As time goes on, I’m thinking more and more about buying two new lenses for my camera. Mind you, I’m also deeply tempted by the new Canon EOS 50D, which would be a serious upgrade from my current 20D.

The two lenses are :

1. A decent zoom lens, that will extend past my current 70-200mm lens. The current temptation is the Tokina 80-400mm f4.5-5.6 AT-X Lens, which would fit the bill for £500
2. A wide-angle lens, for the landscapes and so on that I like to take. I’m thinking about the Tamron 11-18mm f/4.5-5.6 XR DI II, particularly having seen some of the things that David at Chromasia has done with it.

So that’s the plan. I don’t yet know if I’ll get the lenses this year or next, but they’re definitely the next photographic purchases - well, unless I get too tempted by that 50D, of course…

I’ve recently started taking the NCFE Level 2 qualification in digital photography, which is making life a bit more interesting.

It’s a thirty-week course, where the first ten weeks are involved in learning more about technical aspects of photography, the second ten weeks will be based around using Photoshop (Or in this case Photoshop Elements - which I don’t mind, as not everyone has access to CS3…) and then the final ten weeks will be spent assembling a project and/or portfolio.

I’m hoping that the course will help me on some of the technical knowledge - for example, I understand about Depth of Field and Apertures, but I don’t know why an f number is called that, or how they work. By which I mean that I know f/2.0 is a wide-open large aperture, and f/32 is tiny, but I don’t know why a larger number means a smaller aperture (And I never remember that rule, either) or precisely how it affects a photo.

Additionally, the course should help give me some more motivation, a bit of drive to get out and take more photos. It certainly seems to be doing so, as I’ve been out (allbeit briefly) the last two weeks in order to take the necessary photos for the assignments.

And that has to be a good thing.