Over the years I've accumulated more gear than I strictly need, and certainly more than I can carry. Of which, more some other time.
But it got me wondering what I really need to get the job done, so I decided to work out the five essentials that I wouldn't want to be without. It's obviously an incomplete list (for example, a radio slave isn't much use without a flash), but it was an interesting exercise all the same (hey, it's December - I'm not exactly rushed off my feet right now...)
Here then, in no particular order, are my five essentials:
1. The met office website
It's a running joke in my house that this is my homepage... but I don't walk out of the door without checking it first. Weather's important to a photographer, partly in terms of keeping gear as dry as possible but mainly because it affects the light. The met office site isn't always right, but it's the most accurate of the lot and it's saved me a lot of time and hassle over the years.
2. Bibble Pro raw conversion software
I shoot raw because it gives me more flexibility, allows me to extract the maximum possible quality out of my cameras and means I can tweak the overall look of my pictures. I like my images to look as film-like as possible, for example, so this tends to be reflected in the choices I make around contrast, colour and noise reduction. Whilst Nikon's raw software undoubtedly gives the best results, it's excruciatingly slow. Bibble's quality is pretty good, but more importantly it's blazingly fast. Result? I spend less time in front of a monitor and more time out riding and shooting.
3. Quantum radio slave
The ability to take my flash off the camera and put it (almost) anywhere I wanted revolutionised my photography. Suddenly I could shoot through foliage, between trees, from behind rocks... and still throw a bit of fill light on the rider. Held together with insulating tape, my original radio slave is still going strong despite being dropped, rained on and generally mistreated.
4. Nikon D200
Well, I'm not going to get very far without a camera, am I? In many ways I prefer my D2X. It feels faster, it's got useable autofocus and the image quality is cleaner and more detailed than the D200 up to around ISO400. But it's a big, heavy beast. The D200 is close enough to the D2X in terms of speed and quality, and it's a whole lot smaller and lighter. If I had to choose just one camera, it would be this one.
5. Nikon 12-24mm f/4 DX
A camera's not much use without a lens. This isn't the greatest piece of glass that Nikon's made - I wish it was faster and a bit sharper wide open, for a start. But it matches my view of the world, which has got wider over the years. I seem to default to seeing things in 18mm widescreen, and that translates to 12mm on my D200 and D2X.
Of course I'd like a longer lens too, but that takes my list over five...
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