Since many folks reach my pages after reading my posts in the rec.photo.* newsgroup hierarchy, and since readers of these groups are noted gearheads, I get e-mail asking me about my personal equipment, and advice about lens and film selection.
I decided to just go ahead and type up some of my biases...
My 35mm system is a Canon EOS system.
When I began researching camera systems in order to upgrade my existing gear (Minolta MD, with a Sigma 400/5.6 APO as my longest lens), my number one consideration was to buy the best auto-focus 600/4 and 300/2.8 lenses available.
At the time, Nikon had just announced their AFI-D telephotos, and had only recently introduced the N90. Canon's USM technology and telephoto design using artificially-grown fluorite-crystal elements had an extremely fine reputation. Prices were lower than the apparent prices for the new Nikkor telephotos. I'd had the opportunity to talk to a couple of professional wildlife photographers who recommended Canon since I was starting from scratch.
Canon's USM lenses also have a feature which I find very useful. You can set up your camera body to start auto-focus when you push on the AE-lock button at the rear of the camera. When in this mode, you can manual-focus or auto-focus interchangably, without flipping a mode switch on lens or body. When auto-focus start is left on the shutter button, you can "touch-up" auto-focus in single-shot mode after the body finishes focus. Either mode is very convenient when shooting birds - my regime is to aim, let the body autofocus, then if necessary "twitch" focus to get the eye as sharp as possible. This drill has become second-nature to me, and is faster than focusing entirely by myself. Sometimes I'll just aim the focus sensor on the eye, then re-frame for a decent composition if I have time, but this only works well for something sitting still.
(Note: Nikon has recently announced "silent-wave" motors and new telephotos incorporating them, which are equivalent to the Canon USM technology.)
I'd started my research convinced I'd "go Nikon", but after months of talking to folks in person, on the net, playing with gear in stores, and reading everything I could find (including Bob Atkins' fine EOS FAQ), I changed my mind.
And am glad I did.
And am especially glad I did so when I did - the Canon 600/4 has gone up about $1,500 in price (new, B&H) since I bought it in mid-1994.
Frankly, if I had to make the decision today, I'd probably go with a used Nikkor manual-focus 600/4 and forgo auto-focus. As much as I appreciate auto-focus at times, prices have just risen too far for my taste.
A lot of people argue that the traditional aperture ring and shutter speed dial are more "natural" and easy to use than the setup on the Canon EOS bodies.
I disagree. I find the Canon user interface very easy to use. Of course, the interface differs a bit from body to body (as does Nikon's) so I bought two virtually identical bodies. Having the body set aperture means that that changing lenses doesn't change aperture. That's a nice feature when you're in a hurry.
Of course, as a professional software engineer, I am forced to be flexible in regard to user interfaces and changing technology in my career. People with a different background may well be more comfortable with a traditional aperture ring/shutter speed dial interface.
No.
There's a lot of religious baloney among armchair photographers over the quality of various brands of equipment. It is true that Nikon has dominated the professional 35mm market for three decades. It is also true that Canon has always had a respectible presence in this market for the same length of time, and that the introduction of the EOS system has led to an increase in their market share.
Why not Minolta or Pentax? It is possible to rent Nikon and Canon equipment in most cities because these two brands dominate the professional market. So there is an availability issue which is legitimate. I've also been able to frequently inspect and play with Nikon and Canon gear in the field. You rarely see serious wildilfe shooters with Minolta equipment. I have run across folks with Pentax systems, but Pentax as a company seems to be fading in this competive market.
This is the one choice I would strongly recommend against. If you buy a Nikon, Canon, Minolta, or Pentax system you have a wide array of manufacturer's lenses to choose form, plus lenses from Sigma, Tamron, and other 3rd-party manufacturers.
If you buy a Sigma body, you are stuck with Sigma lenses and no other option, as the other 3rd-party manufacturers don't bother with this system.
This lack of flexibility alone argues against purchasing this system, and Sigma's lenses vary widely in quality, both in terms of optics and construction.
Currently, the best budget telephoto would appear to be the new Sigma 400/5.6 APO Macro, which replaces their older 400/5.6 APO (note the word "Macro", you can also tell the difference by price, as the new one costs about 50% more). I used the older one for years, and think it was excellent value for the money. It had the reputation of being just barely sharp enough for professional results, but with no sharpness "left over" for use with a teleconverter.
The new lens is reputed to be somewhat sharper, sharp enough that results with a good-quality teleconverter are also professionally sharp.
The major problem with this lens is that a 400/5.6 is too short. That can be fixed by attaching a 1.4x teleconverter, but then the resulting 560/8.0 is too slow for fine-grained slide film.
If you are shooting for your own pleasure, and therefore aren't constrained with the publication market's love of slow-speed film, this combination is very workable. Fuji and Kodak both make excellent ISO 100 slide films, pushable to 200, and many folks like Kodachrome 200. This coyote was shot with the older Sigma 400 and Kodachrome 200.
If you can afford to spend more, but not enough to simply call up B&H and solve your problem, and are primarily interested in photographing birds, look into the purchase of a used, manual focus 500/4.5 lens. If you find one, but it's the wrong brand, shed your religious preferences and consider buying the cheapest body of that brand that you can find, or buy a higher-quality used one. You'll still be saving a lot of money.
This lens actually offers some advantages over a 600/4 - it weighs about one-half as much (regardless of brand), is long enough to often be useful without a teleconverter, and sharp and fast enough to be useful with one (yielding a 700/6.3).
