Strictly For The Photography Nerds

Lately, I've been entertaining the idea of purchasing another lens for my Canon 30D. The 24-70mm lens that I have now is mostly for portraiture work. It's a killer lens, but doesn't zoom in close enough to capture shots where I'm forced to be away from the action. Since the boys play so much baseball, I thought it might be fun to have a telephoto lens so that I could capture the facial expressions that go unnoticed when I use my 24-70mm.

In steps Arlington Camera and their wonderful rental options. Instead of dropping $1400 for a lens that I'm not 100% sure that I'm ready to commit to, I opted to rent one for the entire weekend. For less than $40, I picked up the lens Friday evening and headed off to meet my family at the Rangers/A's game.

Our seats for the game were out in the bleachers. That would be far enough away for me to test out the 100-400mm lens that I rented. And I'm sure that you can't tell it from this snapshot, but the lens brought the action right to me. After viewing the pictures on my laptop, I would have never thought that the images were taken from well over 400 feet away.

I was impressed enough after the MLB game, but couldn't believe my eyes after I uploaded the images that I snapped yesterday at Jason & Dallas' Little League game. I've uploaded a few of my favorites here.

This lens allowed me to stay far enough away to remain unthreatening and unnoticed, yet still capture the facial expressions and detail that I absolutely love to see in photographs. If I can zoom in and not have the detail of eyelashes distorted, I know I've captured a great shot. This lens allowed me to do just that at a distance that I've never shot from. I'm obviously giddy over this lens.

All in all, I think I've taken about 600 pictures in the last 36 hours. My right forearm feels like it's been through a meat grinder. But who's complaining? It's been well worth it.

As much as I have enjoyed playing with this rented toy, I think I'll give one other model a test run before I purchase anything. The speed that the 70-200mm lens offers might be worth sacrificing the reduction in zoom capability. It's much faster and will allow me to shoot in lower light like my 24-70mm does.

When I rent that lens, I'll post some pictures from it as well....and won't bore anyone who reads this with all the nerdy details that I've included in this post.