A Little News

Bounce flash in a very small gym with lots of white surfaces to bounce light from.

Did I fail to mention that it is basketball season again?  This is my least favorite sport to shoot and I guess I am lucky that I don’t cover too much of it any more since I am working mostly day shifts now but over the years I have covered hundreds, if not thousands, of basketball games.  It seems to be the season that never ends.  It does have its moments though and you get some of the best, funniest and even ugliest faces in photos during basketball games.  Way more than in other sports where faces are often obscured and you are very close to the action which increases your chances of good facial expression.  On top of that, if you shoot a lot of high school hoops like I have always done, you are most likely strobing the gym so you have great light on those expressions.

Well, you  have great light assuming that you can position your strobes in good locations and not end up with garish shadows crossing those great facial expressions.  So maybe now is the time for a little lighting primer.  Back in the day I used to always shoot with on camera direct flash which partially explains why I never really liked shooting high school hoops.  No amount of Photoshop can cure on camera flash in a dark gym.  It just is what it is.  Then one day my friend Corey Wilson came to work for The Decatur Daily.  He owned his own set of White Lightning strobes and he used them for every basketball game.  His stuff looked great and my stuff looked like I didn’t care.  I bummed strobes off of Corey every chance I got but that was not a good solution.  I finally convinced the boss to buy us a set of mono-lights we could use and then Corey left us to go to Green Bay and he took his lights with him.  I spent the next season and a half lugging in those AC powered mono-lights, stands and endless extension cords climbing all over the patrons trying to get everything hooked up, taped down and out of the way.

Finally one day, the light came on.  My boss bought me an SB800 to go with the SB28DX I was already carrying and just like that my shoulder began to recover from heavy mono-light syndrome.  Never heard of it?  That is an obvious deformity of the left shoulder leaving a deep indentation between the neck and shoulder joint which results from carrying that ever loving heavy bag in and out of crowded gymnasiums all winter long.  About that same time I discovered Strobist, God bless David Hobby, and my life was transformed.  Now I was going into those same gyms with about forty pounds less gear and getting essentially the same results.

I have made one more evolution in my lighting gear.  Now I am using a pair of Lumedynes I picked up used and they are wonderful.  They have more power than the SBs and are less bulky than the mono-lights.  A great compromise and they work wonderfully.  So how do you position the lights and yourself to make the most out of those small, dark high school gymnasiums.  I am so glad you asked.  Tonight, for instance, I worked in one of the two or three smallest gymnasiums in our area and it is not well lit either.  What it does have is that white padded insulation stuff all over the place in the ceiling and even on the walls above the concrete blocks.  So I could bounce my strobes into the ceiling and shoot basketball in a giant softbox.  Nice!  And it is almost compensation for shooting in a “cracker box” gymnasium.

Normally I have to use direct flash.  Most gymnasiums are a bit larger and less accommodating of bounce flash with ceilings that are either too high or simply not white.  Most high school gyms use the same basic layout.  They have bleacher seating down the sides and open ends with varying amounts of space between the baseline and the wall.  Some gymns have balconies or even tracks around the court area.  Some have full balconies running all the way around the gym and others have balconies just on the sides.  There is even one gym with balconies behind each basket, no baseline area at all and stands down both sides right up to the court.  Setting up strobes then becomes a work in gymnastics.  (Yeah, I planned that one.  Did you enjoy that little pun?)

The basic lighting scheme I use in almost every case where there are no balconies is two lights on light stands in the corners of the gym on either side of the basket I am shooting under.  I place them as high as I can get them and aim them to cross in the lane or at the top of the key.  It depends on how far back I can get the strobes.  The more distance behind the basket I can get the strobes the further up the court I aim them.  In those gyms where there is only a few feet between the basket and the back wall I cross the lights more toward the center of the lane to prevent light loss under the basket.

If there are balconies then I am very happy.  I can get my strobes much higher and I can get them out of the way of the majority of the foot traffic in the gym.  It is a constant worry that someone will trip over the light stands and knock them over or even hurt themselves.  I usually secure my light stands to something stationary with ball bungee cords or even tape.  An alternative to light stands are super clamps that allow you to physically clamp your strobe to something like a rail or a bar.  The gym usually dictates what you can do.  Nine times out of ten I have to shoot my strobes direct but every now and then I get to use bounce and it is really nice light.  Since I will never have the luxury of really setting a lighting scheme like you see in the big arenas I am not worried about darkening down my backgrounds so the bounce light is really nice.