Another possibility is to buy a 300/2.8 and to plan to use a 2x converter on it for birds. When I planned my Canon system, I knew I'd be buying both the 600/4 and the 300/2.8 so purchased the latter and Canon's 1.4x and 2x converters first. The 600/5.6 which results is an excellent combination. There are also 3rd-party 300/2.8 lenses available which are quite good and which are roughly comparable in price to a used, manual-focus 500/4.5. If you are into general photography the 300/2.8 lens is extremely useful. But if you plan to mostly shoot birds, you'll find you rarely will use the lens without its doubler. A "naked" 500/4.5 will be sharper, and when used with a 1.4x teleconverter slightly longer than the 300/2.8 with a 2x converter, which is why I recommend this length for those who wish to primarily shoot birds.
I own two zooms, a 28-70/2.8 and a 80-200/2.8. I find modern high-end zooms to be extremely sharp. While mine are Canon, many people like the 3rd-party offerings, too. Since I own two bodies, I can slap one zoom on each and be ready for a wide range of opportunities without changing lenses. While prime (single focal length) lenses to cover this range would cost and weigh no more, I find the convenience of not having to switch lenses very often a real plus - it rains a lot in Oregon, and I also shoot a lot in the desert, particularly the Great Basin country of southeast Oregon and Nevada, where dust and especially alkali can be a real hassle.
I also own Canon's 100/2.8 macro which focuses to life-size without the need for an extension tube. I like this length better than the 50mm macros as it gives me a little more working distance. If my major interest was in shooting insects and flowers, I'd probably choose a Nikon system as it offers more options, including a 200mm macro.
Note: Canon has recently added a 180mm macro to the EOS lens lineup
Yes. I recently bought a Mamiya 7. I seriously considered buying a Pentax 67 system, but as my major use for medium format is outdoors when I'm often already lugging "Big Bertha" (all history buffs know this was a Cano...oops, cannon), I chose against this bulky system. The Mamiya 7 is lightweight and has excellent optics (there's a good review of the similar Mamiya 6 in the photo.net pages maintained by Phillip Greenspun). As it is a leaf-shutter, rangefinder camera it is very quiet - kind of like a gigantic Leica. I like taking street photos, particularly when I travel, so I'm also intrigued by the opportunity to sneak quiet shots on giant negatives.
Since I do freelance my nature photos occasionally, I mostly shoot slide film - the publication market demands it. I'm very fond of Fuji Velvia, which I, like many photographers, rate at ISO 40. I'm one of the few folks who hang out in the rec.photo.* hierarchy who will admit to liking Kodak's Lumiere 100x, but then again few people have as much opportunity as I do to shoot in the overcast, cold-light conditions that this warmly-balanced film is designed for. I rate it at ISO 80. The burrowing owl which heads my Malheur Guide main page was shot on Lumiere 100x.
Note: Since this was written, Kodak introduced E100S, E100SW and Elite II. These are fine-grained ISO 100 speed films, giving 1 1/3 stops over the speed of Velvia. They're very nice pushed one stop, too. I've standardized on E100SW as my wildlife film, but still use Velvia for landscapes. Kodak has very recently introduced a new ISO 200 speed professional Ektachrome that I've not tested yet. However, Glen Johnson, a frequent and respected poster to the photo.net Q&A forum, has tested it and states it is the first ISO 200 speed slide film he's tried that is fine-grained enough that it's not immediately obvious it's a high-speed film. This film pushes well to ISO 400, and will be very welcome, especially to those using slower-speed telephotos.
I used to shoot a lot of Kodachrome 64 and 25. They're inconvenient to get processed, and I, along with much of the photographic world, have stopped using them. For some reason these don't scan to Photo CD very well, either - most of the images in my pages with weird color balance are Kodachrome.
I have my local lab scan them to Photo CD, about 100 at once, for $1.50/slide. I then use a freeware program that runs on Unix systems that translates the Photo CD to PPM format, and to jpeg by another piece of freeware. I found these tools through photo.net.
I also wrote some of my own tools. These create scripts to decode base ("big"), base/4 ("medium"), and base/16 ("tiny" or "thumbnail") images and jpeg them using the above-mentioned freeware tools. I also wrote a simple captioning tool, and a program which combines the various sized jpeg files and captions to make the various images you see in my texts. This tool automatically generates height and width information in the IMG directives embedded in the html anchors, which helps Netscape. Finally, the tool generates an index file of thumbnails. Click here for an example.
The program to convert the images to the three jpeg sizes takes about twenty minutes to digest an entire 100-image Photo CD. Captioning is, of course, dependent on my creativity quotient, so varies. Creating htmls and thumbnail index from the images and captions takes about 10 seconds.
I dread to think how long all this would take by hand...
When I first decided to create "Springtime in Malheur Country!", I figured I'd better invest some time in tools since the fancy web-creation stuff you hear about don't run on a primitive VT 100 terminal!
In addition to the photo-cheater mentioned above, I wrote a simple templating tool that takes a template name with arguments and spits out a new page. The new page then has properly formatted headers, links to the home page, to the index maps, etc (feel free to peek at the template for bird pages by clicking here).
I just fill in the blank sections with text, copy in the photo .html files generated by my photo tools, and I'm done.
Currently, these tools are far too customized to my own environment to be given to others, but I may make sources available at a later date.