GEAR TALK

My high school graduation present was an excellent 35mm camera, "Sears" brand, yes the department store, it was made for them by Pentax I think. Although I did not appreciate it at the time, it had an awesome 50mm Asahi lens. When I actually became interested in photography, after years of snap shots of family and events, I was carrying the lightest weight and least expensive point and shoot Olympus because I thought it was the best for the circumstances . At that time I was doing high altitude mountaineering and week long tracks in remote wilderness areas. Packing light and not having to worry about gear in rough conditions was the order of the day. However, the impact of the landscape aesthetics became increasingly more compelling and photography more central to the outdoor experience. It was time to migrate to a more versatile 35mm format. I choose Nikon because of its wide lens selection and otherwise fine reputation.

Until the Nikon D100 came out I believed the truth existed only on film and digital photography was a mere virtual truth. In my opinion, doctoring photos on fancy computer programs was somehow cheating. I had a couple of N 80 bodies and several lenses and I was learning more about photo taking. I got two or three photos I liked from each role I shot, not very efficient. I saw fantastic results from the more "affordable" D100, the advantages of digital photography became undeniable. I changed my ideas about truth. My compromise was to take digital images that do not require significant digital manipulation, get it correctly right out of the camera. I am working on it. So..., I find that digital photography is a robust learning tool for all the obvious reasons, the quality of results are just great, and for my website nothing beats a digital camera.

IN MY BAG

Nikon D200, Nikon lenses: 50 1.4, 12-24, 18-200 VR, 80-400 VR, 80-200 2.8.

My bag's history:

November 2003

Nikon D100 (sold)

Nikon 24-120 VR, used most, love the VR and reach. Travel and walking around lens. (sold, replaced by Nikon 18-200 DX VR)

Nikon 80-400 VR, wildlife lens

Nikon 12-24 DX, superb. If you like true wide angle on digital a must have lens.

Nikon 50mm 1.4 D, super sharp lens, great for low light or indoors natural light photos.

Bogen 3405 tripod with build in head.

I carry the gear in a small and lightweight Delsey camera backpack that fits perfectly into a day backpack. Functional and a comfortable carry with plenty of room for other gear and while traveling I do not advertise that my pack contains photo gear. In the field I use either my camera backpack alone, chest holster or camera pack inside the backpack depending on my activity.

December 2004

Nikon D2H (sold, replaced by the D200)

Epson P-2000 multimedia storage viewe

Nikon 80-200 2.8 D

June 2005

Nikon 18-70 DX. - (sold, replaced by the 18-200) The Glacier trip included a fair amount of hiking with significant elevation gains. To cover my desired focal range from wide angle to landscape tele I will need to carry my 12-24 and 24-120 for the D100, too heavy, almost 4 lb. The 18-70 DX lens received great reviews and weighs a mere 15 oz., good compromise, fairly wide to good enough landscape tele, perfect, on my D100 total of 2.2 lb., that I can live with. This combo is my "hiking all day" set up. Most of the landscapes in the Glacier gallery were taken with this lens.

December 2005

Nikon D200

Nikon 18-200 DX VR. The 24-120 VR and the 18-70 are great lenses, but the new 18-200 VR replaces both, and for a walking around/travel lens that is what I want.

ABOUT LENSES

After buying and selling lenses for several years I discovered that I was suffering from a mental condition common among photographers, "Lens OCD" or Lens Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. If you think I am joking take a look at some lens discussions on the photo forums listed in my links page. I managed to recover from silly concerns of how tack sharp and minimal the barrel or pin cushion distortion was reported for a lens. I reminded myself of the old cliche, the photograph is made by the person behind the lens.

