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This is my favourite lens. Bought it 2nd hand at a bargain price of $120 (it came with a Hoya HMC 52mm filter and 4 months Canon warranty!). It is a rare copy which was made in Japan, later copies are produced in Malaysia.

This lens has followed me to a number of places including Hong Kong, Seoul, KL, Melaka, Taiping, Ipoh, Genting, etc. Also shot a few weddings with it.

Served me well for about 3 years until it finally broke down after taking pictures for my 10-year secondary school reunion dinner! Basically, the front glass dropped off and it was fully detached from the lens! On close inspection, I found that a small plastic hook holding the front glass was broken. My initial thought was there’s no point sending it for repairs as the repair cost might well be more than the price of a new lens.

Looking on the bright side, I finally get the chance to upgrade to the far superior 50mm F1.4 USM =p

I have been considering upgrading my good old 300D bought way back in mid-2004. The 300D has served me well over the years and it is still capable of doing it in near future. So why am I considering an upgrade? In some situations, I found that 300D is slightly limiting.

300D, my current camera (image from dpreview)

300D has the ancient first generation CMOS sensor and DIGIC image processor which isn’t great by today’s standard. The main complain is that noise handling in low-light situations is quite undesirable. With the 17-40mm F4 that I’m using, I find that need to use high ISO pretty often.

The other thing that is bothering me is the small frame buffer in 300D. It has a buffer of only 4 frames (both RAW and JPEG) for goodness sake!! Even the old 20D has a buffer for 23 frames (for JPEG at least, but only 6 for RAW)! This is especially crucial for weddings and events where i find that i missed out important shots because the frame buffer is full!

Other complains are minor. They include slow focusing speed, no AI servo mode, no spot metering, lousy battery life, small viewfinder and small LCD. That’s probably it! For my kind of usage, there isn’t much to complain actually.

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