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Q. what accessories to by with new d300
Asked by Inanc Tekguc
(K=880) on 6/9/2008
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I have decided to buy Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED-IF AF-S DX VR II Autofocus Lens with d300 body.
(Thanks to Jeroen Wenting and Clive Carter's help, and to my boss who is paying the difference between d200 and d300)
I found a decent priced kit at B&H ($2300 including a 4GB EXTREME III COMPACT FLASH CARD, 5877 Impact and Weather Resistant Backpack)
Pretty much I am starting to build up my system from scratch. Any suggestions to what other accessories to add to this purchase?
I am at the limits of my budget so I will wait for later to add a flash, prime lenses etc.
But for now, I want to make sure that I have the essentials.
I am thinking of getting a Tiffen 72mm UV Protector Glass Filter for $31. What else? Cleaning kits? Filters? etc?
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Jeroen Wenting
(K=25317) - Comment Date 6/10/2008
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Don't get a "protector filter", they're useless unless you plan to shoot a protest march or paintball contest, or when you go into other environments where direct impact on the front element with hard or corrosive materials is likely.
The lenshood will do duty everywhere else.
Cleaning kit is a good idea. Microfiber cloth, lensbrush (blowbrush), maybe a sensor blower.
You may want a tripod and cable release (mind, you need a special one, not a generic one, for the D300) at some point. If so, get a quality one (Manfrotto, Bogen).
Get an extra memory card. 4GB is a nice size.
Don't know that bag. Check if it's sturdy enough to trust your camera to, else get a quality bag. No sense getting your $2500+ in gear damaged beyond repair because you skimped on a $100-200 (yes, they can cost that much, I have several bags costing over $200 each) bag.
Flashgun for later. Go save up for that SB800. There is no substitute. And you may want the SD8A batterypack to go with it if you plan to use it a lot.
Spare batteries for the camera are essential. At least one, two spares is better (so you can have one battery in the camera, one in the bag, and one in the charger at all times).
Lenses. You will want a fast lens for shooting indoors and in low light as you lack a decent flash right now (and forever if you can't or don't want to use flash).
I love the 35mm f/2 AF-D Nikkor. Cheap, excellent optics, small and light.
The 50mm f/1.8 AF-D Nikkor is a cheaper alternative. Personally I'm not fond of 50mms, but they're optically sound and cheap.
And that's about it.
Save up for the flash and tripod, they can wait.
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Inanc Tekguc
(K=880) - Comment Date 6/12/2008
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Thanks Jeroen. How are below? I got them on my shopping card already.
I was thinking of getting a UV filter for two reasons:
1- I can be clumsy sometimes and if i am going to somehow scracth it, i rather scratch a 40$ filter than a 700$ lens.
2- with my old camera i used a polarizer filter which helped get better colours. Isn't this a good addition on a lens?
Is the UV protector the wrong thing to buy for this purpose?
Cleaning kit:
1- Kinetronix lens brush 7$
2- Targus cleaning kit with microfiber 8$
Extramemory card:
Extreme III Sandisc 54.50$
Spare battery: 34.95$
Flash (i assume flushgun means the same): will save for.
Lenses: so far i think 18-200 will be enough (for my budget)
Bag: for now i will get the kit bag, but once I have the camera in hand, i will head to a Ritz store in Denver and get a decent bag. General advice seems to be to check for the bag personally with the camera and gear in my my hand, instead of online shopping. Any brand suggestions or other tips to consider?
Tripod: will save for next year
Cable release: 55$ is the least expensive i found. perhaps can wait till next year.
Sensor blower: necessary for me at this stage? I don't want to go messing in the camera yet :)
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Dave Arnold
(K=55680) - Comment Date 6/12/2008
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Inanc
Jeroen has always had some rather peculiar ideas that he expresses here... but this one pretty much takes the cake in my book. I have been shooting for over 30 years and he is the first, ever, person that I have heard say "don't bother to put a UV filter on your lens".
That is totally insane. Even you can see the benefit of risking a $12 filter over a $700 lens. You don't necessarily need to be working in some protest or paint ball environment like Jeroen said. Even the simple task of constantly rubbing dust off your lens will eventually scratch it. Asking advice is good as long as you know what to rely on as gospel and what to ignore as hogwash. 
And if I were you (rely or ignore this), I would skip the lens kits, dust brushes, blah blah blah. I use a Giotto Rocket Blaster, which is a good heavy duty duster, to blow loose dust off my lens and sensor. For my hands-on lens cleaning, I have a lens cloth that I will wipe with, followed by blowing it with the Giotto. If I need to clean my lens beyond that, I use eyeglass wipes, which are relatively cheap at most drug stores. They are just like "wet napkins" except for glasses and lenses, each in their own little packet.
