I've been limping along with failing cameras for a while now. My little Olympus had its battery compartment damaged so I've had this giant L-shaped tripod quick release bracket permanently attached to keep the battery in place. Not ideal. My Pentax has been eccentric for a while but finally expired last week with blurry pictures and a death rattle.
Reasoning that I'm a professional so should have professional gear I've switched from Pentax (which I loved and would recommend to anyone) to Nikon. Mostly on the basis of availability of well-priced second hand bodies and lenses. While second hand Pentax lenses are pretty rare things Nikon (and Canon) are available in huge quantities. So I've gone the whole hog and bought a pro-grade full-frame Nikon d610 with 24-70mm f2.8 lens.
The end result is big. Bigger than (and about twice as heavy as) the Pentax, hugely bigger than my Olympus. But built like a tank. It feels like it should last a while.
So far I've taken a few snaps around the house and today took it out for a walk in the woods for some non-serious snapping. I like it. It feels good (though heavy) in the hand and the big bright viewfinder is lovely. It will take a few long days of shooting to train my muscle memory to where the controls are but they're all laid out reasonably well. Picture quality looks good, especially wide open with nice out of focus areas.
I'll write more once I've used it enough to talk sensibly about it but so far so good.
I've also replaced the thoroughly damaged Olympus with another one exactly the same, second hand, but pristine. It's nice to have that one back and in proper order again.
In the meantime here are a few snaps from today's walk in the woods taken with the Nikon.
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