I do not try and totally kill the ambient light in the gym.  A lot of people do and that is fine.  I like to have my ISO up around 800 and in most of our places this gives me a bit of illumination in the background to balance the lighting from the strobes.  I usually aim for an exposure of 1/250 at f2.8 ISO 800.  About 90 percent of all my high school hoops is done this way.  It is my preference and not any rule.  When I began shooting SBs in gyms this worked really well and I have continued it using my Lumedynes.  It all comes down to whatever works for you.  I just don’t like my backgrounds to be real dark because then it looks like photos are over strobed.

The photos with this post area combination of shots done with both bounce and direct flash.  Strobe positions are very similar with the difference being the size of the gyms and the ability or lack of ability to bounce.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Nikon Professional Services loaned me a D700 a few weeks ago to go along with the 4oomm f2.8 which was stolen (I am coming for you dude, but enough of that!) and it is a really nice camera.  It is the little brother both literally and figuratively to the D3.  It is somewhat ironic that I began and ended my college football season in the Georgia Dome covering Alabama.  I used the D3 in the first game and the D700 in the second.

First of all, the D700 is a remarkable camera.  It can do 5 fps in the configuration I had from Nikon and 8 fps with the appropriate grip attached which is, I think, the Mbd10.  The camera is set up in the FX format giving you the heaven sent full frame sensor.  The camera is much lighter than the D3 and much smaller.  The down side of the construction is that the camera includes one of those irritating pop-up flashes that scream, “I am an amateur!”  I hate those things.  Why anyone would build a camera that costs basically $3,000 and put one of those cheap things on it is beyond me.  Anyone spending three grand on a camera might splurge for an add on flash.  Whatever.  It is a minor flaw in an otherwise nice camera.

The image quality is very similar to the D3.  I found the higher ISO images very clean.  The images I shot at ISO 4000 were just as clean as those I shot with the D3.  I can’t quantify this, it is only an impression, but the images from the D3 look marginally better than those from the D700 at high ISO.  It is a slight difference and not one that would cause me to spend $2,000 more for the D3.  That said, the D3 is a big boy camera and if I were choosing between the two with no regard for that extra money the D3 is the hands down choice.

The control setup is similar to that of the D3 or the D2H for that matter but not the same.  Because the motor drive is not integral the controls for white balance, ISO and image quality are moved to the top of the camera.  It is not a big deal just something I was not used to.  I have also become addicted to the vertical grip.  Man, it is tough to shoot verticals without that grip.  Back in the early days before I owned a camera with a motor drive I never even thought about it but once I had a vertical shutter release it is something I don’t want to do without.

The auto focus performance on this camera is truly remarkable.  I am not nearly as picky about AF as some folks evaluating cameras on the internet seem to be but no matter how picky you want to get this is a remarkable performer.  I actually like the AF performance on the D700 better than I like the AF performance on the D3.  No doubt the AF sensor is a little less sensitive on the D700 which suits my shooting style better.  The D3 was so touchy that any slip off that center AF sensor produced an immediate out of focus response.  The D700 gave me just a slight delay, nothing you would notice, but just enough so I had time to readjust my camera and catch some of those shots I might have missed.  That said, I like using the center AF sensor only.  I am not a big fan of all the focus tracking sensor arrays that allegedly track moving subjects when they leave your primary AF area.  Maybe it is that I have grown up on cameras where the AF sensors not in the center position are worthless so I learned early not to trust any AF sensor except that middle one.  This caused me to develop a shooting style that relies heavily on the center AF sensor to the complete disregard for all others.  Your shooting style may be different and you will get different results so this is just me.  Suffice it to say this is an amazing AF camera.

I referred to the D3 as My New Mistress in an earlier post.  While I like the D700 it wouldn’t make it to that level.  I like the camera but it left me a bit unmoved.  Maybe if I had shot it before the D3 I would have been more impressed.  It is not that there is a world of difference between the images the two bodies produce.  It is not really that there is a big difference in construction or quality.  Really, I can’t put my finger on it at all.  It is just a bad feeling about spending $3,000 for the camera.  I think that is it.  My feeling is the camera is over priced by about a thousand dollars.  For this camera with no vertical grip attached I would not personally be willing to drop three big bills on it.  Last time I checked, that is a bunch of money and if I were going to spend that much on a body I would just go ahead and bite the bullet and get a D3.  I guess that is the bottom line.  Drop the price to around $2,000 and I would jump on it.

