Tech Friday: photography system building – Which to buy??????

Please allow me to start out with a really, silly example. For many years one of my hobbies was audio equipment, I guess I was an audiophile. I loved and still do love music and I always had a really good stereo system. I’ve owned a lot of different speakers, including; Bose, AR, Advent,
Boston Acoustic, Polk, and many others. My amplifiers and receivers were always top of the line units, I even built a few myself. Back in those days (60’s through the late 70’s) you used to buy audio gear by the pound, will not really, but it seemed if it was good, it weighed a ton. Today that is less true. It is certainly less true with camera gear.

My job for Nikon involves advising a lot of photographers about what gear will best suit their needs to do a particular job. I’ve been obsessed with the subject for many years, long before I went to work as a Nikon tech rep. In the last decade and a half, I’ve had a turn about on what gear to cary and use. I’ve gone smaller and lighter. In the past I would have thought that this was sacrificing something to loose that weight. With a few caveats, I don’t think that anymore.
FX sensors (Nikon’s name for 35mm size sensors / 24 X 36mm), are great for working in very low light at High ISO. Because the actual pixels are larger they do not need to be amplified as much to increase their sensitivity in low light, therefore noise is greatly reduced. Because the sensor is larger, so is the viewfinder, so it is bigger and brighter. Today (12/17/10) in my opinion the very finest camera in existence for general photographic use, the kinds things you and I shoot, is the Nikon D3s. This 12 .1 mega pixel, $5,000.+ camera has the best overall image quality of any camera I have ever used, period. That is the ratio of noise to resolution to color quality.

I believe the new D7000 might just be in 2nd place. The D7000 is a DX sensor camera meaning the sensor is 23.6 X 15.8mm. Packed into that sensor are 16.2 mega pixels. In terms of resolution the D7000 is now Nikon’s highest resolution camera. But the D3x is 24 mega pixels you say. That’s true but remember the D7000’s smaller sensors packs those pixels into a smaller space, thus higher pixel density and, wallah, more resolution. The noise, while very very low, is not up to the standard of the D3s, but for many of us, it is more than adequate. Add to that, DX lenses are lighter and easier to carry, and your FX (or old film lenses) are “effectively” 1.5 times longer when used on a DX sensor camera, thus more lens range. Add to that since the FX lenses are made for larger sensors, when used with DX size sensors they are actually only using the very center part of the lens for imaging. The center part is by far the sharpest and best corrected. The bonus is with FX lenses on a DX sensor camera even though the lenses are heavier they work spectacularly with the smaller sensor.

O.K. pilgrim what’s your point?????? This is my advise as of today, remembering that with each new camera the whole game changes again.

If you are a working pro in a specialized arena, like photojournalism, sports, wedding, portrait, wildlife/nature, forensic, medical, scientific, etc. etc. Have a long sit down with your pro tech rep from what ever company whose gear you use. They are trained and qualified to help you select the equipment that will best help you take the kinds of images you must in your profession. That’s what they do 365 days a year.

If you just love photography and want to make the best pictures you can while having the most fun possible. I don’t see how you could go wrong with the D7000 or your camera companies equivalent type camera and a couple of lenses. For me the D7000 is the near perfect storm of features, size, weight and cost (around $1,200. body only). It has very high resolution, extremely high pixel density, and very good, low noise. It is the quietest camera I’ve ever used in an SLR. More important than anything else, it makes great images and makes it easy to do so.

What two lenses? You had to ask. I’m actually still working on that myself, but I will tell you two
combinations I really love are; the 10-24 AFS Zoom and the 28-300 AFS VR (15 to 450 equivalent), or the 16-85 AFS VR and the 70-300 AFS VR (24 to 450 equivalent). Still working on that one, but I love both of those systems. If I really didn’t mind carrying three lenses, I would do the 10-24 – 16-85 – 70-300. The new 24-120 also would work great in there (36-180).

One last category; you’re eaten up with photography and have the budget to do whatever you really want to do. Easy, own both and FX and a DX body and just enough lenses to cover what you need or want to do. Right now, my choice for FX would be the D3s. If you don’t want to carry it’s significant weight, the D700 is a close second place. For DX, I think we’ve already established the current champion, D7000. In the price vs performance category, it is unbeatable.

Of course this is all just my opinion and food for thought, the key is take pictures and enjoy it.
Select equipment that will help you do just that………….

Merry Christmas,

the pilgrim

P.S. I assume that most of the photographers that visit this blog are fairly serious and that is why I didn’t mention many of the other excellent choices in less sophisticated cameras our there today.