When I first got my Nikon D40, it came with the 18-55mm kit lens. I thought this lens would be all I would ever need. Nikon then released the 35mm f/1.8 prime for their DX cameras. I bought it and was hooked with it’s great low light prowess. 2 lenses, who would need more right? Well, I was now bitten by the lens bug. I had tasted the sweet nectar of fast lenses and now I’ve been reading up on a bunch of other lenses.
Recently the opportunity came up to shoot a wedding for a friend, and this was the perfect chance (i.e., excuse) to try out a new lens. I’d heard that there were places online where you can rent lenses for quite affordable prices. When I found out about the wedding though, there was not much time to order something online, so I started looking for a local place here in Atlanta. I was disappointed to not really find any options nearby. There was one place, but it charged ridiculous rates. Then I found Aperturent.com. These guys run a rental website site that is based in Atlanta, and conveniently, they offer local pick up.
I browsed their site and settled on the 70-200mm f/2.8 and gave them a call. I spoke to Oscar and he was very helpful. When you pick up locally, you avoid the shipping costs and the shipping time, so it was perfect for me. I arranged with Oscar to pick up the lens and he was there right on time (actually, I was a little late). I tested the lens and found it to be in perfect order.
I used the lens for a week and then met up with Oscar to return it. Overall, I was very satisfied with Aperturent.com and would recommend them to anyone, specially if you are in Atlanta and are looking to try a new lens or perhaps some lighting or even a camera body.


AVCHD is quickly becoming a more common way to record footage in consumer and other mid to higher tier camcorders and cameras. It has many advantages, the primary being that it compresses high quality video into smaller files, thus allowing for more footage to fit in inexpensive flash storage. AVCHD has also been a source of extreme frustration for Mac users who wish to edit, organize, and archive their footage. In this post I’d like to provide some guidance based on my experience working with the Canon HF10 (similar to the HF100) camcorder.