RYP wrote:I like the Leica 19mm and bought the Panasonic cuz it had a 24mm equivalent Bought the 14 on the Nikon D700. Longest lens I have is a 180
Post more pics if you want always interested in the back story!
Do you already have a 4/3 Panasonic? I have decided to definitely get a 4/3, but I think I am going to get the Olympus E-PL2 when it comes out. I would love a couple Leica lenses to go with it, but the only way that'll happen is if I steal them or find a good deal on some secondhand ones. (hint hint) I have seen a couple on eBay for decent price and according to the descriptions they are in decent shape, but I am not comfortable with buying used camera gear online. Maybe if there is a return policy I'll go for it.
I'll post more pics later in the photography forum.
The little girls and the family picture I posted were from an Earthquake in Jogyakarta, Indonesia.
I was passed out drunk in bed when my gunny beat on my door at about 2 in the morning, the day of the quake. He said grab your gear, you are heading to Indonesia. We landed there within about 24 hours of the first quake and were there for many of the aftershocks. I believe we were the first westerners to arrive besides the ones already living there. I didn't see any other media for days.
There were 12 of us in the advanced party. Mostly we were there to assess the situation to determine what we needed the body of our assistance team to bring. There were a couple of Air Force officers on board, the rest were Navy and Marine Corps. When I asked the Air Force guys why they were there, they said they needed to do test on the runway to see if it could be fixed and if it could handle large planes like the C-130 we were in. The runway had a huge crack running down the center of it. This is the runway we landed on. Thank god for Navy pilots. They got skills.
As soon as we landed I headed to the closest hospital. That is where I got the family shot above. I had to step over bodies of the dead and injured to get into the hospital. Saying it was overwhelmed is a gross understatement. The halls, parking lot and even the sidewalk had patients wait fruitlessly for help. People were carrying their loved ones in on carpets, bicycles and scooters. That damn place has more bikes than I have ever seen. Since I work for a government news outlet, we didn't publish any of the really gruesome stuff. I will post some later in the photo forum if you want.
I later learn that hospital had the first case of human to human contraction of bird flu just weeks before I got there.
We later set up a field ER/OR and clinic a few miles south of the city. People poured in needing everything from simple inoculations to trauma surgery. That is where the smiling girl picture came from. She was being treated for burns to her back.
One of the biggest problems was tetanus. Unlike in the US, they don't get the same standardized shots we westerners do and it resulted in tetanus epidemic two weeks after the quake. Apparently two weeks is the incubation period for that disease. Watching a man completely paralyzed by every muscle in his body "cramping" is one of the saddest things I have ever seen. He was completely aware of everything yet couldn't move and was in massive amounts of pain while being fed with tubes. They had ran out of pain meds. The heart is the last thing to seize up, so he looked like he was frozen in a position of a person who was being shocked by high voltage until he died.
After a week, other media outlets showed up. This is when my job changed from journalist to public affairs rep. I mostly gave tours of our compound (ER and clinic) and gave statements to the visiting reporters.
After two months we retrograded our stuff and stayed at hotel until a plane arrived to bring us home to Okinawa Japan. This is when I stopped taking the malaria pills and others meds. Mistake. I ordered a coke at the restaurant and thought "fuck it" I want some ice in it. I usually told them to hold the ice, but I was sick of the heat. Jogyakarta is right on the equator, well the small city I was in was at least.
I spent the next two days in the head with an IV in my arm keeping me hydrated.