Having pondered over which lens to get for another few days I decided to go the classic route with a fixed lens. So I headed off out and picked up a Nikon N80 with a 50mm f/1.8 lens (I briefly considered the f/1.4 version, but couldn’t justify an extra 150 GBP for a single additional stop). Having spent 2 days shooting off pictures I can honestly say there were very few occasions where I found myself wanting a zoom – its amazing what you can achieve by just walking towards / away from your subject ;-)
Aka, another dose of musical genius from the artist known as Beck. His Albert Hall solo gig, back in April, was an intimate & restrained performance, drawing heavily on tracks from the melancholic “Sea Change“. Things couldn’t have been more contrasting at the Brixton Academy. Supporting act ‘The Ravonettes’ were nothing to write home about, but hey, we’d come to see Beck, the support act is just there to get the audience cranked up. And with their punishing guitar riffs, they certainly got things moving.
From the moment he appeared on stage, with a menacing grin, you could tell it was going to be a fun night. Starting things off were a pair of songs from Odelay (Novocane & The New Pollution), then closely followed by from my favorites from “Midnite Vultures” – Get Real Paid & Nicotine & Gravy. Ever the performer, at one point he was dashing around the stage with a roland keyboard. A brief slowing of tempo for a few songs from Sea Change was the only respite to more than 1+1/2 hours of music, which finished with a cover of White Stripes classic ‘Black Math’.
For the record, here’s the set list
So having decided it was time to get myself a ‘serious’ camera, so I spent much of the weekend visiting camera shops, reading camera books & leafing through magazine reviews. Deciding on which ‘body’ to go for was the simple part – just pick a price point & choose between the Canon & the Nikon.
What’s not nearly so clear cut is which lens to go for. One option is to pay the extra 70 quid & get the ‘standard zoom’, but when you’re spending 400 on the body, is a 70 quid lens really doing the camera justice ? I rather think not.
A good rule of thumb seems to be to split the budget 50/50 between body & lens. Still, that doesn’t help the decision process all that much. There is still the choice between a fixed and zoom lens. Most common advice on photo.net is to pick a 50mm fixed lens & add more as you need, but having used a compact with a 28-120mm zoom lens for a while, there is still the nagging thought that maybe a zoom would be more versatile. And there are soo many options with zooms too, a series of smalls with short ranges, but wide appertures, or go for convenience of a large range, sacrificing quality.
Oh well, looks like another busy weekend at the camera shops…
…but you wouldn’t want to live there. Back at the turn of the century, Brussels was a strong centre for Art Noveau design and architecture, and later Art Deco. Sadly in modern times they seem to have little respect for their heritage – in the 60’s they demolished two of the best examples of Art Noveau architecuture by Victor Horta – the ‘Maison du Peuple’ and ‘Hotel Eetvelde’. Thankfully, his personal house survives as the ‘Horta Museum’. Wandering around the city you find a such a wide variety of styles that you
soon find that little really stands out, until you come across the hidden gems such as the Horta House, or the not so hidden gems like the outrageously huge Ministry of Justice and the impressive Grand Place.
The thing that Brussels is probably most famous for is being the center of the European Commission – in fact since most of the politicians are on holiday this time of year, the city was rather empty of people. Which meant there was all the more room in the bars for sampling Brussels other point of fame – its beers. In sharp contrast with Britain where all beers are served in pretty much the same standard pint glass, the Belgiums like to hightlight the differences between the beers. Nearly every beer appeared to have its own ‘ideal’ glass & suggested manner of serving from which bar staff were none to happy at diverging. When requesting a ‘slice of lemon’ with a glass of Ciney Blonde, we were rather abruptly refused – ‘NO. You don’t have lemon with that’ . Of well, so much for the customer is always right.
