Quiet and cooler day today. Woke up around 8:15. Spent most of the day continuing to test my 24-70mm, and, deciding that this lens was unsatisfactorily soft at f/2.8 across over 30 photos, I looked into a return back to KEH and a prime lens to replace this. It's especially sad because the focus speed is so fast it's like magic, but what's the point of the photos aren't sharp? The silver lining is that using this lens has made me more aware of how much I actually like normal and even (short) telephoto focal lengths. Something about the perspective distortion on 35mm and shorter feels a little gooey to me and not in a good way. Might be related to the mindset of capturing scenes vs. subjects -- I know for sure photojournalists want to capture scenes and stories in medias res more than posed subjects in a studio, so they'd benefit from wider angles. Anyway my replacement prime lens from the potentially recovered $500 I would get back from the return (the Monad willing) is the EF 50mm f/1.8 STM and 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro. No, that wasn't a massive typo. I'm switching out the zoom lens for two lenses. And the kicker is that it's still cheaper -- I think it came out to $380. If these things still aren't as sharp as my 60 year old FL 55mm I will become whatever the photography world equivalent of The Joker is. (Maybe Ken Rockwell.) Incidentally I feel less frenzied about waiting for these lenses to come -- it'll take longer than 6 days by their estimate -- which probably means I'm actually returning to normal.
"[Growing up] is hard and nobody understands." // https://www.homestuck.com/story/2391