A clearer view...

WARNING: Gear lust ahead!

I've got my budget all laid out for everything I'm going to be picking up over the next week or so to fill in a fully capable pro kit, and one lens seems to have jumped the gun and come onboard before everything was, shall we say, approved.

The Nikon 24-70 f/2.8 is, according to everything I've read, absolutely superlative in terms of it's image quality, even wide open, and it provides an excellent range on a full-frame body. It's supposed to be as sharp as the 28-70, but wider, and as good wide open as the 17-55, which is a DX (crop format) lens. Right now it's on the D200, where I'm finding that 24mm is not wide enough for my taste on DX, but it's going to settle right in on the D700 when it arrives in a few weeks.

The rest of my list is roughly as follows:

D700. Already discussed. The body that so many of us have been waiting for.

Sigma 150mm f/2.8 macro. This will be my long portrait/short telephoto lens, and I expect it to reside more on the D200, which will be staying in my kit for some time still. This provides me with a bit more reach than I've had previously (150mm vs 135) and gets me to a nice f/2.8 for a very reasonable $550 or so.

Nikon 85mm f/1.4 I try and try to convince myself to get the 1.8 instead. But I've used both, and the 1.4 is simply magic.

Another SB-800 and Pocket Wizard. One light simply isn't going to do everything I need.

Beyond that, I have enough budgeted for either a 14-24 (a beautiful lens, but I'm torn trying to make a business case for it) or a set of a couple of AB lights and associated modifiers (probably more practical) I'm leaning heavily towards the lights, as I think 24mm on FX will be wide enough for me for a while. I've rarely shot wider than 27mm equivalent, so I'm ok with 24. Hopefully.

Also, a couple of lightstands, an umbrella or two, a roll of seamless, some business cards and a sign for the back window of the van. I'm sending some design work to a little company called FatTofu (http://fattofu.com/) who will be doing my logo and stuff. As you can tell by the graphic above, I am not a designer!

Anyway, thanks to all for the support as always. More to come soon. And I promise to keep the gear posts to a minimum. This stuff is tools, and right now I'm investing in the future of my business. Hopefully I'm not putting the cart too far ahead of the horse.