New York Trip Report, Lens
New York
Went to New York for two weeks with work, thus having a weekend to wander around. Went for a walk around Ground Zero, through to Battery Park (where I lived for a few weeks in 1999), along to Wall Street and down to the South Street Seaport. Had a quick trip up to Central Park, watched some guys bouldering, and then went to Trattoria Del’Arte for some astonishingly nice pizza and a glass of wine. Finally rolled off Saturday with a trip to see Chicago, on the basis that I couldn’t get cheap tickets for anything good. I was entertained but (as ever) relieved that I’d not spent full ticket price.
Sunday involved a trip to MOMA, which I rather enjoyed, having some rather conservative modern art rather than all the flashy and rather hard to understand stuff you previously found in Tate Modern (although I’ve not been since the re-hang). Annoyingly discovered after paying that I could have got in for free, but that’s just my tight northern approach to life reappearing. Wandered down to see the Rockerfeller Center (nice wall motifs), Grand Central Terminus (pretty impressive), past the NY Public Library and through Times Square to catch the E train up to Central Park again. Had some chinese on the upper west side, then back down to Times Square Loews to catch Inside Man (slightly disappointing; I enjoyed the general feel of the film, the characters and the dialogue but fundamentally the “clever solution” that is present in all good heist movies just wasn’t clever enough, and the deep dark secret wasn’t that interesting either).
Photos will be turning up shortly…
Angst
This was my first trip to NY on my own; I found myself with a lot of evenings with some expenses to have a nice dinner and then nothing else to do, and no energy to do it with anyway. It’s a bit isolating working with people who you only vaguely know and then having the evenings to yourself. I met up with a friend from uni who is working out there which was a rather pleasant break from it all. The culture differences don’t help either; there is something comforting about the familiar and being in a strange place is rather stressful, even if it’s one that you think you know from movies and television shows.
I’m hoping that for any future trips, I’ll know what I’m doing and I’ll be able to relax a little more 
Lens
A few days prior to the weekend I took advantage of the dollars to sterling exchange rate to buy a new lens - a Canon EF 70-200mm L IS. First thoughts were
* it’s really, really heavy
* the zoom isn’t as much as I was hoping for
* I can’t tell if the image stabilisation is making that much difference
* but the image quality looks pretty sharp
Well, after getting used to it, I can confirm that it is worth the ludicrous price tag, giving astonishingly sharp images. The IS really does help to give a really stable image to the extent that it’s possible to take sharp pictures at 1/25th of a second at the full zoom. I’m really looking forward to taking more photos with it and getting the most out of it. What I would really like to do is try it with a 1.4x and a 2x extender - specifically to see how it affects the sharpness of the end result.
It’s still really, really heavy, though…