EQUIPMENT REVIEWS

Welcome to my equipment reviews.

Here you will find links to various articles about a whole variety of subjects from commentary about the various pieces of equipment that I have used and owned over the years to tips on how to trvel with your camera gear. Writing and populating these links will be a continual process so please do pop back from time to time and checkout what's new. I hope that you find some of it useful and / or interesting.  See below for further general comment.......

All of the pieces of equipment covered here have been, or currently are, owned and used by me. Here I want to pass on to you some of my thoughts and conclusions.

I am not into spending endless hours trying to determine if one lens is optically better than another or shooting lots of test chart comparisions. This is therefore not an in-depth review of each item, it is simply a summary of my opinion of them in actual use. I am relatively critical of equipment, in terms of build quality, ease of use, value for money, resultant image quality, etc. and so take my comments with that in mind. For example I used to use a Sigma 400mm f/5.6 APO telephoto lens which had an excellent reputation and was certainly well made and budget friendly, but I was never truly happy with the images it produced. Being my first true telephoto it could equally have been the lens or my use of it i.e., poor technique. I replaced it with a second-hand Nikkor 400mm f/3.5 IFED (a terrifying investment at the time). The images were stunning, but for the price they should have been, at least I knew that it the relatively poor performance of the Sigma was not down to me. I am sure many amateurs would have been delighted with the output from the Sigma, especially if previously experience had only been with consumer optics. It was not a bad lens but for me it did not deliver what I was looking for. I will therefore try to put any comments into context where I can. I have also created a basic scoring system to rate each item.

1 = Poor, not fit for purpose, definitely to be avoided

2 = Generally disappointing but useable, best avoided

3 = Good, solid performer but not 'great', think twice

4 = Excellent with some minor flaws or caveats, recommended

5 = Fabulous, recommended without hesitation

When buying I do some research on the web (thankfully there are lots of people who do like to do such comparative evaluations) and then buy and use whatever piece of kit I feel best fits my needs and budget. If it delivers and gets sufficient use I keep it, otherwise I sell it on and think again. I am not a chaser of the latest kit, some of my lenses I have had 20 year or so and I still use my first digital cameras. My priorities, in order of importance, are performance, ruggedness and cost. Cost is still important but, rather than paying whatever I have to in order to meet priorities 1 and 2, it has a different impact on my purchases. If I can't (or won't) afford what I want I tend not to buy a second best option.

I hope that you find my thoughts and comments useful when considering a new piece of kit. There are of course sample to sample differences, and indeed user to user, so you may well have different experiences. If you have specific questions, need a little clarification or just want to comment then feel free to contact me. Enjoy.....

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