Dragged Kicking and Screaming.....

[adrian_stone1]

It's official. I have now actually acknowledged that digital cameras have

something to offer. I'm going to upgrade and I'd welcome some advice and

encouragement.

 

My current Nikon kit is:

 

2x F100;... AF 50mm F1.4;... AFS 18-35mm F2.8;... AFS 80-200mm F2.8; .... AFS

TC-20E II 2x;... AF Micro 105mm F2.8;.... Speedlight SB 28. All my Nikon

lenses are pre-digital but otherwise faultless. The AFS zoom lenses are heavy

though.

 

Plus:

 

Sigma 24-135mm F2.8;.... Gitzo Tripod G1325; .... Self levelling base Gitzo

1321;.... Arca Swiss Monoball; .... Really Right Stuff clamp and plates.

 

I've been carrying all this kit around with me and my back's playing up. Who

would have thought that would happen??? So I need to lighten up and get with

the new technology. I'm keen on travel, landscape and candid photography Street

scenes. I will be creating digital lectures and printing at A3 size (16" x

12").

 

I think I'll buy a D300. Here are my questions.

 

I'm assuming my existing lenses will be broadly compatible. What about the

macro lens? Will I need a new wide angle?

 

Will my capacity to change the ISO rating for each shot mean less reliance on

the tripod?

 

Does the D300 built in flash cope reasonably well with indoor shots and fill in

flash?

 

In addition to the D300, what other items /accessories / backup do I need?

When travelling I'm away from home for about a month.

 

In India I discovered that F100's don't bounce. Ever since I've carried a

spare body. Any thoughts?

[walterh]

Get two D300 - one for bouncing and one for shooting :-P

 

Sooner or later you will want to upgrade the flash to an SB800. The new system is just so good. Play around with the flash you have to see if you use it often enough to spend the money. The built in flash is nice to have for emergencies (some will disagree^^). It is no substitute for a "real" flash. You can use it though to control some of the newer flashes like the SB800 away from the camera (actually you can control several).

 

The AF 105 micro is a good lens. Specialists for macro may prefer an old MF goodie but since you goth this one already...

 

You will not need the Gitzo and the Arca Swiss monoball - just send it to me :-P

(Seriously - no change in tripod+head use.)

[Jerry_]

"Will my capacity to change the ISO rating for each shot mean less reliance on the tripod?" Only if you have 'like-rock-steady' hands.

 

 

 

 

Two F100 bodies, replaced by a single D300 body will make your load a litle more easy on your carrying weight, but the wide angle 18mm lens you have is going to 'behave' much like a 27.5mm lens. You'd need to go to the D3 body for a full-frame digital SLR body.

 

 

 

 

Adding in a AF 10-20mm Sigma lens, and you have just about the same weight factor you started with. [if you went to a Nikon D80 body, that would weigh a little less....]

[tri-x1]

Adrian:

Going to the D300 probably won't help your back any. I thing the F100 and D300 are pretty comparable weight wise. You won't be lugging as much weight in film, however. Sounds like you have some good glass for your changover.

 

It took me a while to accept digital, too. Now that I have the D300, there's no way I could go back. You have some exciting and fun times ahead.<div></div>

[ronald_moravec1]

The way to lighten up is D300, 12/24 Nikon 18/70 Nikon 70/300 Nikon.

 

Maybe the 18/200 + 12/24.

 

Like all trade offs, you loose lens speed, the best image quality, nice macro lenses.

[Two23]

I use the Gitzo 1325 tripod and it is perfect for digital. You actually need it more since you can make bigger enlargements. I would suggest the SB-800, it is worth what it costs.

 

Lenses. What you have is good except you have no ultra wide angle. If you are serious about cutting weight, I'd suggest: Sigma 10-20mm (or Nikon 12-24mm f4), Nikon 18-55mm "kit" lens (very cheap but optically excellent and light,) 80-200mm f2.8, Nikon 60mm f2.8 macro (will be equiv. 90mm on DSLR and lighter weight,) and either a Sigma 28mm f1.8 or Sigma 30mm f1.4 lens for low light. The 70-300mm VR is a very nice & light lens too, if you don't need the f2.8. Carrying that instead of the 80-200mm would be a huge weight savings. You could probably get away with a lighter Gitzo tripod and the lighter AcraTech head if not using the heavy 80-200mm f2.8. The new Gitzo carbon fibers are lighter and stronger for the weight.

