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New Nikon cameras and lenses
Thursday, July 30th, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | 2 Comments |
D3000, D300s, and updates to the 18-200mm and 70-200mm/F2.8. Amazon already has them up.
DP Review has a brief D3000 hands on with full specs. Hit the next and prev buttons for other new Nikon gear. Somewhere on DP Review there’s a side-by-side chart comparing the D60, D3000 and D5000, but I can’t find it again.
What I wanted was a camera the size of a D40/D60 with the 12MP high ISO sensor of the D90/D5000. The size is right, and the D3000 has the improved autofocus system of the D5000, along with a larger LCD (but with the same 230,000 pixels).
The big disappointment is that the D3000 has the D60’s 10.7MP sensor. I don’t care about the 1.3 extra megapixels, but what I lusted after was the amazing high ISO performance of the 12MP sensor and this camera doesn’t have it. That pretty much does it for me, but just to pile on, the D3000 lacks the built-in chromatic aberration correction and distortion correction of the D5000 and D90. Also missing from the D5000: LiveView, movie mode, and exposure bracketing.
None of this makes the D3000 a bad camera, but it does make it a half-hearted upgrade from the D40 and a pointless upgrade from the D60. If you’re starting from scratch this looks like a decent camera at a fair price, but be aware the feature set here is getting a bit out of date. (Almost every new DSLR these days has LiveView, for instance.) It definitely ain’t the swingin’ deal the D40 was three years ago. Me, I’ll keep plugging away with the D40 until there’s something clearly better at a price I’m willing to pay.
P.S. It’s still a few days until August 4th, but compare today’s introduction to the (supposedly) leaked Nikon roadmap.
In praise of Nikon’s 70-300mm VR lens
Friday, May 29th, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | 2 Comments |
Good reviews of the Nikon 70-300mm VR lens keep coming. Wildlife photographer Moose Peterson has a huge kit of expensive telephoto lenses, but he still likes the 70-300mm VR, calling it Nikon’s best kept secret.
Likewise, Thom Hogan likes his 70-300mm VR and would choose it as one of only three FX lenses on a desert island. “You’re probably surprised with the 70-300mm VR. If you don’t need f/2.8, then you don’t need the 70-200mm. Indeed, you’ll like the 70-300mm at f/5.6 or f/8 better on an FX body. Close your mouth, that dropped jaw makes you look stupid. Really. The 70-300mm has very good edge to edge performance and doesn’t really start to fall down in any way until you start to approach 300mm. And even then, it’ll do in a pinch.”
Do the math
I like mine, too. It’s a heck of a lens for a reasonable amount of money - not cheap, but not crazy expensive. To realize how good this lens really is you have to take a look at what it would take to get a better lens.
At current prices (inflated due to a strong Yen) the 70-300mm VR is about $550. Weight is 1.5 pounds, length is 5 inches. The next longer lens, the 80-400mm VR, costs $1,500, weighs 5 pounds, and is 7 inches long. The next faster but shorter lens, the 70-200mm VR 2.8, is $1900, weighs five pounds, and is 8 inches long.
The weight of the 80-400mm means you’ll mostly wind up carrying it in a backpack and you’ll mostly shoot it off of a tripod. Not that there’s anything wrong with that - but it wouldn’t work for the kind of photography I get to do in my spare time. The 70-200mm is more reasonable, but pretty long.
You know how I carry my 70-300mm when I’m walking around? If it isn’t on the camera I stick it in the pocket of my Columbia pants. No problem. I do that all the time when I’m switching between the 70-300mm and a shorter lens.
I’m not putting down those other lenses in any way. They can do things the 70-300mm can’t. It’s just that they do them at double or triple the weight and triple the cost.
My review
I use the 70-300mm on a Nikon D40, which is DX a (1.5x crop sensor) body, but it’s an FX lens that works on the new full frame D3 and D700 bodies. Better, some say, than the 70-200mm VR, which will probably get a redesign to reduce vignetting on the full frame bodies. DX users won’t see vignetting with this lens because the image circle is overly-specced for a DX body. Whenever I look through the viewfinder with this lens I notice how very bright it is compared to my DX lenses.
This is a good portrait and wildlife lens, which was my original motivation for buying it. On a DX body it has the same field of view as a 450mm lens. I find that’s plenty for mammals and large birds, though not really enough for tiny songbirds. If you want to photograph songbirds you’ll either need to attract them with a feeder, stalk them, or get a second mortgage.
