vailian

One of the first pictures I took with my new lens was this one of one of the cellists in the orchestra, she is Rumanian and very graceful. She won't be playing here much longer though because she just won the audition for a position in Switzerland's best orchestra. I like the picture because it captures nicely her calm and intelligence. It can be difficult to take a picture of someone that is characteristic and not unflattering... quite often I get asked to do publicity shots for musicians because I have a fair collection of decent portrait shots by now-- I find it much easier if I know the person well-- the important things are light and timing. This is why it is so hard to get a really good portrait shot with the little portable cameras: because of their size they will have only a limited zoom, and the timing is quite impossible because the lag between pushing the shutter release button and actual exposure is usually nearly a second, by which time the desired moment can have passed. OK, you can be lucky and the pose gets better in this gap, but it is generally not the case.

This picture shows my favored working implements. The big Canon with my new 70-300 lens (I have the feeling I will be using this a lot) is a couple of years old, and I love it, it has a real metal body and the batteries get me hundreds of pictures before I have to recharge them, and it has withstood my constant neglect and mistreatment. The little Canon fits in my pocket, and, given a reasonable amount of light and subjects that don't move too quickly, produces remarkable results.
The violin is a completely different thing indeed, it has been following me around since I was a student, no lover ever got the number of caresses (or neglect or mistreatment) this thing has had. I spend up to 8 hours a day with it on my shoulder, trying to coax sweet music out of it. It has followed me all over the world-- Denmark to Damascus, Vancouver to Buenos Aires, Korea to Mallorca, Venice to Zagreb. San Diego to Budapest. Seattle to Athens. Tokyo to Fargo. And I am not the only one who has used it... I can trace its owners back nearly a hundred years, and it was very old even then-- made in 1721 and in constant daily use ever since.
I somehow doubt this will apply to the cameras.