Photo equipment and films
Overview
Digital Cameras
Since April of 2006 I take photos exclusively digitally.
I (mainly) use a Nikon D200 digital SLR camera, which is a great tool (though I have to say that waiting for the camera forever was quite annoying - the camera was announced for November 2005, I ordered it January 2006 and finally received it in April 2006!). I have enlarged the images from its 10Mpixel sensor up to 40x60cm. No problems!
I currently use four different lenses:
- AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-70 mm 1:3,5-4,5G IF-ED standard zoom which is used for most of the images I take. It is a great lens. The zoom range is very convenient and the image quality is fantastic.
- AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 55-200 mm 1:4-5,6G ED tele zoom lens. The lens is very small which is convenient and the zoom range is also very good (converted to 35mm film it is equivalent to 70-300mm), but the image quality especially on the long end is only fair.
- Tokina AT-X 4/12-24 mm PRO DX super-wide angle zoom lens. I love this lens because the super wide angle opens great opportunities for unusual views.
- AF Nikkor 50 mm 1:1,8D standard lens. This lens I received only very recently so I can not yet really comment on its quality.
My "shift" to digital photography from analog (which I used exclusively until mid of 2002) was quite smooth I guess.
I bought my first digital camera mid of 2002 which was a Minolta Dimage 7i bridge camera - fantastic camera. It has a high quality 28-200mm (35mm film equivalent) f2,8-3,5 lens and a 5 million pixel CCD sensor. The resulting images can be printed as 20x30cm images without any problem.
Early 2004 I "upgraded" to a Minolta Dimage A2 digital camera. It's main advantages compared to the 7i are the Anti Shake sensor, 8 Mega-pixels instead of 5 at the 7i and an improved user interface. I printed the images at 30x45cm - no problem.
I have a couple of 1GB and one 2 GB CF card to store the images. In order to be able store enough photos when I am traveling, I also use a mobile hard drive: The X-Drive II with a 100MB HD.
Photos with the "Exif" icon (see right-hand side) and the link "Digital camera photo" at the end of the text below the photo are made with the digital camera. The link leads to a summary of the most important technical data of the photo (extracted from the EXIF data of the respective image file).
"Analog" equipment
I have used three different "analog" cameras for the photos shown at my site photos: Until September 2000 I have used a
Ricoh XRX and a Ricoh XP3.
Since September 2000 I am mainly using a Pentax ZP1
(which is by the way a fantastic camera with an unmatched user-interface).
I have a set of lenses from 20mm to 500mm.
The lenses I mainly use while traveling
are a 20mm F2,8 Soligor super-wideangle prime lens, a 20-35mm F4 wide angle zoom lens, a 50mm standard prime lens
(a Ricoh F1,7 lens for the Ricoh
cameras and a F1,4 AF lens for the Pentax camera), a 28-70mm standard zoom lens (a Sigma F2,8-4
lens for the Ricoh cameras and a F4 AF Pentax lens for the Pentax camera) and a 70-200mm
F2,8-3,5 Sigma tele zoom lens.
Since March 2001 I also use a 80-320mm F4,5-5,6 AF zoom lens from Pentax.
I only use slide material for my color photos.
I used to use Fuji Sensia II 100 films, but at the end of 1999 I shot some rolls of
the Kodak Elite CHROME Extra Color 100,
and I was so impressed, that I switched to that material.
Black and white photos
The "analog" black and white photos were taken with a Yashica T4 Super camera. I really like that camera, because it is very small and it has an excellent Carl Zeiss Tessar 3.5/35mm lens.
For "analog" black and white photos I use Ilford XP2 film. It is very flexible and it can be used to make big prints.
In 2006 I started experimenting with converting digital color images taken with the Nikon D200 into black and white images. I am still learning but I do like the first results.