Would I recommend the body?  Oh yeah!  This is a fantastic camera.  The money is a complaint I have about pretty much all photo gear but especially Nikon’s gear.  It has always been overpriced and it probably will always be overpriced.  What I do in most purchasing decisions is to do a cost/benefit analysis.  I try to determine if spending the money on a camera or lens or any piece of gear is going to yield an appreciably better result than I could get without that piece of equipment.  I was doing this long before the national economy got into a funk.  When you have a big family and not so big an income you learn early to evaluate all your purchasing decisions this way.  Is the camera worth the money?  For me as a member of a newspaper photo staff, the camera would be a great camera for our newspaper to buy because it is an excellent compromise between the price and image quality.  For me personally, this camera is a bit out of my range for the benefit it would produce.

The images in the gallery below are from the D3 and the D700.  Both images were shot at ISO 3200 and the D3 image was shot at 1/1250th at 2.8 while the D700 images was done at 1/1000th at f2.8.  The images were shot in NEF which is the Nikon Raw format and they were just opened directly in Photoshop with no image adjustments.  The JPG images were toned like they were when I sent them to our paper for publication.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

Here is a bit more detail about setting up your camera as a remote with an eye to the tight wad in all of us. My set up is as basic as it gets. As I mentioned in the first post, I obtained a shutter release cable from Ebay. The important part is the ten pin connector on the camera end. Cut the wire leaving plenty to use for splicing then tie it in to a mini phono jack from Radio Shack. The Mini phono jack plugs into your Pocket Wizard. You can set the PW in your camera’s hot shoe or use velcro to mount it somewhere else or simply bungee it to your support. Whatever works best for you. The final step is to set your camera on the infinity setting on the setup menu for the auto meter shut off. This keeps the camera awake and ready to fire at all times. Mount your camera using your Variable Friction Arm (I erroneously called it a Magic Arm in my first post) and lock it down with cables to make sure it doesn’t fall and you are ready to shoot. You must make absolutely sure of your focus before you walk away. If the camera is mounted anywhere that there are people, you should probably use a little bit of gaffers tape to cover the focus ring so no curious folk adjust your focus for you. ALWAYS secure the camera in such a way that it cannot fall and injure anyone. ALWAYS ALWAYS TEST YOUR SETUP before you walk away. You will never know frustration like remote frustration if you think you are shooting and you come back at the end of the event to find not one single frame fired. Below are some detail shots to give you a better idea of how to set up your rig. As I mentioned in my earlier post, kudos and thanks to Jonathan Palmer for setting me up with this really cheap way to do remotes. Without his assistance I would still be remoteless.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

This is my favorite sports season. Spring in Alabama is anything but dull. Baseball, softball, soccer, tennis and crazy weather come together in a medley you simply couldn’t pay to get anywhere else. Literally, I shot snow Saturday morning and kids playing soccer in the park Sunday afternoon. They were wearing shorts enjoying the 60 degree weather. All within about 30 hours. Ahh, Spring.

Baseball, softball and soccer all present an opportunity to use a remote camera. Now, I know what you are thinking, only dudes with deep pockets can afford a remote setup. I used to think the same way you are plus I only had one camera. That kind of puts a crimp in the whole remote shooting thing. Let us assume that you either have a second body or can beg, borrow or steal one for an afternoon sporting event. One hurdle down. Second hurdle. Do you have a set of Pocket Wizards? Yes!? Wow, now we are really cooking. How about a remote cord that will keep your camera awake? Oops! Don’t have a couple hundred bones to lay down on that one. Don’t worry. I have really good news.

My coworker Jonathan Palmer let me in on a little secret. You can build your own cable for about twenty bucks. I ordered a really cheap electronic cable release that cost about $13 from Ebay. It came from Hong Kong and didn’t look like much. I brought it to Jonathan and he got out the surgical tools first cutting off the switch end and keeping about three inches of the cable and the end that connects to the camera. We then used some inexpensive connectors from Radio Shack and soldered the whole deal up and Shazam!, I now have a remote cord. My D2h is a very accommodating piece of equipment and comes with a setting that allows me to leave the meter on at all times which keeps the camera awake so it is ready to shoot.

