I've been getting a few questions lately about what equipment I use and I'd been meaning on writing an article on it anyways. At the very least, it saves me from having to answer the same question all the time. I figured that if I was going to write a whole article, I might as well also include some of my reasons for choosing the equipment I did.
When I was originally looking for a new body (I was previously using an ancient Praktica body that had developed some problems and wasn't worth fixing) I wasn't thinking of an autofocus body. I wanted to be all "pro" and use a manual focus body. I discovered a few things:
I was primarily looking at new bodies because I was finding that most of the decent used stuff that I'd see was still pretty expensive and if I was going to spend that much money, I might as well get a new body.
This is not meant to be a continuation of the endless Canon vs. Nikon debates that you'll see all over the internet. After I had decided to go with a new body, I had quickly narrowed the field of manufacturers down to the "big 2". My reasoning for this was really simple, I was thinking that I'd like to get more into photography. I was entertaining ideas of going "pro" (still do, but I haven't yet). If I was going to get more serious with my photography I wanted to pick a system that I knew would be around for ages and would offer me a lot of versatility. The way I saw it was that if I went more "pro" then I'd likely be going to either Canon or Nikon at that point anyways. It made more sense for me to get a system with either one of them now which would let me grow into a more pro system instead of having to switch later on.
With that decision made, I then went around to the local camera shops and tried out different models. Originally, I was more familiar with Nikon's line and was mainly trying them. The bodies had the features I wanted (I had tried the N50, N6006, and N70) but I didn't really like the controls on them. They all required that you make your selections through a series of menus that were displayed on an LCD. I found that while this meant there were fewer buttons on the body, they all did various things and there was usually 2 or more steps to setting most options.
Eventually, I went to one camera store that didn't sell Nikon gear (I had pretty much figured that the N50 had the nicest interface of the Nikons I'd tried and was the cheapest too, so I was just comparison shopping at that point). Instead, they sold just Canon and Pentax. I wasn't nearly as familiar with either system, but I gave them a try. I liked the Pentax bodies but I found most of them were too small for my hands (I have very long fingers and I couldn't really wrap them around the small grips that these bodies have). So I started trying out the Canon bodies. At some point, I tried out the Elan IIe and I really liked it. Instead of having a menu system, almost all of the controls are accessed through knobs (there seems to be a return to knobs in the camera body design world). I liked this a lot better because it allows you to see what all the settings are at a glance. It's also much quicker because you just have to turn one knob instead of having to do something like press mode, move up and down to the option you want, move right and left to select a setting for the option and then press select. I also liked the fact that the exposure settings are controlled by 2 wheels (one right behind the shutter release, the other's on the back of the camera). I found this really intuitive and much better than buttons on the top of the body (I could hold the camera in a shooting position and adjust the settings, which I found I couldn't do with the Nikons). That's not to say that there's anything wrong with the Nikons, I think Nikon makes really good bodies. It's just that I preferred the feel of the Elan IIe.
In case you're interested, I did settle on the Elan IIe. There is also the Elan II, which is exactly the same body except for one feature. That one feature is the eye controlled autofocus. At first, I thought this was just a gimmicky feature. But, I then looked into it a bit more and noticed that there wasn't that much of a price difference between the 2. After making that decision, I must say that it's not a gimmick, it really does work and it's incredibly handy. The view finder has 3 focus points and all you have to do (after calibrating the camera which takes about 2 mins) is look at one of those focus points and the lens will focus in on that point. It's a very intuitive system for controlling the autofocus.
Currently, I only own one lens. When I decided on the Elan IIe, I could have bought it in a kit with a 35-80mm lens (I think there might have also been a 28-70mm or similar). I did some research and I found out that the lens wasn't really all that good. Instead, I settled on the 28-105mm 3.5-4.5 USM. Not only is the 28-150mm a better range, it's also a better quality lens. The USM stands for ultrasonic motor. Not only is the autofocus very fast on these lenses, it's also extremely quiet, which is really handy. I plan on adding some more lenses to my kit when I have the money but for the moment this single lens is extremely useful.
