Digital nomad in Hampshire

[Wild Brambles]

Greetings from an old digital nomad in Hampshire.

For the last few months I have been travelling around in a high top van, and I decided to convert this, and to use it as a base for a life as a digital nomad. I'm interested in Bitcoin, domain names, and web site creation, and photography has been a part of this. I've been using a FujiFilm bridge camera, and a Sony video camera amongst others. These are great for creating sales support images, and for web page illustrations, and I've really just been using the automatic settings.

I've been given a Canon 350D body with a couple of dead batteries and a soft bag. I decided to use this as a basis for a cheap experimental system, and I've purchased a few items to check the body and get me started. I found a suitable USB cable in one of my bags of computer bits, and I purchased a cheap charger and battery on Amazon, and the camera appears to be working. Now I'm waiting for a 4Gb compact flash card to be delivered, and a couple of used lens. One is described as "Canon FD fit wide angle zoom 24-40mm working but stuck at f3.5". This was cheap, and I thought it would be usable as a test, and I may try to fix the stuck aperture, and maybe learn a bit about the construction of lens in the process. The other one was also cheap, and is a Canon 200mm 1.4FL manual focus lens, and it has a rather nice leather lens case, and I felt that this alone way probably worth the price I paid.

I've manged to download a pdf of the user manual, and once I become familiar with the system, I'm thinking of buying a reverse lens adaptor and experimenting with some macro photography. Do you guys think this is a sensible low budget project?

 

[G.K.Jnr.]

Hi Robert, And welcome aboard TP, looking forward to hearing from you and maybe seeing some of your images on the various forums. "Enjoy".

 

[Norkie]

Welcome to the forum Robert

Not sure about the stuck aperture lens 24-40 but other than it's a decent base to start from, get posting

 

[Wild Brambles]

Thank you for the welcome, and I started a thread about reverse lens macro photography on the beginners' board.

Of course I will post a few pictures, and let you know if I manage to fix the damaged lens. I'm hoping that it will still be usable, and the stuck aperture may actually be a benefit. hopefully it will force me to learn a bit more about camera settings to compensate for the restriction.

 

[ABTog]

Welcome.
I'd love to have some time on the road to escape and shoot. Good luck with that.
I think you're going to hit a snag though with your purchases.
You've got a Canon EOS 350D, this has an EFS lens mount. The Canon 24-40 and 200mm FL lenses both use the older Canon FD lens mount. This means they won't fit the Canon EOS 350D.
You can but an adaptor (available from ebay here or amazon) but you won't get autofocus or aperture control and to be honest with those lenses, they're probably not worth the effort. If you get an adaptor with a "focus confirmation chip", this will mean that the camera will confirm via a red square or beep that it's in focus. But even a cheap modern zoom is going to be better.
Buy a secondhand Canon EFS 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 lens for £30-40 or even lens. Like this one on ebay.
If you then want a longer lens, try the Canon EFS 55-250mm which can be had for very reasonable prices, example here

Good luck.

 

[Wild Brambles]

I was hoping that they would work in manual mode. If they don't then I'll try them with a reverse ring adaptor for macro work. I didn't pay much for them, so they can jusr be an experiment.