The Light Touch
•Equipment
Touch the Light.....
John MacPherson
Landscape and Environmental Photography from Scotland
For many years I used Nikon equipment, a collection of FM2's, F90's and F4s bodies and lenses from 20mm to 500mm f4. The Nikon F4 is one of the best handling cameras I have ever used.
Several years ago I purchased the Canon EOS1n so that I could use the 35-350 Canon L zoom lens. This is an amazing lens and it quickly took over from the Nikkors, and I gradually sold off the Nikon kit (all except the FM2's and some manual lenses which I will never sell). The Canon autofocus is incredibly fast and accurate.
I now use Canon L lenses, the 17-35 f2.8L; 35-350 f3.5-5.6L; 100-400 IS L zooms, and 300mm f2.8 LIS & 1.4 & 2x converters, with EOS1n and 1v bodies. These lenses are quite simply amazing, and the most used - the 35-350, better than a lens of this zoom range has any right to be. It is a testament to the design expertise of the Canon engineers. At short focal lengths it is extremely sharp, and maintains repro. quality sharpness up to around 250mm. Quality drops off after that pretty quickly but if you tripod it and stop down it can take pictures from 250-350mm that are sharp enough for most publishing uses in magazines and books, provided they don't require too great an enlargement. For close up work to 0.25x it is excellent, and as a one-lens outfit for a landscape photographer it is a hard act to beat. Read more about this lens here.
I particularly like the user-friendliness of the Canon system, and the flexibility afforded by the bodies and electronic aperture lens system.
•35mm
