Each year, when our bonus comes in, I do the responsible thing with most of it, paying off bills and investing it. I say most, because I do splurge on something of a gift for myself, you know, for all that hard work pushing buttons and playing with numbers.
When I bought an iPhone earlier this year, I told myself it was my bonus gift, and a practical one at that. My then current phone had gotten to the point that even a 30 minute conversation would nearly drain the battery and it may or may not have been dropped a few too many times. My envy of a coworkers shiny gadget coupled with the fact that they bumped up the size to 16GB, I caved. And I'm glad I did since I can now carry all the power of the internets in my pocket. The mapping feature was quite useful while in Austin this past weekend too and trying to meet up with a friend.
By now I'm sure you can guess that the iPhone isn't the only "gift" I bought myself. Although I've wantd one for a while, over the weekend I spontaneously decided to buy a lensbaby. It's a selective focus lens that allows you to move the sweet spot around. As you can see from the above photo, only the "AI" in the upper left is nearly in focus with the rest of the frame filled out with blur. I need much more practice with this lens, but besides being fun to use, it also forces me to slip the camera into manual mode rather than rely on the presets.
The best advice I can give is to handle both of them in a store before buying. I use a Canon S3 as my carry around camera, so nothing against Canons. I just liked the feel of the Nikon better.
A Lensbaby is on my camera wish list too. Which did you get?
I think my next lens will be a macro lens. Played with one at Camera Co-Op on Friday but can't remember which at the moment. Going to post a test shot I took with it.
