Snow and a Camera Tip

Snowcapped

I've been practicing with lighting, but don't have anything to really show off from it yet. Instead, how about another snow image? It is hard to believe that a tad more than a week ago, the trees in my yard looked like the shot above. A couple of days later and the snow was all gone. Now it has been sunny and in the 70s-80s the past few days. I noticed that some of the neighborhood dogwoods are beginning to bud. So, it looks like you folks will get inundated with flower pictures soon enough. I bet you'll want to see more snow pictures before the flowers drop off. ;-)

Yesterday, I stumbled on a neat "feature" of my Nikon D80. I was reviewing the sharpness of an image on the LCD display when I accidentally turned the command dial on the back of the camera. To my surprise it advanced the image. The really cool thing about it though is that it advanced to the next image at the same zoom level in the same position as the previous image! Do you realize how easy this makes it to compare images for sharpness on the LCD? Before I would look at one image, zoom in several times, check the sharpness, zoom out until I got back to the full image, go to the next image I wanted to check, zoom in several times, and check that image, etc. Sometimes it took a lot of time and button presses. Now, I only have to zoom in on the first image and then move to the next image with the Command dial. This will be great for those times that I am shooting a series in continuous mode. I will have a better idea which one is sharpest and in less time with fewer buttons to press. I guess it is the little things that sometimes excite us.

Keep shooting.

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New Nikons

Well, after a week or so of leaks Nikon has announced the new D700 pro/enthusist level camera. They also announced a new Speedlight flash, the SB900.

More after the jump.



The Nikon D700 is a full frame digial SLR camera that is situated between the D300 and the D3 cameras. Indeed, for all intents and purposes it is a D3 scaled down into a D300 sized form. The D3 retains some features over the D700, while the D700 has some refinements that may or may not make it into the D3 via firmware updates. There are a couple of D700 features that are hardware related that are not on the D3 like the Info button and a built-in pop-up flash with remote Commander mode for the Advanced Lighting System. All-in-all the D700 is expected to have the same image quality as the D3, with a slower frame speed and fewer of the bells and whistles of the D3. The D700 is estimated to retail at US$2,999 compared to the US$1,700 for the D300 and the US$4,999 for the D3.

The camera fills a similar place in Nikon's line-up that the Canon 5D did in Canon's camera line. Until now the 5D was the only smaller form factor full frame DSLR on the market. It is also a three year old model that is expected to be upgraded soon as well.

The specifications and speculations are flooding the photography sites, so instead of retyping them here I will just link to some of the better ones.

DPReview D700 preview
Thom Hogan's take on the D700
Rob Galbraith's D700 page
PopPhoto.com's D700 page
... and last but not least Nikon's Official announcement.

Nikon also announced the release of a couple of perspective control, i.e. "tilt-shift" lenses that were previously announced to be in development. These types of lenses are very expensive and meant for very specific professional applications. If you don't know if you need one or not, then get a Lensbaby instead. Similar capability for a fraction of the cost for a hobbist.

Finally, Nikon announced a new flagship Speedlight flash ... the SB900. This flash improves on the current top of the line SB800 in a number of ways. It has a new, more intuitive interface, it zooms from 14-200mm, it auto detects DX or FX lenses to control power output and light spread, it rotates 180 degrees both left and right, and it has controlable light shaping. Another new trick is that it can auto detect gel filters and adjust the camera's white balance automatically.

Joe McNally has already been playing around with the SB900s and has a post about his hand's on with them here. The lucky guy gets all of the new toys first.

So what do I think of all of these announcements?

I wish I could afford them ;-)

Seriously though, the D700 looks like nice camera and I would consider getting one when I need to upgrade my D80. However, the D300 is very similar and quite a bit closer to my needs right now, thus likely it would be the next camera I get if something should happen to my D80. The D700 would pair well with either the D300 or the D3 depending on the photographer's needs.

The SB900 looks like a great flash. I will wait to see some more hands-on with it, but I can easily see it being my next flash.

The new PC lenses are well out of my budget and needs. Don't need them, so they have no lust factor for me. If I start doing professional arctectural photography, then I'll change my mind.

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