The Twilight Report

points

2009-02-21T02:30:00

I've discovered Nikon AF cameras have a little dot in the viewfinder that tells you when you've got the correct focus, even when using MF lenses. Surprisingly useful.
Mike Birbiglia on This American Life this week (Act Three) described in startling accuracy my relationship with Ronin. The people and places are entirely different but everything from beginning where he explains she is a liar, to end where he meets his girlfriends boyfriend is not only exactly how it happened to me, but exactly how I feel about it too.
I am in Wyoming this weekend. Bert was waiting for me on sentry duty in the driveway where he is always waiting for me.
The neighbours are having a party. boom boom boom boom boom.

d60

2009-02-15T21:30:00

D60. Good:

Lightest DSLR that I've ever used. I'd much rather take this up Breakneck Ridge than my D700. It's just 100g heavier than my (film) Minolta Maxxum 4 and 5, and just as compact.
Auto focus is quite good.
Manual focus is easy, for a viewfinder of this size with my vision.
Takes good pictures.

Bad:

No depth of view preview!
There aren't very many knobs and you are forced to go into the menus, which is okay for occasional use, but not if you want to set something in a hurry because you are going to miss a photo.
No manual focus switch on the body! I think most (all?) of the AF lenses that work with this camera have a manual focus switch on them, so that is okay (actually prefer the switch on the lens after having gotten used to it with the Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8).
AF doesn't work on many older AF lenses, including (as I suspected) my Tamron 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3. As mentioned before the manual focus is excellent, so this isn't as bad as I thought it would be. I ordered a Tamron 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 which will AF on the D60 and will be better for this camera anyway since it is designed for digital cameras with the small sensors.
Metering doesn't work at all with manual focus lenses, which makes them almost useless with this camera.

The bad list looks long, but really most of the bad points are because it would be impossible to build such a compact camera with all of those features. Those things are what the D700 (or D300) is for.

Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 DX VR. Good:

VR. The kit lens compensates for camera shake at moderately long shutter speeds. So far seems to give the in camera image stabilisation of my Minolta Maxxum 7d a run for its money.
Actually works pretty well on my D700. No vignetting at all from 24-55mm, and what you loose from 18-24mm is much less than what gets cropped when you put the camera in DX mode. I suspect that the optical performance of the glass outside the DX crop may not be up to spec though.

Bad:

The front of the lens rotates when focusing. This makes use of a polarizer very difficult. This is common with budget lenses.
Tad longer than I was hoping. The optically far inferior Minolta 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 (without image stabilisation) that came with my Maxxum 5 was more compact. I will be happier when the Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX comes out next month.

(one more example)

reviews

2009-02-15T04:17:00

I've been reading this guys reviews of camera equipment lately:

www.kenrockwell.com

In fact I (re-)stumbled over his review for the Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 and remembered that I got mine based in part on his review and in part from the reviews on B&H's website. His reviews also helped me reaffirm my desire to get the Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR when I can afford it and decided that the Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 DX isn't worth the money and weight compared to (surprisingly) the Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 DX kit lens that comes with the D60... at least for the sort of photography that I like to do. I did some checking elsewhere to be sure of course. Another thing I have noticed is that although he has highly detailed reviews and picks up on little things that are important to people who spend a lot of time with their cameras, his reviews are also highly schizophrenic and he has a tendency toward extreme hyperbole. To demonstrate both points, he says that there is no reason to get the D300 because the D90 is cheaper and newer technology (by about a year and there is some truth to this), but of all the Nikon cameras he prefers the D40 (which is cheaper and about twice as old as the D300) because it is light, and five mega pixels is enough for everyone. No professional photographer would take that advice seriously, but it actually makes a lot of sense for a lot of non-professional enthusiasts. His chart of Nikon lens compatibilities is the best on the Internet (I've been using it since before I even started reading the reviews) and he has an intimate knowledge of everything Nikon based on (as far as I can tell) buying pretty much everything they make/have made, reviewing it, and either keeping it or selling it back usually for about ~70% of the original purchase price. I take a lot of what he says with a grain of salt, but it's interesting reading regardless if you are a Nikonian amateur photographer such as myself. He has a couple of reviews of other manufacturers gear, like the Leica M7 and the Canon 5D, but the main value of his site is to Nikon owners. He even has a page explaining how to save money, as an explanation of how he gets to play around with so many fun expensive toys, but of course there are some oddities to his advice as he 1) tells you to tip well, which, while nice if you live in a country where waitresses aren't paid even the minimum wage, doesn't really save YOU money and 2) not to have kids, despite the fact that even a cursory reading of his website will reveal the fact that he hasn't followed this rule himself. But that is Ken Rockwell dot com... schizophrenic to the last.

