Reading forums, decorating gingerbread house, and watching TV

This morning I checked hotukdeals, my email and deviantart, then watched A fistfull of dollars with Mac.

After lunch I checked the istockphoto forums. There was a good thread about taking self portraits and someone linked to an article about taking self portraits, although I didn't bother reading the article as I'm not interested in taking self portraits at the moment. Someone had also posted a link to a kodak booklet about Wintertime Picture Taking, again I didn't read it, but looks quite good and may be useful for future reference.

Then I checked the dpreview canon lens forum and thewebsqueeze forum. I also tried out eclipse with the PHP IDE. I only had a quick look at it, but I couldn't really see any benefit of using it over Dreamweaver or SciTE.

I also had a read of the D300 and Nikon lens forums on dpreview, and found a thread about Nikon equivalents of the MP-E 65mm lens. Alex (SiFu) suggests using a reversed lens with a Nikon BR-6 ring, Nikon AR-10 double cable release and Nikon MC-25. I checked the prices on these parts and they seem to be about £50 each, so quite expensive. I think this would only work with non G Nikon lenses as well (i.e. lenses with an aperture ring). It seems that the BR-6 would let you use a macro flash on reversed lenses though, at least according to David H. Hartman on this thread over at photo.net: Best way to obtain high magnifications. The thread also contains some pictures of the BR-6 and similar adapters.

Of course, an alternative to the BR-6 would be the method I saw someone posted on deviantart, which involved a Kenko Extension tube broken in half, with computer cable connecting the contacts on the camera side to the contacts on the lens. This has the advantage of being cheaper than a BR-6 (assuming you already have the extension tubes, otherwise it's more expensive but you do get the extension tubes you don't break as well) and it would also work with G lenses. I expect the Nikon 16-85mm f3.5-5.6G ED VR AF-S DX NIKKOR would make a nice lens for reversing like this.

Going back to the dpreview thread, another poster suggested the 120mm f5.6 APO macro Nikkor. Looking at Bjørn Rørslett's review of this lens, it sounds very good. While I would like to experiment with macro on my Nikon camera, I can't really afford it at the moment (as well as being busy doing other things anyway).

I also found out there was a manual version of the Nikon 200-400mm/4 lens made, which I didn't know about. Possibly may be able to get it cheap, although from Bjørn's review it sounds like it would be quite expensive.

When Ben came home from school, me, Mac and Ben watched an episode of Lost.

After dinner me, Mac and Ben finished off the gingerbread house, it's totally covered in sweets now. Then Me and Mac watched IACGMOOH.

The weather was overcast and cloudy all day.

Food
Breakfast: Blood orange marmalade toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
Lunch: 2x cheese on toasts; clementine; slice of chocolate swiss roll; breakaway; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Southern fried chicken; chips; baked beans. Pudding was ice cream with toffee and chocolate sauce. Coffee.
Supper: Cup o' tea; malted milk; choc chip cookie.