New Rig!!!

さしぶり、ね！

After having my equipment displaced, I finally have a new system. It took a long time for the home owner's claim to go through, but Liberty Mutual valued my equipment very well. It was very tedious going through the process of starting from nil to acquire at least the basics again [I had a very VERY high deductible]. When starting from scratch you have to face all these questions with less bias than you normally approach them since you aren't tied to a system:

Canon, Nikon, Sony, or other?

Full frame or crop?

New or used?

Get a few great items or a lot of mediocre items?

fixed vs zooms for certain needs?

What I eventually realized is that I need to figure out all over again what I want to do with my photography, which is little more than a hobby. Well, in a world where every guy who dreams of taking pictures of beautiful women goes out and grabs a D40 or a Rebel XT and calls themselves a professional... I decided to become a professional and eventual earn additional income using something that brings joy to my life. Once this decision was made, my choices seemed to limit themselves, then Photokina happened and brought more possibilities than you can shake a stick at. In the end I went with a system I feel is good enough for me to cover a wide range of needs at what seemed like the most economical cost. So here's the new rig:

Nikon D90 [body only]
Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 XR Di II LD
Tamron 70-200mm f2.8 Di LD (IF) macro
Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 AT-X Pro
Nikon SB-800

That's it, cover 35mm equivalent range of 16.5mm - 300mm, with a gap from 76mm - 104mm. This is a good enough kit to begin bringing in revenue, but here are the pro's and con's:

D90
Pro's: price [vs 50D, 5DmkII, D300], FPS decent enough, some controls easier to use than the D700's were, still has flash commander, movie mode allows additional creativity [vs 50D and D300], it's available now [vs the 5DmkII], the LCD is a step up [vs the D80], pixel sharpness and file size are better [vs 50D], uses SD cards which are cheaper, AF and metering better than predecessor.

Con's: Color and Luminance data not as appealing as the Canon line up, not as sharp as D300, slower AF than the competition, Less customizable body compared to competition, smaller body not as comfortable, not FX/FF, high ISo performance about 1 1/2 stops below the D700, viewfinder smaller than FX/FF bodies.

Tamron Lenses
Pro's: PRICE!!! Weight, and f/2.8 across the range

Con's: AF speed and accuracy, no VR in 70-200 [vs Nikon and Canon variants]. build quality poor.

Tokina Lens
Pro's: Fastest superwide available!!! Sharp!!! f/2.8 across the range and build quality rivals OEM lenses.

Con's: None, this is now my favorite lens. Some may say that the zoom range is not enough, but it's a superwide and the difference between 11 and 16mm's is more drastic than 200 and 300mm's.

SB800, quite simply the most bang for your buck flash around.

One day I would love to have the nikon variants of all the lenses save for the tokina, but the 2 tamron lenses are less than either of the Nikon counterparts.

So what's missing? At this point I only lack a couple things to make this a complete system and they are:

A portrait lens. Since I'm using crop sensor will probably get the Nikon 50mm f/1.4 AFS; would love an 85 1.4 but costs....
A macro lens. The Tamron's and Tokina's all focus extremely close. But I really would prefer a genuine macro like a 60mm or 105mm Nikon.