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thoughts about taking pictures - arboretum 1 | low light | embrace | about pen & tone | guests

the equipment we use -

digital
- Nikon D80 - excellent full-featured semi-pro digital camera body
- Nikon D40 - super light, super cheap and fantastically good pics
- 2 x Nikon D70 digital SLR bodies
  - Nikkor AF- S 70-300mm ED f4.5-5.6 VR - an amazing vibration reduction lens that gives about four stops extra performance - great for low-light work. Crisp and sparkling - a real pleasure to use.
  - Nikkor AF-S 18-70mm ED f3.5-4.5- a good performer - not particularly fast, and prone to the zoom mechanism sticking
  - Sigma 12-24mm DG EX f4.5-5.6 - one of the widest rectilinear zooms around - huge fun to use
  - Sigma 50mm DG EX f2.8 macro - helps us get up-close and personal
  - Nikkor AF-GII 18-55mm ED f3.5-5.6 - great little lightweight lens that came with the D40
  - Nikkor AF - G 28-80 f3.3-5.6 - came with the F65
    quoted focal lengths should be multiplied by 1.5 to find the equivalent for a 35mm film camera
    - e.g. - mounted on a Nikon D70/D80 the 18-70mm lens has an equivalent focal length of approx 27-105mm
  - Nikon SB800 speedlight - highly sophisticated and capable of very subtle lighting effects - for example
  - Centon MR20 macro ring-flash - works well with the Sigma macro lens
  - Centon manual flash / Hanimex manual flash / 2x optical flash triggers
  - Velbon tripod / Jessops Monopod / Joby Gorillapod
  - Epson P-3000 photo viewer - great for uploading and checking images as you go, without having to lug a laptop - very high performance LCD display and a 40Gb hard disk
  - Media cards - 0.5 & 1.0Gb compact flash for D70s and 1.0 and 2.0Gb SD card for D80 and the compacts
- Nikon Coolpix P2 - a nice compact with loads of manual control
- Canon Powershot 720IS - bought when our IXUS seemed irreparably damaged - in the end the IXUS was repaired, so now we have both cameras. The Powershot is very capable with lots of zoom, ISO1600 max sensitivity and image stabilisation.
- Canon IXUS 800IS - extreme pocket-ability and fantastic low light performance (due to image stabilisation, ISO800 and f2.8 lens)
film
- Kodak Retinette IIB
- Nikon F65

image management & manipulation -

Adobe Photoshop LightRoom - a brilliant new approach to digital image management, processing and workflow
Photoshop Elements 5 - we use both the organiser and the editor
Photoshop 7 - when we (rarely) need to do something more sophisticated

We make relatively few changes to our pictures - both Pen and Tone are committed to composing the picture in the viewfinder. We try not to crop pictures too much.

site created & maintained with -

MS FrontPage 2003 - we may come to regret this, but the learning curve for MoveableType seems too steep, and we've used FP before
If you are interested in setting up a photoblog check - wiki photoblogs