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Sonos

I’ve been considering building a Sonos home audio system for some time. I want to have music throughout the house and I want to be able to easily control which rooms it plays in at any given time.

A weekly email update from TheWireCutter.com two days ago alerted me to the release of the Sonos PLAY:1 two-speaker model, along with a free Sonos Bridge with purchase of any Sonos speaker. $199 with a free Bridge thrown in? I’m in. I read a few reviews about the PLAY:1 and then placed my order.

The PLAY:1 and Bridge arrived via FedEx a few minutes ago. I had it set up and playing music from iPhone in minutes. The on-screen instructions in their iOS controller app walked me through everything. My iTunes music library is currently being indexed via the OS X controller app.

25 January 2014 Update: Since buying my PLAY:1, I’ve picked up three more Sonos pieces: a PLAY:5, a CONNECT:AMP and a CONNECT. I haven’t tried the CONNECT yet, but I’m very happy with the other two pieces.

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Goodbye, Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX lens.

Now that I own a full-frame body, I decided to sell my 35mm Nikkor f/1.8 AF-S DX lens. I have a 50mm f/1.4 AF-S G lens that gives me the field of view that I was getting with my 35mm on my (DX) D90. So this lens is redundant, unless I were to buy a DX body, which I’m not inclined to do — I’d rather buy a Fuji X-E1.

I bought this lens on 4 August 2010 for $196.93. It sold last night via Amazon Marketplace for $174 plus shipping. Ignoring Amazon’s reasonable seller fee for a moment, I used that lens regularly (tens of thousands of photos) for two years and the ultimate rental fee was $$22.93. Not a bad deal.

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Hello again, Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 D.

The other day, on a lark, I decided to see what used deals were available on Amazon Marketplace for the Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 D lens.

I found what seemed too good to be true: A mint, new in box specimen for $775. Seriously? I ordered it lickety split.

Well, it arrived today. This thing is definitely new in box. And sexy. Dead sexy. The autofocus is very snappy on my D600; much faster, as I recall, than it was on my D90.