Wishlist

So this is the stereo­typ­i­cal page where I, being unem­ployed, beg oth­ers to buy me the expen­sive gear I can’t afford. Mostly its photo & video equip­ment here, but there’s more avail­able on my amazon.com wish­lists here (please sort them by priority):

Books, Movies, Media, etc.

Cologne

Shav­ing Stuff

Out­door Gear

And instead of link­ing to my amazon.com wish­list for photo/video gear, I’ve put direct links to each item here, in most cases, click­ing on the image takes you to the items amazon.com prod­uct page. Also, don’t hes­i­tate to search Ado­rama or B&H for bet­ter prices, espe­cially if they offer any items fac­tory refur­bished (just be sure they include at least 1 year warranty.)

	First things first, I’ve recently decided to switch to Canon for pho­tog­ra­phy equip­ment, largely because Nikon seems to have aban­doned the “prime” lens busi­ness, and also because Canon has vastly sur­passed nikon in doing video, and this is the cam­era I want (READ: buy me this before ANYTHING else on this page), the game-changing Canon 5D Mark II. 21 Megapixel, full frame sen­sor dig­i­tal slr, with full HD video record­ing, soon to be upgraded to industry-standard 24p and 30p at cor­rect 29.97 fps. Is it per­fect, NO, but I’m will­ing to work around its faults for its stun­ning fea­ture­set and image qual­ity! Price, $2700 (new, with­out lens) you can often find these fac­tory refur­bished for $2400 here
	And a spec­tac­u­lar lens to go with the EOS 5D series, the Canon EF 24mm f/1.4 L USM II lens, super fast, and a decent wide-angle field-of-view that will con­tinue to work won­der­fully once I tran­si­tion to Canon’s next mas­ter­piece evo­lu­tion of their full-frame/5D series in the com­ing years. Price, $1700 (shop around, don’t pay more than $1700!)
	And the be-all, end-all 50mm “nor­mal” lens, and one of the only aspher­i­cal 50mm lenses ever made, along with the now dis­con­tin­ued 58mm NOCT nikkor. the Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L USM lens, basi­cally the fastest, newest, sharpest 50mm lens made today. Price, $1600.
	And the pin­na­cle of “por­trait” lenses, the astound­ing Canon 85mm f/1.2L II, basi­cally the fastest, newest, sharpest por­trait lens, with the most amaz­ing bokeh avail­able today. This lens has been com­pared to leica and zeiss, and with the right body, is absolutely their equal. Price, $1900.
	And a great stan­dard zoom lens to go with the 24mm, the Canon EF 70–200 f/4L IS USM lens. While not as fast as the f/2.8L, its still decent, and has been renowned as one of the sharpest 70-200mm lenses ever, plus its got Image Sta­bi­liza­tion that yields 4 stops worth of improve­ment, and costs almost a grand less than the f/2.8 vari­ant. Price, $1200 (cheaper if you shop around)
	And since Canon has yet to come to mar­ket with an ultra-wide angle zoom to com­pete with the absolutely stun­ning Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8, this is the best ultra-wide-angle lens that canon has to offer today, the EF 14mm f/2.8L II USM lens. Price, $2200 (cheaper if you shop around.)
	And since Canon sadly hasn’t come out with any­thing yet to com­pete with the Nikon 14-24mm f/1.8, this is their best wide-angle zoon, the EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM lens. Price, $1500 (cheaper if you shop around.)
	And Canon’s best speed­light flash unit, the 580 EX II, not much to say except that it rocks, and can be used as a wire­less slave flash. I’m look­ing for 3 of these flash units. Price, $425 each.
	And of course, bat­ter­ies are nec­es­sary to power the cam­era, so I’m look­ing for 3 more of these, the Canon LP-E6 lithium ion bat­tery. Price, $55-$75 each.
	And with extra bat­ter­ies, I can opt to use this, the Canon BG-E6 ver­ti­cal grip when I choose, which not only offers extra ergonom­ics and con­trol, but the abil­ity to use 2 bat­ter­ies at the same time, and dou­ble my shoot­ing time before switch­ing bat­ter­ies! Price, $250.
	And of course, another area where Canon out­shines Nikon, sim­ple wire­less shut­ter relase, no need to spend $150 on an overly com­pli­cated (and wired) remote shut­ter release, instead, canon allows their prosumer/professional cam­eras to work with this tiny infrared, wire­less remote con­trol. Price, $25.
	And nobody in the world makes tripods like Gitzo, and these tri­pod legs, the Gitzo GT3541LS, fea­ture excel­lent porta­bil­ity, weigh­ing only 3.79 lbs, and col­laps­ing to 21.65″ closed, yet capa­ble of sup­port­ing almost 40lbs of gear! Price, $750
	And of course you can’t use a tri­pod with­out a tri­pod head to attach the cam­era to, and this is among the best in the world, the Really Right Stuff BH55 with Pro attach­ment, weights 1.86LBS, but sup­ports 50lbs of gear! Price, $415.
	And of course what good is all this equip­ment with­out a means to record the pic­tures and videos cap­tured with it? Of course there’s a solu­tion, the San­disk 16GB Extreme Pro com­pact flash card with 90MB/S write speed! I’m look­ing for 4–6 of these. Price, $250 each.
	And a mas­sive RAM upgrade for my 15″ mac­book pro. While I already have 4GB of ram, when pro­cess­ing RAW files between 25 and 33mb each, this quickly eats through all my avail­able ram, so basi­cally, in the world of photo/video work, more RAM is always bet­ter. Price, $400.
	And of course, how do we store all these images and all this video once its off the mem­ory card? Cer­tainly not on my measly 320GB lap­top hard drive, and until I can afford to build a mas­sive file server, exter­nal dri­ves are the way to go. This is a mas­sive 4TB raid exter­nal hard drive setup, fea­tur­ing firewire 800 inter­face, which is essen­tial for video edit­ing. Price, $715.
	And lastly (for now) the cam­era bag to end all cam­era bags, the Crum­pler “Brazil­lion Dol­lar Home.” This thing is huge, designed to hold a 17″ lap­top, 2 pro­fes­sional cam­era bod­ies, 3 flashes, over a dozen menory cards, 4–6 lenses, and has straps on the out­side for a tri­pod as well. Price, $295.“