My inspiration at my current stage lies in these words of Henri Cartier: "Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst."
Dis-regarding my earlier kiddish clicks with point-n-shoots, the shutter actuation of my D5100 counts round of 7500. If I look at my public photos in 500px and flickr, then it shows there are barely five hundred images that I could dare to make public and out of them a maximum of 100 will stand out in my eyes now.
If I take Henri Cartier's word in serious sense (means not just random clicks but those clicks which are worth to count), then there is a long path ahead to travel before getting over of my "worst".
Still I dared to introduce a full-frame member in my d-slr family. Yes, my D5100 has a brother now - the mighty D600.
Launching of D600 really lured me towards it, I wanted it in my bag. Lots of reviews in many forums/blogs encouraged me to go ahead with one negative note: dust/oil spots on the sensor issue. In December (2012) there were big deals in the market and I could find that Adorama would be happy to deliver the camera to me in UAE (where B&H or Amazon would like to disappoint me). Even after paying international delivery charges, and duties the deal was really mouth watering for me. In UAE we do not get such deals and eventually I have to pay much more than the amount of this deal just to buy the camera body. No doubt, I have to compromise the warranty - still better than buying from black market I guess.
After sleeping 2-3 nights over the issue I placed the order on 16-Dec and immediately it went to back order list. After waiting for almost 50 days and compromising one item from the package Adorama shipped my order on 5-Feb-2013 and I received it in UAE on 9-Feb-2013 via UPS.
I was little disappointed with Adorama due to the small item which I compromised, it was a Adorama's in-house lens cleaning kit. In all my email communications, they claimed that the item was available and kept aside for my order. All of a sudden they started to show that item in back order and mentioned that it would not be available till March-2013. I cancelled it and asked them to ship rest of the package - 50 days is a big time to wait.
Finally I got D600 with 24-85 kit lens, 32 GB Lexar card, Nikon Wi-Fi kit, Lower pro camera bag, additional battery and charger set at little less than AED 8200 - a very good deal at the end. A total of 296 AED I paid as customs duty (of which 221 is only the customs and UPS charged 75 as disbursement fee) - it turns out to be around 3% of my total cost. For your information, only D600 body costs AED 9000 in UAE (official retailer price).
I spent 3-4 hours in my office anxiously to leave and un-pack the package. I captured the un-packing with my trusty D5100.
Like many others, I tested the sensor and it looked pretty clean to me.
I looked at the shutter actuation in Opanda as well, I had a pre-shutter actuation of 10; I guess Nikon or Adorama did that to run a quality check.
It is time to go out and explore the new monster buddy. I will keep on posting my new venture with D600. For the time being, D5100 will take the back seat but he will remain as the core member of my team.