Have a hot battery because the camera will consume an entire battery during the course of a game. Now all that remains is a way to mount the camera securely. This need is met by a Magic Arm from Manfrotto. I got the Magic Arm and a camera platform new for just a bit over $100 dollars. This allows me to clamp the camera somewhere and just walk away. I carry a Pocket Wizard and fire manually from anywhere within PW range which is enough to shoot from anywhere around a baseball field.

The key to using a remote camera is that you have to prefocus on specific location and wait for the action to go there. I use the remote on a base where action happens frequently. Second base or home plate are both good choices. That allows me to use my other camera with the long glass to follow the play around the field and my remote camera then picks up my security shots. I use the 80-200 on the remote. Another note. Make sure you secure the camera if it is mounted in any location where it could fall on a person or into the field of play. There are a variety of cables that can be used to do this. ALWAYS make sure the camera cannot fall and injure some! After that is done, you are ready for some action. My only real challenge is to not get so caught up in shooting that I forget to fire the remote.

For the next post, I bet you would really like some detail on how to do this remote cord so I will give some detail.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr and The Decatur Daily. The opinions in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

My friend Corey Wilson seems to have attracted a lot of attention since his post on shooting in the Deep Freeze in Green Bay during the NFC Championship game. On the Fred Miranda Forum there is a great debate raging over the competence of the camera and the photographer. For any of you guys coming in from that forum or the several other interested parties, let me fill in some blanks for you. Corey has been working in the cold conditions with Nikon gear exclusively for the last five years. His paper has talked about changing over to Canon as some other Gannett papers have done but they have not taken the plunge.

There was some speculation the Corey took the cameras straight from the locker room to the field but as I understand it, he was in a photo workroom prior to the game. While I am sure it was heated, I do not think it was a situation where it was humid nor do I think the Packer’s locker room would have been excessively humid prior to the game for the simple reason that it would have made the players that much colder upon entering the stadium to play football. Since other cameras coming from the same workroom as Corey’s did not fail, I can only assume that the workroom was not the source of the problem.

Corey states in the earlier post where he detailed his personal preparation that there was not much to do for the camera to prep it for the cold. One of the comments posted indicated that some photographers will tape hand warmers to their camera battery compartments in cold weather to help the battery from becoming sluggish in the cold weather. To my knowledge, none of the shooters from the Press Gazette did that. From what Corey describes in his post about the blank frames, I would diagnose a battery problem rather than a camera problem. I know I used to have the same problem shooting with the D1 cameras when the battery would drop below as certain ampere rating. This usually happened after about a year of use and the battery would not fully recharge. My guess is, and it is only a guess, is the batteries were falling victim to the cold and causing the cameras to fail.

Some speculated on Fred Miranda that the problem may lie with condensation in the camera. This could also be a problem, particularly if the condensation were in the battery compartment. In that kind of weather, the only source of condensation would be the photographer’s breath. There is some possibility that Corey’s breathing with face pressed to the camera back as a sports photojournalist is constantly doing could have introduced some moisture into the system causing the freeze ups. This is only speculation but if you think about it, you will remember seeing guys with facial hair with frozen mustaches or beards solely from the condensation caused by their breathing. Who knows, maybe my man is a heavy breather.

What I really think is that Press Gazette guys just ran into some bad luck whatever the source might be. I know Corey personally to be very attentive to his gear and a complete professional so I am pretty sure his competence does not come into play. Personally, I don’t think that a poor performance demonstrates an inherent flaws int he D3; although, I am not likely to have an opportunity to test that theory in balmy North Alabama.

This is the first of two posts by my friend and former co-worker Corey Wilson who is now a staff photojournalist for the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Corey shot and survived the Packer’s NFC Championship game in Green Bay last Sunday with temps dipping to -4 degrees with a wind chill in the -25 degree range. Corey shares his experience of surviving then shooting in extreme cold. Enjoy!

On January 20th I had the opportunity to photograph the NFC Championship game between the Green Bay Packers and New York Giants here in Green Bay, Wisconsin. In my fifth year as a staff photographer for the Green Bay Press-Gazette I cover the Packers as my beat. I’m at all home games and I share half of the road game duties with my co-worker Evan Siegle. The Packers are our franchise topic to say the least. Unfortunately, this big game didn’t go very well for the young Packers team. The Giants won 23-20 in overtime and man was it cold. REAL cold. Like third coldest game in NFL history cold. Like minus-five degrees air temperature and minus-twenty-five wind chill cold!