As a sports lens it’s limited by its maximum aperture of 3.5-5.6. That’s fast enough to freeze action outdoors on a sunny day. With a newer Nikon like the D90, D5000, D3, or D700 you can boost the ISO to extend its usefulness without sacrificing too much picture quality. If indoor sports is what you want to shoot you’ll eventually want a 2.8 or faster lens, which is where the 70-200mm 2.8 becomes the lens to have.
Autofocus speed is very good. The VR (Vibration Reduction) II system helps greatly in counteracting shaky hands, which means more pictures are keepers. The lens makes it easy to throw distant backgrounds out of focus on the long end. The quality of the out of focus backgrounds is good, if not up to the level of faster aperture lenses.
Sample photos
Some pictures I’ve taken with the lens:
Long live the Nikon D40
Monday, May 18th, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | No Comments |
Nikon has finally discontinued the D40, the cheapest DSLR Nikon has ever made and a great, affordable tool for making photographs.
Over at Digital Photography Review, people are pulling out the photos they’ve made with their D40s. Ian Bramham posted some amazing D40 photos here and here. A sample:
His Web site is ianbramham.com. For anyone who doubts what a 6 megapixel camera can do, note that he sells prints of his work up to 30 inches wide and sometimes wider.
Previously: Cheap camera owners of the world unite
I can’t see the appeal of the new Nikon D5000 DSLR camera
Saturday, April 18th, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | 1 Comment |
Even though I’m not ready to buy a camera right now I was looking forward to the new Nikon D5000. It was pitched as a replacement for the D40 (which is what I use ) and D60.
The appeal of the D40 and D60 is that they’re small, lightweight, and inexpensive - perfect for someone like me who wanted something more than a point and shoot but less than a pro DSLR. Yet in size and weight the D5000 is much closer to the D90.
The D5000 is also much closer to the D90 in price than I’d like. Where the D5000 is similar to the D40/D60 is mostly in the negatives:
- No focus motor for older AF lenses
- Cheaper pentamirror instead of a brighter pentaprism
- Lower resolution rear LCD
- No top LCD
- No second command wheel
- No battery grip/portrait grip option
I like my D40. I like the size, the weight, and the fact that it didn’t cost an arm and a leg. What I really want is a D40 with one of the third generation sensors and a few more features. This isn’t that camera. This is a cheaper D90 with some nifty features like the swivel LCD, but without many of the D90 features that would actually help me take better pictures. I’ll pass.
Nikon D5000 and 10-24mm DX lens
Monday, April 13th, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | No Comments |
The release is supposedly imminent. Check it out at NikonRumors.
- Bali-angle LCD, 2.7 inch? [Swivel LCD]
- D movie image editing and enhanced scene mode
- Silent Mode AF
- 11-point target tracking AF
- ISO3200high sensitivity support
Megapixel count is undetermined, but presumably at least 12 MP.
LATER: DP Review has full specs and a comparison with the D90 and D60. Sensor would seem to be the same as the D90. The D90 has a pentaprism vs. the D5000’s pentamirror, and the while the D5000’s LCD is on a swivel mount it’s about a fourth as many number of pixels as the D90.
Price is about $300 hundred dollars different, with a lens on the D90 that’s worth about $200 more. Granted, the D5000 is new and hasn’t been marked down yet, but if I were buying today and wanted the kit lens I’d be tempted to get the D90.
Thom Hogan on used Nikons and upgrades
Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | No Comments |
After reviewing years of his pictures from various Nikon bodies he has this advice (no permalink - get it while it lasts):
So, if you’re looking for bargains and don’t need high ISO much, the D2x/D2xs would be my choice amongst used offerings. The D200 is probably the best “bargain” amongst the group due to its all around decent image quality, and you can find new in box samples of this camera for substantially less than you’d pay for a new D90; the D200 performs quite well overall. So much so that I had one converted to IR and it’s my main IR camera now.
Another way of looking at things is “is it time to upgrade?” Here, I’ll look at each body and make a judgment about whether it’s time to move to a newer generation:
- D1, D1h, D1x: yes, to any of the FX bodies.
- D2h, D2hs: yes, to a D3 for more pixels, better really high ISO values; otherwise no.
- D2x, D2xs: no, unless you’re moving to a D3x or need high ISO regularly.
