Honestly Larry, it really is all about personal preference with these. And any photographer should have a compliment of tools for different purposes.
Monopod with a ball head is great for quick work (popping into a Historic church and no tripods are allowed- so you drop the monopod right when your ready to take your shot and nobody is really the wiser)
Lightweight tripod for trekking and backpacking with another ball head is light a easy to carry
Heavier tripod with geared head and column for longer lenses and studio work.

Manfrotto makes great products, I am a Gitzo man- just always have been and prefer the ergonomics. No right answer, just avoid the cheap junk .

 

Guys .. you are saving me from buying stuff I don’t need and focusing my gear shopping. Priority is a bag right now and learning how to operate the beast outside of the auto settings.

 

Back when I bought my DSLR, I also bought an online course for photography. I should still have those material and can share with you if you want.
Its no fun having a DSLR and taking pictures in auto mode

 

Larry, Here's your first lesson:

Set the ISO (used to be known as film speed) on the camera to 100. Set the camera to manual, adjust shutter speed to 125 (or 100 if there is not 125), and lens aperture to 16. Go outside on a bright sunny day and just start taking pictures of things the sun is falling on directly- they will be perfectly exposed (don't trust the screen on the back of the camera for exposure or color balance- it's wrong). That is called the " Sunny 16" rule. If you adjust the shutter speed up, the aperture must inversely go down to allow for the same exposure. If you have that as your basis of exposure, everything else becomes calculations on a sliding scale around that. Shutter speed allows you to stop or blur action depending on where you set it (generally under 1/30 sec will start to show motion) and aperture controls your depth of field (sharp close and soft far like pretty portraits or sharp both close and far like landscapes).

 

@JwRosenthal .. I started out with an old German bellows camera and an analog light meter. First priority is reading the user manual. Then the book. Will try your suggestion.

 

I don’t want to oversimplify it- Obviously when you move into shade or dappled light, things change and going inside is a whole different set of rules (for color balance as well, tungsten vs daylight!, but it a good starting point to get you playing with manual exposures.

 

I have been a view camera user for 25 years- and Gossen LunaPro for hand held metering. The principles of capturing light haven’t changed, just the capture medium. And yes- like a new car, figure out what all the buttons do.

 

Larry

Do not worry about exposure et al. That is what the camera assistant is for. You get your camera presented from him/her and just expose the masterpieces. And hand the camera back

 

Bag Recommendation (based on living in the UK) - If you want a shoulder bag, which has a bit of style can carry your gear and a few other bits as well then I would recommend the Billingham Range, I have used these bags for over 35 years and they have never let me down, my oldest current bag is 15 years old and works just fine. Billingham bags are not cheap but they last and last and last. If you want a backpack which is all the rage today then either F-Stop or Lowepro again there are a range of bags to suit most needs.

Tripods, well this isn't so easy as there are so many to choose from, I have 5 at present, a Joby Gorilla Pod (weird but wonderful), a studio Manfrotto (huge, heavy and rarely used), a lightweight Manfrotto (too lightweight unless conditions are perfect, rarely used), a Manfrotto MT055CXPRO4 combined with a Vanguard ball head (superb bit of kit and used regularly, only issue is that it is a bit bulky and not easy to chuck in hand luggage on a plane, but otherwise brilliant and highly recommended), finally a 3 LeggedThing - Leo (a brilliant small - fit in any case, carbon tripod, a bit pricey but it is such a great carry everywhere tripod it gets used a lot. 3LT do an Aluminium version of this tripod which is cheaper).

Shoulder bags allow you access to your gear whilst you are on the move, useful if you are walking around and shooting as you go but not so useful if you want to carry Camera, Lenses, Tripod, filters, accessories, plus drinks, snacks, waterproofs, gloves, hats etc that you might need if you are out in the wild somewhere in which case a backpack is better. It all depends on what type of photography you are interested in but choose carefully as there are many photographers out there with more camera bags than their partners have handbags (speaking from experience).

Your camera is awesome, it has an electronic viewfinder which will show the image pretty close to how the eye sees the scene, if you can move away from Program and use Shutter or Aperture priority then brilliant, if you can get to manual mode even better. Remember that in manual mode as you adjust the shutter speed or aperture you will see the results in the view finder or on the screen at the back of the camera, you do not see this when using other modes as the camera compensates for your changes.

Sorry for the long ramble, but enjoy the new camera and have fun taking those pictures.

 

I have a Crumpler Four Million Dollar Home bag. I chose it because I could fit my DSLR and two lenses (11-16 mm, and 18-200mm). You can also put a battery or two, filter, memory, phone... but not much else. It was the most compact bag I found that could fit my the camera and lenses. Love it!

 

I use a Manfrotto Befree bag and matching Befree alloy tripod and have used it with my Olympus M5 & PanLeica 100-400 with no issues. As with all these things there is no such thing as a perfect camera bag or tripod - which is perhaps why I have three tripods, two monopods and five camera bags!

Paul

 

What type of camera and lens and accessory are you going to carry?

 

See original post.

 

@Larry S do you develop your own film, send it off to develop or scan digitally? I'm trying to work out a viable way of dealing with film, had the preference of scanning but no idea where to go with that.

Have harvested a ton of bags ideas here , thanks all

 

There are guys who still love film. Not I. I still think there is an infrastructure for it.

 

There are many of us old timers who still process and even wet print!!

It’s actually quite simple to process b&w using a changing bag and daylight tank in your kitchen sink (color is a whole other world of chemistry- better to send that out, there are still a few places that do C41 and E6 processing) hang dry the film on a coat hanger with clothes pins and scan using an Epson flatbed film scanner. Scanned film still looks like film- not digity. Don’t need a darkroom to still embrace film if you love it.

 

As a kid I did this. Had a coffee can enlarger.

 

I need to get my head back in the space to find a good affordable digital scanner then. Want to use Dad's Canon more as well as process the 1000s of old prints we have literally filling a room and get them digitised, so any recommendations for a film scanners greatly appreciated.

#backontrack
I just ordered a Crumpler Delight light 6000 messenger style bag. I wanted something to help figure out what I needed and would work best. I wanted something pretty subtle and relatively cheap to start with. If it works, will upgrade to a better equivalent.

 

Crumpler bags are nice, but the Velcro was so noisy 10 years ago. Not great for Street or Wildlife.

 

A word on camera bags: nothing is more readily recognizable, that is not always good. So any unmarked bag + a towel or two will do nicely for a body + two lenses, even a small old military surplus shoulder bag (I happen to like those).