My Equipment

In this article, I discuss my photographic equipment as well as the computer hardware and software I use to process and publish my images.

Cameras

I made most of the images on this site with my Nikon setup which includes a good number of prime and zoom lenses. My main camera is a Nikon D200 which is a 10MP digital SLR released in late 2005. Other cameras that I have used include:

Olympus Stylus Epic. A great point and shoot film camera with a sharp 35mm f/2.8 lens. I still take this camera with me when traveling although I am looking for a digital equivalent (I haven't found one yet).
Minolta Autocord. A twin lens reflex camera that shoots medium format film.
Nikon D100. This was a 6MP Nikon DSLR released in 2002. It has since been retired.
Nikon N80. This is a Nikon film camera. Also retired.
Holga. A plastic medium format camera that sells for about $20 with all sorts of image defects like vignetting and light leaks. Because of its flaws, the camera has managed to develop a cult following.

Lenses

12-24mm AF-S DX. A great wide angle zoom lens. This lens has some distortion so it's not optimal for architecture although much can be corrected in software.
24-85mm AF-S. A standard zoom that is sharp without having too much distortion.
18-70mm AF-S DX. This zoom lens has a slightly more useful range on a DX format camera than the 24-85 but it has more distortion as well.
70-200mm AF-S VR. This is a great all around telephoto lens. I primarily use this when I am covering events and I need to get shots of people.
55-200mm AF-S. I use this lens when weight is at a premium and I need telephoto reach. Although it's an AF-S lens, autofocus is extremely slow. On the positive side, it has a 9 bladed diaphragm which makes for nice out of focus highlights.
105mm micro AF. A great macro lens that also works well as a short telephoto.
85mm f/1.4 AF. I only use this lens for portraits. It's big and heavy for an 85mm lens.
300mm f/4 AF-S. A great telephoto lens that is not too big. The bare minimum length I would recommend for wildlife.
24mm AF-D. I rarely use this lens anymore.
50mm AF. On digital, this is a nice portrait lens.
Lens Baby. This is a selective focus lens designed to replicate and improve on the Holga look.

For those unfamiliar with Nikon's terminology:

AF - autofocus lens
AF-D - autofocus with the lens providing distance information
AF-S - autofocus with the motor inside the lens instead of the camera body (the lens also provides distance information). Generally, AF-S lenses have newer designs, and focus quieter and faster. AF-S is equivalent to Canon's USM.
VR - Vibration Reduction optically stabilizes the image projected onto the film or digital sensor by rapidly moving a small internal lens to counteract movements of the lens and camera from hand holding. This allows sharp images at lower shutter speeds. VR is equivalent to Canon's IS.
DX - a lens designed for Nikon's digital sensors which are smaller than a 35mm frame

When traveling by air, I will usually take the 12-24, 24-85, and one other telephoto lens. I may take additional lenses depending on what I plan to photograph.

Other Equipment

Velbon El Carmagne 640. This is a carbon fiber tripod with lever locks. I chose this over the equivalent Gitzo tripod because it has a much smaller closed length making it easier to travel with. When closed, it will fit inside my carry-on luggage and even inside my backpack.
Acratech Ultimate Ballhead. My ballhead of choice.
Kenko 1.4x TC. I use this with the 300mm AF-S lens when I need maximum reach. With the digital crop factor, and the teleconverter it is roughly equivalent to a 300 * 1.5 * 1.4 = 630mm lens on a film camera.
SB-800. Nikon's top of the line flash.
Polarizer filter. I have a polarizer filter but I rarely use it.

Studio Lighting

A few of the pictures on this site are made in the studio. For these images, I use Dyna-Lite strobes along with many different light modifiers such as umbrellas, softboxes, and reflectors.

Bags

When traveling, I like to carry bags that don't look like photo bags. Usually, this means a standard backpack or a side hanging courier bag. These typically have very little padding which I actually prefer because it reduces weight and bulk. I found a nice daypack from REI that I like since it has side pockets at the bottom in which I can stuff my lenses without taking off the pack.