Eventually you are also going to either have to clean the sensor yourself or have it done. But that is a whole new ballgame and you don't need to worry about that during your initial purchase.
Dave
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Dave Arnold
(K=55680) - Comment Date 6/12/2008
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Oh, and by the way... I paid $80 for my cable release at a local camera store..... It has lasted me about a year. I just replaced it by buying one on E Bay, brand new, for $8.99 with free shipping from Hong Kong. It seems of much better quality than the Canon one I bought for $80.
and skip Ritz... you pay through the nose their.... go to a place in Denver... web site sales only... www.sellnsend.com and get a pretty good deal on a Lowepro bag... they even ship free on most items and if you are in Denver as they are, shipping can't take but about 2 days if that.
Even if you MUST shop in person, usually you can see a good line of Lowepro at Best Buy and then know what you want in order to get it from sellnsend (they are also on e bay under that name)
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Inanc Tekguc
(K=880) - Comment Date 6/13/2008
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Thanks for the additional info Dave.
Actually giving me a brand name helped me out to find a 19$ small lens kit of Giotto. It has the small Rocket Bluster, a brush, microfiber cloth and lens fluid.
I will look into bags from the sellnsend.
any tips in what to look for? I will need it to store the bag in general, and probably use it when i travel too as i like travel photography as much as nature and modeling.
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Jeroen Wenting
(K=25317) - Comment Date 6/13/2008
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Dave, pretty much everyone except salespeople will tell you to NOT buy those crappy "lens protection filter"s.
Put a $5 piece of windowpane (and that's what it is kids, windowpane) in front of your $1000 lens and it's a $5 lens.
35 years ago it was a different story. Lens coatings were thin and fragile, and that filter would protect that coating.
It would also be quality optical glass itself.
I don't use them on ANY of my lenses, and haven't in over a decade.
I've NEVER had a scratched front element in those 10 years, ever.
Before that I did use them on some lenses, and guess what? The only lens I ever suffered from a scratched element was one of those, when sand came into the mechanism during a sandstorm and scratched an internal element, so the filter was quite useless.
Another one got stuck on the lens, impossible to pry loose, and some moisture got in between it and the front element.
Only way to break the glass of the filter (with the quite real risk of getting fragments into the lens mechanism or damaging the front element by striking too hard, so I could pry it loose with a wrench. Damaged the filter thread on the lens beyond repair.
Both were filters of far higher quality than the crap usually sold as "lens protectors", being multicoated skylights which I used for the purpose (as well as for their slight warming effect) at the time.
Remember, those "lens protectors" will seriously degrade your optics.
They'll also cause light loss, to a degree depending on their quality.
The only people who benefit from you buying them are the store that sells them and the manufacturer. You don't gain anything if you are at all careful with your kit.
Inanc, for a bag look for these brands above all: Tamrac, Lowepro, Domke, Crumpler, Billingham.
There are others, but those are known good.
Billingham is expensive, high class, handmade in the UK.
Crumpler is weird. You either hate them or love them.
Tamrac, Domke, and Lowepro are solid performers.
That's not to say there are no others. There are many quality brands. But those should be available from well stocked stores (maybe not all brands at all stores) and provide a wide range of quality bags to choose from.
What style to get is purely personal preference. Many people love backpacks, I hate them.
Any thief can get at your gear easily, while you yourself can't.
I use a series of different sized Lowepro and Tamrac bags myself, ranging from a Lowepro barely legal as cabin luggage to a small beltpack that takes just a single body with an attached lens for when I go hiking or biking and want to travel light.
Once bag fever grips you, you'll end up with your own collection while you search for that elusive "perfect" bag and never find it.
The bag I use most at the moment however is a Tamrac Velocity 9.
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Dave Arnold
(K=55680) - Comment Date 6/13/2008
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Jeroen, you make an extremely good argument, most of which I agree on. For me, in this desert environment where the wind blows nearly constant and sand storms are an every day event for most of the year, I would be very nervous without a UV filter. On the other hand, there are times that I take it off, to avoid refractions of light, etc.
Heck, when I lived in Dallas, I usually never even bothered to put my lens cap on when the camera went in the bag. That is out of the question here in New Mexico. Within a few minutes after cleaning my lens, it is once again coated with dust.
I did find it interesting that B&H has two types of UV filters, one they call a "protection" filter with a price of around $12 and then the "UV" protection filter, priced around $31. When I was last in the Competitive Camera store, I asked what the difference was and the owner said "quality". So that left me with the question of is the quality so different that you should always opt for the more expensive filter if you are he|| bent on using one?
This debate, whether or not to use a filter, is interesting. I hope we can have some other photographers pipe in with their feelings on the matter.
Like I said, you make a valid argument, one of which I am inclined to agree with. You certainly don't want to buy a lens with "bad glass" but are almost forced to add "bad glass" to it. At least, until such time as they come up with better solution, I feel forced to use some type of protection in this environment.
