Creative Design Class Canceled

Well I just was informed today that the Creative Design in Photography Level II class that I was registered in at Metro has been canceled due to a lack of enrollment. The next offering won't be until February of 2009. I was really looking forward to this class as it's been almost 4 months since I completed my last class (not counting the Photoshop class I took in February). The next class I'm registered for is Designing Wedding Photography with Tracy Grabowski which starts in June. Hopefully the enrollment will be enough for them to proceed with that class otherwise I will have to wait until the fall to take some more classes.

New Gear

As I gear up for a very busy spring and summer season it was time to, well, gear up! The first thing I needed to do was expand the home network. Upgrades include a new HP Core 2 Duo desktop which will be used primarily for Photoshop work and a new 22" wide-screen LCD. I also picked up a small Bamboo tablet from Wacom for photo editing.

With the photo collection growing at a rapid pace, backups are more and more important so I added an HP Home Server with mirrored drives along with 2 new external hard drives. My plan is to backup my laptop and desktop to the server and then backup those backups to one of the external drives periodically. This drive I'll leave at my parents so that in the event of a fire or theft I won't lose everything. The 2nd external drive will primarily be used to backup photos only and provide extra storage when I'm traveling with my laptop.

On the software side I decided to make the move to Lightroom. I had been experimenting with Bridge for awhile but after downloading a demo of LR I decided that it was a much better tool and provided much better organizational features than Bridge. I also liked the ability to jump right into the Develop mode and start tweaking photos without having to open them in Camera RAW.

The last big piece of the puzzle was my camera equipment. I contemplated upgrading to the Canon 1D Mark III but just couldn't justify the $5000 price tag yet. The 5D was my next option but it's been out now for a couple of years and is due to be replaced so I didn't want to get stuck buying something that will be outdated the second I buy it so I finally decided to buy a 40D. It has some great new features including Live View, automatic sensor cleaning and it uses the new Digic III processor. Of course I also had to buy new batteries a new battery grip because the one I have for my Rebel doesn't fit the 40D.

In addition to a new body, I also bought a couple of new lenses including Canon's 24-70mm f2.8 and my friend Greg sold me his 70-200mm f2.8 along with a 1.4x converter. Both lenses are great and I'm really happy with how they perform in low light conditions.

My last purchase this spring (for now anyway) was a new ball head for my tripod. Until now I had just been using the ball head that came with my Slik tripod and it was enough for the smaller Rebel and the glass that I had. I quickly realized that it was not strong enough to support the larger 40D and the heavier glass so I purchased the Manfrotto 322RC2 pistol grip ball head. It can hold up to 11 lbs and comes with a quick release plate. The pistol grip is great for quickly adjusting the position of the camera to move between horizontal and vertical shooting. Looking forward to testing it out this weekend on a wedding shoot that I am doing for a couple at the Legislature.

Over the course of the summer I'm sure I'll add some more glass to the collection as well as a portable light meter, a lens baby and a new cable release for the 40D because of course the current cable release that I have for the Rebel wont' work with the 40D. What a surprise.