- D100: yes, to a D300.
- D200: no; I’d wait for a D400.
- D40: if you need more pixels, yes, to a D60; otherwise no.
- D40x: no; present bodies don’t provide enough more unless you move upwards in the lineup (e.g. D300).
- D50: yes, to a D60. (But note you may lose AF on some lenses, which may bring you back to no.)
- D70, D70s: yes, to a D90.
- D80: probably, to a D90.
- S1, S2: yes, to almost anything from a D90 up.
- S3, S5: yes, to a D700.
- Pro 14n, SLR/n: no, unless you need high ISO (D700) or lots more pixels (D3x).
No Nikon D5000 at PMA
Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | No Comments |
The D40 is being shown as discontinued all over the place. The D60 is still available. We saw a palette of them at Sam’s Club last weekend.
Snow!
Monday, February 23rd, 2009 | East Tennessee, Home Life, Photos | Permalink | 2 Comments |
Saturday was sunny and warm. The kids spent the day playing outside. I noticed the first crocuses blooming. Then snow moved in Sunday morning and covered everything in a white blanket. That’s East Tennessee winter for you. It’s enough cold to remind you it’s winter and enough warm to remind you that spring is on the way.
We wanted to see more snow so we took a daytrip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. There seemed to be more snow in Walland than at home, but a few miles later in Townsend the snow level had dropped. Once we got in the park it was no better, but we drove to Sugarlands anyway.
Nope. The snow wasn’t any deeper there. We turned up 441 and made our way up the mountains past the Chimneys and Mt. LeCeonte to Newfound Gap, up in the spruce-fir zone. There was a little more snow there along with some impressive icicles from water seeping out of the rocks. It was definitely cold as all get out up on top. We only kept the girls outside for a few minutes before diving back inside the vehicle.
On the way back we stopped in Gatlinburg at Howard’s Steakhouse, where we had a good dinner served by a very nice Romanian waitress with a pretty accent. Howard’s is one of our favorite restaurants in Gatlinburg. It’s on the main drag near the park entrance and we can always find parking. The prices are reasonable and in warm weather we like eating on the back patio which overlooks LeConte Creek. Their pickles are delicious and their onion rings are colossal.
Photography notes: gray snow
Continue reading the rest of this post right here ›››
Rumor of a Nikon D40/D60 replacement: the D5000
Saturday, February 21st, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | 3 Comments |
Nikon Rumors broke the rumor about a Nikon D5000 being introduced at PMA in a few weeks.The D5000 is expected to be positioned between the D60 and D90 in price and features. Most people are guessing the D40 will be discontinued and the D60’s price lowered.
Rumors slash reasonable assumptions are that the D5000 will be the size of the D40 and D60, seeing as how the next size up is already occupied by the D300 and the still-new D90. That would likely mean it won’t have an autofocus motor, a top LCD, or the option of a portrait grip. If you want those features, or a second command wheel or Nikon’s Creative Lighting System, you’ll probably have to pony up for a D90. The advantage over the D90 would be size, weight, and price.
The main upgrade over the D60 will be the sensor, which will almost certainly be the same excellent sensor as the D90. That would mean 12 megapixels with fantastic ISO performance, LiveView, video, and dust control. If the D5000 has the D90’s 3″ 920,000 pixel rear LCD that would be even better.
One feature I’d like to see move down to the D5000 is exposure bracketing. That’s a pretty basic digital camera feature which the D40 and D60 lack. Heck, my point and shoots had exposure bracketing. Without it HDR photography is all but impossible.
P.S. Nikon ran out of numbers in the DX0 line, so they had to go to DX000. How dumb would it be, then, to go straight to D5000? Any model number below that would be assumed to be a lesser camera. They should go with D1000 to prolong the usefulness of that namespace.
Milo the cat
Sunday, February 15th, 2009 | Home Life, Photos | Permalink | 3 Comments |
Milo showed up at my house not long after I bought it. My roommate Josh and I were sitting outside and this fat and sassy cat just ambled right up. It was obvious he had been someone’s house cat.
At first I gave him some food outside. Then I bought him some actual cat food. Then I bought him an actual cat bowl. Eventually he got to come inside and much later I even put in a cat door. Growing up, my family had cats but I never thought of myself as a cat person until Milo showed up.
