Good luck to all who are considering quitting. Cigarettes are incredibly addictive. I quit 48 years ago after smoking for just 2 years and after several failed attempts. I was very young at the time and thought of myself as being in good shape and athletic, and I quit because I came up short of breath after a few times up and down the court in a pick-up basketball game, and that scared me. It took just about a calendar year of going one day at a time. Then at about the one year point, I realized I hadn't thought about cigarettes for a week and I was finally free of them. Up until then, I had thought about cigarettes several times a day, every day, for a year. I consider myself in a situation analogous to an alcoholic: I'm a smoker who hasn't smoked in nearly 5 decades. I've never taken a single puff, because I'm afraid of what might happen if I did. I've also lived an absurdly healthy life: I'm 69 and the worst illness I've ever had is the flu. I'm well aware of how much good luck that involves, but I'm also certain that I wouldn't have been so lucky if I'd kept up the pack-a-day habit.

I'm not one of those zealots who talks about this a great deal. I think it can be self-indulgent to talk about things like this, and I don't want to bore people. But I thought I should jump in to add my story as encouragement to anyone trying to quit. It's very hard to do--as I said, I quit several times before succeeding--but it's worth it.

I've been happy with the 270EX. As I understand it, Canon made it primarily for the G and SX series cameras, where a large flash might throw the weight off and make it hard to hand hold. (It also works with all of the EOS SLRs, too, of course.) It's very light and fits easily in my bag. It also fits in my pants pocket and would fit into most purses. I like the fact that it tilts--though only in landscape format--so you can bounce it off the ceiling. I bought it from B&H, along with a diffuser made by Zeikos that cost less than $10. The larger models in the Speedlight line have more bells and whistles, of course. The primary selling point here is size and weight.

I sent these photos in once before in response to a similar question, so I'm sorry if you've seen them before, but that time they were on page 3 or 4 of a thread, so many may not have seen them. They're all taken from the same spot--never moved my feet, since I was testing the quality and scope of the zoom for myself. I took them in Siena, Italy, last November. The building is the 14th-century Palazzo Pubblico, their city hall. The overview is at full wide angle; the zooms. both at the 1200 maximum, are details of the tower on the left side of the building, which is over 90 meters, over 300 feet tall. I'm probably about the same distance away from the ground-level of the building. If I tell you there are gargoyle-like creatures sticking out of the corners of the gray stone portion of the tower near the top, you might be able to just see them in the overview. In the details, you can actually see the carved dates from the 1820s when these replacement decorative elements were installed, along with the more recent steel reinforcements keeping one of them in place. The bottom line is that I was impressed by the quality of the zoom. All photos were hand-held. For the zooms, I used the 2-second delay, since I found that at that degree of zoom, squeezing the shutter risked pulling the camera a bit off-line, and the 2 seconds gave me time to re-frame.

You're a magician: getting the bird to hold that pose at the end of a wing flap is one thing, but how did you get the wave to cooperate? Brilliant as usual.

In December 1969, I had only lived in Northern Vermont for a little over a year. I left Burlington to drive south and ran into the teeth of a blizzard in an agricultural area far between cities. Only driving about 5 mph in a near white out, so when I hit a skid, the car slid gently off into a ditch with a soft landing. But there we were with 2 kids ages 1 and 2, wondering what to do since this was way before the days of cell phones, and we were far away from any gas stations, when a farmer who happened to be out in his barn saw me and came out with his tractor. Without saying a word, he attached chains to the frame of the car and pulled me out. When I asked if I could give him something for the favor, he said he wouldn't hear of it. "Next time, I might be the guy in the ditch, and you can be the one to do me the favor." I was already thinking of Vermont as home after my short time in the State, but this clinched it, and in fact, my experience over the following four-plus decades is that that's just the way people are around here. As they say, I wasn't born in Vermont, but I intend to die here.

I'm afraid I meant the line to refer to you and me as well as to the NRA and Tea Party, tschmath. That's why I said whichever side we're on. I see their excesses better than I see my own, and I'm sure they see mine better than they see their own. One man's jackal collectivist is another man's Tea party nutjob, and that's the problem for me. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't hold true to our principles, but we should still deal with each other with respect.

