Who, me? Just a quiet guy, not afraid of work but enjoying partial retirement. 66 years of age. Happily married with lots of kids and grandkids. Passionate about photography, especially nature and architecture. Avid beekeeper and bee breeder. Volunteer beekeeper for the Belle Isle Nature Zoo (Detroit Zoo). Fruiticulturist and fruit explorer and breeder. Homebrewer of tasty honey beers.

What's in my Camera Bag? In May of 2011 I suffered the theft of my entire SLR camera kit from my truck. This necessitated replacing the SLR and my lenses. It also necessitated never again leaving a good kit out of sight in my truck.

The current kits, Powershot and SLR, contain the following:

(1) The Canon Powershot G15, an excellent 12 megapixel digicam full of whistles and bells and a very bright and sharp f/1.8-2.8, 4x, stabilized lens, ideal for close macro, portraits, landscapes, terrific videos, and IR with the Hoya R72 filter, topped off with the small, but very capable Canon 270 EX II Speedlite. The Powershot G15 is a super general purpose camera but too puny for serious telephoto. It even holds its own under poor lighting. This is often my first choice for candids, parties, or walkabout. You can carry it all day .

(2) My Canon Digital 60D, an 18 megapixel SLR wonder, normally paired with the awesome Canon 300mm F/4L IS; the fine, non-stabilized Tamron 17-50mm F/2.8, (my general-purpose or walk-around lens); the four-stop image-stabilized Canon 100mm F/2.8L IS (incredible for macros, longer candids, and short telephoto); and the sharpest lens in the bag, the Canon 60mm F/2.8 Macro (close portraits, landscapes, macro, and crisp infrared with the Hoya R72 filter). Topping it all off is the Canon Speedlite 430 Flash. Other than the 17-50 Tamron, an excellent party or very short portrait lens, the rest are all primes. This camera badly needed recalibration when new due to awful front-focusing. It came back so incredibly sharp it could almost cut you.

(3) The latest weapon--the incredible Nokia 1020 camera phone, with its Carl Zeiss optics. This is the ideal cell phone for the photographer, with a futuristic, space-age sensor that records almost 41 megapixels and downsamples very sharp jpg images. With its latest firmware it can now open its large files in Adobe DNG format. The camera is backed up with terrific software giving the photograpger extensive control over the exposure processes if desired, plus excellent panorama and multiple-exposure capabilities.

The Nokia images have been set up to automatically upload to my Skydrive account and are promptly available for further processing on the computer in Lightroom, Elements, or Paintshop Pro. It is weak on long telephoto but quite capable for everything else. Most importantly, it is always right there at your side when suprised with a photo oppurtunity you would otherwise miss!