I’ve been taking pictures of Milo for years, but I’ve never felt like I captured his essence. These pictures of him sunning himself in a flowerbed are the closest I’ve come.
New Nikon AF-S 35mm prime lens for DX cameras
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | No Comments |
Pretty cool. It’s an AF-S lens so it focuses on the D40/D60 (as well as any other Nikon DSLR), and the focus should be as silent as it on other AF-S lenses. At 35mm it replicates the 50mm field of view on a Nikon crop sensor DSLR. And it’s less than $200 retail. Assuming the picture quality is good this should make a decent lens for indoor or nighttime work on a budget. Good stuff, Nikon.
I was going to do a longer writeup, but Chris has already done it.
Hey D40 owners
Friday, February 6th, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | No Comments |
Check out Donald Peterson’s great photos. They’re all taken with the D40, Nikon’s cheapest DSLR ever. Most of them are taken either with the included 18-55mm kit lens or Nikon’s budget 55-200mm.
Hat tip to Ken Rockwell, who convinced me to buy my D40 around this time last year.
Previously
Make your own Christmas cards online
Thursday, December 25th, 2008 | Photos | Permalink | 1 Comment |
Earlier this year we bought a Nikon D40 DSLR. We’ve been getting great pictures from it, so my wife decided to make our Christmas cards using pictures of the kids.
She found a red tablecloth in our Christmas boxes to use as a backdrop. You can see how the tablecloth is draped over the couch in the picture below. The girls are already so tall that next year we’ll need to hang the tablecloth from a higher point.
Our lighting couldn’t have been simpler. For some of the pictures we used the camera’s built-in flash, but we used available light as much as possible. We turned on all the lights in the living room and had the door and drapes open to let in morning sunlight. (One tip we’ve heard from multiple people is that kids are usually easier to photograph in the morning. As the day goes on they get crankier and less cooperative.) As a bonus, morning light and evening light comes in low, so it peaks in through the windows. You can see sunlight coming from a side window in the middle of that second picture above.
After taking the pictures I did some simple tuning in Google’s free Picasa software. All pictures got Auto Contrast (under the Basic Fixes tab) and one round of Sharpening (under the Effects tab). Each of those operations involves clicking a single button. A few pictures were cropped and a few more had red eye removed with the Red Eye button (also under Basic Fixes). Some other Effects you might try are Saturation (to boost the color) and B&W or Sepia (to remove the color and create the look of a faraway classic).
My wife printed the best pictures on a card from Walgreens.com using their online printing service and picked them up from a local Walgreens a few hours later. Cost was $10 for 20 cards. The cards are ready to stamp, address, and email with no envelope required.
Making our own Christmas cards online was quick, inexpensive, and fun. We liked the results so much we’ll be doing it again next year. The only glitch was that Walgreens’ site lost our card several times before successfully saving it, so my wife had to recreate the layout more than once. We’re hoping Walgreens has that bug fixed next year.
Cheap camera owners of the world unite
Monday, December 8th, 2008 | Photos | Permalink | 3 Comments |
Via Ken Rockwell, it turns out that the winner of the Metro Global Photo Challenge took the prize-winning photo with a pocket-sized Canon Digital Elph SD500.
I can believe it. The two photos of mine that have been published were taken with the previous-generation SD400, a little 4 megapixel point-and-shoot, set to automatic everything.
Here’s a similar story, found at Nikon D40 Photographer. Guy takes a picture. He uploads it to his Flickr account. Hollywood types contact him to get permission to use his picture in the Iron Man movie. He took that photo with the Nikon D50, which, while not exactly cheap, was the cheapest DSLR Nikon had ever made up to that point.
The newer D40 is even cheaper. I bought my D40 for $479 last year, which is less than I paid for the SD400 point and shoot four years earlier. Now they’re about $400 with a starter lens. A Canon Digital Elph is now less than $200.
The first rule of photography is “have a camera.” That means you need to own a camera and have the camera close at hand so you can take the picture when you see it. You’ll take more pictures with the cheap camera you have than with the dream camera you leave in the closet because you don’t want it to get stolen, or that you never got around to buying because it was too expensive. Affordable and convenient are wonderful virtues.
UPDATE: Linoge has some great black and white photos from a Canon Powershot point and shoot that sells new today for less than $200.
