Crossing Over to Nikon

CROSSING OVER TO NIKON

My first Nikon DSLR was a D80, and at the time I felt that it was a big step up from where I had been, a majority of the worlds photographers own either a Canon or a Nikon, that is not to say that the other brands are any less of a camera, but I was now using a camera that everyone could relate to, I felt that I was part of a bigger thing, and to add to that, there is so much more information & reviews available in magazines, internet etc that directly related to my specific equipment, making it far easier to make new purchase decisions.

I loved my D80, it was reliable & produced high quality images, little did I know at the time that this would lead to a substantial investment in Nikon equipment over the coming years.

My original thought train was to purchase a second-hand compatible lens of the desired focal length & aperture on ebay so that I could use it whilst I got enough cash together to buy a new Nikon lens of the same specs, I would then sell the compatible lens and add that cash to what I had to buy the new Nikon lens, this work well for some time, however made the cost of getting into the gear far more expensive than it needed to be.  I used this process not only for lenses, but for other stuff as well, tripods, flashes, the list went on, however at the end of the day there is one lesson that I can give you, and that is you have to buy quality gear once!.

Slowly but surely, I increased my investment in Nikon equipment to the point where I own almost as much as some small retail camera stores, my wife asked me one day why do I need to have so many cameras, you only have two hands, how could you possibly use more than two, I replied simple, the same reason you have more than one handbag!, this of course didn't go down all the well.

As mentioned earlier, I continued to purchase additional lenses, and added Nikon D300 to the list, this was a bit weird at first as the camera was significantly bigger and heavier, the menus were nothing like what I was use to, different controls etc, so I tended not to use it as I still favoured my D80, but slowly convinced myself to learn the settings and all of a sudden I had changed over to the D300 being my prime DSLR. Nikon then of course brought out the faster D300s, it would shoot seven & a half frames a second and had better in camera processing, so I then sold my D80 and purchased my first D300s, I say my first because I purchased a second one later on, really great camera.

By this time I had started becoming obsessed, I always wanted a full frame DSLR, so I extended the kit by purchasing my first full frame D700, it was slower than the D300s, but very much superier in many ways, I then purchased the new D7000 small sensor camera, more megapixels but it just didn't suit me, so I sold it and purchased a full frame D3s, now this is a camera, it took a while to get used to it, but now it is without doubt my camera of choice.

In early 2011, I made the descision to increase the camera bag to include a Phase One P65+ digital medium format camera, sixty-one megapixels, when you get this one right the final image is amazing, big files but can produce big results.

Photographers see more of the world!

As you get older you start to think about what are you going to do when you retire, I gave this some thought some years ago and decided that I would do something different, instead of “doing nothing”, I decided to retire into photography? what an odd thought, however I think that for some of us, we only start appreciating all of the wonderful things around us when we slow down enough to enjoy it, I truly believe that photographers see more of the world, by this I mean they are always looking around for something to photograph, and thus see more of the world.

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