As a Vermonter, I feel the need to come to Bernie Sanders' defense. I hate seeing him dismissed as "just another jackal collectivist." Bernie has been elected continuously (except for 2 years) since 1981, which must make him the most successful American third party candidate of the 50 years at least. In fact, in his first successful campaign, for mayor of Burlington, VT, he ran as an Independent against what he called the Republicrats, claiming there was no real difference between the parties, whose only commitment was to getting elected and rewarding cronies. Once elected, he did such a good job of revitalizing the down town area and encouraging small businesses that Republicans stopped running candidates against him, since he was exactly what they wanted in a mayor and were afraid to run someone who'd split the vote. He was elected for four continuous 2-year terms. Police and firemen who traditionally didn't take sides in political campaigns took to endorsing him. He won 4 straight terms.

Burlington is a liberal city in a historically Republican state. (It's ranked as the most rural state in the nation.) So when he decided to run for congress, many thought he was foolish. But he went out to the most rural (and Republican) parts of the state, engaged the local farmers one on one to learn of their needs and concerns, and amazed everybody by earning their votes and becoming one of the best informed members of congress on farm issues. He opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghansistan, but when he saw wounded veterans returning home to inadequate services, he became the staunchest of supporters of Veterans' rights and in his recent re-election campaign he had widespread support from Vermont vets. He's just been named Chairman of the Senate's Veterans' Affairs Committee.

He's an equal opportunity gadfly. He was as much an opponent of many of the policies of the Clinton administration as he was of the Bush administration, and he continues to be a nuisance to the Obama administration. For example, he was a major opponent of the Clinton administration's globalization policies, things like NAFTA, arguing that exporting manufacturing jobs to third-world countries would inevitably lead to unemployment and a shrinking of the middle class at home and the exploitation of workers in third-world countries, all so we could have cheap electronics. From the perspective of the great recession, that feels pretty smart, but in those high-flying days, he seemed to a lot of democrats like a crank. And lots of people who worry about a New World Order (who would never have voted for Bernie) probably wish more people had sided with him in defending the independence and autonomy of American industry.

Currently, the Air Force is discussing whether to assign a fleet of F-35s to the Burlington Air National Guard. Their base is adjacent to the Burlington Airport and many locals are opposed to the move because of the fear of increased noise, and there's a major petition drive, ongoing picketing, etc., in opposition. Bernie is a staunch defender of the Air Force in this debate, a stance that has offended many of his supporters who see this as an abandonment of principle. But Bernie has shown himself over the years to be extremely flexible about such matters. He's a pragmatist who looks at each case separately and bases his decision on its merits, not on ideology.

I'm not trying to make him out to be a saint, but he is an excellent public servant who really is independent in fact, not just in party label. He stays in close touch with his constituents, engages in an incredible number of local community meetings in small towns where the political payoff for him would be slight. The result is that he's become a beloved figure to most Vermonters, and the closest thing to an unbeatable politician in the state. I don't hear very many people plotting how to get rid of him. What I do hear are people wondering what are we ever going to do when Bernie (who's now in his 70's) isn't around any more.

Thanks for listening. Part of my reason for writing all this is to make an appeal for courtesy and open-mindedness on the board. It's clear by now who's on what side in virtually all debates, and unfortunately that's what it feels like--two opposing sides with two different sets of presuppositions about politics and cultural values, two different vocabularies, two different narratives of history. We're not really speaking to each other--just resorting to name calling. As long as that remains true, we're never going to change each other's minds. I hate to see people on this board who seem to be such lovely people demean themselves by acting, if you'll pardon the insult, like members of Congress. It wouldn't be a bad thing if we were able to cling to our values, but respected people with opposing values and kept an open mind about rethinking those values. Bernie Sanders is clearly a figure on the left, but he's an independent figure on the left who keeps surprising me by how often his positions are his own and are opposed to those of the Democratic party or of left-wing orthodoxy. Whether we like his politics or not, we could do worse than to imitate the open-mindedness. Whichever side we're on, we don't walk on the only avenue to the truth.

