Monday, 1 December 2008

Digital photography equipment

The following is a inventory of my current equipment:


Camera

  • Nikon D200 – the Nikon 200 is good enough - (see Canon 5D Mark II discussion in blog below)
  • AF Nikkor 50mm 1.8 Lens – Nikon's cheapest and sharpest lens
  • MC-30 Cable Release – essential for taking sharp photos and bracketing for HDR.
  • 1x 8GB Card – no need to switch cards in the middle of a shoot (cheap as chips too)


Tripod

  • Manfrotto Tripod 190 ProB - an entry level tripod that could be upgraded for added stability (but will do for now)
  • Manfrotto 141RC Head - basic pan and tilt head that seems to work (could upgrade to a pano head but hard to justify the cost at this time)


Accessories

  • Head torch – essential for early morning and twilight work
  • Level – I use a small carpenters level from the hardware store (a good habit picked up from levelling the Sinar)
  • Inverter – plugs into the car lighter socket and will charge camera batteries and laptop while on the road.
  • Spyder2 Express – simple and foolproof color management for the screen
  • 300w Inverter - Plugs into the cigarette lighter socket for charging laptop and camera batteries on the road


Computer & Software

  • Laptop – I’d love to be a Mac user, but my work supply’s me with a Dual Core, 4GB Ram laptop running Windows XP.
  • Maxtor 1TB HDD – 1TB used to seem a lot, but by the time six images are processed and the working files including NEF’s are backed-up you’re looking at 25GB for a single shoot.
  • Printer – I still use my old trusty Canon SJ800 for proofing and send out to the labs for final prints.
  • Adobe Camera Raw 4.0 – Have considered upgrading to Nikon Capture but have yet to justify the expense.
  • PhotoShop CS3 – Still the default post-processing software.
  • Autopano Pro – Best of breed open source photo-stitcher.
  • FDR Tools - Easy to use photo realistic HDR image processor.


The beauty of this kit is that it all fits in one small backpack – including the laptop - no need for any specialist back pack, as I have a LowePro 170 AW shoulder bag that neatly fits into the backpack and protects the camera.


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