It has been a small while since my last post, I had planned on making a post or two over the past couple of months but I have been without a laptop or any computer, frankly trying to do this on a phone is enough to make me cringe, the reason, I killed my MacBook Pro, my body is not as strong as it once was, and my laptop is a bit of a brick and over the years I might have dropped it a couple of times, recently I dropped it one time too many and it landed on the edge of the table further bending the chassis and damaging the screen beyond all chance of repair. It took little work with the insurance company but they eventually payed out and I was able to purchase a new computer, I decided the time I was going to return to a desk top and I bought a new iMac, the larger screen will make it easier to play the two games I have and most importantly to make working on photo's a little easier, which brings me neatly to this post, I sold up all my Fujifilm gear and I have returned back to Nikon after a 10 plus year hiatus, I still have my first "proper" camera, my Nikon D100, I will never part with this beast, I am considering picking up a cheap Nikon D200 with a 18-140 F-mount lens for giggles even a daily carry, I loved the colours that came from that old body, it was great.
So what's in the bag now, well I picked up a Nikon Z5ii with the Nikon Z24-200 kit lens and for my wildlife work I purchased the Nikon Z180-600 and well so far I am quite liking it, I have been full frame curious for some time now, the excellent low light performance and stronger auto focus had been tempting me for some time not to mention the improved depth of field that comes with using full frame, I had been looking at simply replacing my Fuji 100-400 for the 150-600, but the little voice was nagging in the back of my mind, like all things, I will never dive head long into things, months of reading and watching reviews online and I was finally ready to change over, and damn, I am glad I did.
So far, I have only had a few outings with the camera, mostly to the local nature reserves, there is a lot to get used to once again but slowly it is all coming together, there are a few downsides, the size and weight of the gear, the body are comparable to my old X-H2, but the lenses are massive in comparison to the Fuji range, I really do miss my 23 f1.4 Fuji lens, it was optically fantastic and just the right focal length, I could carry it around all day. The other thing I don't like is the lack of zebra's in live view, let me explain, Fuji and Sony, not sure about Canon, can be set up to give a warning strip over over exposed areas of an image while composing in either the view finder or the screen, for me this is a brilliant feature, one I hope Nikon will implement at a later day, or at least I hope they do, there is a highlight protection metering mode but it is very situationally dependant.
The second lens, the 24-200 was also a considered choice, on the past couple of trips away I had taken a standard zoom and a telephoto lens with me for the Fuji to cover all ranges, I had considered replacing both with the Tamron 18-300 but it came away with too many optical compromises for my liking, and having two lenses in the bag just make carrying more kit a pain, plus having to change the lens to change focal length especially in dodgy weather was not a good thing given the environment's I will hopefully end up taking the Nikon into this year to come, I plan on carrying the camera on my beach rides and almost on a daily basis, changing lenses on a beach with the wind, rain and sand blowing about is not going to be good for any camera!
So yeah, I am quite looking forward to taking more photo's in the months ahead especially with a few trips away with the family and a couple of bike events I am attending even if I am not riding in them. I am hoping that taking photo's and getting back out on the bike again will help pull me out of the fink I am currently dragging my ass through, I have just been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes which explains why I have nose dived this past 18 months after I was seeming doing quite well, but more about that in a later post. Thanks for reading this far, more to come soon.
