Niklas' blog

I’ve just done a bad thing. I’ve ordered the Nikon AF-S Nikkor 18 – 200 mm f/3.5-5.6G DX ED VR which is a brilliant lens. I’m in awe of it. At first, I thought about looking for this Tamron-lens I’ve written about before, but I happened to catch info on this newish Nikon-lens. It was announced in November, and I wish to Isaac Hayes I could have gotten whiff of it earlier, but things as the way they are, and hence, I’ll probably get my lens by the summer or in the autumn. Yes! Effing alias khrist. So why will it take that long a time? Check this, courtesy of Ken Rockwell:

The only thing wrong with this lens is that it’s so good. The backorder list is so deep that they are hard to get. This has replaced my entire bag of lenses, except for my ultrawide 12 – 24 mm. As of January 25th, 2006 I’ve made about 6,000 shots with mine and they look great.

Just buy one. I did. It’s so good and so much fun I haven’t even bothered to put any other lens on my D200 since it arrived.

The 18 – 200 VR has no limits. I never hit the stop at either end of the zoom ring or can’t focus close enough. It frees me to do what I want to do. I used to always have to swap between my long and short lenses. In the few days I’ve been shooting with my 18 – 200 it’s been a pleasure to go between tele and wide and macro with just one flick of the zoom ring. It focuses very fast. The 18 – 200 VR focuses close enough to shoot something in your hand, even at 200 mm! At 200 mm it can focus on something less than 8″ in front of itself! To repeat: the image quality is also sharp and stunning.

What a thing. I really trust his reviews as they’re always backed by hard facts, and that’s definitely the case here. I can’t wait to get hold of it, and doing to will make me learn how to save money to get it. Ha! Two flies in one smack: materialism and money. Greenspan and Dubya, where’s my new job?

You got flickr? You want to make a dynamic screen-saver. You do! So go.

A very remarkable report has been published in Sweden. This report consists of replies from 3000 randomly selected Swedish citizens, and questions them on tolerance. 41% are partially or wholly negative when it comes to jews. 5% are anti-semitic. 25% are negative against the idea of having a jewish Prime Minister. How very nice. The entire report on these matters, as well as anti-Islamic, homophobic and intolerant views is available in English, in this PDF-file. The report is available in more languages here.

Speaking of a lesser kind of intolerance, read this article. From it:

An Alaska high school violated a student’s free speech rights by suspending him after he unfurled a banner reading “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” across the street from the school, a federal court ruled on Friday.

My hero. While on heroes, guess which religion your favourite super-hero is part of?