When I first started my digital photography journey, I hopped on board the Canon Train. I bought the Canon Digital Rebel. a 5.6 megapixel beast. I learned so much on that camera. Composition, Exposure, lighting, you name it.
A short time after I found a used Canon 20D and purchased that. That was a game changer for me. I had been trying to use manual mode, but the Rebel only had one dial and you had to switch the function of that dial to control both aperture and shutter speed. The 20d however had 2 dials allowing me to control both shutter speed and aperture without needing to push an extra button increased my shooting tremendously. With the addition of the wonderful Canon 100-400 lens and a 1.4x teleconverter I had a blast! I’d go out every weekend to Sunken Meadow State park or Caumsett State Park or Massapequa state park shooting a variety of animals. With the 100-400 on my 20d and my 10-22 on the Rebel I was set. I started getting into wedding photography and decided to upgrade my Rebel which I considered my back up camera to a 40d and make that my primary camera. That’s when things took a turn.
I was so excited to get the 40d. The 20d was so good. The addition of more megapixels and better low light performance made me excited. But i was very very disappointed. My percentage of good images I got from shoots plummeted. In fact, the only usable images were from my 20d. I started hating going out and shooting. Images were soft. Every lens produced soft out of focus images. I let friends shoot with it, I even sent it in for repair still had issues.
This brings me to the first switch. I went to see my friend Steve over at Neptune Camera. Steve was a Nikon shooter and we always joked about which one is better. I put my bag on the counter with every piece of Canon equipment I had and said “Give me a price I’m going Nikon”. I walked out of the store with a Nikon D700 a 28-135 and an SB900 flash, and did a photoshoot with it the next day.
That D700 was great! images were crisp, colors were great and I loved shooting again. After switching I did a short portfolio review with Jared Polin of Fro Knows Photo. We were talking before and I realized as I was picking images how much I didn’t shoot because of that 40d. But I digress, shortly after the D700 I upgraded to a Nikon D3s (I love shooting 2 cameras especially for weddings) and the Nikon 70-200 2.8 version 2. The combination of the 70-200 and that D3s… WOW. I’d say 90% of my weddings were shot using that combination. Even walking around day to day it was rare to have anything but that 70-200 on my D3s
When I made the switch to Nikon, one thing that my kit lacked was a nature photography lens. I had used and LOVED the 100-400 by Canon. I had looked at some of the Nikon and Sigma offerings but they were either out of my price range or didn’t perform to my standards. I went to my local camera shop and started asking questions, eventually walked out of the store with a Tamron 150-600 (you can see my blog post here)
That brings me to my switch… again. I have really missed shooting, but life has gotten in the way. I’ve made an effort to get back out and shooting and much to my dismay, the batteries for my now 13 year old camera are very difficult to find. I found a third party one a few years ago, but it doesn’t charge properly. It gets a calibration error on the charger and won’t actually calibrate. It only charges to 50%. I knew a new camera was in my future.
I started doing my research, and exploring the new mirrorless cameras. Interested to see what Nikon had to offer, I started looking at the Nikon Z series. I quickly found out that while the focusing system is good, Canon and Sony is much better. It has more focus points, and even has special focusing system for animals and even specifically birds.
So I took that Tamron 150-600 lens (it truly is a wonderful lens and I highly recommend it) and brought it back to Dodds Camera exchanged it and paid the difference for a new Sony a7 IV and Sony’s 200-600 lens. The lens hasn’t arrived yet and I’ve got less than 100 shots on the Sony with the kit lens. I’m learning the autofocus system and wish I had a more substantial piece of glass on it, but I’m liking it so far!
