Klaus Nordby's Militantly Dull Homepage:

My photo gear

10 glorious megapixels: Nikon D200 DSLR

In August 2006, after much deliberation, I bought my first digital SLR — the Nikon D200 (in my film days, I have owned two other Nikons, so I have a little Nikon bias over Canon). I won't belabor its well-known virtues, except to say that I am generally immensely pleased with it. My only gripe is the amount of noise at long exposures and/or higher ISO settings, which I could have wished to be less — but that is not doable with current technologies for Nikon's DX sensor. Only full-frame sensor cameras, like the Canon 5D and its even more expensive siblings, have less noise — but the cost of such systems, both for the camera and for the large, heavy lenses, is not doable for me. But, aside from night photography, for almost all other photographic purposes the D200 is a fantastic camera.

Lens lust

I bought the D200 with the 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G ED-IF AF-S DX Zoom Nikkor as a "kit" lens. It was quite good, but it wasn't the lens I really wanted — namely the much-fabled 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED-IF AF-S VR DX Zoom-Nikkor. Its US list price is around $700. But there were long waiting lists for this lens, both in Norway, the US and everywhere — for, very sadly, Nikon have long back-order lists for much of their equipment. But in October, through my friend Sara Lee and her husband Glenn, who run a web photo store in Australia called Discount Digital Photographics, I was finally able to buy and import this lens — using a private courier who traveled from the US to Norway on vacation, to bypass our horrible customs duties and taxes — but at the premium price of $930! I then sold the 18-70mm Nikkor and used nothing but the 18-200mm, which is an amazing all-round lens for at least 80% of all my intended shooting.

Then, in March 2007 I bought two new lenses, the 50mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor and the Tokina AT-X Pro 12-24mm f/4.0 DX. The 50mm Nikkor is fast and razor-sharp, with no perceivable distortion — as a good prime lens should be — and it "only" cost me around $150 (in Norway, in the US it would have been $100), which is very cheap for a Nikon lens. And the 12-24mm Tokina, has, after a few quick tests, shown itself to be even better than I hoped, and it will be of great use in my landscape photography — its widest setting, 12mm, is just amazingly wide. I bought it in Norway, from Fotofokus, for around $750 (in the US it would have been around $550 — yes, Norway is a horribly, terribly, dreadfully, expensive country!).

Happy update!

I've bought a very snazzy GPS receiver for my D200, the di-GPS. It's a matchbox-sized doodah, costing about $240, which sits in the camera's flash socket. It works splendidly, so now all my photos will get auto-tagged with exact co-ordinates, and it even the altitude! (The only downside is that it draws more juice from my batteries.) You just gotta love modern technology — and the free gift from America to the world, namely the amazing GPS system.

Mission accomplished — and just begun!

So that completes my camera gear list. If I can't make any first-class photos with the equipment I have now — the fault will, as usual, be my own.