kelseybacon.com

Today is the 19th of January.  Is that too late to make a New Year’s Resolution?  Well, here is mine:  I am using a new blog for my personal journal.  It is not really a personal journal, since it is out in public!  But it is where I put the same kinds of things as a journal, so it acts like a journal, and it is about me, so it is personal in that sense.  But it is not private! 

A little about me, in case you stumble upon this journal, though I doubt you are here on accident!  I am an American who lives in the UK, and has done for the past six years.  My wife is English, and so are my two step-sons.  We have a infant daughter as well.  She is something special! 

I enjoy photography and writing.  I am a stay-at-home dad who home schools our 12 year old son and balances parenting with school, hobbies, and household responsibilities.  For the moment, I am 37 years old. 

We have plans to move to the USA in the spring, and depending on how that goes, it may become the first saga of this blog.  Wish us luck! 

Lastly, I apparently have a very dry sense of humor, which seems impossible here in the UK.  I also have mixed American and British spelling and grammar.  Forgive these nuances, and I will forgive the fact you have nothing better to do than to read this blog.

Yours,

Kelsey Bacon

I got up an Tuesday morning and checked the bank to find that my funds had cleared.  Naturally I got straight onto the sites where I had been eyeing up the Nikon D300, only to find their delivery was long or their stock was listed as low.  It seemed suspicious to me, and I checked eBay, only to find the worst; THEY had none in the UK.  Well, there were a few with lens packages, but the bodies were sold out, especially at the price I had in the bank! 

I did the unthinkable and went to the Jessops site only to find that there was one in Worcester.  I did an Internet order and had it put by, and when they called to confirm that it was waiting for me, they said it was their last one apart from the display model.  There are a lot of times that I like getting things marked down for being the display model, but NOT this time!  I was happy to have the second to last in the store. 

Tuesday evening I went and picked up my new Nikon D300, and I have been learning to use it since.  And what a lot I have had to learn! 

Watch for photos here!

I knew I wanted the Nikon D300.  I have a lens on its way today to start me off with, and I am all set as far as a CF card goes for a starter.  So I went online at about 5:45 AM to see about the camera itself after discovering the money was cleared into my account for it.  I checked Calumet: 4-6 weeks on deliver, Warehouse Express: Stocks Levels LOW, and eBay, where the dozen or more that were there were suddenly gone today.  What has happened?  The one place I did not want to buy this bad boy was Jessops, but I checked there, and reserved what turns out to be the LAST one at my local branch!  So, I am getting a Nikon D300, but after me, nobody else will in Worcester, unless there is one hiding out at the London Camera Exchange. 

I think it is funny that two weeks ago I joked about the closed Jessops branch on the high street having one Nikon D300 in it, and I only had to go inside and pick it up off the floor from under a single spotlight.  Now, as it turns out, that is pretty much what I am doing. 

Friday I shipped the last item to sell from my Hasselblad Camera.  I packed the lens and shipped it off to the Netherlands.  I have only a camera body and film back left.  They are what I want so I can convert the camera to digital in the future while holding onto the ability to shoot film with it.  I also want to have different lenses for it than the 80mm.  It just does not suit me.  I need to have a 120mm and a wide angle, though now the new camera will likely suit that better.  We will see.  It will all be about the quality on offer.

I have also ordered a basic 18-55mm VR lens for Nikon.  I am getting it off eBay new, but deeply discounted.  I am assured there will be serial numbers on it still.

The money for the lens should clear my account on Wednesday or maybe even Tuesday.  When it does, Nikon D300 will be the order of the day.  It is crap at 3200 speed ISO when you scale the image to 100%, but apart from that, apparently it is a perfect camera.  Considering I seldom shoot low light without a tripod anyhow, I don’t see this as a big problem.  Now it is time to start a glass collection for Nikon, and start saving for the higher end body! 

I sure do look forward to getting some new photos up onto this site!

I have listed all my Hasselblad items that I plan to sell on eBay, which are a lens, flash, grip, and motor winder.  I should be able to get £1000 for them, but of course, watching them so far, I have got to wonder if I am going to make more than a couple of pounds.  I would be very remorse if the parts I have on auction went for less than £100 each.  But I have tossed caution to the wind and decided to see what would happen on the flash and the winder.  I seriously need more than £120 each on them, and that can be had as an average, of course. 

Why the eagerness?  I got to try out a Nikon D700 on Wednesday.  The D300 was out to one of the shop employees for the day.  I was told they were almost identical in the way they operate, especially the tracking focus and that lot.  Judging by the 700, the D300 is a camera worth having!  It had no troubles in the medium light shop.  I mean, everything worked flawlessly!  Metering, focusing, Vibration Reduction, all of it!  Compared to what I have been shooting with thus far, this camera is the cat’s pyjama’s! 

