Pancake

Approximately twenty-nine years ago, I first met Ashley Jones. In those days he was an excellent guitarist (and, to the best of my knowledge, remains one). I was always struck by the time he put into practising and the effort he put into learning and then utilising music technology.

Later on, he bought that same application to photography and these days, in addition to his day job, he does a lot of photographic and video work for prog rock bands around London*.

A few years ago I took Ash's advice on which DSLR camera to buy. Working to my budget, Ash recommended a Canon and a couple of lenses, and the whole set up has served me very well on the occasions that I use it. (It's too big to carry around all the time, so most of my shots here are taken on my Samsung 'daily' camera or my 'phone.)

Recently I decided I wanted a new lens to freshen things up a bit and went to Ash for some advice but, to be honest, I'm not really sure what I'm looking for so although I'm sure the advice was sound, I was still at a bit of a loss. However, I did have a look around the site of one of the links he sent me, where I found a 'pancake lens' for just over a hundred pounds. So, on the spur of the moment, I bought that and it arrived today.

Obviously I unpacked it and attached it to the camera and took a few shots and most of the shots came out really nicely. However, even in autofocus mode, the actual focussing doesn't seem to work through the viewfinder, which is pretty frustrating; I'm not sure whether there's something wrong or if I haven't set something up correctly (although surely one does just screw on the lens?). So, at the weekend, I'll have a Google around and see what I can find out.

For now, though, here's one of the shots I took today, which, by my standards, turned out well.

* That probably isn't the best description. If Ash reads this, he can tell me what a better one would be!

Update on 30/07/14: Ash had a photo in the Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jul/24/knifeworld-the-unravelling-review