Michal's photography gear

Bodies

Nikon D50: specs and review on dpreview.com. I got this in November of 2005 shortly before a trip to Thailand.

Nikon Coolpix 2100: specs on dpreview.com. Got this sometime in 2001 or 2002 because I was jealous that everyone had a digital camera except me.

Nikon F601: specs on mir.com.my. My family got this in the early 1990s so it's sort of a hand-me-down, though I don't claim ownership of it, or use it very much actually. Film is expensive and I havn't yet found a good reason to use it.

Prime lenses

Nikkor 50mm AF f/1.4 - Got it on eBay. Very fast and sharp optics. Low light scenes come out nicely. It has a wonderful shallow depth of field so it can bring out items of interest and smoothly blur everything else. This 50mm non-DX lens means a 70mm equivalent on my D50, which is a little too narrow for comfort. I often find myself retreating back a few steps to capture a scene.

Zoom lenses

Nikkor 35-70mm f/3.3-4.5 - Came with the F601. Not much to say here; it's an okay lens but almost never leaves the F601 body.

Nikkor 18-55mm DX ED f/3.5-4.5 - Came with the D50. This is a ubiquitous lens and my favorite. It is very light and has great optics. I use it mostly for the wide-angle 18mm. The 55mm zoom is useful, but I have found that it is not as powerful as I'd like, so I don't bother with it very much.

Nikkor 70-300mm G f/3.5-5.6 - Got it from Amazon. This is a high-zoom lens. It is great for portraits and up-close nature photography.

Tools

The most useful tool I have bought was the Vosonic X's Drive II+ 2160. This horribly named device is essentially a portable enclosure for a 2.5" hard drive. Inside is a 40GB drive and outside are two buttons and a card reader. It lets you copy the entire contents of a memory card to the hard drive, making a new directory for each card. This means that on a trip, I can transfer pictures to the hard drive and format the card. This gives me much more breathing room and I hesitate less about taking pictures.