Gear

With the transition to mirrorless now complete over the past year I’ve focused on filling out lens gaps with three new zooms and completing my camera collection with the addition of my Nikon D100 and my Dad’s original Canon. Here is the current set of gear, including mirrorless, drone, and flashes – but scroll down to read about my photo equipment background and how I got to this point …

Z Mirrorless Bodies
Nikon Z8 48 MP Z Mirrorless Camera
Nikon Z6II 24 MP Z Mirrorless Camera

Z Zoom Lenses
NIKKOR Z 14-30mm f/4 S
NIKKOR Z 24-120mm f/4 S (New)
NIKKOR Z 28-400mm f/4-8 VR (New)
NIKKOR Z 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 VR S
NIKKOR X 180-600mm f/5.6-6.3 VR (New)

Z Prime Lenses
NIKKOR Z 20mm f/1.8 S
NIKKOR Z 35mm f/1.8 S
NIKKOR Z 50mm f/1.8 S
NIKKOR Z 85mm f/1.8 S
NIKKOR Z MC 105mm f/2.8 VR S
Nikon Z Teleconverter TC-1.4x

Support
Gitzo GT2541 Series 2 Carbon Tripod
Markins Q-Ball Q10 Ballhead
Peak Design Travel Tripod
Gitzo GM5561T Traveler Monopod
Luma Labs Cinch Camera Strap
Peak Design Slide Camera Strap

Flash and Lighting
Godox AD200Pro TTL Pocket Flash
Nikon SB-800 AF Speedlight
Godox X3 N Touchscreen TTL Wireless Trigger
Godox X1R-N TTL Wireless Receiver
Westcott Rapid Box 26″ Octa Speedlite
Westcott Rapid Box 1×2′ Switch Strip
Westcott Light Stands

Drone
DJI Mini 3 Pro with DJI RC Controller
DJI Goggles Integra with RC Motion 2

Action Cams
DJI OSMO Pocket 3 (New)
GoPro Hero 3+ Black

Post-Production
Clouzen Tainer
MacBook Pro M2 Max
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic
Adobe Photoshop
Final Cut Pro

Nikon Z8 and Z6II • iPhone 12 mini back dual wide camera 4.2mm f/1.6 • ISO 64 • 1/120 sec at f/1.6

Camera Bags
Like many photographers I am obsessed with camera bags. You can never have too many! Last year I sold three bags and donated a fourth. This year I sold the thinkTANK photo Airport Accelerator, but added the thinkTANK photo Logistics Manager 30 V2.0 and the GuraGear Kiboko City Commuter 18L+. Here is the camera bag lineup …

The camera bag collection • Nikon Z6II • NIKKOR Z 35mm f/1.8 S • ISO 100 • 1/250 sec at f/8.0

… and the updated camera bag list:

GuraGear Kiboko City Commuter 18L+
LowePro BP 250 DroneGuard
thinkTANK photo Airport Essentials
thinkTANK photo Logistics Manager 30 V2.0
Vanguard Kinray Lite 45

Photo Equipment Background
I’ve had a number of cameras over the years ranging from 35mm still cameras to digital single lens reflex cameras to point and shot cameras to standard and high-definition video cameras. Here is a look at the various still cameras I’ve owned dating back to my high school days.

My Dad purchased the Canon II F while he was stationed on Korea in the mid-1950’s. The camera’s date of manufacture was October 23, 1953. He mostly shot slide film and profiled camp life as a US Army soldier at the end of the Korean War and then in the early 1960’s family photos including me and my sister. After about 20 years away from photography he bought a Canon AE-1 with a 50mm f/1.8 FD lens at the local photo sho in town.

My first camera was the previously mentioned Canon AE-1 and 50mm f/1.8 FD lens … a college graduation gift from my parents after “borrowing” the camera for the three previous years. I shot with this camera and lens combo for 15 years before eventually adding a 35-70mm f/3.5-4.5 FD standard zoom lens and a 70-200mm f/4.5 FD telephoto zoom lens to go along with the 50mm. The AE-1 was a great starter camera – an excellent way to learn about the exposure triangle and to be efficient when shooting film on a limited college budget. I brought the AE-1 to grad school, family vacations, and some business trips early in my career.

The Canon A-1 was likely acquired around the time I started “borrowing” the AE-1. Makes sense as Canon manufactured the camera from 1978 to 1985 … right around when I was an undergrad. The A-1 included a microprocessor for an electronically controlled programmed autoexposure mode. Probably not much computing power compared to the chips included in today’s DLSRs and mirrorless cameras, but very likely of interest to my electronic engineer Dad! I never used this camera, but it is now part of my camera collection, so worth sharing here.

