Hello fellow photographers,
I would be grateful for some opinions on what I should do with regard to my lens situation.
First a little background on my photographic habits, so you can know me better! I am a keen amateur, my style being travel shots or street shots. In 2008 I travelled around the world for 7 months and I took about 30,000 images, some of which I really like but not a high percentage of keepers. I started shooting RAW about halfway through my trip (after doing a travel photography course in NYC) and I do my post-processing in Aperture 2.
I acknowledge my biggest flaws which are hampering my photographic development are my laziness to (a) get up early or stay out at the end of the day for the magic hour, (b) carry extra lenses and (c) change lenses when I do have them with me, as well as my reluctance to get in there for the shot and get in peoples way. Because of this I am a big user of the mid-range zoom. Im also a little impatient so often I will not wait for a slow-walking person to get out of frame etc.
I know because of these things I will never be an amazing photographer, but I do enjoy taking snaps and putting them on my wall. Here is a link to some of my favourite pics from the trip.
During my travels I used a Canon 400D and carried only 2 lenses: the Canon 10-22 and a Sigma 18-200OS. These served me surprisingly well and I got a lot of use out of both lenses. I had a flash unit but often didnt carry it, for the same reason of laziness and to save the hassle. Plus I am not a fan of artificial lighting. Which is why I fell in love with the D700.
And then my fiancée completely surprised me for my birthday last year and got me the D700! It was completely unexpected, but awesome. She got me the camera with the 24-120 kit lens.
I thought at this point that I should beef up my lens collection. I wanted to have similar range to my last set-up, but with the loss of the 1.6x crop factor I had difficulty selecting lenses. I also didnt have $10,000 to throw on a new stash of glass. Also had an interesting time trying to decipher the Nikon terminology, after shooting Canon for >10 years!
What I ended up getting as a starting point, with a view to upgrading slowly over time, was:
Ive barely used my kit since I got it in October/November as we have been flat out and havent had an opportunity to travel.
OK now to the guts of it (and thanks for reading this far). We are heading to Botswana and South Africa for our honeymoon later this year. I am aware I will need more reach at the long end for the safari. I dont really want to carry any more than 4 lenses - I did also get a Tiffin flash with slave function when I was at a camera store in Malaysia, and along with my circular polariser and Cokin set (really only for the graduated ND filter), spare battery and stash of CF cards, thats more than enough to carry.
I am after suggestions on how I can distil my lens collection to (preferably) fewer lenses. I was also hoping to get a reach of 400-500mm but these lenses all look to be huge this comes back to my reluctance to carry such heavy lenses around. I also dont want to spend a lot of money on this long lens option, as I dont think I would ever use it again after the safari. Looked at lens rental but its hideously expensive here in Australia and it would not really be any great financial advantage.
Would a 1.4 or 1.7 teleconverter, do you think, work well enough for my purposes? What detriment do they cause? I assume you lose an f-stop of two, but how about image quality? Which brand? Kenko or Sigma have reasonably priced ones from what I can gather.
Any other lens advice would be good, keeping in mind my photographic habits. I am thinking about leaving the 24-120 at home and using the 50mm whenever I can, but then I will need to change lenses more often again, Im lazy, and also a bit worried about dust getting onto the sensor if I have to change lenses too often.
Thanks again for reading, and I look forward to your advice.
I would be grateful for some opinions on what I should do with regard to my lens situation.
First a little background on my photographic habits, so you can know me better! I am a keen amateur, my style being travel shots or street shots. In 2008 I travelled around the world for 7 months and I took about 30,000 images, some of which I really like but not a high percentage of keepers. I started shooting RAW about halfway through my trip (after doing a travel photography course in NYC) and I do my post-processing in Aperture 2.
I acknowledge my biggest flaws which are hampering my photographic development are my laziness to (a) get up early or stay out at the end of the day for the magic hour, (b) carry extra lenses and (c) change lenses when I do have them with me, as well as my reluctance to get in there for the shot and get in peoples way. Because of this I am a big user of the mid-range zoom. Im also a little impatient so often I will not wait for a slow-walking person to get out of frame etc.
I know because of these things I will never be an amazing photographer, but I do enjoy taking snaps and putting them on my wall. Here is a link to some of my favourite pics from the trip.
During my travels I used a Canon 400D and carried only 2 lenses: the Canon 10-22 and a Sigma 18-200OS. These served me surprisingly well and I got a lot of use out of both lenses. I had a flash unit but often didnt carry it, for the same reason of laziness and to save the hassle. Plus I am not a fan of artificial lighting. Which is why I fell in love with the D700.
And then my fiancée completely surprised me for my birthday last year and got me the D700! It was completely unexpected, but awesome. She got me the camera with the 24-120 kit lens.
I thought at this point that I should beef up my lens collection. I wanted to have similar range to my last set-up, but with the loss of the 1.6x crop factor I had difficulty selecting lenses. I also didnt have $10,000 to throw on a new stash of glass. Also had an interesting time trying to decipher the Nikon terminology, after shooting Canon for >10 years!
What I ended up getting as a starting point, with a view to upgrading slowly over time, was:
- Nikon 18-35mm f/3.5-4.5 AF-D
- Nikon 50mm f/1.4 AFS
- Nikon 70-300VR
- And of course the 24-120VR that came with the camera.
Ive barely used my kit since I got it in October/November as we have been flat out and havent had an opportunity to travel.
OK now to the guts of it (and thanks for reading this far). We are heading to Botswana and South Africa for our honeymoon later this year. I am aware I will need more reach at the long end for the safari. I dont really want to carry any more than 4 lenses - I did also get a Tiffin flash with slave function when I was at a camera store in Malaysia, and along with my circular polariser and Cokin set (really only for the graduated ND filter), spare battery and stash of CF cards, thats more than enough to carry.
I am after suggestions on how I can distil my lens collection to (preferably) fewer lenses. I was also hoping to get a reach of 400-500mm but these lenses all look to be huge this comes back to my reluctance to carry such heavy lenses around. I also dont want to spend a lot of money on this long lens option, as I dont think I would ever use it again after the safari. Looked at lens rental but its hideously expensive here in Australia and it would not really be any great financial advantage.
Would a 1.4 or 1.7 teleconverter, do you think, work well enough for my purposes? What detriment do they cause? I assume you lose an f-stop of two, but how about image quality? Which brand? Kenko or Sigma have reasonably priced ones from what I can gather.
Any other lens advice would be good, keeping in mind my photographic habits. I am thinking about leaving the 24-120 at home and using the 50mm whenever I can, but then I will need to change lenses more often again, Im lazy, and also a bit worried about dust getting onto the sensor if I have to change lenses too often.
Thanks again for reading, and I look forward to your advice.