Dave
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Jeroen Wenting
(K=25317) - Comment Date 6/13/2008
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as to whether you should go with quality, the answer it a resounding yes.
I had a lens that came with a cheap filter I used from time to time (skylight). The results were notably sharper without it. And I mean you could see the difference on a 4x6" print, which of course isn't good.
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Dave Holland
(K=13074) - Comment Date 6/16/2008
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Well, I bought UV filters when I bought my excellent quality camera lenses ten years ago. Those filters live in my camera trunk, and never see the light of day, like many of the filters I bought that year. The one filter that is worthwhile is the circular polarizer, which is mounted on my lenses about half the time. Remember that when you use a polarizer you should take the UV filter off, to try and avoid vignetting of two filters. That process of taking filters on and off can cause scratches, so UV filter protection only goes so far. Also, the outer element of many top quality camera lenses can often be replaced, in the unlikely event of a misadventure. Minor scratches of those outer lenses do not necessarily degrade the image significantly. Finally, the best protection for your camera lens is the hood, which lives on my lenses almost all the time.
Dave
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Inanc Tekguc
(K=880) - Comment Date 6/16/2008
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it looks like it can be true that a $30 UV protector/ circular polarizer filter might make your $1000 lens a $30 lens.
perhaps that is why there are big price difference between them. They go as high as $400 (Heliopan circular polarizer)
I have used circular polarizer with my old camera. i don't know how much of quality it costed me on photos, but the colors looked much nicer despite the loss of light.
So, I am inclined to agree with Dave that a circular polarizer filter is worthwile to invest on, as it can be used both to enhance colours and be a protection (half the time at least) on the lens especially for clumsy people like me .
Prices are range from $50 to $400, with brand names like Hoya, Tiffen, B+W, Cokin, Heliopan (super expensive), General Brand.
Personally I have never heard any of these brands bofore (as i am new in this). So, regretfully, I will probably follow my budget and get a $55 Cokin. Yet I am open to further suggestions.
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Jeroen Wenting
(K=25317) - Comment Date 6/16/2008
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yes, a polariser is definitely worth the investment. I used to use a Hoya, now use mainly B+W multicoated ones (still have a single Hoya for a lens for which I've not yet tracked down a B+W).
A 77mm one will set you back something like €100, but that's worth it.
The Cokin ones (which I also have...) are not very good at all.
Overpriced for their quality.
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Dave Arnold
(K=55680) - Comment Date 6/16/2008
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Jeroen, you are talking about a circular polarizer, right?
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Inanc Tekguc
(K=880) - Comment Date 6/16/2008
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Cokin was out of stock anyway.
nevertheless as of this afternoon, there are new items in the list
canon, nikon, rodenstock and sony polarizers, but all for above $100.
yet, I put in my cart the Hoya for $64.50
from your comments i do not understand the effect of having a filter that is "multicoated" ... also there are other terms in the B&H website that i don't understand: "slim" or "thin", or "warm"
I will go ahead and do some reading to get an idea.
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Jeroen Wenting
(K=25317) - Comment Date 6/16/2008
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circular or linear, hardly matters when it comes to quality.
I've used both from several brands, Cokins are sub-par for both in the value for money department.
multi-coated means the filter has multiple layers of coatings. This reduces reflections and other artifacts that negatively affect the optical quality of the resulting image.
Often at least some of those layers also serve to harden the surface, increasing its scratch resistence.
"Slim" and "thin" indicate filters that are just that, extra thin.
They're specially designed for extreme wideangle lenses, where filters with regular size fittings would cause vignetting around the edges of the frame.
It's not (usually) the optical components of the filter that are different, just the ring that screws it in place. Most often this means you can't stack them, as they won't have a screw ring at the front, only the back.
A warming polariser is a polariser with a built-in Skylight or warming filter.
It will give a slight discolouration, enhancing warm tonal ranges in the image.
Most appropriate when shooting at high altitude using Fuji slide film, which has a rather cool tonal quality.
They're specialty filters you probably should pass up initially, buy them later when you find yourself stacking a warming and polariser filter a lot.
And yes, good polarisers are expensive. I've got 3 of them that I use at the moment, only the smallest of which cost me under €100 (I've got some more, Cokins mostly) that I no longer use because I wasn't happy with them).
Hoya is probably a good filter to start with. You might want to get something better once you start looking at primes and $1000+ zooms though, but when you get those they'll have a different diameter filter size so you will need more filters anyway 
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Inanc Tekguc
(K=880) - Comment Date 6/19/2008
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many thanks to all of you guys.
order is paid for and already shipped to the address.
you will definitely get to see some photos in the next few weeks so that you can criticise for me to better my skills.
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