In 1999 I replaced the AE-1 with a Nikon N80 paired with the Nikkor 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5D zoom and the Nikkor 70-300mm f/4-5.6D ED zoom. My first experience with a Nikon camera and NIKKOR glass. I picked up a Lowepro Mini Trekker backpack to carry the N80 and the zoom lenses. And I brought this set of gear to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the inaugural United States Grand Prix Formula One race in September of 2000.

I made the transition to DX digital in 2003 with the Nikon D100 DSLR and immediately realized the importance of a complete digital workflow. In those early days I spent more time at the computer than taking pictures. Several years later Adobe introduced version 1 of Lightroom and vastly simplified the process for ingesting and processing RAW files from the D100. I gave this camera to my nephew years ago but now it’s back as a recent addition to the camera connection. It still takes a pretty good photo and I still have the NIKKOR 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 D zoom lens!

In December 2010 the D100 was replaced with the Nikon D7000 DSLR (used for the 2011 Greece and Turkey photos and video). I made the move to a full frame DSLR in October 2012 when the D7000 was replaced with the Nikon D600 (used for the 2013 Galapagos Islands photos and video). In March 2015 the D600 was sold and replaced with the Nikon D750 DSLR (used for the South Africa, Peru, Cuba, India, Southeast Asia, and Brazil trips).

After keeping the D7000 as a backup body for a number of years, I traded it in to purchase the Nikon Z6, beginning the transition to mirrorless in March 2019. I took the Z6 to New York, but in the midst of the pandemic the Z6 didn’t do much travelling. And then I traded in the Z6 for the Nikon Z6II in December 2020. The Z6II was the camera of choice for the spring 2022 trip to Israel and the D750 was eventually sold as part of the transition to mirrorless.

I wasn’t really in the market for a new camera when the Nikon Z9 was introduced. Amazing capabilities and too big and too heavy. But over the years as my photographic skills have improved I’ve become more interested in stepping up from a “prosumer” camera to one of the “professional” or “flagship” cameras In the When the Nikon Z8 was announced I was intrigued. Most of the capabilities of the Z9 in a smaller and lighter form factor. I made the leap in the summer of 2023 and the Z8 is easily the best camera I have ever owned!

Over the years I’ve also had an assortment of point and shoot cameras, beginning with the brilliant Yashica T4 Super D film camera, purchased in 1999. I sold the T4 on eBay six years later in 2005 and made most of my money back. Now it sells for much more. I replaced the T4 with a Canon PowerShot S50. The S50 always struggled with white balance, wasn’t particularly well constructed, had a terrible menu system for camera settings, and eventually fell apart. Although by this time I was firmly entrenched as a Nikon shooter, this experience has kept me for looking at other brands.

In 2007 I bought a Ricoh GR Digital II with 10 megapixel sensor and 28mm fixed lens. In many ways the GR Digital II was like the T4 – easy to use with outstanding image quality. I brought the GR Digital II to China and on the London-Paris trip. I enjoyed traveling with a smaller camera and the challenge of working with a fixed wide angle lens. The GR Digital II is small enough that I brought it as a second camera to Peru, along with the D750, for use shooting timelapse sequences.

DJI OSMO Pocket 3

DJI Mini 3 Pro

After years of tweaking and simplification, my digital photo workflow, from ingest to Web output, is now built exclusively around Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic. My digital video workflow uses Final Cut Pro for digitization, editing, and output encoding. In January 2020 I replaced the Mac Pro workstation with an iMac Pro workstation and in April 2023 I expanded the iMac Pro with 16 terabytes of external SSD storage using an Sonnet Echo I Desktop, with a Sonnet M.2 4×4 PCIe Card outfitted with four Sabrent 4TB Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 SSDs.

Photo and Video Equipment Timeline
The following timeline shows acquisition dates for photo and video gear dating back 40+ years. The list is subdivided into categories showing 35mm film equipment, video camcorders, DX format, FX format, and the most recent Nikon Z System Mirrorless gear. If I sold something along the way that’s indicated by the dates following the item. Otherwise I still have it.