These adverse conditions present a lot of problems for a photographer. Not the least of which is, “How am I going to survive this cold?” Frostbite can take hold in just a couple minutes to exposed skin. My wardrobe planning began several days in advance. I’ll admit I was a bit nervous. However, I photographed a game in Chicago on Dec. 23rd where 40 m.p.h. winds drove the wind chill to 20-below zero. Anyway, layers are what you dress in when you live in the extreme north. It seems I wore clothing (in weight) than I actually weigh (in body)! The key is to stay 100% away from cotton. It doesn’t insulate as well as polyester and other fibers and it doesn’t wick away moisture if you sweat a bit under all those layers! Here’s a rundown of what I wore.

Top:
Long Johns
Polyester long sleeve tight athletic shirt
Wool sweater
North Face wind breaker hooded shell
Down-stuffed winter coat

Bottom:
Long Johns
(2) pairs of athletic wind pants (jeans get too tight)
Ski pants with a liner

Feet:
Knee-high nylons (for wicking)
Thick wool socks
Heavy Columbia-brand winter boots.

Head:
Bomber-style hat with rabbit fur in the front, ears and down the side panels.

Hands:
Columbia brand arctic gloves I found at Dick’s for $35.
(I had to wear a thinner wool glove on my right shooting hand so I could feel the shutter release.)

WHEW! I think that’s about it. Oh yeah! And let’s don’t forget I had foot warmers in those boots and 8 hand warmers in my pockets to relieve my hands after EVERY single play.
Much like the players, it’s easy to let the preparation for the cold be a distraction. You actually think more about the survival and lose focus on being a photojournalist and the opportunity that is before you.
Fortunately I have been through this dozens of times and it is less traumatizing each time.
Strangely, there’s little preparation to do for your cameras and gear. There is really no danger of “wet” precipitation at those frigid temperatures. Even if snow falls, your cameras and lenses are already at the same temperature so nothing melts on them.
Now with all that taken care of, let’s go kneel down for 3 ½ hours on the frozen ice chunks along the sidelines at legendary Lambeau Field!!

Photos copyright Corey Wilson, the Green Bay Press Gazette. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of The Decatur Daily or The Green Bay Press Gazette.

If I could have my dream package of gear it would go something like this: Two Canon EOS1D Mark IIIs, a 16-35 f2.8, a 24-70 f2.8, a 70-200 f2.8, a 300 f4 and a 400 f2.8 with a 1.4 extender. I would have at least two Canon dedicated strobes and I would pack additional Uni400Jr strobes with Jack Rabbit battery packs and there would be Pocket Wizards galore. I would also throw in an EOS 5D for full frame work and a tilt-shift lens just because they are really cool. All that gear would put me at the new car price level and it is, and probably will remain, just a nice dream.

So what do you really need to have a good chance at success? This is a really important question because I can tell you from experience that it is very frustrating to be shooting with several other photographers at an event and not have the gear to keep up. This is more common for me at big sporting events than anywhere else because so much of sports photography is focused around having excellent big glass. Leaving that aside for a moment, what basic gear do you need to be a successful photojournalist?

Obviously the first thing anyone needs is the camera body. Here I will say to spend your money wisely because several manufacturers offer excellent camera bodies in their entry level pro cameras and you may not need to spend the multiple thousands to get a pro body. You might find an EOS 20D or 30D that is lightly used or if you are a Nikon shooter and can’t quite swing the new D3, the D200 is just falling out of the first string being replaced by the D300 and you will be able to find bargains here too. Just be cautious when you buy used. You may be sinking your money into someone else’s money pit. A good, reputable online dealer like KEH in Atlanta would be a excellent place to find quality used gear.