As others have said and as you can infer from the way owners of both seem to love them, you can't go wrong with either camera. Try them both out (or at least fondle them) in a store and see which one is more satisfying physically. Unlike Sarge, I'm a fan of the buttons on the back since I hate to resort to menus at the moment of truth. Plus I liked the feel of the SX50 in my hand better. No right answer here--you may well like the Nikon better. One good feature of the Canon (don't know if the Nikon has this, but maybe) is something they call Zoom Framing Assist. If you're zoomed out to 1200 mm or anywhere near that length, it's easy to lose your target with the slightest movement of your hand (say in pressing the zoom lever). Press what they call the Zoom Framing Assist button on the side of the lens and the lens zooms back to a selectable level, say half of that distance, so you can re-aim, and then when you let go of the button the camera zooms back out to 1200 or whatever. It's a great aid in taking the long telescopic shots. And by the way, I was surprised by how well the Image Stabilization worked at full tele. I was surprised to find that I can usually hand hold at that distance. Just to be safe, when possible--stationary object, for example, rather than wildlife--I use the standard tricks of either setting the 2-second delay so camera shake from pressing the shutter is neutralized, or setting the shutter for continuous shooting and holding the shutter so I get 2 or 3 shots off. The second is often the best, again because pressing the shutter may have caused some camera shake which gets magnified at this length. Those are common tricks, of course, that will work just as well on the Nikon.

Can't speak to the Lumix, but I bought the SX50 in October for a trip to Italy circumstances were such that I didn't want the weight of an SLR and multiple lenses. It was a bit of a gamble, obviously, but I was very pleased with the results. Full disclosure: I had no intention to try to sell the photos or make large prints, and the SLR would almost certainly have been better under those circumstances. But I put the SX50 to the test and got excellent results both wide angle and full tele, along with some of the canned options that I thought I'd never use like low-light hand held night shots (I think it takes several consecutive shots and merges them to reduce noise on the theory that noise is a random event not likely to be reproduced in the same place in multiple exposures) and in-camera HDR which usually worked ok, even hand held, though the manual said to always use a tripod. (I sometimes helped the camera by leaning against a building, etc.)

Here's an example of the camera's reach, both photos of Siena's city hall, the Palazzo Pubblico taken from the same location on the opposite side of the city's central piazza, the Campo. I took the photos primarily for diagnostic purposes, to see the effect of the lens and whether I could hand hold at 1200mm equivalent. The first photo is at full wide angle. If you look at the tower above the Palazzo, you'll see that there's a grey stone top above the red brickwork. At the point where the stone stops angling outward and begins to rise vertically, there are sculpted wolves projecting from the four corners. They're scarcely visible in the overview, but at full zoom you can actually read the date 1922 sculpted into the base, presumably the year when this modern replacement was installed on the tower, and see that it must have since been at risk of falling so that metal restraints that have been placed on the carving to secure it to the tower. Both are hand held, though for the zoom I used the 2-second delay to prevent camera shake from pressing the shutter.

The third photo is one of those hand-held night shots of the Via Lamberti, a street in the center of Florence. The last two were taken during the day, about 10:30 on a November morning, but in the extremely dark 13th-century Church of San Remigio. The painting is from the late 13th century. Because the church was so dark, I used the hand-held night shot here, too. The camera defaulted to 1600 ISO. Obviously some noise, but under the circumstances surprisingly ok, and needed very little clean up in Lightroom.

One last testimonial for the camera. On another location I was photographing a fresco in an interior with crazy low lighting, some of it from clerestory windows high up on the wall and part of it from tungsten high up in the ceiling. The colors were weirdly orange. There was a fire extinguisher in the corner with a white paper tag on it providing the date of its most recent inspection. I used it to register a custom white balance and photos came out with the white balance pretty much spot on. Kudos to Canon on those grounds, too.

Palazzo Pubblico, Siena




Via Lamberti, Florence


San Remigio, Florence


13th-Century Madonna, San Remigio, Florence

Love them all, but especially the last one. The pelican is clearly the ugly duckling of the group, but I love the curved feathers at the front of the wings. The pilots out there can be more specific, but I assume this is part of the aerodynamics of the bird pulling up to regain altitude and balance after the beak first dive whose splash is still rising up behind it. Great capture of the moment, right down to the bird's reflection.

