My new baby!
I finally did it! This past weekend, my awesome friend Sean and I spent hours scouring Hong Kong for the best places to get some gear. Hotdiggity, that was fun. I don’t get to geak out all that often nowadays, so I really appreciated the company that appreciates the same stuff I do 
This is what I wound up getting: the Nikon D80
No surprise here, since I’ve had my heart on this little guy for quite literally a year now. I know it’s not the newest, nor the fanciest, and it’s not a FX camera (which costs a whopping HKD 22,000+ by the way) but it’s the one that I want. I love the body, so small and compact, the set up is almost identical to my F80 (now they can be friends!) – I know it’s a small thing but I really prefer it over the way the D200+ are laid out. Call me set in my ways, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
I got it at a decent price, and have a little room to spare for lenses. I’ve decided not to get any DX lenses, because I know I will definitely be using them with my film camera, and hopefully in a few years, (if/when I wear this one out) the digital FX cameras will be more affordable. So with the money I save by investing in a good-enough body, I’ll throw onto lenses.
Speaking of which, this is the only slightly anti-climatic part. I don’t have a lens! I’ve decided to restrain myself from walking the gear-obsessed path and have ordered a 1.8 50mm lens. That’s right, ordered, as quite literally every store I went to is out of stock. It’s a good little lens, definitely affordable, fast, FX, light and not at all intimidating as sticking a huge canon in a subject’s face. I’m super excited, it gets here in two to three weeks. Until then I will just have to stick with my 28-80mm. I was always dissatisfied with it because it’s one of Nikon’s cheapest, but really it’s not a bad lens. It’s light, and has definitely allowed me to grow to the point where I can appreciate gear as just a tool to achieve the images that I want.
Besides, it’s not the gear that makes the photographer. Ansel Adams, anyone?
Can’t wait to take it out for a test run. Now if only I had the discipline to really get out there, and keep seeing the world from my lens. I think this weekend I will try to photograph the graveyard I’ve had my eye on since forever.
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