About me - Equipment

Notes on Equipment

For those of you with an interest in equipment for particular aspects of photography, I’ll give a brief breakdown of what I use.

For Panoramic Landscapes

One of my favourite cameras, the Fuji 617 panoramic - a completely manual camera which takes the equivalent of 3 x 120 frames in a row, giving negative/transparency size of 6 ¾ x 2 ¼ inches, hence the 617 designation in centimetres. So, it’s back to basics with camera - no auto focus, auto iris, auto wind, not even a light meter! I love it. You really slow down and consider the image you are taking. There’s so much information in the shot you have to be meticulous in looking for objects within the frame that could spoil the picture and, of course, a spot meter is an essential partner as well as a sturdy tripod. Most of the exposures are made at ¼ second or less at f45 to make up for the limited depth of field.

For Wildlife 'stills'

I now use a digital system, the Nikon D2x is excellent, robust, fast processing and great lenses. I use the 70-200 f2.8 zoom, the 300/f4,which is exceptionally sharp and the 500/f40 with a 1.4 x converter.

For Filming Wildlife

My basic camera is an Arriflex HSR II high speed camera. This can run film at 150 fps (frames per second) giving a slow motion effect 6 times slower than normal when played back at 25 fps. - wonderful for filming birds in flight. The film used is super 16mm in 400 foot rolls which gives 10 minute of screen time.

The standard zoom lens is 8-64mm which equates to 16-128mm on 35mm. My telephoto lenses are Nikon 50-300 zoom and prime 600mm; these have been adapted to a universal mount which takes the Arriflex bayonet mount or a Nikon mount, so I can still use them for still, though only as a manual; no auto focus or auto iris. The 600mm lens equates to 1200mm on 35mm so a very heavy fluid head tripod us used.