The development of my gear, part 1

In the last post I told a little bit about the story of how I became a photographer. In a couple of next posts I will write a bit about a gear I'm using and in what order I got it. I will include also a few comments on how I see the value of my choices now and concider if I would do something differently. I will also put in some shots that I have been taken with the gear I'm talking about.

Daisies

24mm, F 9.0 @ 1/50 second, ISO 100

Copyright (C) 2008 Markku Heikkila

In March 2008 I went to local camera store to buy a DSLR while I was tired taking photos with my Ixus. My sister got a son just before that and I wanted to get good pictures of the newcomer. So I was thinking of buying D60 or similar. Even before that I tried to find as much information as I could from internet about starting level DSLRs. I don't know how but all together I found out that Nikon was more made for me than Canon. Sorry Canon people, I know that there are some advantages and disadvantages over both brands. Anyway I thought that I need to confirm my conclusions at some local camera stores. So I surfed around all camera shops around Jyväskylä. And I have to say that I found very expensive ones with no service attitude at all and with prices very high. Fortunately I also found shops with very good service and prices very high. If anyone knows a place with a good service and LOW prices, my wife would be more than happy. At Foto Saarinen I got very good and friendly advices to go with Nikon D80 or I would soon be looking for one. They also advised me to buy Nikon 18-200mm VR as kit lens. I didn't do as they advised but I bought Nikon 18-55mm f/3.5 - 5.6G and Nikon 70-300mm VR because I wanted to shoot some sports. I haven't been shooting sports a lot, but 70-300 was my ultimate number one lens before I got my 24-70, but more about that later. This was my basic gear at the beginning.

Wedding couple

22mm, F 8.0 @ 1/100 second, ISO 400

Copyright (C) 2008 Markku Heikkila

Now one year later I still think that I made a good choice with the D80 body. A jump to the next class (D300) would have been too high for me. I have used every feature there is in D80 so anything below that would not have been enough and I would have ended up buying D80 sooner or later. I don’t know about the lenses I bought. I haven’t had opportunity to test 18 – 200mm Nikon so I can not say anything about it. But I can tell you that I was missing something from 55 to 70 mm before I bought my 24-70mm lens. I like to shoot portraits and if not in studio, the 70 – 300 mm lens is too tight with DX body. But now I’m so happy to be able to cover anything from 18 mm to 300 mm with my good lenses from 24 mm on.  

Game Ball
300 mm, F 5.6 @ 1/160 second, ISO 800

Copyright (C) 2008 Markku Heikkila

That’s all for now. At next post we will talk about tripods and flashes.