The Nikon D600 is mine!! I had been looking into getting a new camera for a few months now knowing that I would want to expand some of my photographing abilities especially as I near graduation and moving onto more professional work. I was thinking it might be a end of the school year reward for myself, but as I was taking an advanced photography class and learning more and more of the insufficiencies of my current model, I decided it would be advantageous to be taking classes and learning with a model that would be more long lasting to me, rather than one that I had practically out grown thus far.
My photography hobby started the summer after tenth grade when I, on a whim, bought cheap, but nice looking camera to take with me to Africa. I bought the Fujifilm Finepix S700. It served me very well in Kenya and I came back with many pictures that I loved showing off. A few years later, it came to my realization that although my camera looked like a DSLR, it in fact was not. I figured this out when I knew I wanted varied focal lengths by buying alternate lenses for my camera and couldn’t. That’s when I had my mind set on a true DSLR. Not knowing a bunch about the mechanics of photography, I just was solely worried about price. As long as I could buy a variety of lenses for it, I would be happy. Thats when I settled on the Nikon D3100. It was one of the newest entry level cameras at the time so technologically it was quite advanced, and not bad on most of the camera specs. I grew a lot with that camera! I learned a lot about composition through my first camera, but this one taught me about the technical aspect of photography and how exactly it captures exposure. I learned about stops and how to configure those using shutter speed, aperture, and ISO speed. I bought a lot of lenses to improve my shooting conditions and abilities and lean red a lot about their different capabilities. However, as I was doing more studying on advanced photography, I realized a lot of things that could be improved or were missing from my D3100. A few of these were that I wanted to reduce noise in my photos and be able to shoot at higher ISOs so I could be comfortable shooting in indoor settings, more frames per second, faster shutter response time, a full frame sensor for true focal lengths, more megapixels, and a few basic settings, such as AEB and U1/U2, that my camera was lacking. After doing a lot of research and drooling over the D4 for a while, I came across the D800. This seemed to be a great fit for a lot of what I wanted, but the 36 mp number scared me because that would be a nightmare post processing and would bog up my computer. Then I came across the D600 a few weeks ago and instantly fell in love and started dreaming about it every night. Everything about it seemed just so perfect and filled all of the gaps I had in my D3100. And the fact that it was one of the most recent full frame DSLRs out and one of the cheapest made it even more enticing. So the camera was on my mind for a few weeks, but the actual purchase was very spontaneous. Spring Break was about a week away and it dawned on me, if I have the money currently, Spring Break would be a perfect time to have a new camera to shoot with. First, I would be in a really cool and different part of the country, so I could do some interesting travel photography, and secondly, I would have a lot of free time to really study and learn my new camera. So Monday morning I called Cameta Camera and had them rush order the D600 to me to make sure I received it before leaving for Florida. That proved to be slightly more complicated because they don’t ship to school addresses and someone had to be home to sign for the package. So I had to find enough of my friends who were willing to hang out at the house to receive the package for the times that I wasn’t able to be there. Nonetheless, the package came in time and I had enough opportunity to break it open tonight and practice some shots and get used to some of the features of the camera before heading to Florida tomorrow. The package I got it in included a 32 gb card, a wireless remote, a spare battery, and a subscription to Digital Photo, all for $1800. Hefty price, but I see it as an investment in my photography career, and a lot of that money was earned through photographic endeavors.
That being said, I hope that this nicer piece of equipment will boost my career to a more professional level. With all of the features and quality the D600 has to offer, along with a little practice, I hope to feel completely comfortable in any kind of setting!
These are hopefully some of the last shots taken with my D3100. I used the 50 mm lens at f/3.5 with Neewer tt520 off camera flashes.
-ZAM
ZAM PHOTO 