With the caveat that unless you are a professional, need poster size prints, competing for a National Geographic's photographer job or enjoy viewing your photos with a magnifying glass, buy your lens by function not price. Under normal viewing circumstances the human eye can not tell the difference between a decent inexpensive and a very expensive lens. So why do I list two very expensive lenses in my line up? Because of the unique functions that are not obtainable in a less expensive lens. For example, I could hardly distinguish photo quality between my $1400 Nikon 80-400 VR (Vibration Reduction) and my (now sold) $400 80-400 Tokina. The difference? the VR. Most of my photography that required a telephoto lens is in the back country. I hate to schlep and set up a heavy tripod, the VR feature allows me to get very acceptable photos at maximum tele without a tripod. Skiing in Yellowstone looking for wolves to photograph is greatly enabled with the VR. I love wide angle photos compositions, a digital camera's crop requires a 12mm focal length to achieve an 18mm focal length. If I want such wide angle composition I need to shell out the bucks. I would have bought the cheaper Sigma 12-24, but, alas it has no front filter treads ( I purchased the Nikon lens prior to the availability of the Tokina 12-24, which I would have likely purchased instead, for almost half the cost). For another example, if I want close action shot of an indoor basketball game, the fast focusing 80-200 2.8 will come in handy. I splurged buying this lens but could not find another one with as fast focusing capability. For low light photos outdoors with my lenses? no problems. I will use a tripod. When it is dark enough to need a tripod I am not likely to be traipsing around in the back country. Low light photos without the use of a tripod? in my case.. indoors venues, the normal view of the 50mm f1.4 prime is my choice.

NIKON 24-120 VR

I loved the Tamron 24-135 great lens! but I sold it after a couple of years. Not great for low light since most of it's zoom range is at f 5.6, but with a tripod it produced good quality photos. A dive trip to Oz and Papua New Guinea required minimum gear for land photography since my dive gear and underwater video take up much room. A tripod was really out of the question and although various gadgets and techniques could be used to steady the camera, I decided that bringing a single lens with VR will be much more workable for me. Mostly, I was interested in photographing the rainforests and the sunsets, both requiring longish exposures. The 24-120 was a good range and the Nikon was the only VR on the market. Since this Nikon lens received mixed reviews I decided to test the lens prior to purchase. I compared it to the Tamron, using a tripod, photographing a newspaper at various f stops and zoom ranges. The Tamron performed better corner to corner toward the 24mm end, the Nikon was not as sharp particularly on the lower right of the frame. Tamron lens produced better contrast. Above f 8 I could see no differences between the two lenses. Barrel and pincushion distortions were a bit less on the Tamron but not significantly so. On my D100 the Nikon lens was just fine, on my computer screen the lenses were essentially comparable. Then came the VR test, the prime reason for the lens. VR allowed me to take good quality photos handheld at shutter speed as slow as 1/8 and even 1/4! (click here for sample comparison) I am very pleased with the performance of this lens. (see photos from the trip in the Oz and PNG galleries)

NIKON D2H

When the D2H price came down substantially at the end of 2004 I jump at the occasion to purchase it. My trusty D100 is a great camera with one problem, in RAW format it freezes up after three captures, unlike the D2H which can burst well over 20 captures in RAW. I found that for wild life, action and rapid changing light conditions, the D100 in RAW format does not make it. Although fine jpg produces great photos the post processing advantages of the RAW format can not be utilized. Although the D2H has a mere 4.1 megapix sensor, my research on the subject convinced me that pixel count is not as important as pixel quality. Here is a comparison shot taken from Ron Reznick web site comparing the D2H to the new 12.1 megapixel Nikon D2X, you be the judge, can you see a difference between a 4 and 12 megapixels photos? I printed a D2H image I opened in the Photoshop CS RAW dialogue to a 17x11 or 5120x3391 pix resolution at 300 dpi, the print was superb. I would show the full res image but the TIFF file is 100 megabytes and will take forever to download. I am certain that even a 20x30 print would be great. However, there is no doubt that the 12 megapixels camera will produce even better quality prints with considerably more details and sharpness. Now, I have my wide angle 12-24 on the D100 for landscape shots and since landscapes are static, I do not care about camera freeze in RAW, it actually forces me to spend the 20-30 seconds it takes the D100 to write the files, to look and study the composition for my next shot. On the D2H I have either my 24-120 or 80-400, depending on the subject. Since I do not need to change lenses very often and seldom outdoors, the pesky problem of sensor dust is greatly diminished.

