Friday, May 21, 2010

Desire vs. Need: Gear

    Lately I've been thinking about camera gear, but thankfully I've been able to force myself to not buy anything. Trying to balance the desire to get more stuff with what I need in order to get the shots I want can be tough at times. Right now I can get the shots that I want about 80% of the time, with a little cropping to get closer to the subject. If money were no object I would shoot with the Nikon 600mm F4 VR, but since I do not have the $10,000 needed to get that lens, the chances of me ever shooting with that lens in the foreseeable future is rather slim! One of my goals for this year is to sell prints, and start to use the income from those sales to get the gear I need to get ever better shots, so if I could even afford the 200-400 VRII in a few years, that would be great.
  
    In the short term I would like shoot with a Nikon 70-200mm F2.8VR with a TC20E III, which may be possible for me to get my hands on by the time fall migration rolls around in October. The combination of the 70-200mm VR II with a TC may not be as much as my current 300mm F4 AF-S and TC combo, but it would not be a replacement so much as a team. The 300mm F4 with TC in good light, and the 70-200mm F2.8 with or without a TC as the lighting conditions get worse.

    The decision get the 70-200mm F2.8 VRII or not depends on whether I decide to upgrade my MacBook Pro to a Mac Pro this year. Since the Aperture 3.0.3 update I've had a very pleasant experience with the software and the desire to get a machine with boat loads of RAM has somewhat subsided. With that being the case I might hold off upgrading hardware till next year. In many ways that would be ideal, because then I could likely afford to keep my MacBook Pro, rather than trading it in, so that I could stay mobile. Some people suggested I get an iPad for mobile use, but the iPad doesn't appeal to me at this point, I usually wait till Apple releases the second generation of a product before jumping on the bandwagon.

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