Great question and lots of great answers here. When I'm at a meeting, I always take a lot of notes, and people wonder why. Do I keep those notes? Consult them later? And the answer is, rarely. But taking notes is a focusing exercise for me. It helps me pay attention to and remember what's being said, even if never look at the notes again.

Photography does the same thing for me. When I have a camera with me, I'm more aware of the world around me. I'm more likely to be looking at light, composition, color, detail, narrative, faces, congruities, incongruities, beauty, ugliness, schlock, all things I might miss if I didn't have the camera around my neck. And when I press the shutter, I tend to save the image to my own memory, as well as to the card's. Even if I don't look at the image again, I'm more likely to remember it. The camera helps me notice and celebrate the moment and the world around me (i.e. time and space), and it makes me feel more alive.

Please keep them coming, Greg. I've never responded to your photos, but I look forward to them every day. And just about every day they're there and they're always winners--great control of light and focus. I admire your skill and your patience.

I've never bought on Craig's List, but I've sold three times--snow tires used one season and left over from a car I no longer own, a rooftop storage container that couldn't attach to my new car, and a desk. All things I would otherwise have had to throw away. Preferred to be green and have them stay in use rather than go to the land fill. Priced them to go, and they all went in two days or less at the listed price, no dickering on any of them. Win-win, as far as I was concerned.

Sounds like you're in a can't lose situation, Sarah Lynn--with 3 or maybe 4 options all of which seem good.

1. 70-300 image stabilized lens
2. 75-300 non IS lens
3. SX40
4. Wait for next month's release of the SX50

I've never used the IS lens, but I bought the 75-300 non IS maybe 15 or 20 years ago and have had great results, both "way back" in film days and now with a crop sensor DSLR. In fact, with exactly the set up you're talking about--Sxi with the non-stabilized 75-300 lens--so I've uploaded some samples for you. They're all pictures of early thirteenth-century sculptures on the facade of the cathedral in Lucca, Italy. They're better with a bit of Lightroom tweaking, but I figured you'd rather see what they're like straight out of the camera, so the only change I've made to any of the three is to crop the second one to remove episodes on the two sides that might be distracting. The first photo, the animals jutting out from the corner of the porch in front of the church, was taken at 75 mm, maximum wide angle for the lens. The other two photos are part of a series of "Labors of the Months," images showing typical activities from the agricultural year, one for each of the twelve months. These are from February, a lull in the round of planting and harvesting, and show a man fishing. The full image is taken mid-range at 105 mm, and the detail of the fisherman's head, with his creel over his shoulder, is zoomed in to 220 mm.


You'll get better results, of course, with a tripod. These are hand held, so I took some precautions with the non IS lens that I might not have with one that had IS. As you can see, it was a sunny day, but I shot at ISO 200 to give myself some leeway. Another trick I sometimes use with the non IS lens (though I didn't use it in these photos) is to set the camera to continuous shooting mode, so it will fire off more than one photo as long as you keep the shutter pressed. All I need usually is a second click. Sometimes I forget good practices and jiggle the camera when I press the shutter (especially since image stabilization usually corrects for this). With a second continuous photo, however, since my finger hasn't moved at all in taking the second shot, that one will usually be stable and make the non-IS lens more forgiving. This would have been an expensive practice with film, but with digital it's easy to just delete the less successful first photo if it turns out to be shaky.

Having said all that about how much I like the lens, I bought an SX40 a few weeks ago and plan to bring that instead of the DSLR on a trip next month. It's taking very good photos, and the trade off of weight/bulk vs. sensor size is one I'm happy to be making this time around. I don't expect the SX50 to come out in time for my trip, or I would have waited for it. The zoom is even longer than on the SX40 (maybe longer than I'd be likely to use), the buttons seem more intelligently placed, it offers the option of shooting RAW, and according to the B&H info on the camera it accommodates a remote shutter release.

Good luck with your choice. As I said at the beginning, I don't think you can go wrong.

And PS: I love your photos.

Perfect timing. I ordered the Goja adapter last week. It arrived today and fits perfectly and easily. Since I already had .58mm UV and CP filters and lens cap from an old pre-digital SLR, I ordered the adapter only. I also have an old lens hood--circular, not tulip, and it stacks on, too, but blocks the corners a bit at full wide angle.

Any way, my two hours of experience with the adapter suggest that it's a great bargain.