DXO Mark camera comparisons
Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 | Photos | Permalink | 1 Comment |
Neat stuff. Check out the comparison of the Nikon D40, D90, and D700. Body-only prices for the three are roughly $400, $1000, and $2500. The D90 and D700 score better on image quality, but the big difference is high ISO performance. The D90 is almost twice as good as the D40, but the D700 is more than twice as good again as the D90!
That’s consistent with what I’ve been reading: the D700 and D3 at high ISOs like 3200 or 6400 have no more noise than most cameras have at ISO 400. You can increase shutter speed by three or four stops and crank up the ISO with no loss in image quality.
To do anything similar without using high ISOs you’d need expensive large aperture lenses, and even then you couldn’t achieve the same low light performance. (And of course there’s nothing preventing you from putting fast glass on a D700 to get BOBW.)
I’m sticking with my D40 for now. I’ve not even had it a year, and there’s lots more I need to learn to wring more performance out of it. I wouldn’t mind having a D90, but what I really want is for the high ISO performance of the D700 to trickle down to sub-$1000 cameras. Rumor is that Nikon will release new low-priced DSLRs to replace the D40 and D60 in first quarter of 2009.
Hat tip to Nikon D40 Photographer, which despite the name is a beginner’s-oriented site with useful links no matter what camera body you’re shooting. To keep your ear to the ground of the Nikon world visit Nikon Rumors.
Intervalometer for Nikon D40 and D60, others
Monday, November 3rd, 2008 | Photos | Permalink | No Comments |
Following up on a recent post on intervalometers (time lapse timers), Dave at Pervasive Light points to this model, which works with the Nikon D40, D60, and many other models. So if you’ve been thinking of buying me something for Christmas …
Nikon D40 for $415 shipped (expires October 26)
Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 | Photos | Permalink | No Comments |
Coupon code here.
I popped another photographic cherry today
Monday, October 13th, 2008 | Photos | Permalink | 4 Comments |
When I got home from Florida I had a package waiting for me, and it couldn’t have been better timed. It was a camera cleaning kit. After a week on the Florida coast my camera needed it. It had sand everywhere from the beach and I had spots on my sensor from months ago beforehand, to boot.
The rocket blower helped get rid of the grit I could hear every time I attached a different lens. Then I followed the instructions to clean the spots off the sensor, which is the digital camera’s equivalent of film. Technically, I cleaned the low-pass filter that sits a couple of millimeters off of the surface of the sensor. Cross your fingers that the cleaning will get rid of gremlins on my pics like the ones visible below.
Cleaning the low-pass filter is slightly nerve-wracking the first time. It’s nice to do it on an entry-level DSLR like the Nikon D40 instead of something higher-priced. But really, it’s no big deal. Press lightly and it’s all over within seconds. When you’re buying cleaning solution buy the smallest size - it only takes a few drops.
More info at CleaningDigitalCameras.com. The kit above also has good instructions.
Megapixels vs. Print Size
Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 | Photos | Permalink | 3 Comments |
Numbers are dots per inch of resolution. Colors are a subjective judgement of print quality: purple is highest, orange is lowest.
It’s interesting that adding a couple of megapixels to a camera has very little effect on subjective print quality. Too, notice how plain old 35mm film is highly rated for print quality compared to any common digital camera resolutions.
Chart from West Coast Imaging via D40 Photographer.
See also:
- Pixel Density on Digital Cameras
- The Megapixel Myth (KenRockwell.com)
Word of the Day: Tessar Lens or Pancake Lens
Sunday, June 29th, 2008 | Photos, Word of the Day | Permalink | No Comments |
From Wikipedia:
The Tessar is a famous photographic lens design conceived by physicist Paul Rudolph in 1902 while he worked at the Zeiss optical company and patented by Zeiss; the lens type is usually known as Zeiss Tessar.
Despite common belief, the Tessar was not developed from the 1893 Cooke triplet design by replacing the rear element with a cemented achromatic doublet. In fact, Paul Rudolph designed the Anastigmat with two cemented doublets in 1890. In 1899, he separated the doublets in the Anastigmat to produce the four-element, four-group Unar lens. In 1902, he realized that reversing the two rear elements of the Unar and returning to a cemented doublet would improve performance; he named the result “Tessar”, from the Greek word τέσσερα (tessera) to indicate a four-element design.
Pancake lenses seem to be limited in focal length and maximum aperture. They also don’t have a reputation as being the very sharpest lenses you can get. Their big advantage is their incredible compactness. Some of them aren’t much thicker than a lens cap. If I ever spot the Nikon version below three hundred bucks I might be tempted. It would be a great companion to the small, lightweight D40 body.