This site:

www.dpreview.com/

takes a much more clinical, detached, scientific and less emotional approach to camera and lens reviews. Each review goes on for about 20 or 30 pages and I usually skip around or even go to the pros and cons in the conclusion, but it's great for in depth pixel to pixel comparisons. It's also good in that when they review a camera they compare it to the same class cameras by other manufactures. They have a few lens reviews, but not nearly enough to be useful yet.

Most people who are serious about photography have bought into one system or another, but it'd be extremely handy for people who are deciding on a first DSLR (compacts are a different because you're not buying into a system there). I picked Nikon because they have a manual focus 50mm f/1.2 lens that I love (Pentax also used to sell 50mm f/1.2, but its been discontinued and Canon used to make an even faster AF 50mm f/1.0, but that thing was way to big, heavy and expensive to be useful), and that I knew would work with auto focus cameras if I ever bought any of those (unlike Canon's manual focus lenses) and at the time I was starting to see the limitations of Minolta. I think it was a good choice for me. Nikon has superb quality and the equipment keeps its value better than most manufacturers if I ever need to sell any of it.

camera gear head

2009-02-11T15:25:00

I was thinking about getting a cheaper compact camera for times when my Nikon D700 was either too heavy to carry around or too expensive to risk losing. I was prompted by looking at some old raw image files that I had taken over the years with my Minolta A1, which despite numerous shortcomings, was actually a pretty good camera for that role. I’d probably still be using it today when I didn’t want to carry around heavier equipment except the macro functionality is broken in such a way that I can’t turn it off^[1].

Unfortunately I was disappointed that almost none of the modern compacts will shoot in any kind of raw camera format. One solution was to see if I could find an older camera like the Minolta A1 on eBay, and I followed that up to the point where I was considering getting a replacement A1 for a pretty good price, and if it had been a film camera I probably would have.

The technology in digital cameras is moving so fast. My D700 is a huge jump in technology from my older DSLR, a Minolta Maxxum 7D, even though there was only about three years between their releases. Nikon’s flagship cameras used to be the single digit F series cameras, of which over their entire history there have only been six^[2], Nikon has already had three flagship digital cameras in less than a decade. A used film camera, especially a top notch one like the Nikon F4 or Nikon FE is a pretty good investment, if you are going to use it. A used digital camera is likely to be so out of date after a year or two that you are better off getting a new one. That is kind of sad in a way, because I really love to buy old camera equipment. Almost all of my Nikon equipment was bought this way until I got the D700, and I always liked to wonder about the history of the equipment and the things those cameras and lenses had seen.

Investing in a low or midrange Nikon seemed to be the answer, as they end up being in the same price range as the high end compacts anyway, and quite a bit more functional for the type of photography that I like to do. The trouble with these cameras is that they have a much smaller sensor than a film frame or the D700, so while you can use many of the same lenses on the cheaper Nikon DSLRs, most of the lenses in the Nikkor line are over engineered for the DX format that they use, both in terms of weight and in price. There are of course a number of attractive DX only lenses, but up until now Nikon hadn’t released any prime (fixed focal length lenses) for the DX format.

People who are getting started in photography look at a super zoom like the Tamron 18-270mm as the ultimate in flexibility because you can frame your subject pretty much regardless of how far away it is, and that is a sort of flexibility^[3]. A couple of weeks ago I was photographing the Chinese New Year parade in Sydney for the fun of it. This year it was an evening twilight parade, so things started to get dark pretty quickly. It got to the point where my Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8^[4] was actually too slow (meaning the shutter times required were too long), and while the flexibility of the zoom was nice I knew that if I took any more pictures with it, the sensitivity of the sensor would have to be increased and I would wind up with more noisy photographs (noise in digital is sort of the equivalent of grain in film). Instead I switched to my manual focus Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 which is a very fast lens, and can be used in very dark situations. To me that is the ultimate kind of flexibility—to be able to take photographs regardless of the lighting conditions.

