• I often missed shots because I had the wrong lens on the camera.  Things that move often do so, or fly away, before you’ve had time to change lenses.  Also, if I had the wrong lens on the camera for a shot, I’d often just not take the shot rather than stop in the street swapping lenses around.
• Although I was generally impressed with the D40 for the low price, it’s not especially speedy, especially with RAW files.
• 6 megapixels.  Plenty for most things I want to do, but doesn’t leave a lot of spare for cropping.
• Lighting is very limited with the built-in flash.  I could add an off-camera flash to the D40, but only by adding a controller, or an SB-800 to act as a controller alongside another flash.  Both options are expensive.

I also had a Canon G9, and had taken to carrying and using it more often than the D40, but it was far too slow to use for everything.

My solution was this kit:

• Nikon D90
• Nikon 18-200 VR lens
• Nikon SB-600 flash

So far, it’s done everything I’d hoped and more.  I don’t carry the G9 now, but Sam uses it.  The old Ixus she was using has found a new home.

The Camera

The camera itself is much more of a step-up from the D40 than I’d expected.  It’s quite a bit faster in taking pictures, but seems to make a really big difference in focusing speed, too.  It’s the first camera I’ve used where I get the best results by just letting it look after the focusing all on its own, even letting it choose the focus points to use.  It just gets shots the D40 couldn’t get.

The image quality is great, as you’d expect.  The performance at higher ISO is much better.  RAW files that Aperture wouldn’t open were a problem, but Apple fixed that one in an update.  Handling is very good, and it feels nicely solid.  The metering seems accurate, so I just leave it to get on with it.

The Lens

No more losing shots because I have the wrong lens on the camera - now I only have one lens.  There are obviously image quality trade-offs to get so much zoom range in a single lens, but nothing that’s been too noticeable to me so far.  Being able to go from moderately wide to moderately telephoto in a second is very liberating.  I love being able to grab the camera and take a photo without having to worry about whether I have to take it apart and change lenses first.

The Flash

I’ve never used anything but on-camera built-in flash before.  I’ve been reading Strobist for a while, though, and it starts to get to you.  The SB-600 seemed a better deal than the SB-800, especially as Jessops did it for £50 less when bought with the D90.  I’ve not done enough experimenting with it to give much opinion yet, but I’m impressed so far.

Once everything is set up in the first place, taking a shot with off-camera lighting is very easy:

• Pull camera and flash from my bag.
• Switch on the flash, and attach its little ‘foot’ if it needs to stand upright.
• Point the flash where I want it.
• Switch on the camera, and press the button to pop up the built-in flash (it uses this to talk to the SB-600).
• Take pictures.

The camera and flash between them look after everything else.

The Kit

It’s a neat kit.  In total, about the same size as the D40 kit with two lenses, but can do much more.  It’s probably a bit heavier.  It all fits in a nice small Lowepro shoulder bag, so I carry it everywhere.  I’m tempted to add another flash - maybe an SB-800 next, so I can do two-flash setups - but I’m not in a great hurry for that.  Maybe in time for the trip to London that I seem to have been persuaded to go on.

When we came to look at them in our local Staples (in Exeter), I spotted another option - a 500Gb Buffalo NAS drive.  It would hang directly on the network, available to both of us without having to worry about which machine is switched on at the time.  I figured it was worth the extra.  We’d copy the data from Sam’s current external drive to the NAS, and I’d have the current drive for my backups.

It was an opened pack, but only because it was the display box (they keep empty boxes on display, and get a fresh one from the warehouse).  When we started it up, though, I couldn’t connect to it from my Mac.  After a few attempts, including connecting direct to it’s IP address by SMB and HTTP, I installed the diagnostic software on Sam’s PC.  It was in ‘engineering mode’, which meant it had failed to boot from the hard drive.  This wasn’t looking good, but it seemed worth reinstalling the drive firmware, so I gave that a go.

It worked.

The drive was around half full.

Of someone else’s data.

Including photos of a lady I assume was his wife.

Wearing no clothes.

Oh dear.

On the plus side, though, he had good taste in music, and a good collection on the drive.  Unfortunately, it died again before I could copy any of it off, and never came back to life.

Back to Staples the next day, and spoke to the manager.  He was very helpful and apologetic.  He also offered a very reasonable explanation of how it was likely to have happened.  He assured me that any returned products go back to the manufacturers, but the manufacturers sometimes send them back saying no fault was found.  I’m guessing 95% of returned NAS boxes get sent back because someone buys it without knowing what it really is, plugs it into their network, then can’t understand why it doesn’t just appear in My Computer like a USB drive would.