Note to Self: Use Smaller Apertures More Often (Picture Bump)
Friday, June 6th, 2008 | Photos | Permalink | 2 Comments |
Riders on US Hwy. 129 TN/NC border
My June Year’s Resolution is to use smaller apertures more often than I do now.
I’ve been using a safe way of taking pictures that ensures a pretty high success rate. Basically, I shoot with aperture wide open. For the two zooms I shoot with that’s roughly F/4 to 5.6. (Aperture
numbers are like shotgun gauges: the bigger the hole the smaller the number.).
Calderwood Dam overlook on US Hwy. 129 TN/NC border
Here’s how I shoot 90% of the time:
A) Set the mode dial to A (Aperture priority).
B) Set aperture to the maximum for that lens at that focal length.
C.) Set the mode dial to M (Manual).
D). On my Nikon D40, press the Info button, aim the camera at the subject, and while observing the light meter use the dial to adjust the exposure to neutral or slightly under-exposed. With large apertures that tends to set short shutter speeds.
Big apertures make sense as a safe bet. In low light they’re the only way to fly because they let in the biggest stream of light that lens can admit. Large apertures also let me set shallow depths of field so I can focus on the subject while blurring out the background. (I thought that was so cool that I wanted to shoot everything that way for a while.) Finally, big apertures mean short shutter speeds, so it’s less likely my hand shake or the subject’s movement will make blurry pictures.
Thing is, large apertures don’t lead to sharp pictures. From what I’ve read most lenses are sharpest between F/11 on the small end and between one and two stops above the largest aperture on the large end. For my lenses that’s roughly F/8 or 11. So on sunny outdoor shots I’m going to try aperture F/8 or 11 to get more sharpness and a greater depth of field. Then I need to get around to reading Understanding Exposure.
Deals Gap on US Hwy. 129 TN/NC border
Tree of Shame (motorcycle parts lost in wrecks) Deals Gap on US Hwy. 129 TN/NC border
Millennium Manor Open House 2008 Pictures
Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 | East Tennessee | Permalink | 3 Comments |
Millennium Manor’s open house was Memorial Day. I got to talk to the current owner, Dean Fontaine, a bit. He’s working on a Web site. He has more source material than I ever imagined - hundreds of pages of documents and photos.
Renovations are going well and he and his girlfriend Karen have one room completely renovated and it’s very livable and attractive, with nice moulding, new surfaces, hidden electrics and recessed lighting. Too bad I forgot to take a picture of that room. Oh, well. That’s what you get for reading a free blog instead of buying a newspaper! Speaking of which, the Knoxville News-Sentinel will have a feature story about Millennium Manor shortly.
I was standing there and someone said “We heard about this on LesJones.com.” My wife said “That’s my husband” and pointed to me. Turns out he was from Madisonville and has commented here a few times. What’s funny is that he wondered if he might run into me, but didn’t know what I’d look like except I’d probably have a Nikon D40 camera hanging around my neck, which I did, and so did he. He bought his after reading about mine and seeing some of the pictures it produced. So that was fun.
When this 1957 story says that the builder and original owner, W.A. Nicholson, worked across the street at the Alcoa aluminum plant, they’re not kidding about the across the street part. You can see the plant in the background behind the gazebo.
More pictures after the jump.
Photography Bleg: 55-200mm or 70-300mm Lens?
Thursday, April 17th, 2008 | Photos | Permalink | 13 Comments |
My only lenses right now are an 18-55mm lens that came with the camera and a 50mm/1.8 prime. I’ve been debating which telephoto lens to get. Last night I had a great chance to take a picture of a hawk in a tree. He was just sitting there. I had the camera with me. I pulled over. I took the picture. This is what it looked like through the 18-55mm lens.
Eat your heart out, National Geographic.
For scale, I was standing on one side of the street and the hawk was in a tree cattycornered on the other side of the street about 50 feet from the road. Maybe 150 feet on the ground, another 50 feet vertically, so Pythagorean Theorem tells us that’s about 158 feet.