As far as lenses go, the zooms are really sexy right now but they come at a steep price. When I began in photojournalism I shot primarily with a 24mm, and 85mm and a 18omm and, amazingly, didn’t even feel I needed a zoom. Prime lenses like these are available from Canon and Nikon at a fraction of the cost of a zoom and the primes usually offer faster maximum apertures than their zoom cousins. (That is called a double bonus!) The trade of is, of course, a little less flexibility especially in fast moving situations. Prime lenses are also quicker to learn. I remember early in my career how I could see in my head what a shot looked like through each lens. When I transitioned to zooms, it took a couple of years to really become intuitive with them as I had been with my primes. Then we transitioned to the DX format and there was another learning curve and I am still not totally comfortable with my wide angles and the DX. It is just a stubborn wish that the 17mm was actually 17 mm but an absolute delight that the 300mm is closer to 450mm. There are trade offs to every choice.

Regarding lenses, don’t buy ones you don’t need. That would seem obvious but when buyer’s lust is upon you all reason is cast aside. When you are drooling over that 300 f2.8, it won’t matter too much that you primarily shoot up close to your subjects. Carefully evaluate each purchase and do a little mental cost/benefit analysis over each piece of gear. Determine how you work, or how you plan to work, and make purchases that will benefit what you do. Be careful that you don’t spend yourself into a hole because there is a huge difference in owning a camera and the camera owning you. When I began thinking about purchasing some gear for a little freelance work on the side I continually discarded the idea because of the debt I would incur which meant I would have to work all the time just to get out of the hole I dug.

There is a tremendous debate raging over whether Canon or Nikon is better. I have a slight preference to Canon because their cameras have been slightly better in the AF department and dramatically better in low-light situations. However, with the intro of Nikon’s D3, that difference may have just evaporated. It really comes down to two questions. First, do you already have a lot of money in one system? Second, does the system fit the way you shoot? A person with skill will make fantastic photos with either system. A person without skill will struggle to make a picture with either system.

One final thought when you make purchases. Have an eye to the future. Try and see yourself down the road a little way. If you are working for a small newspaper and have to supply your own equipment, do you see yourself in two years still working for the small newspaper? This matters. If you say yes, you may want to spend just a bit more on your gear than someone who will be working in a larger market where equipment is supplied for him. At any rate, have fun out there keeping the U.S. economy rolling! (PS. This big baby at the bottom I have nicknamed the Widowmaker because if you are married and you bring this big boy home unannounced your mate is gonna kill you!)

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Last week I got a loaner 400mm f2.8S from Nikon Professional Services to shoot a couple of big football games. That lens is so stinking sharp that you can cut yourself on the images. It makes me drool. At more than $7,000, I don’t think the paper is going to buy one any time soon and I know it is not in my financial realm. But having a lens like this one begs the question, “How important is your gear?”

Before I bought my first camera bag many years ago, someone gave me some really good advice. Whoever it was told me not to buy a large camera bag because you will surely fill it up. I didn’t heed that excellent advice and before long I was carrying around a camera bag version of the mega-SUV and breaking my shoulder. By the time I became a pro, I had just about decided that I could do without a bunch of that junk. Over time, I have become a minimalist. This is what is in my bag.

There are two bodies, a D2H and a D2Hs. There are two lenses, a 17-35 f2.8 and an 80-200 f2.8. There are two strobes and three Pocket Wizards and a few ball bungees. There are also nine megs worth of card space which I am always looking to expand. In my trunk, I also have a 14mm f2.8 Sigma which I don’t use much and I really don’t like at all. There are also two light stands, two umbrellas, an extra strobe and an ancient 400mm f3.5 manual lens that only works at f3.5 except on really hot days when you can get it to stop down to f5.6.

Do I wish for more stuff? Oh yeah! Especially that 4o0mm f2.8s. But realistically, if I could do any one thing to my bag it would be to sub the 17-55 for the 17-35. There are too many times when 35 is not enough and 80 is too much. Other than that I would only add another Pocket Wizard and another strobe. I am finding that having the ability to create light, sometimes even a lot of light, is the most valuable thing outside of my actual camera bodies. Oh yeah, a new D3 would be pretty nice too.

Not to dive into the endless debate between photogs over which system is better, Canon or Nikon, I would say this. I have used both systems and each has its advantages and disadvantages. IMO, Canon has an edge but that may be short lived with the new D3 and D300. I have owned both at one time or another and don’t hesitate to use either. You can make nice images with either system because it is not the system that is making the picture. The bottom line in equipment is this, photographers make pictures, the cameras are his tools. In other words, what is behind your eye is more important that what is in front of it.

Photo copyright Gary Cosby Jr. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.