New Lens, Recipe Site

We got our coveted 50mm prime lens today -- no zoom, but a cheap, crisp, fast lens that isn't made anymore. It's absolutely GREAT for low light portraits. So we promised ourselves that we wouldn't get more lenses, but prices are rising since they aren't made anymore, and we got it in a bundle that we can resell -- I'm hoping the final cost will be about $35, which is dirt cheap.

What is so great about a lens that doesn't even zoom? Well, it's a LOT cheaper to get a great lens that doesn't zoom than one that does. Hundreds and hundreds of dollars cheaper. That's a big motivator. Also, this lens is "fast" -- you can set it to have a very large opening (aperture, also called f-stop) to let light in. This large opening also means it has a very small depth of field, so you get a nice blurred background effect. The depth of field is so shallow, this picture of will has his shirt being a bit blurry! You can of course adjust the aperture to make more in focus. We'll be using this lens a lot.


I've also decided that I'd like to make a recipe sharing site. Blogs don't work so well for sharing and searching recipes, but they do capture the social/sharing aspect well; recipe sites make searching for recipes you've seen before easy, but also just list everybody's cream of mushroom soup & chicken recipes without discrimination. So I'd like to combine the two into an odd but interesting combo, (kinda like dipping french fries in a chocolate shake). It will probably take a bit to develop, but it would be fun too. If you have any must-have features, let me know!