In the summer of 1999, I was really looking into photo a lot more again. During that time I was really thinking that I should get more "pro" (ie, try to make some money with it) with my photography. I had always been interested in medium format and had thought about trying it. At a local camera shop they had a used Mamiya M645 (that's the original 645, not one of the later models in the same line). It was only the body but I was kind of interested and I did some research and found out that used lenses were fairly common and that the price was good. Well apparently, I spent too long researching the camera because it was gone by the time I had decided that I'd pick it up. I was kind of frustrated but it wasn't that big a deal. I continued to keep my eye out for various deals on a medium format camera. Awhile later, a local photographer was selling his Mamiya M645 system (body, 80mm 2.8 lens, prism finder) and I picked it up (again for a decent price). Later, I got a metered prism finder for it (so I could use my polarizer filter more easily with it, the 80mm lens takes the same 58mm size filters as my 28-105mm lens for my Canon). I haven't shot that much film with it but I do intend to experiment with it. Currently though, it may have developed a problem and may need some repair (haven't gotten the test roll developed yet, then I'll be certain). But, it's still a solid camera and I imagine I should be able to get it fixed and keep it in service for awhile longer.
To date, all of my photos on the site were made using 2 films. All of the colour photos were taken using Fuji Sensia II film. I originally bought some of this because I wanted to try out slide film and this was on special at a local camera store. Since then, I've really gotten to like the colour and quality I get from this film. It's a 100 speed film which is kind of slow but it hasn't been too much of a problem for me. I find that the colour is incredible and that the saturation is quite good but doesn't look unnatural. It does tend to look a bit dreary on overcast days but in sunlight it's fabulous. I originally went to slide film again because that was what the "pros" use. I knew that it tends to have more colour depth than print film and I can say that this seems to be the case. As I've found out more recently, it's actually the colour paper that your photos are printed on that can't capture all of the colour depth that's in the negative. However, I will say that there's a certain "look" that you seem to get with slide film that you don't seem to get with colour print (this is probably because of the colour that is lost in the printing).
For black and white, all of the photos were taken using Agfa APX 400 film. I like the extra speed that I get with a 400 speed film. There is a bit of extra grain but I've still been able to enlarge the negs up to 11x14 and the grain is not unpleasant. As for why I use this film, well that's not really a subjective or objective decision on my behalf. When I was taking photo in High School we used Agfa 400 film. I liked the results that I got with it and I've stuck with it. It also happens to be some of the cheaper black and white film that you can get which is nice.
I have also used a roll of Kodak T400CN, this is an interesting film. It's a black and white film but it's processed in normal colour film chemicals (it is actually a colour film but instead of leaving coloured dyes to make a colour negative, it just leaves a black and white negative). Ilford also makes a film that works like this (XP2). While it is convenient that you can get your black and white film processed anywhere, I wasn't that impressed with it. I've been able to get some nice enlargements from it (there's very little grain), but I've found it difficult to get good contrast (I think that the coloured film base kills some of the contrast as opposed to the clear film base of a true black and white film). You also tend to get a bit of a colour cast when you get your prints (because they were printed on colour paper). This can be cool and can be used to simulate different tonings (much as you can do normally by printing a black and white negative on colour paper). Overall though, I'd say that it wasn't that big a draw for me because I tend to get all of my stuff processed at a pro lab and I don't really care about the slightly quicker processing I'd get with this film. I've also found the scans from this film to be somewhat disappointing (which is one of the reasons none of those photos are online yet). I imagine that if I tweak the contrast and brightness settings though I should be able to get better results.
For filters, I currently own 2. One of those is the ubiquitous UV filter. It does help cut down the haze somewhat but it's the classic wisdom of putting a (comparatively) cheap filter in front of your very expensive front lens element so that if anything gets damaged, it will likely be the filter instead of the lens.
The other filter I use is more useful. It's a circular polarizer. A polarizer filter helps cut through the haze but it also does amazing things to colour. The filter will cut out all of the polarized light (which primarily exists when you are facing with the sun to your back or to your side) and make the colours really pop. It will also make the sky a nice dark blue. It will also cut through most reflections (other than off of bare metal if memory serves). Basically, this is the ultimate filter and I highly recommend picking one up. If you've been wondering how I was able to get my skies so nice and dark blue and the colours so vibrant, this is the reason. I've gotten to the point that this filter hardly ever leaves the front of my lens (it's always on there when I'm shooting colour). It's still cheaper than a lens so the protection concept isn't completely wasted either. The only disappointing things about this filter are that it doesn't do much on overcast days and that it's not cheap. The cheapness factor has to do with the fact that it's a circular polarizer, if you have an autofocus system (or some manual focus cameras will still require it for the meter to work properly), you need a circular polarizer, or else the filter will interfere with the camera's operation. If this isn't the case with your camera, then you can get away with the much cheaper (but gives the same results) linear polarizer.
