The Photo Journey

I don’t have a massive kit but it is growing every year. Before I got this gear I shot with a  very reliable and powerful 6 Megapixel, 10x optical , 1 inch screen point and shoot by FujiFilm. The S5000 and this thing still gets rave review. It took allot of growing to grow out of. I still use to document setup shots and head to parties that I dare not take the 40D.

Canon 40D

This is my current and first DSLR camera. It has a very simply yet powerful navigation panel, 5.5 fps with up to 75 images captured in a sequential order, a massive 3 inches of screen and so much more. It was one of the first SLR camera’s to incorporate its LCD for composing an image like most point and shoot camera’s do. This function is called Liveview and yeah its has its uses.

Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS

Ah yes my most favorite lens in my arsenal. I refer to it as “The Canon” as this baby gives me plenty of reach and response when its action I’m after. I actually bought this before I bought my camera body. This one lens was the swinging factor of whether to go Canon or Nikon. If your after some fast glass well this is the one to start with. Perfect for sports, nature, portraits and low light photography.

Canon 17-85mm f4-5.6 IS

While its only a kit lens it goes rather well. Its widest aperture of f4 at 17mm and f5.6 at the other end of the zoom makes the lens a little limiting when wanting a shallow depth of field to increase an objects emphasis. For a kit lens the 17mm’s is a great resource for landscape photography. Its a general purpose lens that I hope to replace in the next few years with probably 2 lenses.

Canon 50mm f1.8
My newest lens and most artistically attuned lens by far.  With the Nifty Fifty’s widest aperture of f1.8 it allows for some amazing use of DOF (Depth of field). With it being a prime lens it forces you to compose an image by moving yourself in and out from the subject as opposed to zooming for a tighter or looser shot. The Canon 50mm f1.8 mkii is one of the cheapest lenses on the market but is perfect for portrait and still life photography.

Tripod

Bag

The CompuPrimus AW is made from 100% post-consumer recycled Cyclepet.  So while doing the job for me its also doing its bit to save the world. It cost a little more then the other non cyclepet range but hey whats a few extra dollars compared to the worlds environmental downfall. The bag offers dual compartments which was a major buying factor as I wanted a bag that I could head out trekking for a day and have it hold all my camera gear and my day hiking gears like jumpers, jackets, first aid kit, maps and alike. It also comes with a notebook pocket that comes with its own laptop bag. And being part of Lowepro’s AW range its offers a rain  protection hood.

Flash
The Vivitar 285 Flash with my Cactus wireless remotes allow me to light a subject in the best way. They are much cheaper the Canon 430 or the 530 range but they also are a little limiting. They are perfect for learning how to light off camera and David Hobby of Strobist loves them. With its manual settings it forces you to learn about lighting as you go.Whilst I have heaps the learn about off camera lighting its this baby I will be doing it with.

Laptop
HP NC 8230 laptop with the reliable Windows XP Pro. My main software packages are Lightroom 2.0, Photoshop CS2, Photo Matrix, Mozilla Firefox 3.0.6, and I trial heaps of other software packages out there.
Other
Cleaning Kit, SD Cards, spare batteries, snoot and grid for flash, and other superfluous stuff.

Coming Weeks

Stay tuned as in the coming weeks I will do more details blogs on how I pack my bag and demo’s on all my lenses.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 at 1:31 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.