CARRYING GEAR

I bought six camera bags, since they are hard to sell on Ebay I gave five of them away. It took a while to learn what carrying system I needed. First I bought a shoulder bag, as my camera gear grew I needed larger and larger bags, then I found out that for the outdoor photographer shoulder bags are useless while hiking, climbing or skiing. I can not figure out for the life of me why I did not realize this, given my outdoors know how. Even walking around taking city photos was not served well by shoulder bag, almost ripped off my shoulder. So the larger bag is now my "gear storage bag," I leave in my closet, nice way to store gear. Then, I found it best to place my gear in a hiking backpack, comfortable to carry but bouncing around, bumping into each other in unpadded packs loaded with other stuff was not healthy for the gear. So I began to experiment with dedicated camera backpacks.

What I needed was a pack that could carry two cameras with lenses attached, an extra lens, two camera batteries, an image tank, two filters and a small CF card holder. Since my photography often takes me on extended days hikes in wilderness area, often solo, I need to take along appropriate outdoor gear ; down jacket, rain gear, food water, headlamp, etc. Try to find a pack that can accommodate this..... There are plenty of very expensive large camera backpack that carry loads of camera gear with great panache, they are designed with rain covers, rugged ballistic cloth ready for weeks in the wilderness, but no consideration for the carrier's outdoor gear, how do you carry your own rain cover? Is such a bomb proof pack really needed to walk a bit from a car to the photo locations? I do not really know what the purpose of these packs is.

Finally I settled on a solution I described above, a camera pack within a backpack. I also have and use this setup with a larger backpack for more extensive trips, the pack photo I included is for my day long adventures. Works great for me, gives me all kinds of options and is inexpensive! I think I am going to send this paragraph to Lowepro for consideration.

EPSON P-2000 MULTIMEDIA STORAGE VIEWER

I am paranoid about loosing my digital photo files. Downloading a few thousand images to my image tank is always accompanied by a prayer that the thing will not break and puff there go all the photos. Although it never happened to me, I thank the Gods for that, I wanted redundancy i.e. another hard drive to store the files. Burning dvds had no appeal, power requirements, need for blank dvds and the bulk associated with a burner. My image tank was smallish, had 30 gigs, decent battery life and worked off my car's cigarette lighter, perfect for my needs. When the P 2000 came out I was seduced by it's features. This was the redundant gadget I was looking for. Not only is it a 40 gig storage tank, it has a great viewer and can be used as a superb digital portfolio. It creates slide shows, with music and transitions, that can be easily plugged in and viewed on a TV screen. What else can I wish for? Now I am no longer worried about loosing images, I just worry that the images might be worth loosing. Here is a fuller description of the P-2000.

NIKON 80-200 2.8

Fast shutter speed e.g. 1/1000 is necessary for sharpness when shooting moving subjects such as wild flowers by the trailside when it's windy, moving wildlife, bird in flight and so on. Likewise low light conditions require a fast aperture. My other zoom lenses were simply not fast enough to accommodate the correct exposure for lower lights and high shutter numbers, EVs were off and needed much post processing with inadequate results. This lens deserves it's fabulous reputation and for me, it's a producer of sharp and correctly exposed images.

NIKON D200

I was waiting for this camera, for me, it's a replacement for the superb D2H. The D200 is not better then the D2H but it's much smaller and lighter and since most of my photography is while tracking somewhere it's better suited. Most importantly, since I like to shoot RAW, it has capacity for rapid and ongoing RAW captures without freezing up. Large prints, 19x13 and larger from the D200 and the 18-200 VR often elicit a question if I used a medium format for the capture, what a compliment for the camera and lens!