I have been using range finder cameras as my main camera for over 20 years. I would say I am in a relationship with Leica. They are often assertive and frustrating, but when I treat the camera well and carefully feed good light the camera gives me stunning beautiful images. You know I mean…this is truly a relationship.
On the other hand, Nikon D800 is job partner. It is reliable and covenient, but I don’t expect the “surprise” which I found in images from Leica. So I often take Leica. I use D800 for mostly for event photography or when I am lazy.
Having said that, I have decided to taking D800 to Lake O’Hara trip in this fall. The reason is the shutter of my Leica M9 has become unreliable after 160,000 actuations. This is known issue of Leica M9. Lake O’Hara is considered to be backcountry so if something happens to a camera, I cannot get a spare camera easily.
So I took my D800 for a hiking to lake Agnes as a trial. Also I got a Cotton carrier camera system so I tested the Cotton carrier system well. Here is my new look.
Cotton Carrier is quite confortable. It is nice on my neck. I put 3 more lenses in a shoulder bag, but it was not heavy unexpectedly. Now I gave a “go sign” to myself to take Nikon system to Lake O’Hara. Another good thing about the Cotton system is a Arcaswiss tripod plate is coming with the kit. So I can put the camera on my panorama head as well. This is handy for landscape photographers.
Hiroaki Kobayashi's Blog 