I received another mail from one of the readers today

Dear Calvin,

On 12 Jan 2010, I posed a question to you whether I should buy a D90 or D300s and you’ve kindly encouraged me to opt for the D90.

Well, just to inform you that I’ve bought myself the D90 recently but I did not go with your recommended Nikkor 50mm F1.8D lens.

Instead, I bought the Tamron 18-270mm F3.5-6.3 VC lens. I took your advise and bought the 16gb memory card, spare batteries, carrying case and the UV filter, as well. The dry box will be the next on my list.

I’m now shopping for a macro lens and have tested three Nikor lens:
1. AF-S Micro NIKKOR 60mm f2.8G ED;
2. AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8D; and
3. AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED.

Among the 3 lens I’ve tested, I find the Micro 105mm to be able to take the most close-up shots of pictures you intend to capture. What’s your opinion on this, Calvin?

Thanks again for your kind advise, Calvin!

Regards,
Wee Boon Han

Congratulations for owning a Nikon D90.  I am sure you will find it lots of fun playing with it,

A lens that covers 18-270 and the F3.5 dropped to F6.3, you can see the performance of this lens yourself.  The more you zoom in, you will find the image quality getting  worse and worse and to the extend at 270mm, the quality is unbearable. This lens is a day lens.  which means it can’t really perform well in indoor or at night.  Not to mention this lens covers from wide 18mm all the way to 270mm.  The sharpness is always doubtful.  In engineering point of view, it is difficult to create a zoom lens that having many moving parts inside while maintaining the sharpness of the image, not to mention covering a huge gap from 18mm (wide angle) all the way to 270mm (long range tele) which is equavalent to 15x zoom.

I encourage you to get a 50mm F1.8, not only it is cheap, it is also a great F1.8 prime lens that will be useful as a training lens.  If you set the lens at F2.8, this lens will give you an easy super sharp image compare with your existing lens, chicks will love to see those amazing quality images.

About the Macro lens. 

I remember I read the Digital Camera about a year ago about comparing the market best macro lens.  Nikon 105mm VR Macro may not be the best value-for-money macro lens, but it is surely one of the best built-quality macro lens you can buy, as a Nikon user, this is the one that you should get.

I used to own the Nikon 105mm F2.8 VR Macro.  It is a superb lens, also a great portait lens.  I sold it after I got my 70-200 F2.8 VR as I hardly use a macro lens.

Try survey around more on macro lenses, there are few other 3rd party lenses which may offer similar optical quality, more economical (compromise with the built-quality of course).  One of the issues in Digital Camera has quite details review on macro lenses in the market, I think it was one of the 2009 issues.   If you can find it, it will be great.  Good luck

Yesterday I posted about the Canon 70-200 F4 thermal mug.  Apparently there are suppliers in China selling Canon 24-105mm F4 Mug. 

You walk into Starbucks with this mug.

A Calculator Fan saw your mug and started to ask you about the mug.

“Wow! A lens mug! where you got that? How much? You use Canon too?”

“Yeah,  I converted the lens into a mug after I tried Nikon.  Should’ve done that long time ago.”

You can find the seller in http://superlemon.taobao.com

Canon Lens Mug: RM50
The facial expression from the Calculator Fan: Priceless

How many thermal mugs you got and it is free?

How many free thermal mugs you got and you actually appreciate?

Many of you own more than one of those thermal mugs but you never appreciate that you got it for free, and just take it for granted, like everyone else.

When you think about thermal mug, you think about freebies.

Thermal mugs are often given away from various companies as souvenir, you can expect to receive one of these when you attending Microsoft seminar, a free gift from the Scretch & Win scam, or freebies from the event girls in Sony roadshow you while you are busy shooting those Race Queens.

Imagine you just walked into your office pantry filling up your regular doze of caffeine, and one of your colleagues walked into the pentry is holding the same mug as yours.  The only difference is only the colour and the logo printed on top.  Perhaps his is Microsoft, and yours is Intel.

“Good morning, so, you got your mug from Microsoft Technet?”

“Yeah, and you got yours from Intel product launching?”

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