Dobson Central Photography

Well as of Saturday, I’m back in business. I purchased a Bogen 3021B Pro tripod. I paid about $20 more than I could have online. It would be nice to think that I was helping out a local Mom and Pop store, but truthfully, temptation and the fact that I could start using the tripod on Saturday was overwhelming. Especially since I’ve been without a tripod for a while now. In that respect, what’s $20 bucks? It barely gets you into a movie theater with a coke and popcorn these days.

Along with the tripod, I also purchased from the same store, a Bogen - Manfrotto 3265 Grip Action Ball Head with Quick Release. Both the tripod and head have bubble levels. This should make it much easier to take straight photos.

I’m very pleased with the purchase. In fact, with the quick release and the grip action ball head, I’m in heaven. I don’t know how I’ve lived without both of these, especially the quick release. The grip action makes it so simple to adjust the camera, it’s almost insane.

Needless to say, I hope to be posting some night shots soon. I got back into the swing of things over this weekend and took all sorts of night photography. None were worth posting, as they were only experimental. The night shots of Tucson weren’t horrible, but they weren’t interesting either. The problem was location, location, location. I need to scout out a better place to take night shots of the City. In Tucson, that’s probably going to be a little difficult, as it’s not a city filled with lights at night.

The bottom line is this tripod and head combo is probably more than I will ever need for the next few years for shooting night photography, wildlife, landscapes, people photos, etc. Even if/when I do get a large prime 400mm F/2.8 lens, I believe this tripod will still support it. I’ll just have to buy a head that will support the weight of the lens.

My rating for the Bogen 3021B Pro tripod and the Bogen - Manfrotto 3265 Grip Action Ball Head is TWO THUMBS UP!

While we’re on the kick of photo quizes, here’s four more. Some of these repeat from the previous test. For those of you who are competitive, I’ve posted my scores next to each link for something to beat. The forth test got me on 4 of them.

Real or Hoax, Test 1 (8 out of 10)

Real or Hoax, Test 2 (8 out of 10)

Real or Hoax, Test 3 (8 out of 10)

Real or Hoax, Test 4 (6 out of 10)

Someone sent me another picture test on whether or not these are real photographs or digitally altered. Needless to say, I did rather poorly scoring only 5 out of 10. I’m sure most of you have already seen the majority of these pictures and like I, dismissed them as hoaxes.

See how well you can do

Canon has already released a firmware update for the new 20D. If you are one of the ones that bought it as soon as it hit the shelves, you might need the update. The new version is 1.0.4.

This firmware update (Version 1.0.4) includes the following two changes:

1. Fixes the problem of the shutter release not working.

2. Improves reliability when using some Compact Flash cards.

Currently their firmware update service is down, but check back at Canon later on and hopefully they’ll have it up and running.