I know some people use that PVC piping used to house electrical wiring as the rails. I saw a picture on PB ages ago with a setup like that and it looked pretty sweet. Maybe have 2 rollerblade wheels side by side and have the pipe in the groove between them?

great sequence woodsy. Looks like the hard yards, hope he caught a wave.

Just recently found the light which is a Canon 550D so selling up my Nikon stuff to fund one of them, purely for the filming capabilities of it compared to my current setup. Just seeing what interest I can get at the moment, so i'm open to offers. Cheers.
Trademe Auction

Here's a shot with my new 24-105mm L Canon lens:

That's stunning Fango

Awesome Fango! I look forward to hearing your thoughts on that lens - I always wanted one for travel

I've had that 24-105mm lens for a few weeks now and it has definitely become the lens I take when I only take one lens. Here are another couple of shots with it.

Noice!

I'm starting to think about more glass, but wondering which way to go
Currently got the two kit lenses that came with the 450D (18-55 + 55-250), crop sensor in the 450D leaves me wanting to get further away at times, so something wider would be nice for landscapes. But a bit more on the tele end could be useful at times too...

I guess what I'm asking is what the "normal" progression would be when buying more lenses - but I know full well that it depends entirely on what you want to shoot
I hear a lot of people saying a 50mm prime is worth having in the bag?

Also - is there much difference between Sigma and Canon lenses?

Cheers in advance.

50mm primes i've heard are amazing sharpness and clarity. Haven't used one myself but for the price i'm going to get one. I ran a 70-300 Afs for a while but didn't end up using it that much. Maybe it's just what I shoot but I found it overkill.

Anything decent longer than 250mm will be quite pricey, your looking at the 70-300 or 100-400 or 3rd party etc. I suggest leaving that for a bit till you know a little more of what you want to shoot.

I've a canon 50f1.8 and its a great tool, built out of old lada plastic but opticaly very sharp, iffy focus (esp manual) and bokeh isnt the best when stopped down a bit. I'd recomend it if you want to go for shallow DOF stuff or potraits.

Wider than 18mm isnt leaving a whole lot of budget options, sigma 10-20 (which I have, its OK) canon 10-22, tokina 11-16f2.8, sigma 8-16 etc.

8-16 is probably the sharpest (and newest) and about $1100, cant use filters with it either.

All the others the 11-16 is probably the best all rounder if limited in zoom.

As for canon vs sigma theres good and bad uns in each range. Canon tend to be better built and have better AF etc but not always. Definatly some value in the sigma range.

Heres some recent 50mm1.8 shots ( I think at 1.8)

Thanks for that RJD - those are some amazing shots. Do you just have the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II? Or is there an L version that I've missed somewhere? (think the L is f1.2 though). If it is the cheaper one it would be worth playing with anyway, for the sake of a couple of hundred bucks. And I love shallow DOF stuff.

Completely unrelated question regarding flashes... Are the mounting shoes specific between brands, or one size fits all. And has there been any change in them over the years? Reason I ask is that my sister had quite a bit of SLR kit in the mid 90s, and I'm wondering if a flash from a Pentax of that era would be compatible with my Canon? I'm guessing not.

Those are with the $150 (or so) EF 50mmf1.8.

The 50mmf1.4 is about $600-700 and the 50f1.2L is about $2500 I think! (theres also an older EF 50f1.0 L !)

The 50/1.8 is actualy as sharp f4 on as the others, optimising a lens for very fast apertures introduces some other optical issues (CA, softness etc) the 1.2L isnt the sharpest lens, but is 1.2...

As for flashes I think there brand specific, I wouldnt try a pentax on a canon say unless I knew it would work - also a fair few older flashes use a very high trigger voltage that could fry your camera.

My Nissin Di866 has been shipped so hopefully this week will have a decent flash that can do off camera ettl too.

Cool - cheers for all the info, might have to grab me one of those stat.

And I think I'll give the flash idea a miss too