Gear

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Well, as buying new equipment is a large source of joy (and distress) for any photographer, and I sometimes feel I am spending too much time on especially the selection process, I want to save you time and worries by showing examples of what I purchased and why (or add to your pre-purchase evaluation information overflow).

What we tend to forget is that the gear does not turn bad images into good ones, and that a piece of equipment doing 80% of the job might be 100% ok for what we are trying to achieve. But everybody seems to be focused on getting the 100% solution, sometimes paying 150% the money ;-)

So, I will expand this list into a comprehensive summary of what I have in my photo bag, and my post processing lab (ergh, desk), studio (ergh, under-sofa bag). Let’s get started:

Small photo bag

  • Nikon D300
  • Nikkor 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5
  • Additional battery
  • Usually 4 compact flash cards with 4 GByte each

Large photo bag

  • The bag itself actually is a Lowepro CompuTrekker Plus AW backpack I bought in February 2008. Love the utility, hate the design.
  • Sigma 100-300mm f/4 including lens collar
  • Sigma 1.4x EX DG tele converter for the 100-300. I added a Sigma 2x EX DG as well.
  • Micro Nikkor 60mm f/2.8
  • Tokina 12-24mm f/4
  • Nikkor 50mm f/1.8
  • Nikon SB 800 flash
  • Nikon 8×36 Monarch DCF Binoculars I got in January 09
  • LED Flash light and head mounted flash light
  • Folding chair
  • Garmin GPS device
  • Sometimes, and only sometimes, a Dell notebook.
  • Attached to the backpack, my Velbon SherpaPro 630 carbon fiber tripod equipped with a Benro KS-1 ball head. Sometimes exchanged for my Velbon monopod.

Lab

  • My main desktop computer is a Dell Dimension 8300, 2.4 GHz. I just looked it up, I bought it in 2003. It is just doing fine. The only things I have improved over the years are RAM (from 512 MByte to 2 GByte), and disk space (from 120 Gbytes to now – …calculating… – 1.7 Tbytes.) Admittedly it is a bit slow, but I can work with Photoshop, and also Photoshop Elements is nicely organizing my 50000+ images.
  • Monitor – ups, this is even older. In 2002 I couldn’t resist and bought a 17″ TFT from Sony. This was pure extravaganza back then, and guess what? It is working as nicely as on the day I bought it.
  • Spyder2 monitor calibration device.
  • Camera Bit’s Photo Mechanic as image downloader and photo browsing, tagging application.
  • Photoshop Elements 5.0
  • Photoshop CS3 Extended edition
  • Firefox.
  • An HP 8850 pigment ink printer for paper sizes up to A3+. One of the harder decisions to make, see my article on my rationale to get this one.
  • Storage system for a online backup of all photo data is a Synology NAS with 2 Terabytes of raw disk space, currently configured in a mirrored drive configuration giving me roughly 913 GBytes network attached disk space.

Studio

  • Strobist set consisting of
    • Two Nikon SB 26 Flashes bought used on Ebay
    • Three light stands (air damped)
    • Assorted umbrellas
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