So what sort of gear do you use?

While this will probably tick off a lot of people (mainly photo salesmen and equipment snobs), the truth is that photo equipment is only a means to an end. The most important variable in the photographic equation is what's behind the camera. Ansel Adams could produce better photographs with a pinhole camera than, say, 99% of the photographers around today could with the very latest 35mm SLRs jam-packed with gee-whiz features. Matthew Brady produced some of the finest war photographs ever taken, and he did it with technology that hasn't been used in a hundred years.

Fundamentally, good photographers know what their cameras can do and what they can't, and work within those limitations to achieve the desired effect. In other words, different cameras can do different things. For example, professionals who specialize in landscape photography use large-format cameras almost exclusively (there are notable exceptions), because the large image size captures the sort of detail that is simply impossible to get with 35mm systems. Conversely, photojournalists use 35mm almost exclusively because 35mm cameras are vastly more portable and convenient (trying to lug a Sinar 4x5 or a RZ67 through a war zone could be hazardous to your health, not to mention your back). Pick the right tool for the job: a construction worker wouldn't try to use a ball-peen hammer to break up concrete, nor would a weekend hobbyist use a pneumatic jackhammer to put together a bird feeder.

Having said that, I use two 35mm SLRs almost exclusively: a Pentax ZX-5n as my primary camera and a Pentax LX as a backup. I also have a well-loved Pentax K1000 just in case I ever feel the need to abandon automation. I have six lenses, plus one teleconverter:

• 16mm f/2.8 Sigma fisheye
• 28mm f/2.8 Pentax SMC-A wide-angle
• 28-70mm f/4 Pentax SMC-F zoom
• 40mm f/2.8 Pentax SMC-M "Pancake"
• 50mm f/1.4 Pentax SMC normal
• 90mm f/2.8 Sigma macro telephoto
• 135mm f/2.5 Pentax SMC telephoto
• 135mm f/2.8 Pentax SMC-FA telephoto
• T6-2X Pentax teleconverter

You'll notice that I have two 135mm lenses. The f/2.5 is manual focus, and is a great lens to go with the LX when I go off shooting in available murk; the f/2.8 is autofocus and is an amazing lens. It's the lens I find myself reaching for more than any other.

I have to say that having autofocus is addicting.

I also have an Olympus Stylus Epic (it's the one with the 28mm f/2.8 lens) as a point and shoot. It fits in a front pants pocket, and the lens sharpness is pretty much indistinguishable from that of the legendary Yashica T4. Plus it's smaller and cheaper than the Yashica.

I recently aquired a Minolta DiMage X for use as a digital P&S. So far, it's pretty nice. It doesn't produce film-quality images, but it more than does the job that I need it to do (for example, all the pictures taken here were taken with the Minolta).

I have a Sekonic L-308 Flashmate flash meter. It does flash and ambient metering in both incident and reflected modes; it also will meter for motion picture use (though I'll happily admit that I've never used it for that and I doubt I ever will). It's very nice and I like it a lot.

The next lens I want to buy will probably be the Pentax 20-35mm f/4 SMC-FA lens. It's a sweet piece of glass. It would go nicely with the new Pentax MZ-S I'd like to own. Mind you, at a thousand dollars, I'm not entirely convinced that I want to pay for it just yet; I just want one.

In a perfect world, I would have all prime lenses: a 15mm, a 20mm, a 28mm, a 50mm, a 90mm, a 135mm, and 200mm, and they'd all be f/2.0 or faster. In a perfect world, I'd have the kind of muscular checking account I'd need to pay for all of this. And in a perfect world I could tote around a 40-pound camera bag all day without even noticing. Yeah, right.

While autofocus is addictive, there is a dark side. First off, it's pretty pointless when you're shooting with wide-angle lenses: a 28mm lens at f/8 has a depth-of-focus of about 4 feet to infinity. What's the point of trying to focus in that situation? And it doesn't work well (ok, at all) in the dark. This is a problem if you're using to doing available-murk photography.

What about a flash?

To be honest, I almost always use available light, even when shooting Kodachrome 64 (this is the primary reason I'm a big fan of fast prime lenses). And when it gets really murky, well, that's why the Great Yellow Father gave us TMAX 3200.

But I have been known to use a flash (often to balance out color temperature when shooting indoors), and the one I use and recommend is the Sunpak 383. It's powerful (GN 120), it tilts, it swivels, it slices, it dices, and it's smaller than a Vivitar 283. It's also cheap: $70, compared to over $300 for Nikon's latest and greatest. Downsides? It doesn't have a zoom head, and it has no camera automation of any sort (TTL flash metering, rear-curtain sync, high-speed sync, etc). For the type of photography I do, that's not a problem. The flip side, of course, is that I can't do all those nifty special effects, even for those times when it'd be a good thing.

October 13, 2002