After nearly 12 months, my equipment update cycle is pretty much complete.
My old D700 bodies were still going strong but they were reaching end of life and I decided to go for a controlled upgrade in advance, rather than facing failure in the field (even though I have backups for everything) and having to do everything at once in a hurry.
I also decided to go largely second-hand. With Nikon on a major upgrade cycle itself right now, there is an opportunity to get well looked after second hand gear – from reliable sources – from the previous generation of cameras. That’s plenty for me and the savings are significant. The risks are minimal if you’re careful about who you buy from. Worst case it goes back to the seller or needs to go to repair (so some contingency is set aside for that ).
The best second hand buys need patience: waiting for the right one to come up at the right price. So having time to shop around is also good.
Finally I decided to upgrade and not switch. There’s a lot of talk amongst photographers about switching camera brands – especially to Sony mirrorless.
There’s a lot of good tech there but nothing really I need that I can’t get from the current (and previous) iterations of Nikon DSLRs.
The biggest reason not to switch is the cost of replacing the supporting equipment: I have a lot invested in lenses, flashes etc. The new ones and ones from different manufacturers may be marginally better in specific circumstances but again, is it really worth spending a considerable amount of money to change everything?
Remember this is a business that fundamentally needs to feed my kids. A lot of camera gear is bought on a ‘want’ basis. Much is bought on a ‘might be useful’ or ‘if X happens then I’ll need this’. These days I look at everything from a Return on Investment basis. If I spend €1000 on an upgrade which makes no tangible difference to my client or my workflow, then that’s money I can’t spend on my family.
In the next post I’ll go through the full itemised list of what the upgrade took.