 

A streamlined lens line up might be: Nikon 12-24 f4, Nikon 17-55mm f2.8, Nikon 60mm f2.8 macro (consider replacing with a Canon 500D,) Nikon 70-300mm VR, Sigma 30mm f1.4.

 

 

Kent in SD

[Ed_Ingold]

You will still need a tripod. Camera shake is the primary cause of unsharpness, even at 3x the "focal length" rule. You will find an high-resolution digital camera like the D300 is just as sensitive as film to camera shake, perhaps moreso because the accutance is so much higher. Increasing ISO increases noise and decreases other image qualities such as color and shadow detail. It is nice to increase the ISO setting depending on the situation, but always use the lowest practical setting.

 

Outdoors during the day, I use the lowest ISO on the tripod (50-200), but no less than ISO 400 for hand-held use, or with flash. Indoors, under low light, I use whatever I need, but typically ISO 800 or less.

 

Anything more than about 16 pounds is too much for a shoulder bag after 2 hours or so. You can tolerate at least twice that weight in a backpack and go all day. I usually just carry the tripod (GT-3540, GT-1321 leveling head and Arca B1) by hand, or on a simple shoulder strap.

[tonybeach]

If you are using the wide end of the 18-35 you will want a zoom that goes to 12mm. However, you should also keep one of the F100 cameras in your bag while you transition to digital, and that could accomplish your wide angle shots in the interim.

 

Shooting digital is the same as shooting transparency film. Once the highlights are blown they are gone, but for technical reasons too complicated to address in this thread shooting in RAW gives you a stop of extra exposure latitude.

 

There is also the issue of software and computer resources to take into account and you may want to master the use of the "digital darkroom"; although many prefer to just shoot JPEGs from the camera and the D300 is highly regarded as far as that goes.

[seandepuydt]

You should get the D300, I love mine, and lots of memory cards. - Sean

[blux]

Adrian,

I second Ronald Moravac's suggestion about the 18-200mm VR. It is slower than all of the lenses in your current kit however, you can usually get that stop back because of the VR. You can also leave your tripod at home a little more often. VR is wonderful. It is mainly there to offset handshake but not subject motion blur. Additionally, the 18-200mm covers a wide range of focal lengths so you can leave more lenses behind with your tripod. It is also getting less expensive. I think it has been out a couple of years now. It is also pretty light.

 

You may also want to look at an SB-400 flash. It is small and is a good flash to have in your pocket when you are looking for images within walking distance of your house or, if you are at a party and want to take a few candids. The flash element rotates up 90 degrees from horizontal for bouncing. The flash head does not rotate however so, no verticals with a ceiling bounce. This is just a suggestion to only look at this flash.

[hans_janssen]

You need a imagetank or a small laptop to store your photo's during your trip. I prefer a small laptop(14.2"), bacause you can watch your pic and do some PS work already during your waiting hours.

[dan_beauvais]

Sorry, but going digital isn't going to lighten things up. Ok, you can drop the weight of film. But the weight of a capable laptop, an extra battery for it, its AC adapter, an external hard drive and its power supply, extra DVD-ROMs....

 

And, instead of sleeping at night so your back gets better, you'll be staying up doing a first pass look at your photos, archiving them to at least two places before you reformat your memory cards. Get to bed at 3:30am, up at 5:00am to catch the first light.

 

And you know what? You will LOVE it!

 

Dan in Kitty Hawk

[Ed_Ingold]

The only time I carry a laptop, power supplies, etc. is from one "inside" to another. If you carry them while hiking, be careful not to trip over the extension cord ;-).

[eric_arnold]

i'd second anthony's suggestion that the 18-35 might need to be supplemented with something wider, due to the 1.5x DX magnification factor. nikon 12-24 or tokina 12-24 or sigma 10-20 are all good. i can personally vouch for the tokina+d300 combo as being outstanding. none of those will work on your film bodies, however.

[scott_warn]

Here's my suggestion for a lighter kit. First, you have to realize that Nikon's recent consumer zooms are excellent in terms of contrast and resolution. About the only thing you give up is speed and the ability to use a narrow DOF. My 18-70 DX is actually sharper than some of my primes, however it does have some distinct distortion at the wide end.

