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Lightscapes Nature Photography
Photographing the North American Landscape

Nature Photography by Kerry Leibowitz

Photographic Gear:  A Brief Personal History

I'm inclined to think that more is made of this is subject than warranted, but a lot of people seem to care, so...

After using an assortment of Kodak Instamatic and Polaroid cameras as a kid, I received my first 35mm film-based SLR at the age of about 15.  It was an Olympus OM-10 (a "semi-automatic"--meaning aperture priority) camera which I continued to use sporadically for about 20 years.  I very briefly owned a low-end Minolta SLR (complete with a "do it all" 28-200mm zoom lens) until I realized, as I became truly serious about photography for the first time, that this camera didn't have several features which were important given what I wanted to do.  The problem was not with the Minolta brand--it was the fact that this was a beginner's SLR, in effect, and I wanted to move beyond that point.

When I moved to replace it, I chose a Nikon N80--a kind of mid-level film SLR, something that had every feature that was important to me (except mirror lockup) at a relatively affordable price.  I was insistent on a camera that had a built-in spot meter--all of my shooting is done in full manual exposure mode--which left out the comparable Canon SLR (the Elan 7).  Had I been willing to move up a class in camera--the Nikon F100 or the Canon EOS 3) I might well have ended up buying into the Canon line, but I didn't want to spend the extra cash.  That's the reason I entered the Nikon world and I became more deeply embedded as I invested in lenses.  I've stuck with Nikon because of this investment, but I'm sure that I would have been at least as satisfied if I'd ended up going the Canon route.

I shot with the N80 for a couple of years and purchased a film scanner so that I could work with my images in the "digital darkroom."  The purchase of Adobe Photoshop--and the associated learning curve--followed shortly thereafter.

By late 2002, I was seriously researching medium format camera options, but I had the opportunity to see images that were being produced with Canon's original 1Ds and decided that fixed-back medium format cameras--at least non-specialty varieties like 617 panoramic formats--probably wouldn't be a good investment.  It appeared to me that high quality digital SLRs were already here and would continue to improve with time.

In the late summer of 2003 I purchased a used Nikon D100 and took it with me on a photo trip to Michigan's Upper Peninsula in early October.  That experience forever (presumably) moved me to digital capture.  I loved the experience of being freed from what I perceived as the limits of film.  (This is no knock on film cameras; many people I know continue to shoot film with cameras spanning a variety of formats with wonderful results; it's simply not the approach most conducive to my workflow and creative expression.)

In early 2006, I upgraded the D100 by purchasing the D200, and that's what I use as of this writing (early July, 2007).  I have two D200 camera bodies, and the following lenses:  Nikkor 12-24 DX; Nikkor 24-120 D; Nikkor 80-400 VR; Nikkor 200mm Micro.  I also own an 18-35mm lens that I've retained from my film days in the event that Nikon releases a camera with a full 35mm film-sized digital sensor that I can afford.  For the time being, given the rest of my equipment, the lens is redundant and I don't carry it with me; the rest of my gear is hauled around in a Tamrac Extreme photo backpack.  I own a Gitzo 2228 carbon fiber tripod and use a Kirk BH-3 ballhead with a Manfrotto 438 leveling head to assist with taking panoramic images.

I've been doing all my own photo printing for about five years now, with a series of 13-inch-wide Epson pigment-based printers.  First it was the 2000P and, for the last several years, I've used the 2200.

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