Trouble of course is that I need to sell my lens for around £800 or more.  The body alone on the Nikon is £900.  Then there is the need for a lens or two.  I seriously need to line up some work!  But of course, I need the camera to do the work!  And debt is out of the question!  So, fingers crossed, eBay will help rather than kill me! 

Kelsey

Have I really come to this?  I am selling parts to a classic camera!  Will I regret it?  Perhaps.  But I also regret not working!  I NEED photographic gear that works digitally.!!  Desperation has indeed set in!  And I have listed some more parts for the Hasselblad on eBay.  I have a flash for sale, which is no longer in pristine condition, so that doesn’t matter too much to me anyway, especially as I have a set of studio lights.  The snap locking grip that holds the flash is for sale too.  The flash starts at £0.99 on an auction, and the grip is on a But-It-Now at a mere £200. 

Okay, these should ring in at about £500, give or take a few.  That is a start.  I hope to have another £100 – £200 by the end of December.  But here is the real question…  and consider this carefully.  I do not like my 80mm lens on my Hasselblad.  I have long wanted to replace it with a 135mm (or so) lens and a 40mm lens.  But those will cost money.  Do I sell the 80 now and buy digital camera gear to get me working so I can buy the new lenses for the Hass?  Or not.  If so, then I can look at the Nikon D300 or the Canon 50D for higher resolution and fast shooting.  Either would be an excellent choice in the end.  The Canon has the advantage of including its camera control software though, and that could prove VERY useful in home studio applications.  It would in fact be the better studio choice from a purely business aspect.  Is all of this worth the lens on the Hass?

Kelsey

I have listed my Hasselblad Winder CW on eBay for £200, a going rate for one in the condition mine is in.  I hope to pick up a buyer, someone who is more interested in having one of these than I am.  I need to see if I can get hold of a couple of screws for the flash unit and sort something out on it before I can list it.  I would like to list the flash and the had grip at the same time.  Meanwhile, if the winder goes at the asking price, that puts me £200 in the right direction.  Another £350 to £400 would put my total for a new camera at £500 – £550 after eBay gets its share.  Fingers crossed there is someone out there that really wants these things!  I’d sure love to see them turned into something I could use everyday, like a Canon EOS 40D with a lens to get started with!  Then I can upgrade as needed later while producing some income off the digital camera in my home studio!  First lens to pick up will be a 50mm with wide aperture.  Of course, that’s assuming a 17 – 85mm lens comes with the camera. 

I am holding fire on working with the Hasselblad much because I may need the film for my daughter’s first Christmas.  We have access to our second son’s digital camera for Christmas pictures, but low resolution and high noise make it less than desirable for such important photos as her first Christmas! 

Last thing to admit to here is that if I could get a Canon 50D instead, I would! 

Stay tuned!

Kelsey

Because the Sony digital camera broke last month, I am in the market for a new camera.  Sony makes some decent entries into the digital camera market, but my experiences with the Sony were not satisfactory for several reasons.  To name a few, the viewfinder display was a display rather than a prism, making it a bit more difficult to focus as accurately as I would like, and the lens on that particular model was permanant, limiting creativity to a certain range.  Further, when doing time exposures at night, I would get concentric rings in my images that radiated out from the middle of the frame.  I do not know if this was caused by the CCD, or the Ziess lens.  I bought the camera for use around the house, and for that it was more than adequate.  In fact, for family work, it was a very good camera to have.  However, these shortcomings made it very difficult for me to attempt to do professional work.  I remember thinking when I bought it, "if it has a Ziess lens, well then that’s got to be good!"  What a wrong assumption.  I could never focus it razor sharp.  I have the same problem with the 80 mm lens that came with my Hasselblad.  It is a great lens, except that it just won’t focus as sharply as necessary for the type of resolution that a Hasselblad film camera can imitate. 

So, I am now in the market for an entry level Pro-DSLR camera.  So far, the nominations have been the Nikon D90 and the Canon 40D.  I have always likes the reputation that Nikon lenses have carried with them, however, the same could be said of Ziess lenses, and look where that has got me!  So I have been looking at each camera and weighing them on their own merits.  I am going to say right out, the Nikon has the distinction of being the first DSLR in the world to have video capabilities, though the reviews on that have been only fair.  Something to do with a little jump in some of the video produced, and the limitations on auto-focus while in video mode.  Well, whatever, it doesn’t really matter to me because I do not like the idea of spending money on technology that I do not intend to use.  If I wanted to do video work, I would be looking at the Canon XL-1.  I would rather Nikon built the camera to do one thing great, and that being still photos.  That is the business I am in.  So that has been a turn off straight away.  Also, the info I have found on it does not indicate the same build quality as the Canon 40D, which is made from Magnesium and Stainless Steele.  Other than what I get in the DSLR Range, I use a Hasselblad, and if you know how they are built, then you can guess which of these two wins in the camera build department, the Canon! 