Film

I now shoot almost entirely digitally, but in the past I would use Fuji slide film for my color work:

Fuji Sensia/Astia. Great for general shooting, travel, people. It has a very wide latitude and helps with scenes with a lot of contrast.
Fuji Velvia 50. Super saturated images that are great for nature and scenic pictures.
Fuji Provia. Finer grained than Sensia and 1 stop faster than Velvia. However, I never really came to love this film.

I also use black and white negative film:

Ilford XP2. A black and white film that can be developed in a color film process.
Kodak CN. Another black and white film similar to XP2.

Digital Storage

I have several 1GB memory cards and usually this is enough to last me a day's worth of shooting. When I need more storage, I use the following devices:

Compact Drive PSD. This is a portable hard drive with a built in interface to directly copy memory cards. This particular model is nice since it has very fast data transfers (1GB in less than 2 minutes) and a set of 4 AA rechargeables lasts nearly forever. I've obtained 15 GB on a single charge in real life without even finishing the batteries.
Jobo Image Tank 2. This was an older PSD that I now use only as an additional backup. The compact drive is better in every possible way.
Dell 700m Laptop. I take this when weight is not an issue. With the laptop, I will burn each day's pictures onto a DVD.

On a serious trip, I will take at least two of the above options so that I have backups of the images at all times. I'll leave one device at my place of lodging and take the other with me.

Digital Darkroom - Hardware

I have a digital workflow and I process, store, and print all my images with computer technology. With digital cameras the entry point is a RAW file. With film, the entry point is a high resolution scan at 5400 dpi from a Minolta Dimage 5400 scanner.

I use a dual processor Dell PC running Windows XP with 2.5 GB of RAM. I am not entirely satisfied with Windows XP and I am strongly considering moving to the Apple Macintosh platform during my next upgrade cycle.

For my monitor, I use a 19" Lacie Electronblue IV monitor. This is a CRT monitor that is no longer being made however it has great color performance that easily exceeds most LCD displays. I calibrate and profile it with a Gretag MacBeth Eye-One Display 2.

In the past I've sent my images to Calypso for printing on a Lightjet. However, the quality of professional inkjet printers has vastly improved to the point where they are superior to traditional film reproduction methodologies, both in terms of image quality and archival longevity. I now print my images on an HP Designjet 130 printer and this gives me total control of the entire reproduction process.

I backup my files to external hard drives and I have at least three copies of my images organized as follows:

a working copy
a local backup updated with daily changes
an offsite backup updated monthly

My working disk is a 500GB external firewire drive. I use an external 4-bay firewire drive case with removable trays for my local and offsite backups. I also maintain copies of my RAW master files on DVDs and CDs.

On average, I have experienced a drive failure once every two years. So my backup plan assumes that the disks will fail, and it is just a matter of being prepared to recover the lost information with minimal hassle.

Digital Darkroom - Software

I process my images on the computer mainly for color correction, spotting, and the removal of capture artifacts (such as lens distortion). I use the following programs:

Nikon Capture. I use Nikon Capture to process my RAW files for global image adjustments. I experimented with other RAW processors such as Adobe Camera Raw and Raw Shooter Essentials but I found the colors required a lot of tweaking whereas NC would produce almost perfect colors by default.
Adobe Photoshop CS. The standard image processing program. I use this for local adjustments that can't be done in NC and preparing images for printing.
Hugin & Panorama Tools. I use this combination for stitching multiple images to make large panoramic pictures. Hugin is the GUI for Panorama Tools and both are open source.
IMatch. A shareware program for managing photo collections. Highly recommended and well worth the $50 I spent on it.
PTLens is a plug-in for Photoshop that I use to remove lens distortions

Web Publishing

Almost all the pages on my website are generated automatically. I use IMatch to store the caption and keywords for each image, and I use text files to describe the galleries and to note which images should be displayed. This information is fed into to a set of Perl programs that actually produces the webpages.

There are a few pages on my website that are dynamically generated such as the search results and the ordering pages. For these, I use PHP in conjunction with a MySQL database that basically replicates the caption and keyword information in IMatch.

I host my site on Dreamhost.com which uses Linux based servers. They have been a great host and I would recommend them without reservation.