born? I bought the Sony because it was the only modern DSLR that would work with my old lenses from my Minolta. It's not the greatest camera in the world, but thousands of shots later I'm still pretty happy with it.

My biggest problem with this camera has been related to shooting portraits. Most of my pictures are of people (especialy Lauren, but not exclusively), which was certainly not the case when I bought my lenses in the 90's. I have three zoom lenses: one wide angle, and two telephoto; all three are Tamron zooms.

• The brightest and fastest is a ƒ2.7 @ 20mm to ƒ3.5 @ 40mm. I could live with the ƒ2.7, but 20mm is too wide for portrait work. ƒ3.5 @ 40mm was the best I could do with this one. However, the lens is in pretty good shape (not great, but pretty good), and it certainly wasn't designed for portrait work. If I'm going to sell any of my lenses, it'll be this one.

• At the other end of the spectrum, there's my gigantic bazooka of a lens. It's a ƒ5.6 that ranges from 200mm to 400mm. It's a beast, and is designed solely for outdoor wildlife shots in bright sunlight. It's not in great shape, either. I'll probably sell this one for less than $200. Useless for portraits.

• My workhorse lens, and the one I used for most everything this year, is a 28-200mm, ƒ3.8-ƒ5.6. Can't really use it indoors without a flash, but I have a big Minolta 3500xi which is bright enough to tan an albino. But that means that most of my pictures have to use the flash, and part of the "art" of photography is capturing the light as you see it, not what things look like in harsh glare of a small sun attached to your camera.

I made do. My primary subject is totally adorable, so this wasn't difficult. A great subject can make up for a lot of other "issues."

Still, I am and always have been interested in photography itself. All along I've known that a better lens, designed for portraits, would only make for better pictures. Having never taken any classes (nor really read any books), I didn't really know what "better" meant other than lower ƒ-stops (faster).

Earlier this year, John Gruber talked (on his site, and in Twitter) a lot about 50mm lenses. He linked to some articles written by pros. The lessons I pulled from them were that to learn better photography you should start with a 50mm (or thereabouts) lens, ƒ1.4 or ƒ1.7. No zooming, and preferably no flash. Learn to work with the most basic elements of photography first, then go back to your zooms and flashes.

Sony's 50mm lens is expensive, and we don't have the money for it. So I looked on eBay for something that would work. I found one, and made the ridiculously low bid of $26. A few days later, I'd won. Surprise!

With shipping it was only about $33, and a couple days later it was in my hands. But not on my camera. It was the wrong mount. I knew that Minolta lenses worked on the Sony, but I didn't know that Minolta had an older mount that was incompatible. Oops.

The seller was more than helpful. We talked things over, and I told him the story (the whole thing!) of the old camera, Mike and Shannon, Lauren, the smashing of the Nikon, the new camera, all of it. He pointed out that the lens I need is much more expensive than the one he sold me. (I knew that, which is why I was so surprised that he sold it to me for so little… but I was confused.)

He surprised me by giving me the lens I need in trade for his original lens. So I now have a 50mm Minolta AF ƒ1.7 lens, for $26 (plus two shipping fees).

"He" is V. John Paloulian and totally deserves a link. If you're in the market for some used camera equipment and want a very knowledgeable and friendly seller, please check out his goods first. (He didn't say, but I'm guessing that he runs some sort of a camera shop, based on his list of products.)

I've only had the lens for a day, so I don't have a lot to show for it yet. All the pictures I took yesterday of my new niece Lydia (and actually one of my Dad, which happens to be one of my favorite pictures ever) used that lens. I'm delighted with it so far, but I'm still learning. There's a huge difference in the field depth between ƒ4 and ƒ1.7, and some of those pictures of Lydia show that I'm still, uh, "experimenting."

Mikey, our Blue and Gold Macaw, got to Corinne's external keyboard *again* (a wireless Logitech that she uses with her PowerBook). It's like her beak was designed for taking keys off of keyboards. She scoops them off incredibly quickly, and usually just tosses them to the side and goes for the next one.

Sometimes she mashes them for a couple seconds before tossing them. The mashed ones can't be put back. Now Corinne's keyboard is pretty screwed up... there are some keys she just can't use, so she has to reach up and use the key on the main keyboard (which is also missing some keys for the same reason).

Saturday we went to Staples to buy her (Corinne, not Mikey, though I'm not sure that's a valid distinction) a new keyboard. They had one Microsoft model, more than a dozen Logitechs, and one or two others. We bought two Logitechs: one Desktop Wave to replace my ancient "split design" Ortek, and something cheaper for Corinne (because of the danger of Mikey attacking it again).

We're returning both keyboards. Logitech actually installs Unsanity's Application Enhancer! That's insanity.

