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Hello. I've been a full-time professional photojournalist since 1985. Always freelance, I've built up quite an arsenal of gear to deal with pretty much any assignment. But my start was much more... austere. The first photograph I sold to a UK national newspaper, before I turned 'pro' in 1985, appeared in the 'Daily Mail.' That picture was shot on a Zenit EM camera with a Helios 52mm lens which had cost - brand new - twenty six pounds [about $42cdn]. Flipping through the glossy photo magazines with the latests 'must have' ad's for D-SLR's and lenses, it occurred to me that many 'wanna be' shooters might want to consider what equipment they REALLY need to cover an assignment. So I set myself a budget of five hundred pounds [about $800cdn] plus or minus 10% to buy a complete two D-SLR-two lens system for general assignments and an additional five hundred pounds [another $800] plus or minus 10% for a long 'sports' lens. I hope to show you what is possible and put some photographs up on this blog shot with my 'austere' system against my... um, embarrassingly expensive 'faster' system.

The criteria for buying the austere system was simple. First, the bodies. Nikon or Canon. Pro D-SLR. As many frames per second as possible. File size not important [most newspapers are fine with 1mp files]. Can still buy batteries for them?

I bought two Nikon D1X's that are in very good to mint condition. These are rubust D-SLR's but use a smaller sensor so lens focal length was increased by 50%. The 5.74 megapixel camera can shoot three frames per second and was Nikon's flagship from 2001 to 2004. These cost me three hundred pounds [$480cdn] for the pair of them.

The only fault when they were new was the unpredictable battery life. Some of the EN-4 batteries would last for days, some were dead in a single assignment. To make the batteries last, the first three battery charges had to be to full [97%+] charge, then the battery level and life improved dramatically.

A small problem with the D1X is that it will only accept a CF [Compact Flash] card of 2GB or less. These are becoming quite rare so I made sure I could still buy 2GB CF cards before I bought the camera bodies.

The lenses needed to cover from something like 16mm [24mm in full frame terms] to about 135mm [about 200mm in full frame terms]. I bought a newish Nikkor 18-70mm f3.5-4.5 G AF-S lens for one hundred pounds [about $160cdn] and a brand new Nikkor 55-200mm f4-5.6 G AF-S VR lens for one hundred and twenty pounds [about $192cdn]. I had considered the Nikkor 70-300mm f4.5-5.6 G AF-S lens but the reviews tended to say this lens, used between about 200-300mm, was suspiciously soft.

The complete two camera-two lens system had cost me five hundred and twenty pounds [about $832cdn] so I was a tiny twenty pounds [about $32cdn] over budget.

The 'sports' lens would need to cover up to 400-500mm. A mint, used Nikkor 80-400mm f4.5-5.6 AF-S might do the job. Two other 'long' zooms that have impressed me are the Tamron 200-500mm f5-6.3 and the Sigma 50-500mm f4.5-6.3 [aka 'Bigma']. I get paid to shoot a lot of sports. During the spring and summer, my 500mm f4 AF-S gets plenty of use. For cricket, I use the 500mm almost exclusively and for baseball, it's my most used lens. So I didn't really want to go for the 80-400mm if it wasn't going to be enough. The Tamron is a bit 'rare.' So I opted for a mint Sigma 50-500mm lens which cost me five hundred and thirty pounds [$850cdn]. Another thirty pounds [$50cdn] over budget.

The 'Bigma' had a maximum aperture of f6.3. Generally, under an overcast sky, when I'm shooting with my Nikkor 500mm f4 AF-S, I'm shooting at f4. My shutter speeds tend to be around 1/3,200-1/4,000 sec. The Bigma would be allowing me to shoot at 1/1,000-1/1,250 sec. under the same light conditions. Obviously, with - say - a cricket ball travelling at 80-100mph, that's a concern. But shooting, as an example, past the slips and looking for a picture where the batsman has played the ball towards or past the slips and the ball is travelling almost towards the lens, then I might still get a high percentage of good pictures.

Nikon D1X + Nikkor 18-70mm f3.5-4.5 G AF-S, Nikon D1X + Nikkor 55-200mm f4-5.6 G AF-S 'VR'