Archive for February, 2010

In addition to shading the lens from glare and preventing lens flare in your photos, a lens hood can also help protect the front element of your lens without degrading image quality (like a cheap UV filter, for example). When using on board or hot shoe flash, it may end up shading your subject from the flash.

After seeing the lens hood that came with my 24-105L, and comparing it to the one on my Tamron, I decided to go ahead, sacrifice a few lunches out, and get Canon hoods for my two other lenses. Sure, they’re overpriced, but the 3rd party ones are overpriced as well even at half this price on eBay, and at least I know this one fits well.

I removed one star for the price. Otherwise it’s perfect.

Pros:

Fits very well.
Inside is lined with a velvety material that will not reflect light.
Can be reverse mounted on 100mm macro for storage.

Cons:

Price.
Velvety material traps dust and dirt.
Needs to be removed to replace / remove lens cap (not really an issue with the hood – just need to get into the habit of removing cap before putting hood on).

Canon ET67 Lens Hood | takemetoyourrobot

I am part of a large running group in the SF Bay Area and almost half of the folks in my group seem to own a GPS watch so I finally got one just in time for my most recent marathon. The Garmin Forerunner 305 is by far the most popular model amongst my teammates. I’ve only used the GPS functions so far and that has worked out very well and is very accurate also. For example, during the California International Marathon, the watch was accurate to within 0.1 miles over the entire 26.2 mile course!…and I did not experience any signal loss either. The real-time pace information and average pace readings were extremely helpful in helping me meet my time goal during the marathon. I considered getting the Forerunner 405, because it’s smaller and more stylish, but my teammates who have the 405 tell me that it’s a bit too sensitive to the touch and can’t be turned off. Style points aside, it turns out that the size of the 305 isn’t a problem because it’s so lightweight that you don’t even know you have it on. The upside is that it has a larger, customizable LCD display (you can display up to 4 data elements on one screen) and actual push buttons which are probably easier to use while running. I haven’t used the heartrate monitor yet, so I can’t comment on that, but the only drawback that I have found so far is with the battery life. It only holds a 10 hour charge, so you need to make sure to charge it before each run. Overall, I think this is an indispensable accessory for any serious runner.
18 Speed Folding Mountain | jerusalemcityfarmers

Works as promised, just had to add security code on program already installed. I have the disk and license rights to install on 2 other computers
Fahyrenhype 9 11 DVD | taaag