technology, photography, music

Buying Equipment. A.K.A. the dreaded NAS

I would like to preface this with the fact that I’m pretty sure that Canon users aren’t exempt from this syndrome, I just know the disease as NAS. – Nikon Acquisition Syndrome. Personally I am not a Nikon evangelist, I just happen to know more people with Nikons so I buy them. It is handy for support, gear swapping, and such. So replace any of my gear suggestions with the Canon equivalent as necessary if you roll Canon-style, and know I would just as quickly have bought a Canon 5DmkII with L lenses as a Nikon d700 with Nikon’s pro lenses

So first I decided to look into camera bodies, which in retrospect is the wrong way to approach this. If I had it to do over again, I probably would have ended up in the same place, only faster and having spent less money on interim lenses. My advice is spend your money on your lenses first, and worry about the body later. But in my case, I had no way of knowing what lenses I would need, so a little iteration and (expensive) trial and error occurred.

The first decision I needed to make was whether or not to go full frame (FX) or not. I knew that doing so would add a significant cost to everything I purchased from there on out. Luckily the 50mm lens I had was a FX lens, so I would be able to use that regardless. I weighed the pros and cons, and decided that since I was basically investing from scratch in this camera system, I might as well go FX since that is where the industry is headed anyway, or at least that was my perception at the time. Throwing out DX lenses for a later upgrade to FX didn’t appeal, and I knew that I wanted to maintain my investment in lenses. This made my choice of body easy. There was no way I was going to buy a D3 as my first camera, so the d700 was my only full frame choice. I have several friends who have them and they love them, so that was a no brainer. It’s an amazing camera, the sensor is incredible. I usually leave it at ISO 800 but I’ve pushed it to 1600 and a few times to 3200 with no problems (aside from having to do some noise reduction on the back end)

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They Might Be Giants @ Music Hall of Williamsburg

On to lenses. So I knew i wanted my kit to have a wide angle, a prime, and a telephoto. I figured that would cover most of my shooting eventualities, and cover the music work I wanted to do well. I already had the prime, so I started looking into the wide and the tele. I wasn’t ready to drop money on pro lenses just yet, so I bought the 18-35/3.5-4.5 wide lens for $400, and I’m very glad I did. For the wide angle work I do with music it is totally fine, and the 17-35/2.8 would have been overkill at $1700.

The telephoto turned out to be where I got stuck. After a few more shoots, I quickly discovered that the 70-200 class of lens was going to be by far the most useful lens in my bag, and it is still the lens I leave on my camera 90% of the time. The first one i bought was the el-cheapo Nikon 70-300 G 3.5-5.6 lens. To this day, I have no idea why i did that, aside from the fact that maybe I was still reeling from spending $3000 on a camera body. It was still way too slow, and luckily Adorama gave me a good buyback price on it when I traded it in.

I then upgraded to the Sigma 70-200/2.8 which I shot for quite a bit. Its a very nice, fast lens. It has 2 drawbacks: no VR, and shoddy build quality. After about 500 frames, the HSM motor gave up the ghost, which required over a month of repair time. If you get a good copy of a Sigma lens, they are great, but I don’t think I’ll ever be buying one of their lenses again. During the time the lens was being repaired, I decided to try some of Nikon’s offerings. First i tried out their 80-200/2.8, which is about $150 more than the Sigma. I shot one show with it and returned it. That thing is a tank. its heavy and the focus is slow (it’s an AF-D lens) and still lacks VR which makes it less than ideal for shooting music.

And then, a great thing happened. Nikon released a new version of their 70-200 / 2.8 pro lens, so the used market for the version 1 of the lens opened up and I was able to get a copy of that lens for about $1500. Let me just say right now that this is the gold standard of 2.8 zoom lenses. The thing is fast, sharp as hell, has perfect bokeh, and built like a tank. The VR is amazing, I can handhold that lens down to about 1/25th of a second. In short it is without a doubt the lens you want for shooting music, if you can afford it. And the good news is that right now, you probably can, the used market for it is pretty good (i’ve seen them as low as $1300) But because I have the NAS in the worst way, so long as there is something better to try, I’m probably going to get suckered into it eventually. This is what happened next:

Recently I had read some reviews of the new version of the 70-200/2.8 (the VRII) that suggested that the VR was even better. I had already decided I wanted to upgrade my 70-200 to a new copy so that I got a warranty for it, since it was now my main lens. So I found a buyer for my version 1 and went for it. It did not disappoint. I can easily hand hold that down to 1/10th of a second, which translates into it being nearly a full 2 stops faster. Not that I would want to shoot music with a shutter speed that slow, but what it really means is that I can either close down the aperture a bit for more depth of field, or drop the iso down to 400 instead of 800 for better color and clarity. The only issue, and this is widely covered elsewhere, is that they changed the optical formula for this lens, and significantly decreased the magnification of this lens. The net effect of it is that it has a closer minimum focal length, (great for the pit) but its overall magnification at close range is reduced. Basically you don’t get a full 200mm equivalent of magnification until about 25’ of focal distance. Honestly, for the kind of shooting that i do, its a totally fine tradeoff: the minimum focal distance being less means I change to my 50mm far less often in the pit, and I get closeups that are just fine. Throw in an extra 2 stops of light, and we have a pretty compelling upgrade over the first edition. Is it worth the price difference? I can’t really asses that for you, but I know I’m not going back.

So in the end my usual kit for a show is:

Nikon d700 with MD-B10 grip + 2 batteries
70-200mm / 2.8 VRII
18-35mm / 3.5-4.5
50mm / 1.4 AF-D

Other stuff always in my bag

Surefire P9 flashlight
Microfiber cloth
Extra battery
2 extra memory cards
stack of business cards

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Vampire Weekend @ Webster Hall

Other Gear Tips

• Be mindful of your NAS… The rabbit hole is deep my friend, and you don’t need to buy everything at once

• Get the fastest glass you can afford. If you can’t afford the new $2,500 Nikon 70-200/2.8 check out the $900 Sigma which you can probably get used for $600 if you try. You don’t get VR if you don’t buy the Nikon but it is the speed of the glass (aperture) that really matters. The difference between fast glass and slow glass is huge, and cannot be overstated. No single investment will affect the outcome of your shots more than the speed and quality of your glass. ‘nuff said.

• If you are just starting out, get a 50mm/1.4 which should run about $350, or less used. You will have to zoom with your feet, but you will not have any problems with light, though controlling depth of field and bokeh will be your new challenges. Shooting at 1.4 gives you a razor’s edge margin for focus, but the good news is that everything is in focus at infinity

• Get a vertical grip for your camera. (assuming you don’t have a camera that already has one built in) Shooting the long way is often useful for poking through the crowd and covering the entire stage top to bottom. Plus, holding your camera w/o a vertical grip for extended periods is awkward and tiring. The MD-B10 for my d700 was about $300, and worth every penny.

• Get a good, bright flashlight. (see below)

• Get a good, comfortable bag. This is a highly personal thing. I use a tarmac velocity 9x. Find something comfortable for you that you can move gear, and lenses in particular in and out of without looking.

• Get insurance. I use PPIP by Hays, but you can cover it under your homeowners / renters insurance. Be sure you know what it covers, things like lens drops, people spilling a beer on your camera, etc, can happen, so make sure you are covered.

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Battles @ Terminal 5

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