My Optical to Digital Conversion System
Those who know me and my love of gadgets -- the geekier the better -- will find this hard to believe, but I firmly believe that equipment is the least important part of being a photographer.
There's a great web site about photography -- www.kenrockwell.com -- that expresses the view well. Read Why Your Camera Doesn't Matter for a great explanation.
That said, I do like my toys...
The earliest photos here were taken with a Ricoh digital camera with barely-more-than-vga resolution and only a wide/normal zoom selection. It was fun, and you could get nice web-quality shots with it, but the camera had serious limitations. Of course, we're talking about 1998 here, so things have moved on a bit.
From 1999 through 2001, I used a Nikon F60 35mm camera and (usually) a Nikkor 28-105mm zoom lens. I shot on Kodak Portra print film, and scanned negatives using a Nikon Coolscan 35mm scanner.
At the beginning of 2002, I bought an Olympus C4040 4 megapixel camera with 3-1 zoom range. This little (for its time) camera has amazingly good performance, and it quickly replaced the Nikon on my travels. The majority of the pictures here (as of early 2005) were taken with that camera.
I'd been telling myself that once digital SLR cameras with interchangeable lenses got to a reasonable price, I'd buy one. As wonderful as the Olympus was, its fairly narrow zoom range and lack of interchangeable lenses was a limiting factor for me. In December, 2004, I took the plunge and got a Nikon D70 with 18-70mm zoom. I also have a 50mm F/1.8 lens to use in low light situations, and a 75-300mm zoom for photographing wildlife and radio antennas. I'm just learning how to use this new toy, and all indications are that it's pretty amazing.
By the way -- I just sold my Nikon 35mm camera. For the type of shooting I do, with the web as my primary showplace, I don't see any need to shoot film anymore.