Clearly I need a telephoto lens. I’m ready to buy either the Nikon 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED IF AF-S DX VR or the Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED-IF AF-S VR. The two lenses have a lot in common:
-
Nikon brand, 5 year warranty
AF-S lenses (meaning they’ll autofocus on my Nikon D40)
Both have VR (Vibration Reduction - equivalent to Canon IS - keeps image steady even when my hand shakes, allows handholding under longer shutterspeeds that would normally require a tripod)
Apertures are basically the same at the same focal lengths.
Both get very good if not outstanding reviews.
Both are within my amateur photography budget. They aren’t dirt cheap but they aren’t outrageous.
Looking at the customer images on Amazon I see more good pictures from the 300mm than the 200mm. The 200mm has a sweet price and weight, but looking at the picture of Hawk Mini-me I wonder if it would have enough reach to take that picture successfully. Obviously the 300m is longer. Is it enough longer to make a difference, and to justify the extra price and weight? Talk to me.
New 50mm/F1.8 Prime Lens
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 | Photos | Permalink | 7 Comments |
Just got this yesterday and took some test pictures. This is a prime lens, meaning the focal length is fixed. Instead of zooming in or out you move your body closer or farther away from the subject. Also, this is a Nikon AF lens. It autofocuses on older Nikon bodies and current models like the D50 and D80, but on my D40 it doesn’t autofocus. I have to focus manually. (LATER: see the update at the end of this post for a useful tip.)
So, why did I buy a lens that won’t autofocus and won’t zoom? Couple reasons. The reduction in moving parts helps make it sharp and rugged. This has the reputation of being one of Nikon’s sharpest lenses, while also being one of the cheapest. (I paid $110 here. As lenses go that’s cheap.) It also gives great contrast and I hope I can use it for some seated portrait work I’ll be doing for press releases. With the big aperture and a short shutter speed you can set a shallow depth of field that makes the subject sharp and the background blurry:
As long as I’m throwing out fifty cent photography terms, I’ll mention that 50mm is what’s known as a normal lens. A 50mm focal length lens provides the same angle of view as the human eye. So when used on a 35mm film camera or a digital camera with a full frame sensor what you see with your eye is basically what you’ll see through the camera’s viewfinder. The image in the viewfinder won’t be significiantly bigger or smaller than what you see with the naked eye. (For the vast majority of digital cameras with less than full frame sensors the DSLR crop factor comes into play. For Nikons the crop factor is 1.5, meaning the 50mm lens on a D40 will have the same angle of view as a 75mm lens. For Canons the crop factor is 1.6.)
This is also an amazingly bright lens (what photographers call a fast lens, because it allows you to use fast shutter speeds). F1.8 is a huge aperture. Like shotgun gauges, bigger apertures have smaller numbers. The kit lens that came with the D40 is F3.5 at the 18mm end and F5.6 at the 55mm end.
I was hoping Io take indoor pictures without using a flash, or using very little. Playing around with it tonight I had mixed luck in low light indoors. The kit lens actually seemed to do a little better closeup, but it’s entirely possible I don’t know what I’m doing. Any tips?
LATER: I was interpreting the blurry results in low light to mean that the shutter was open too long. Now I’m inclined to think I was just doing a stinky job of manually focusing the lens. Here’s something I learned tonight from Ken Rockwell. My Nikon D40 won’t autofocus this lens, but the focus meter does work with it and all (most?) AF lenses. As you adjust the focus manually look for the focus light in the viewfinder (it’s on the far left bottom on a D40 viewfinder). When it lights up the lens is focused. That’s an enormous aid in focusing AF lenses. I was eyeballing the focus and in low light conditions that didn’t always work so well.
Photography Class Was Totally Worth It
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 | Photos | Permalink | No Comments |
Last night was the last night of the UT non-credit photography class. Sometimes you don’t know how much you don’t know until you learn a little. That was the case with my photography aspirations. In eight weeks I learned about proper manual exposure, handling high and low light reflectance lighting, setting custom white balance, photographing moving water, on- and off- camera flash, composing portraits, posing subjects, and much more.
Highly recommended. Tom Geisler of Tom Geisler Photography taught the class and he’s aces. Tom is teaching an advanced followup class starting in four weeks. The Thursday class is full, so he’s opened a Monday class. If I can make the time I’ll take it. I also really, really liked my classmates and I’d like to take more classes with the same bunch.
See also:
- Took the Plunge on a Nikon D40 and a Photography Class
- Photography Class Looks Promising
- Photo Class Field Trip to Downtown Knoxville
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