We photographers are picky about our equipment. Photography is a technical art and the equipment you use has a significant impact on the work you produce. It’s all about having the right tool for the job.
And so one regular feature on this blog will be reviews of the gear I use. You won’t find any benchmarks or benchtests in these posts. There’ll be no lens test charts or resolution figures. The reviews will be my personal responses to the gear – what I like and what I loathe; what works and what doesn’t; and how the equipment affects what I do as a photographer.
I won’t review anything I haven’t used in the field. In most cases, it’ll be equipment I’ve used for some time. Occasionally, I’ll have been using it for so long it’s already obsolete!
I have form here. Back in the Dark Ages (that’s the early 1980s to you) I was the technical editor of a monthly photography magazine called SLR Camera. (People used to say the ‘SLR’ stood for ‘slowly losing readers’. Alas, it turned out to be true.) Back then, I’d be lucky if I had a week to play with a camera before having to crank out a 3,000-word review. Phrases like ‘uncluttered top plate’ got used a lot.
There’ll be none of that kind of thing here. If you read a review on these pages you’ll know that it’s about a piece of equipment that has been put through its paces in the real world.