Just to introduce myself - Marcus Rowland, retired lab technician and author (mostly of role playing games), resident of London, UK. In the seventies and early eighties I did some part time work for Morgan Cameras, a London used camera dealer, so I've seen a lot of strange gear in my time, especially at the vintage end of things. My main interests are scientific and nature photography, macro and micro, occasional pictures for Wikipedia, etc.
I've been a Nikon D50 user for ten years or so, before that my main camera was a Canon F1. Since Canon digital cameras use a different lens mount to the F1 I had no incentive to stay with Canon when I went digital, so ended up with Nikon. I'm sticking with the D50 because I mostly take photos for web sites etc. and rarely want really high resolution, because my favourite lens uses the old-style motor in body AF system, and because it's reasonably sensitive to infra-red with the right filters and I like messing around with infra-red photography occasionally. A final reason is that it's cheap and relatively expendable if I get mugged, drop it in a canal, or something... I also own a Canon Eos 300D body which I use for lens tests since you can adapt most lenses to it more easily than to Nikon, and a Fujifilm S5700 bridge camera which is my "carry all the time" camera when I don't want to use the Nikon.
The lens I probably use the most is a Tamron 28-300mm XR, not the most modern lens but it's built like a tank and my go-to lens for eBay listings and general photography, and still has the option of manual aperture control. I've also got a Nikon AF-S 35 1.8, Nikon AF-S 18-55 3.5-5.6 VR, a Lensbaby 12mm fisheye (not the full frame one, the cheaper version for their interchangeable element system), a generic manual 500mm F8 lens, and usually one or two others - I buy cameras and lenses in street markets and car boot fairs (US=Swap meets") and sell them on eBay, and tend to keep the interesting ones for a few months before I sell them on.
I'm here because I joined NikonForums.com a while ago and was told to ask here about a couple of things that interested me. I get the impression it's a much busier forum, so hopefully I'll be here fairly often.
