New Stuff

1. Lately I’ve not had the opportunity to get seriously geeky about camera gear, or gadgetry in general. But, I’m one step closer to getting my kit together with the purchase of this — an AF-S DX VR Zoom-Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED (say that three times fast). Which looks like this:

2. I’ve been wanting to cut my kit down to bare essentials ever since I got back from Indonesia — I’m just sick of lugging all that stuff about. Now I’ve got a lens that will pretty much do everything except super-wideangle, which I don’t need most of the time, meaning I won’t need to change lenses much at all. So my kit now consists of:

3. …all of which fits nicely in my new LowePro Nova 3AW shoulder bag, which with the help of a couple of clips attaches itself to the front of my LowePro backpack (which will hold clothes and stuff). This combo will be great for short trips, and would probably do for a couple weeks in the tropics. On a test pack I crammed a pair of jeans, a pair of cargos, a pair of sneakers, a sweatshirt, 4 t-shirts, underwear and socks for a week, toiletries, medication, a small towel and my laptop in it. It’s a bloody black hole I tell ya.

4. So, the only thing left to buy now is a super-wideangle, and I’ve got my eye on either the Nikkor 12-24mm f4, or the Sigma 10-20mm F4.5-5.6. The Nikkor is the better of the two, but the Sigma is wider and half the price. That, and replacing my Canon Ixus 30 with an Olympus 770SW — it’s small and light, better in places where you don’t want to have a huge Nikon thief-magnet, and waterproof to 5m with no special housing — just the ticket the next time I get stuck on a raft in the middle of the sea getting pelted with rain and waves.

5. My first chance to road test the new combo will be in May, where a mate and I will be heading for the bright lights of Tokyo and making our way back on local trains. Think Sydney to Melbourne via local trains. Except more exciting.

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