Most of my time in photography has been spend pursuing sharpness and as a result I have had and sold a number of cameras and lenses over the years. Now however, I have the Nikon 610 and absolutely love the images. Couple it with my Nikon 300mm f/4 and I am in hog heaven sharpness. But at age 71 I find that weight is becoming a concern and the 610 and bird-seeking telles (also Sigma 150-600mm) are REALLY heavy. My question as I ponder the use of lighter mirrorless cameras is, am I foolish to think that, given my limited abilities that still achieves sharpness with the 610, that I can be happy with a smaller mirrorless camera?

I have 2 Nikon Coolscan LS 2000 units with slide stack loaders at work.
The only drawbacks are Nikon doesn't support it with newer windows computers and the slides jam if your mounts aren't in good shape. VueScan software is a pretty good substitute and does some things the Nikon software never did like automatic cropping. Another positive thing you can't get with using your camera is the dust and scratch removal. The Nikon (and other scanners, I believe) mKe a red, blue, green and infrared pass of the slide. Anything picked up in the infrared pass is dust or a scratch and the software does a very good job of suppressing them. Won't work with black & white negatives.

When you're done scanning, you could sell it.

I'm with Bill on ultrawide lenses. I used to have a Sigma 10-20 F4-5.6when I had a cropped sensor camera, and now I have a 14-24 F2.8.

I use them infrequently as well - mostly when I am in tight quarters.

There are two main concerns - the perspective distortion that Bill talks about - near objects take on an unnaturally large size, while things further away become tiny. This can produce some very dramatic effects. The other is volume anamorphosis - where round objects become increasingly egg-shaped as you place them at the edges and corners of the frame. You can see it in the image below - the trash can at the bottom left is not oval in shape - :)

There are some software programs that can correct for this to some degree - DXO being the best of the bunch, but at best it is an imperfect solution. In the past, lens manufacturers like Zeiss, Leitz, Schneider and Rodenstock had lenses for 35mm and larger format that were corrected for the volume aberration, but most lens designers these days don't bother. The 38mm F4 Zeiss Biogon and the 25mm F2.0 Zeiss Distagon were among the better designed lenses with low anamorphosis.

Another good reason to not use an ultrawide for landscape can be found in any fine art museum. If you look at all the great landscapes from the masters - not a one will appear to have an ultrawide point of view. If the artist wanted to encompass a wider view, he merely turned his head. In similar fashion, my most natural panoramas and wide view images are stitched composites usually taken with a 45mm or 85mm tilt shift lens. These are by far my sharpest lenses and my go to for landscapes.

Thank you for your reply. Your wife's sharing in the carrying is great. I, on the other hand, have a wife who has adamantly refused to carry anything of mine, not even a small shoulder bag with drugs, emergency clothing and a few electronics. This happened after our last trip when she hurt her back snatching a suitcase off the conveyor. So I used to wear a ThinkTank backpack (not a roller) with all the equipment. Heavy and uncomfortable because no waist band. And I would pull a roller with my clothing. My wife used to carry a small shoulder bag of mine with drugs, toiletries, Bose sound cancelling earphones, a flashlight and a Kindle reader plus all the charging apparatus.



But now I'm expected to carry *two* rollers up stairs, hers and mine *and* she will not carry the shoulder bag. I can do this, but I don't want to. It's just one more misery to add to the general anxiety I experience during travel, worrying about every detail and struggling with foreign languages. I tend toward perfectionism so even though I've studied Italian, French, German and Spanish, it still is stressful to have to deal with foreign languages.

My main interest is in candid photography of people plus the usual tourist stuff. So one Nikon D800 with the 70-200 f/2.8 would hang at one hip and the other Nikon D700 with the 18-35 f/2.8 would hang on the other hip. That way I wouldn't lose a shot by fumbling with changing lenses. This worked in China, India and SE Asia, but it was a no-go for France and Germany because their attitude to being photographed is not the open, welcoming attitude one finds in India, Burma, etc. So in Europe I would use the D800 with the Nikon 24-120 f/4 as my walkaround lens. But even that drew too much attention. So I just bought the Fuji and I'll see how that works out with the 18-135 or the 27 pancake lens.

I should point out that even though I'm 78, I am physically able to carry plenty of weight. (I can curl 30 lb dumbbells and do multiple dead lifts with 155 lbs.) So the issue is not physical incapacity.

So when you travel (to Turkey, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Mexico, Costa Rica, St Maartin, Hawaii) you haul all the equipment you have listed plus a tripod? Do you walk around with a large, heavy backpack carrying all your stuff? I'm just wondering what lengths you go to to get good shots. I travel a good deal too, but for the first time on an upcoming trip to Sicily and Calabria, I will be taking only a Fuji X-t1, and a Nikon SB 600 speedlight. On past trips I hauled two full frame Nikons and a wide angle zoom and medium telephoto zoom and I'm sick of being a packhorse.

Over the last few years I have built up quite a comprehensive collection of Lee graduated filters for use in my seascape/landscape photography. I am considering buying a new lens, Canon's 11-24 which is an ultra wide angle and uses a different size of filter and filter holder. I'm just thinking about the options and rather than buy a whole new set of graduated filters one option that occurred to me is to use the graduated filter in Lightroom.

So, my question is: has anyone here ditched their grads and is now successfully using Lightroom or equivalent filters?