Well I was up serious about an early morning shoot to get back into the swing of things with a tryout of the Nikkor 70-200mm F2.8 lens. But after a 5 minute wander outside at 05:30 I decided my cold infested lungs that felt like I had razor blades & ball bearings in the bottom of them were not up to the challenge. I’d stay inside and come up with something else. So I decided to do what I’d been intending to do all week since the arrival of said addition to the kit. This was create a new car kit, and review everything since I’d originally put it together as quite a few things have changed.

Gone is the D3100 that was tucked in there, I gave that away to a friend a couple of months ago after getting the D810. The D7000 now becomes the all reliable “yes you have a camera in the car”! It’s had a sensor clean, and I’ve given it the small backpack I was using as I’ve recently purchased a new manfrotto pack with more room for the larger lenses I’ve gained over recent times. So it was a shuffle of camera, lenses, cards, batteries, flash, remotes, and other peripheral gear between small pack, vest for other gear, and some for the larger back.

The D600 got a sensor clean, it’s needed one for a while, but finding quality cleaning gear cheaply is not easy. However it came up magnificently again, and is shooting as it did when I bought it. Those who know about the D600 know it was notorious very quickly for a defect where lubricant collected on the sensor. I had hoped I’d bought from a batch where the problem had been “silently” fixed as Nikon seems to be somewhat fond of doing in recent times. But in the last couple of months it seemed not so at some point it was going to require regular cleaning. I’ll see how it goes, it’s still a great camera despite this manufacturing defect. I took a chance, I was aware of the issue, and it seemed like as time went on your chances of getting one that didn’t have the issue seemed better. But that’s the crumbling cookie as they say. Anyway after the clean I had just enough light to run a quick test of the Nikkor 70-200mm F2.8 and see what I was paying for in a big way.

And the attached Tiggakat is a nice start.