The Canon also has THREE customisable shooting modes on top of the standard shooting modes.  Both can be connected to a PC and controlled to a great extent directly from the PC.  I like that idea!  I can get a large view of what I am shooting on my PC screen!  I can see some real potential with that; particularly with still life and product shots, but also with family portraits for a "live view" and instant review, saving a lot of time and money, and getting what the client is looking for.  I am sure that when playing around with it, I will find many other uses too.

Canon has a much stronger set of lenses in its line-up!  Unbelievably the Canons actually even have tilt and shift lenses, which would of course come in handy in architectural work and artistic applications.  But they also have a great many other lenses as well, and all are a great deal more quiet, which could be helpful at a wedding during the ceremony, and while shooting wildlife.  They do this because the lenses can apparently be used on the XL-1 video camera…  Which I may want to buy further down the road, when I actually DO want to get into video work! 

There are many other reasons that I am leaning towards the Canon over the Nikon, which is a great camera!  But so far, the above listed ones are the primary reasons why I think Canon is going to become the backbone of KelseyPhoto.com in the near future.  These include market permeation and and what I will be able to upgrade to.  Canon’s top of the line DSLR has nearly double the resolution the Nikon top offering has.  That could be important to that client wanting larger then life images! 

So, to fund about half of this expense, I am going to be listing a couple of items on eBay from my Hasselblad that I never use.  These are a winder CW, a D Flash 40 (Ironically), and the Flash Bracket/hand grip.  I would expect to pull in around £450 for the whole lot.  Of course, that depends on my eBay auctions!  But watch for the new camera and photos to start appearing in January or February, when I have rounded up the rest of the money, as I do not wish to purchase on time.  Debt is a bad way to run any small business.

Kelsey

This news release is artificial except in terms of my renewal of policy.  I broke my camera, on accident, when I caused it to short out by allowing a screw to tumble loose inside and touch some electrical components.  Norwich Union’s claims manager, Kirsten somebody or other in Scotland refuses the claim because the short caused what the repairer termed as a mechanical fault, like a manufacturer’s defect.  What’s worse, she would not hear my explanation at all, so I had to fight with her on the phone for 30 minutes till she finally offered to have one of their suppliers have a look at it.  The short and long of it, they are calling me a big fat liar to my face. 

I am most aggravated because we have paid them £500 in premiums and by the time the excess (deductible) and the out of pocket cost of the estimate are taking into account, I only needed a £106.25 payment from the insurer (which has underwritten my photographic equipment separately on our homeowner’s insurance). 

Semantics.  That is what this all comes down to.  That is how you lose business!

In other news, Calumet sent their part of my Anniversary/allowance for this month.  One of the 60" Umbrellas was faulty, so I emailed them.  They said they’d "send one out today," and please toss out the faulty one.  What do you know?  Customer service that I can take real confidence in.  That is how you win business!

The web came along a little today, improving the wording, adjusting the pricing, and putting more details into the pages created.  I also put in a "Bespoke" page in order to give customers an idea of prices for work done for them, such as portraits or restorations.  I have still got a ways to go!

The insurance company rang today to tell us that they are not going to pay for the repair on the camera, effectively shutting down the digital side of the business temporarily.  I am looking at what it will take to get the repair money together.  I am also taking this on board as a lesson learned, and considering how I can invest in a proper Digital SLR that I can change bodies on easily.  I would love to start on the low end of the Nikon range, then get a new body later on and use the original for a back-up, and for holding a separate lens, ready to go.  Getting going in this direction would be exactly the type of kit I need to get stared in Wedding Photography!  Let’s hope that I can save up a little of my allowance and get that started in the New Year!

Galleries are not online yet because it is time I sit down and take seriously what I plan on putting into them.  That might take a few days!  All the while, I want desperately to get the Hasselblad out and shoot a couple of rolls of high key photos on that pretty new white background I have got!  I also have MASSIVE new 60 inch umbrellas that need testing out.  This all comes out of my allowance and my Anniversary present for November.  It is a great upgrade to my kit that I am really looking forward to using with the kids.

Ta for now,

Kelsey