35mm Film
May 30, 1982	Canon AE-1 SLR 35mm Camera
May 30, 1982	Canon FD 50mm f/1.8 SC Lens
January 15, 1995	Canon FD 75-200mm f/4.5-5.6 Telephoto Zoom
March 3, 1995	Canon FD 35-70mm f/3.5-4.5 Zoom
July 1, 1999	Yashica T4 Super D 35mm Camera (sold Nov 17, 2005)
September 18, 2000	Nikon N80 SLR 35mm Camera
November 11, 2011	Canon A-1 SLR 35mm Camera (my Dad’s camera)
DX Format
November 15, 2003	Nikon D100 DX DSLR Camera
March 2, 2005	AF-S DX NIKKOR 17-55mm f/2.8G IF-ED Lens (sold Nov 4, 2013)
December 11, 2010	Nikon D7000 DX DSLR Camera (traded in March 22, 2019)
December 28, 2010	AF-S DX Zoom Nikkor 12-24mm f/4G IF-ED (sold Nov 4, 2013)
FX Format
September 18, 2000	AF NIKKOR AF 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5D IF Lens
September 18, 2000	AF NIKKOR 70-300mm f/4-5.6D ED Lens (sold Aug 6, 2013)
January 3, 2002	AF-S NIKKOR 18-35mm f/3.5-4.5D IF-ED Lens (sold Aug 6, 2013)
July 1, 2002	AF NIKKOR 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6D ED VR Lens (sold Aug 6, 2013)
March 20, 2010	AF-S NIKKOR 50mm f/1.4G (sold Dec 15, 2019)
March 12, 2011	AF-S NIKKOR 24mm f/1.4G ED (sold Jun 20, 2022)
March 19, 2011	AF-S NIKKOR 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II (sold Jul 13, 2022)
October 16, 2012	Nikon D600 FX DSLR Camera (sold Apr 2015)
March 24, 2013	AF-S NIKKOR 24-120mm f/4G ED VR (sold Mar 9, 2020)
February 9, 2014	AF-S NIKKOR 16-35mm f/4G ED VR (sold Mar 9, 2020)
March 31, 2015	Nikon D750 FX DSLR Camera (sold Jul 13, 2022)
August 3, 2017	AF-S NIKKOR 200-500mm f/5.6E ED VR (sold Jul 13, 2022)
Z Mirrorless
March 22, 2019	Nikon Z6 Mirrorless Camera (traded in Dec 9, 2020)
March 22, 2019	NIKKOR Z 24-70mm f/4 S Lens (traded in Dec 9, 2020)
September 6, 2019	NIKKOR Z 14-30mm f/4 S Lens
September 6, 2019	NIKKOR Z 35mm f/1.8 S Lens
October 27, 2019	NIKKOR Z 50mm f/1.8 S Lens
November 11, 2020	NIKKOR Z 85mm f/1.8 S Lens
November 26, 2020	NIKKOR Z 24-200mm f/4-6.3 VR Lens
November 28, 2020	Nikon Z6II Mirrorless Camera
November 11, 2021	NIKKOR Z MC 105mm f/2.8 VR S
May 8, 2022	NIKKOR Z 20mm f/1.8 S
July 18, 2022	NIKKOR Z 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 VR S
July 21, 2023	Nikon Z8 Mirrorless Camera
October 3, 2023	Nikon Z Teleconverter TC-1.4x
May 28, 2024	NIKKOR Z 28-400mm f/4-8 VR
January 5, 2025	NIKKOR Z 24-120mm f/4 S
January 5, 2025	NIKKOR Z 180-600mm f/5.6-6.3 VR
Video and Audio
May 8, 1999	Sony TRV-103 Digital 8 Camcorder
July 1, 2002	Sony DCR-PC101 Mini-DV Camcorder
February 12, 2007	Canon HV10 HDV Camcorder
April 3, 2013	GoPro Hero 3 Action Camera
September 3, 2013	DJI Phantom Drone (traded in Aug 24, 2019)
October 14, 2013	GoPro Hero 3+ Black Edition Action Camera
November 28, 2014	DJI Phantom 2 v2.0 H3-3D Drone (traded in Aug 24, 2019)
March 22, 2017	DJI Mavic Pro Fly More Combo Drone (sold Jun 24, 2022)
January 19, 2019	DJI OSMO Pocket Handheld Stabilized Camera
May 25, 2022	DJI Mini 3 Pro Drone with DJI RC Controller
November 1, 2022	DJI Wireless Mic System
May 14, 2023	DJI Goggles Integra with RC Motion 2

Originally published April 16, 2013. Revised April 12, 2015; August 29, 2017; May 2, 2021; October 22, 2023.