My Gear Pt. II

Got home late last night from an intimate concert with Martyn Joseph. My good friend Trent, was at a song writing workshop with Martyn and got to know him on a personal level. Martyn was coming over for a concert in Calgary and Trent asked if he would play for a group of about 50 friends. What an amazing evening! Good food, connecting with friends, and listening to an incredible musician. Martyn shared that he'd once had a review where the critic said, “Martyn Joseph makes Leonard Cohen sound like Julie Andrews.” OK, maybe his voice isn't the best, but he is a brilliant song writer and can he play the guitar. Amazing!

When I wrote, My Gear Pt. I, it was from the perspective of the decisions that I made in the fall of 2007 as I prepared for travel photography. In this post I will finish the discussion around the gear that I have purchased since our trip to Europe, and will conclude with what I would purchase if I was going to buy a digital SLR camera today.

I was very pleased with the gear that I purchased for our trip to Europe. You can view the best of my Europe pictures on my website at www.scottjantzenphotography.com. Most of my shooting was outside during the daytime, so I rarely had need for anything other than my Nikkor 18-200 mm VR lens. When we were at the Willie Clancy Traditional Music Festival in the dark pubs of Miltown Malbay in Ireland, I switched to my 50 mm f/1.4 and was able to take reasonable pictures with available light. One other piece of equipment that I purchased before our trip was a Nikon SB-24 Speedlight (from eBay for $70) and a set of Cactus wireless triggers, which I lugged all over Europe. I was very glad that I did for the one occasion when I really needed them, which was our evening Greek Feast with Thia Popi (Aunt Popi, portrait above) and Theo Nikos (Uncle Nikos). I've been an avid follower of Strobist, which is a blog dedicated to teaching photographers how to use small portable flash units, triggered off camera in order to create photos with dramatic lighting. Highly recommended!

Since getting back from our trip, I have been working at rounding out my photo equipment so that I can make better portraits with “interesting lighting” as opposed to the very flat, mug-shot type photos that you get with on camera flash photography. I've purchased a second flash, a Nikon SB-28 (again from eBay for $100), a light stand, umbrella, rechargeable batteries, gels to control the colour of the light from the flash, and a few other lighting tid-bits. I bought most of my stuff in a "strobist" kit through Midwest Photo Exchange. They were great to deal with, even for cross-border shopping. I also bought a Nikkor 85 mm f/1.8 lens, which is fast, bright and great for portraits where you have some room to work. I can get in nice and close to people's faces without being in their personal space like I would if using the 50 mm.

That's pretty much it for my collection of gear that I currently use. There is nothing that I have in my collection that I don't use on a regular basis and I don't regret any of the purchases that I've made. I think I did the best I could with the dollars available and the information at hand. That being said, if I were purchasing today instead of a year and a half ago, I'd buy the Nikon D90. The reason is the amount of noise that I get in blue skies and other similar dark even spaces with my D80. It is not a problem for normal photography, but the standards for iStock submissions are getting so stringent that it is getting harder and harder to get an image accepted. The quality of the sensors in Nikon cameras has improved dramatically over the past year and this has been incorporated into the D90. The D90 also still fits all of my original requirements that make for a great "travel" SLR camera. The other fantastic thing about the D90 is that it takes video! I'll link to Chase Jarvis where he shows a video demo of the D90, very cool. That's it for now. I'd be curious to hear your comments about the choices I've made and your experiences. Just click on the “Comment” button below. I've had a report of difficulty leaving comments. If that's your experience, please send me an email so I know.

My Gear Pt. I

Let me begin by quoting Scott Bourne from This Week in Photography, "Nobody makes bad lenses or bad cameras anymore." That being said, I researched my camera gear very carefully before I purchased it in the fall of 2007. My decisions were based on the fact that we would be traveling to Europe in the summer of 2008, and I wanted to travel light. I also wanted to maximize the quality of equipment for the least amount of money (which is always more than you've budgeted when you are buying camera gear). I spent considerable time in camera stores, handling cameras from both Canon and Nikon. I didn't consider other manufacturers as I wanted to be able to access the large number of used lenses, speedlights, and other accessories available. I settled on the Nikon D80 because I really liked the way it fit my hands and the controls were intuitive to operate. My next decision after deciding on the D80 body was what lens to buy. I was tempted to purchase the inexpensive "kit" lens, but decided instead on purchasing the best glass I could afford. I settled on the Nikkor 50 mm f/1.4 and have been very happy with this compact, very fast and high quality lens.
I especially like the shallow depth of field that is achieved by shooting with a large aperture, resulting in a smooth, silky background. Whenever I purchase a new lens I also buy a high quality UV filter which protects the front element of the lens from dust and scratches.

I spent the next few months taking hundreds of photos with my new system, getting to know the controls, options, and settings. I found this combination of camera body and lens to be excellent for many types of photography, but found myself getting frustrated with not being able to "bring in" many subjects because of the short focal length. I knew that I would soon be looking for a longer focal length zoom lens. While I was saving up for my next lens I purchased several additional memory cards, an extra battery, and a remote shutter release so that I could take long exposure photographs with the camera mounted on a tripod.

In November of 2008 I began shopping for a zoom lens that would cover a decent range and still be compact and high quality. I did lots of research and after much consideration chose the Nikon 18-200 f/3.5-5.6 VR lens. I really like this lens. I've taken about 90% of my photos with this lens and it is as close to an "all-in-one" that you could hope to get. Having the full range of focal lengths from wide-angle to moderate zoom in one lens does not come without some sacrifice in sharpness, speed and minor darkening of the corners at 28 mm. With this pair of lenses, the 18-200 mm and the fast 50 mm I was almost set for travel photography.

To round out my gear I acquired a good quality circular polarizing filter to fit the 18-200 and a 120 GB Hyperdrive Colorspace, which is a portable hard drive with a screen and built in card reader. This device was perfect for storing my digital photos so that I could clear off my cards and keep shooting. This particular model is quite reasonably priced and the internal rechargeable battery can be charged with a USB cable, AC adapter, and a car charger. I also took along a second portable hard drive which I used to backup the Hyperdrive whenever I had access to a computer.
My last purchase before our trip was a good quality camera backpack. I looked at several LowePro bags but I wasn't happy with the quality of the stitching and velcro closures. I tried out one bag in a local camera store and as I opened a velcro tab, the stitching let loose. Not impressed. I ended up choosing the Customary Barge backpack from Crumpler. I like this bag because it looks like a regular backpack instead of a camera bag. The bottom half has storage for a SLR camera, an extra lens and some accessories. The top portion has enough room for my rain gear and odds and ends. It also has a full padded sleeve for a laptop which can accomodate my Toshiba Tecra laptop. About a month after I bought my backpack, I stepped on one of the buckles for the waist belt and broke it. I sent the good folks at Crumpler an email and they sent me a free replacement waist belt. I was very impressed with their customer service.

Anything That Reflects Light

I'm often asked, "So what do you shoot?" My answer is usually along the lines of "Anything that reflects light!" One of my favorite things to do is to get up early in the morning, grab a cup of coffee in a travel mug and head west of High River into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. One morning, late last August, I happened upon a group of five cowboys in the process of moving a heard of cattle from one pasture, across the road, to an adjacent section of pasture. The light was warm, the air was cool and these quiet gentlemen nodded affirmation when I motioned that I would like to make photos of them. I took this photo just after they crossed the road and headed down into a gully. This cowboy stopped for a few moments to appreciate the peaceful morning and take in the mountain view. Taken at 1/60, f /5.6, ISO 100 at 200mm with my trusty 18-200 VR lens.