That was the only NAS they had in stock, so I suggested that if they’d be willing to do a good deal on a USB drive, I’d be happy to take that instead.  He offered me a reasonably nice deal to make up for the inconvenience, then after we’d agreed on that, added a nice little refund to my card to the deal because I’d been so good about the whole thing.

We left the store with a 1Tb USB drive from Western Digital, and still happy to deal with Staples.

I’ve unboxed a pretty good share of new PCs from various makes.  It’s mostly a pleasant enough experience, though there’s usually that big chunk of time at the end removing all the crapware that’s been preinstalled for your convenience.

So, how is opening an iMac different?

Well, the box was quite well designed, with the introductory bits sitting neatly at the top, so you get to them before the computer, but that’s not too unusual.  I was a bit puzzled by one of the little CD-sized packages, which turned out to be a plain black microfibre polishing cloth, with a small embossed Apple logo.  A simple extra, but nice.  Gives you a little message up front that you’ll be wanting to look after this machine, and care for it, rather than just agreeing to lots of EULAs.

The machine itself was heavy.  Especially considering that at the moment, it’s just sitting on a folding table that wobbles rather more than I’d like.  The power cable plugs neatly into the back, and has a ring around it that fits flushly with the back of the machine, to make it look more like a hard-wired cable.  There are a few other sockets, but nothing else was needed to get it going, as my keyboard and mouse were wireless, and it has WiFi built in.

On powering on, the machine seemed to know it should have a wireless keyboard and mouse.  It displayed a couple of diagrams, showing me where to put the batteries in my mouse, and how to switch it on.  Once I’d done that, it found the mouse, and a ‘next’ button appeared.  It found the keyboard without much trouble, though I don’t think it actually explained where to put the batteries and find the power button in that case.  It wasn’t difficult.

I told it what account to set up, and confirmed that I didn’t have another Mac to migrate from, and I was pretty much done.  There are apps preinstalled that I may never use, but it isn’t full of demo versions and crap nobody would ever want.

The main impression I had on having it all set up and running at home, after seeing it in the store, was that it was big.  It didn’t look small in the store, but in our living room, it really looks big.  I guess it’s not long ago that 24″ would have been a pretty impressive size for a TV set for a family to watch from the other side of the room.  Now I’m sitting at a screen that size to work and play.

The odd thing is that if anything, I seem to have more desk space spare than when I was using a small notebook PC.  It’s a big screen, but a small footprint on the desk.  The keyboard is tiny, and when I’m not using them, the keyboard and mouse can both sit on top of the ‘foot’ the machine stands on.  It’s all very neat.

I’ll continue soon with more thoughts on how I’ve settled in to using a Mac after I’d had a bit more time to get used to it.

Getting In

The Apple store in Exeter is welcoming.  Very welcoming.  Maybe a little too much so, with staff on both sides of the doorway waiting to pounce, and numerous staff around waiting to speak to you as you look around.  They’re not pushy, though, just chatty.  I felt a bit uneasy going in - I’m nowhere near hip enough to enter an Apple store, and wasn’t sure if I’d be allowed in without becoming much cooler somehow.  It turned out not to be a problem.  I suspect I got away with it because I had a Lowepro bag - there are probably special rules to let photographers in even if they’re a bit unhip.

On the second visit, I was there to buy.  I bypassed the door guards swiftly, and headed straight for the 24″ iMacs.  A friendly assistant called Hannah turned to ask if she could help, so I just said “Yeah, er, 24-inch iMac, wireless mouse, and a copy of Aperture”.

There was a short pause, and she said “Oh.  You want that?  That was easy!”

Choosing

She explained that upgrading to wireless keyboard as well as mouse was almost no difference in cost compared to buying the extra wireless mouse, so I went for that option.  She then explained a special offer they had on printers, that would give me a fairly decent HP inkjet for free through a cashback offer.  Since our only printer at that point was a Windows GDI printer, which wouldn’t work with a Mac, I took that too.  She offered me Apple Care, which I turned down, but may consider later anyway.

Ringing up the Sale

This part was the first real surprise.  There are no tills.  Hannah just opened a browser on the display machine we were looking at, and logged into Apple’s retail system from there.  The sale is rung up through a web browser on the display machines, and set for delivery to one of the two desks in the middle of the sales floor.  The browser then showed the progress of the order being picked and brought to us while we just chatted about cameras.  Sam wandered off to fondle the iPod Touch.

After a while, the stuff was all brought down the glass stairs.  Hannah pulled a card machine off a holster on her belt, and took the payment.  She took my email address, and the receipt was emailed to me there and then.  No paper needed.