To use the polarizer, you just attach it to the front of your lens. The filter is in 2 sections and you can rotate the front element which allows you to control the effect (and yes, you can see this through the view finder). There are a couple of annoying things with this:
As for a tripod, I bought a Manfrotto 055cb (the b just means it's the anodized black version). It's a very nice tripod and is still light enough that I don't find it too annoying to carry around. The nice thing for me is that I can extend it to eye level (I'm around 5'10" or 5'11") without extending the centre column (which tends to make the tripod less stable). I use a Manfrotto #168 ball head on this. The whole thing weighs in at around 5 or 6 pounds so it's not the lightest thing but it's still quite luggable. I made a shoulder strap for it and I don't mind the weight that much (it's fairly balanced along the length of the pod so it just rests nicely down my back). The one complaint that I'd have with this setup is the quick release plate. Manfrotto uses a strange hexagonal plate that I find rather bulky. I'd prefer something that was smaller so that I could leave it on my camera body all the time. As it is though, I still find it much more convenient to attach the plate than screwing the body onto the pod. My one word of caution would be to never trust the quick release plate to hold your camera to the pod as you lug the pod around. I made that mistake with my Mamiya and was incredibly lucky. Somehow, the quick release lever got pulled and the Mamiya detached itself from the pod. It was just plain dumb luck that the Mamiya's shoulder strap managed to hook itself on the head or else it would've been an unpleasant accident. Since then, I always make sure to lock the lever (there's a secondary lock on my tripod head), which seems to secure things a bit better (knock on wood).
This would be the number one question I get about my equipment, what I use to scan my photos. Because I was mainly concerned with scanning my own photos, I decided to go for a dedicated film scanner. This is a different beast than the flatbed scanners that you see all over the place. It is a scanner that is specifically dedicated for scanning film. It actually scans my photos by scanning the actual negative or slide.
The primary reason I went for a slide scanner instead of a flatbed was the quality. I had a number of slides that I wanted to scan and 35mm film tends to be too small to scan at a decent quality from a flatbed scanner (you'd also need a scanner that supports transparencies). I could've scanned the black and white photos from the prints but I had lots of slides and I wanted to scan them. Rather than get them all printed (and expensive option), I decided to get a film scanner. I could've also gone for having Photo CDs made, but that adds up in price really quickly. I figured that it would be more economical in the long run to just scan them myself (which does add a time factor to the whole thing but it's not that bad). CD burners are fairly cheap these days (I don't own one yet but will be getting one as soon as I can afford it because it will let me drop 2.5gb of photos onto CDs instead of my hard drive) so making my own CDs wouldn't be that big a deal either.
In the end, I settled on the Canon CanoScan FS 2710. One of the main reasons for this was that it gives a very good quality without being insanely expensive. It's gotten very good reviews so that helped swing the decision as well. This scanner has a maximum optical resolution of 2720 dpi which gives me a 3888 x 2592 pixel image when I scan full frame (and I tend to scan my photos at full frame). I generally scan the file at the full 36-bit colour and then, after making adjustments, drop it down to 24-bit colour. It's generally a good idea to look for a scanner that can scan at a higher colour depth than 24-bit. This is because every time you make adjustments to the colour, brightness, contrast, etc, you throw away some of the colour data. If you start with more than what your final output will be, then you won't notice this difference because you'll still have more colour data then you need. When you drop down to 24-bit you'll still be able to get close to full use of the colour gamut.
In the future, I would like to add a flatbed scanner so that I can scan my medium format photos (the 6cm x 4.5cm frames that my Mamiya takes would be big enough to scan with some of the new flatbeds that have put some thought into scanning medium and large format film). For the moment though, it's not a huge priority (getting caught up with my 35mm scanning will keep me busy enough for now) and I don't have a lot of photos on 120 film yet.