It's too bad... I quite like the feel of the Wave keyboard. I'd have liked it more if it had a split layout like my Ortek (to which I'm returning, until I find something better), but I do like the "wavey" layout. And I wouldn't mind having some media keys on my keyboard.

But... APE? Give me a break, Logitech.

Oh, there were other problems, also. Corinne's keyboard didn't sit level, so it bounced/rocked a little while she typed. Also, I don't need the whole Wave combo of keyboard and mouse. The only device for which I'd give up my Kensington Expert Mouse trackball is the wireless version of same. After buying this Wave, I found that Logitech sells a wired version of the keyboard, by itself. (Unfortunately, that doesn't help with the APE issue.)

No more Logitech keyboards until they stop installing APE.

Looking over this picture, I'm slightly embarrassed at just how many of those machines I've owned (or talked my parents into buying, years ago). Sigh.

Link via the very-cranky-and-crass-lately Fake Steve Jobs.

Tuesday morning a friend gave me a Motorola SURFboard 5100 cable modem that he wasn't using anymore. We have a much older 4100, so the idea behind the upgrade was speed: the 5100 is DOCSIS 2.0 compatible and, in simpler terms, is simply supposed to be faster. We pay a little extra for a faster connection here at the house, so a faster modem might help us take advantage of that.

Unfortunately, the modem refused to go online. The Power light comes on, and then Receive light flashes for about three minutes. Then the Receive light stays on solid, and the Send light starts flashing. The End. The Online light never comes on at all.

I'd been forewarned that I would have to call Comcast to have the modem's MAC id added to my account, so I thought perhaps that was the problem. I called them, and they said that if the online light wouldn't come on but my other modem is still working fine then there is something wrong with the modem's hardware: they can't add the MAC id to my account until the modem is attempting to talk to the network, which would mean the Online light was lit.

In the process, the tech on the phone commented that my signal strength was pretty low. The newer modems are supposed to be more tolerant of weak signal, so this was an unrelated problem, but it would still affect our upload/download speed.

Comcast's "cable guy" is here now. He's done laughing at all the splitters and barrels on our cable line, especially since I told him it was Comcast that installed them all, not me. So he's replacing a fifteen year old line, a three-way splitter and three barrels (connectors) with a new line, a two-way splitter, and one barrel.

With all of the pictures I've been taking lately, I'm mostly hoping for better upload speed. We've been floating between 256 KB and 384 KB per second for a while... we'll see what happens.

Blah. I can't post this until he's done, since the line is completely disconnected right now.

... dum de dum de dum ...

Line's back up, signal strength is hugely improved, going to try (again) to have Comcast register this new modem.

Now I'm on the phone waiting for Comcast to figure out how to add a modem to an account. First their software can't connect with my modem. Then somebody else's software says we've never paid our bill (in six or seven years!?). No, we're current. Fix it!

The tech guy is delivering a stream of consciousness report about everything he's doing. They're rebuilding my account in an attempt to convince the billing software that I'm up to date, so that the modem registration software will proceed. "Because the two applications aren't talking to each other very well today."

What, is one of them moody? Is it a weather thing? Gender issues? Come on!!! I've been on the phone with this guy for over an hour. I just want to register a cable modem, which is something they do every day!

All done. The new modem is humming along nicely. Download speed is a little better than it was (it wasn't bad to start), but upload still stinks. Here are my results from speedtest.net:

I wonder if I can talk them into loosening up the throttle on my upload.

Duh, I forgot to mention the funniest thing about this whole ordeal with the cable modem.

Comcast wanted me to "reinstall their service", which really meant register the modem from my end. With their software. That meant downloading some of their software from their site (which was the only site I could visit at that point).

How big was their installer? 45.6 Megabytes as a StuffIt archive. Over 100 megabytes when decompressed.

Why!? Why is it so big?

Because their installer's application bundle included a copy of Internet Explorer for the Mac, version 5.1! It didn't install IE, it ran it from the bundle.

That's just insane.

The old flash is a bust.

My old camera equipment included two decent lenses, one nice lens, and a fair-to-middlin' flash (the Minolta 3500xi).

It seemed to work with the camera, but I was struggling with it. I took a couple pictures with it last night that looked like I was trying to cook the subject. (I just want to shoot it, not cook it!)

After digging around in the manuals and on Sony's site, Google finally found the answer for me on some forums. The 3500xi isn't fully compatible with modern DSLR cameras.

The 3500xi isn't compatible with the flash metering in digital cameras. It always fires at full power.

Bummer!

the other problem is that it won't work as a remote flash. So if/when I get around to doing something with the old Minolta body, this flash is going with it. Sony makes a couple of alternative flashes with the same features, and one of them (at least) costs about the same as what I paid for this one 13 years ago.