…and Out

All done.  She made sure I had the details of their training courses and demos, and where to do the rebate for the printer.  The iMac box turned out to be surprisingly heavy, but I turned down the offer of help taking everything back to the car, and made away with my new toys.

We’d decided a while ago that when we sold our house, we’d both be buying new computers. I considered a Mac again then, but decided to spend the money on a new camera kit instead.

I started speccing up a new PC, and it started to get quite pricey to get the sort of machine I wanted. Still cheaper than a decent Mac, but not as cheap as I’d been hoping. On a wander around PC World, I came face-to-face with the 24″ iMac screen. Wow. Big, bright, clear. I started to consider spending the extra to get a Mac again.

• I’d tried out Adobe Lightroom, and liked it, but it didn’t really fit well for me. I wanted everything in one catalog, so I could search all my photos. That seemed a pretty basic thing to want to do, and Picasa could manage it just fine. Lightroom seemed to start having serious performance issues with a big catalog, though. My photos folder comes to just over 30,000 files. Aperture may be better, but I had no way of trying it out without having a Mac.
• I started doing a bit of searching around online to see what people thought was best for a photographer to use. Some people didn’t think it made a lot of difference, but a lot through a Mac was much better. There don’t seem to be many people who think Windows is actually better for photography.
• Big screens are expensive, especially if you want quality. I could find a PC much cheaper, but adding a good quality 24″ screen soon pushed the price way up.
• I’d changed phones recently, and was now using a Nokia. Before that, I used Windows Mobile, which was a bit limited when syncing with a Mac.
• They’re way prettier than almost any PC. When looking at PCs, I was considering a Sony Vaio, mainly because it looked so nice. If I was willing to pay extra for Sony’s design, Apple’s design was certainly worth a bit.

The one thing that was stopping me was the thought that if it turned out I really didn’t get on with MacOS, it would be a very expensive mistake. Then, I woke up at around 04:00 in the morning thinking “Bootcamp and Parallels! Idiot!”. Of course, if I didn’t get on with MacOS, I could buy a copy of Windows Vista, and use the Mac as a PC. OK, I’d have over-payed somewhat for a very pretty PC, but I’d still have a good quick PC with a great screen.

So, off we went to the Apple store in Exeter to hand over a whole lot of money. But that’s for Part 2.

(That’s an embedded Flickr slideshow, which may well not work in RSS feeds, so you might need to click through to see the pics. Or you can go straight to the set on Flickr)

As part of my new kit, I also bought a Nikon SB-600 flash.  Coupled with the D90 camera, it’s everything you need for fully automatic off-camera lighting.  There are more powerful flashes, but it’s something I’ve never done before, so I’ve no idea if it will really prove useful to me very often, or will just be used occasionally.

It took a bit of fiddling to get it up and running - a few things may not be immediately obvious:

• The on-camera flash needs to be up to control the external flash.

• The SB-600 isn’t set to be a wireless slave by default.  You need to turn that option on.  ‘Zoom’ and ‘-’ together get you into the menu.  ‘+’ and ‘-’ select what you’re changing - the wireless remote mode is a squiggly arrow.  Use ‘Mode’ to change it to ‘On’, then briefly press the power button to set it.  The display should show the squiggly arrow.

• The camera needs to be set to ‘commander mode’ using custom setting ‘e2′.  Set the built-in flash to ‘–’, so it doesn’t fire, set both groups to ‘TTL’, and set your channel.  It doesn’t matter what channel you use, but the flash and camera must be the same.  The SB-600 will default to ‘3′, and the camera will default to ‘1′.

If you’ve done all that lot, and I haven’t missed anything out, you should be able to pop the flash pretty much anywhere, and the camera will control it.  By default, the flash will beep a couple of times when it fires, so you know it worked.

In theory, the flash needs a line-of-sight view of the camera, within 30 degrees of the front, and can only be a short distance away.  In practice, indoors, it seems to work in almost any position, and even outdoors, it’s nothing like as touchy as Nikon suggest.

My first attempt was in an underpass in Exmouth - a mural painted by the local school kids.  It was light enough to get a shot, but would have been quite flat with no definite light source.  I put the SB-600 on the ground, to the left of the shot, sitting on its little ‘foot’.  It’s pointing up at an angle towards the area I was photographing:

Later, when we were in the pub for lunch, I decided to recreate a shot from David Hobby of Strobist.  My dad and I are the models.  The SB-600 is sitting between us and the menu, pointing at the menu:

Sam operated the camera, and it was her first time trying it - it focused on the bar instead of us, but the idea worked out ok.

