Help please (kit advice)
Posted: Tue 22 Dec 2009 23:02
Hey all, I have been asked to go to Malawi to take some pictures of the local people at the end of someone else's few month visit. She wants me to get candid portraits and we also need to try and get some video between us.
This is a once in a life time opportunity and I was thinking that it might be a good time to buy myself a new toy. I think that a D3s would be my ideal and would help with the sports photography a lot too but it is probably too much money right now, obviously lessons would be great but time is a big issue for me over the next few months too. What would people think would be the essential kit for this kind of project? I was thinking that probably the 70-200VR or the new version would probably be the kind of thing that was within reach of my budget, would add value to this particular project and would come in useful down the line too.
The reason that I am asking here is that there are some great portrait photographers here and I just want to sanity check - body wise I will be taking both my D300 and my S5 I also have an SB800 (which won't be needed in the daytime!) and lenses that I currently own are the Zeiss 25mm f2.8, Voigtlander Nokton 58mm f1.4, Nikkor micro 105VR and the 70-300VR. I have heard that when it rains there it is very heavy so the other reason I am thinking of the 70-200 is for the waether sealing.
Here's a few examples of the kind of portraits I am being asked to take incase you are not familiar with my portrait style.
(The light was pretty poor so I was shooting ISO 1600 at about a 1/30s at 100+mm
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2525/420 ... 6fe0_b.jpg
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4034/420 ... fb6d_b.jpg
And my little boy Oscar just in case you are missing him
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2566/418 ... 0c5c_b.jpg
This is a once in a life time opportunity and I was thinking that it might be a good time to buy myself a new toy. I think that a D3s would be my ideal and would help with the sports photography a lot too but it is probably too much money right now, obviously lessons would be great but time is a big issue for me over the next few months too. What would people think would be the essential kit for this kind of project? I was thinking that probably the 70-200VR or the new version would probably be the kind of thing that was within reach of my budget, would add value to this particular project and would come in useful down the line too.
The reason that I am asking here is that there are some great portrait photographers here and I just want to sanity check - body wise I will be taking both my D300 and my S5 I also have an SB800 (which won't be needed in the daytime!) and lenses that I currently own are the Zeiss 25mm f2.8, Voigtlander Nokton 58mm f1.4, Nikkor micro 105VR and the 70-300VR. I have heard that when it rains there it is very heavy so the other reason I am thinking of the 70-200 is for the waether sealing.
Here's a few examples of the kind of portraits I am being asked to take incase you are not familiar with my portrait style.
(The light was pretty poor so I was shooting ISO 1600 at about a 1/30s at 100+mm
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2525/420 ... 6fe0_b.jpg
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4034/420 ... fb6d_b.jpg
And my little boy Oscar just in case you are missing him
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2566/418 ... 0c5c_b.jpg