Photicious All Photography

These are cool. Pictage is interviewing a Photo Pro every week and these guys do give some good tips.

Fresh and Free!

Check it out here http://blog.pictage.com

I got a D3 with the 14-24/2.8 today.

My first reaction when I picked it up was: “It’s not as heavy as I though it would be”.

You get a feel of the quality just when turning the ON-OFF switch. Butter-smooth, ahhhhhh, Mercedes Benz! This camera oozes quality!

Does this get you better pictures? NO. It’s all about holding the state-of-the-art in your hands. The flagship. The best there is.

Nikon, while being great of ergonomics haven’t yet mastered making all their cameras the same to operate. Even among cameras which were released together, like the D3 and the D300. Switches and dials are maddeningly different places (metering, ISO, WB, Quality), this function differently (e.g. the magnify-button will not react to repeated presses like on the D300, which is again different in the D80, but you must press the button and turn the thumb wheel).

There is a back display for ISO, WB etc., which is nicer that to operate the buttons on the back and look at the top.

The strap is beautifully light, this seems like some kind of high-tech material. Lots of anti-slip.

Ah, yes: It does not have a dust-removal mechanism and no built-in flash to trigger CLS flashes.

There are two continuous-frame modes, high and low, as on the D300. The high frame rate is SUPER-WICKED.

The mirror slap is very loud and not good for weddings. The D300 is already loud coming from the D80, and now that I’ve finally gotten halfway used to it, along comes something even louder! Fix this, Nikon.

The camera comes a beautiful dual high-end charger which displays the charge level through a couple of LEDs and it also comes with two batteries. Man, these batteries are large!

The dual CF-card slots are nice too, but I’d be hard-pressed to use this feature. I’d probably plunk in 2 16GB cards for a wedding and forget about changing cards.

I couldn’t get used to the vertical grip yet, because it makes me rotate the camera the wrong way for verticals. I think my method is at least as stable and convenient for verticals as is the grip. No no points for this one.

Image quality? Nice at ISO 6400, although image quality is nowhere that at ISO 200. There IS noise in dark areas, contrary to what all the media hype has made everyone believe. So there is no way I would leave the camera set at those high ISOs.

Auto white balance is, well, not usable for me. I did some tests with halogen lights and the shots were too yellow for me. I guess it is ok but I am an all manual guy and will probably get better results much of the time.

So all-in-all: A beautiful bit of machinery to hold, it does have good high-ISO performance, but apart from that: I prefer my D300. So, as soon as the D700 comes out I will be testing it and that will probably be my low-light camera of choice.

D3 - nice to have known you. Bye.

As has been widely speculated since the announcement of the Nikon D3, two cousins of this sensational camera are in the works and are due to be announced soon. The naming is similar to the D2 series, so few surprises here.

The D3x will be a high-resolution studio camera with 21 MP and a frame rate of 3 images per second.

The D3h will be a lower resolution sports camera featuring a blistering frame rate of 16 images per second.

Wow, Canon has some catching up to do!

Not only has Nikon replaced it’s entire R&D department but also it’s marketing department. R&D is busy churning out sensation after sensation making former big-boy-on-the-block Canon look so yesterday. After the D3, which really is a pretty revolutionary machine - much to the chagrin of some die-hard Canon-ites who can’t stand being have-beens, and the D300 which is a pretty nice camera as well, now the D700 is finally offical.

D700, an ultra low-noise full frame camera without the bulk and the price of the D3.

A dream come true!

The ‘leak’ of a Chinese printing press employee who was near the printed D700 marketing material and ’snapped a few pictures of it’, published the pictures in an east Asian blog, and swiftly got picked up by photo blogs all over the world didn’t convince me. I rather thought of this as a planned leak by Nikon’s marketing department, which created tons of free buzz and anticipation to photogs all over waiting for a ‘cheaper D3′. Well, it’s here.

The D700 is official, and above is the picture.

http://www.nikon.ch/product/de_CH/products/broad/1627/overview.html