I doubt that flash is something I’ll ever do a lot of, but Nikon CLS makes it easy to achieve some interesting effects, without spending too much time learning and experimenting.  If you want to learn and experiment, or just get lots of ideas, head over to Strobist.

Featuring yours truly as “the reet classy bird swigging bolly from the bottle”. Oh dear.

This was my big treat after the house was sold. A trip to the Big Smoke to meet some of my fellow rrrumpettes from Luigi’s, the place I while away many an evening squeeing over the brilliance of the TV show Ashes to Ashes and the charms of the insanely talented and really rather attractive actor Philip Glenister.

I travelled down to London on Wednesday morning, and met some of the girls at Paddington Station. We went off for lunch at the posh hotel I was staying in, where many a giggle was had at the expense of the poncy menu. “Noisettes of lamb with drizzle of jus? Bugger that, bring us fishcakes and chips!” And any excuse to throw in lines from the show - “LUIGI! Another bottle of your house rubbish! Grassy-arse!”

After lunch we headed over to the Royal Albert Hall, a mere two minute walk from my hotel. And that’s where I met the rest of the girls, and took up residence at our spot near the red carpet.

The Luigi’s Ladies are known by their trademark red balloons, each decorated with lines from the show. We are also known by our beverage of choice. As shown here by the lovely Gem:

It was a cold night, and it was recommended we all wrapped up warm, in lots of layers with a nice warm woolly coat on top. I swear this was the only outfit I could think of that was appropriate:

However, as the evening went on my bottle gradually went, so the tie and leather gloves were quickly dispensed with, and I went for my equally eccentric ATV t-shirt.

As darkness fell over the Royal Albert Hall and was replaced by the warming beam of the floodlights, the crowds built up with members of the public lucky enough to have tickets, and as time went on, the celebrities began to file in.

Fun as it was shouting for Ant & Dec, Babs Windsor and Paul O’Grady, we were there for one celeb and one celeb only, and after about an hour he arrived.

If you’re wondering how I reacted on seeing him “in the flesh” for the first time, I did stand there for a while, muttering “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod” over and over, calming down just before heading into “OMGOMGOMG!!!!111!!PONIEZ!!”. Just.

At this point I would like to offer a big bucket o’wispas and thanks to the wonderful neonsox, who told me to get in front of her because I hadn’t been before and I needed to get his autograph. So I was right at the barrier when he came over. I decided to get some snaps, and then hopefully an autograph. Snaps I managed, but he was being dragged away by his coat-tails after signing for the others, and having the obligatory kiss with genesgeni.

To which I responded “That’s three times now! You greedy bugger!”

We decided to wait it out through the show and see if we could catch him again on the way out. While the gongs were being handed out inside the Royal Albert Hall, we took a walk back to my hotel in time to see the Legend that is The Stig accept the award for best Factual programme on behalf of his minions.

Back at the barrier we waited on news of Philip’s category, Best Drama Performance. He didn’t win, losing out to David (insert expletive here) Tennant. It made us more determined to stay put and catch him again, to remind him that “a sizeable rump of intelligent women” still think he’s the best thing since sliced Bollinger.

In spite of aches and extreme cold I stayed with the girls and waited it out. It was worth it. When we spotted Philip’s wife, the adorable Beth Goddard, we called over and I managed to speak to her. I had with me the issue of Slimming World magazine I was featured in back in the summer, when we had our own special Man of the Year Party and I went dressed as Gene Hunt. Since Philip had headed straight off for the bar, I thought I’d ask Beth to sign it anyway, as it would still be a very nice motivational tool for the future. She read the little article that mentioned my 10 stone weight loss, looked over her should for Philip, and called him over.

“Have you got my wife?” He said as he approached us. Now, you’ll have to excuse me at this point. I can’t quite recall the actual words as I was just experiencing a massive squee overload, and when that sense is overloaded, other things get overlooked like hearing, and memory. I think Beth explained what the magazine piece was about, and then he signed. All I can remember is saying “Thank You” over and over and over and now, in hindsight, I’m somewhat concerned I sounded like Perry, friend of Kevin the Teenager… “Fank yoo Mister Glenister, I really like you on the telly…”

Having got exactly what I wanted, I didn’t see the point in hanging around on the off-chance I might catch another glimpse of Simon Cowell (surprisingly, quite a nice bloke). I floated on my squee cloud back to my hotel, and proceeded to empty the mini-bar until I got to sleep.

Coming up in Part Two - the Luigi’s Ladies tour Ashes to Ashes locations and indulge in a couple of re-enactments.

So when you vote, vote right.

Vote for Philip Glenister for Best Drama Performance at the National Television Awards.

Oh, and as for that other vote thing… I’d go for Obama.  Seems like a nice bloke.