 

Anyhow, this is what I would suggest, a 3 lens kit that covers everything from 10 to 300mm. First, the Sigma 10-20mm Dc zoom, that will give you the equivalent of a 15mm optic in a compact package with quite good quality. Second, the newly announced 16-85mm f3.5-5.6 VR. Yeah, it is slow, however the samples that I have seen are quite good and it's got VR, which will mean you can leave your tripod at home. Wait about a month or two and you'll probably be able to buy it bundled in a D300 kit, which should save you about 100 dollars. Last, get the 70-300mm VR, it is excellent up to about 240mm and decent at 300mm. Plus it's probably half the weight of your 80-200 f2.8. BTW, I have compared my 70-300 VR against my 180 f2.8 EDIF and it is very close to the 180 in terms of image quality at any focal length under 240mm, close enough that it won't matter on a 12 x 16 inch print. Also, you actually have to try a VR lens before you'll really believe how effective this technology is. I have actually hand held mine at 300mm at 1/40 second and couldn't see any shake in a 100% peep.

 

I would also suggest that you plan on getting the SB-800 flash, the built in flash on the D300 is pretty weak and useless over 10-15 feet.

 

So, by giving up a bit of lens speed, which isn't that essential as good as the D300 is at ISO 800, but you'll also give up about 10 lbs. of deadweight if you leave your tripod at home.

[adrian_stone1]

Thanks everyone for taking the time to help me out. I've decided to go ahead and purchase the D300 and get a super wide zoom to make up for the impact of the sensor size. Do you have any preferences - Nikon, Tamron or Sigma?

 

I'll try out the pop up flash and after think about the SB800. Most of you think a tripod is still necessary despite being able to vary the ISO with each shot. My tripod legs aren't so heavy, it's the monoball and the self levelling base which packs a pound or two. I'm sure I could get a lighter ballhead for when I've got a lot of walking to do. I'll keep the Gitzo and Araca Swiss setup though - sometimes you need a Hummer rather than a Jeep.

 

I'll stay with my other lenses for the time being although I fancy having the VR function. Do any of you think the replacement for the D300 will have a full frame sensor(as per the D3)?

 

I guess I need a card reader and a couple of 4GB SDHC cards as a minimum. Any idea how many raw images I would get on a 4GB card? In the short term I'm thinking I could burn the images to DVDs at the end of the day.

 

This spec. will of course change completely if I recieve a large inheritance. Unfortunately I don't antipate one.

 

All comments will be gratefully received.

 

Adrian

[karen_pleasant1]

Another two cent suggestion....DVDs can get heavy...consider a portable storage device. Compact flash cards can be downloaded to the device without any hookups. I will get a portable storage device that works without a computer for an upcoming trip to India. Consider: Epson P3000 or P5000, Jobo Pro Evolution, Sanho Hyperdrive Colorspace, Transcend portable photobank, etc. Get two backup devices so you can re-use the CF cards.

 

When you use a laptop when traveling, use a small external hard drive for backup storage. At home, I have a large external hard drive to backup my desk top computer.

 

Storage on a 4 gb card "depends" on what format you are shooting. I get about 120 raw files on a 2 gb card. You'll get many more JPG files, depending of the size/quality of the JPG.

 

BTW, like you I switched from Nikon SLR to Nikon digital. On camera flash is nice for fill..I rarely use my SB800. LOVE my 70-200/f2.8 but it is heavy and generally only used in landscapes. Will probably get 70-300 for upcoming trip to India. I use the Nikon 12-24. The Nikon 24-120 ED VR (equivalent of 36-180!)is my main lens.

 

Karen

[tonybeach]

"Do any of you think the replacement for the D300 will have a full frame sensor(as per the D3)?"

 

> The D300 is Nikon's pro DX camera for the foreseeable future, and I personally believe Nikon will continue to support the DX format at the pro level forever. Since the D300 just came out, it will not be replaced for at least a year and half, and I would guess it may well be longer. On the other hand, Nikon will probably come out with a "prosumer" FX format DSLR by the end of this year or in the first half of next year; I bet it costs more than the D300 does.