The other trouble with zoom lenses is that unless you pay a lot of money (and even then) your zoom lens is probably optically not very good. The kit lenses that come with cameras are usually the worst of the worst, which is why you find that most high end cameras don’t even come with a lens.

The reason my Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 is so fast is because it is a “normal” lens. It’s a special focal length which means that Nikon can inexpensively produce them at high quality. Most major camera manufacturers will produce a fast normal lens for a reasonable price, and they are an excellent investment for the quality and the flexibility. When I went looking for DX fixed focal length lenses, I didn’t find any made by Nikon. The only lens that sort of fit the bill was the Sigma 30mm F/1.4 (30mm is approximately analogous to a 45mm lens in 35mm/full frame format), and I was really excited about getting one of those because although it isn’t a Nikkor, Sigma is usually pretty decent. Unfortunately the reviews for that lens were pretty terrible! Desperate I started hoping that Nikon would release its own normal lens for DX format, but that seemed to be a pretty faint hope.

Then, last night I was reading reddit, and stumbled across a post from Nikon that they were just then, just now, just exactly when I was starting to give up hope, going to release a 35mm f/1.8 DX^[5] lens (with a built in AF motor no less so that it will work with the D60). It’s funny how these things go. With the release of this normal lens, the Nikon D60 is actually looking very attractive, despite its shortcomings, for those times that I would usually want to take my Minolta A1, and although it is a little bulkier, it is a lot more functional.

I’d be happy to permanently turn it off, because it isn’t really an appropriate camera for serious macro work, but that doesn’t seem to be an option
the F, F2, F3, F4, F5 and F6, and you can arguably not include the F6, since it was introduced well into the digital age and its target audience is completely different from the F(1)-F5
and I have two of these sort of Tamron lenses, and they are pretty good for what they are
which for a zoom lens is very fast
35mm in DX format is analogous to a 52mm lens in 35mm/full frame format

2009-01-22T01:50:00

19 January 2009 08:10am: Forgot the memory card for my DSLR today but remembered my TLR with film.
19 January 2009 03:39pm: With all the dire predictions of web(bubble) 2.0 corps folding in the recession it's nice to work and an unsexy corp with actual revenue.
Yesterday at 03:39pm: It's so cute that to install APC (a PHP module) that you need Perl installed.
Today at 04:35pm: New toy hopefully arrives tomorrow: Nikon D700 DSLR and Nikkor 16-35mm f/2.8 lens.
Today at 05:28pm: Obama got the first five pages of the mX today. Hard not to feel the excitement even on the other side of the world.

twitter.com/plicease

2008-12-09T17:15:00

5 December 2008 08:58am: Day 3 of "don't have to go to work for three days" conference. Internets and my notebook. I'm too shy to boot my notebook into windows here.
5 December 2008 11:57am: Talk on Klingon programming (in Perl) was surprisingly entertaining.
6 December 2008 04:53pm: heading off to the beach wheeee!
6 December 2008 10:31pm: I am bored of the Internets, but I keep clicking anyway.
7 December 2008 10:18am: I had my twitter hyjacked accidentally.
7 December 2008 10:25am: I am glad it is only 24 today after it being 30 yesterday.
Yesterday at 09:30am: Pancake and pear sauce with fresh squeezie orange juice for breakfast. Was raining but now stopped. Pretty good start for the day.
Yesterday at 03:04pm: I'm frustrated by how difficult it is to find film and equipment for film cameras now a-days.
Today at 10:51am: I'm happy to report that at least one of my MF Nikons appears to be back in working order and the other will be within ten days.

twitter.com/plicease

NYC and Photography

2004-09-20T14:30:00

I was down in the city again yesterday, specifically to photograph the reflections in buildings using my 100mm macro lens. I wanted to isolate small areas where two textures intersected, as my most successful photograph from Color1 was of this genre and I wanted to explore that further. (I will most likely eventually post the photograph, but I am still deciding in what form to present it and the pictures which go with it).

One of the neat things about NYC (for me at least) is that I often run into professional photographers working. I think it is natural for photographers at every level to check out what equipment others in the field are using. As described in Shutterbabe (see last entry) there is a sort of pecking order. Pros use Nikon or Leica, locals use Minolta or Olympus. (What does that make me? I use both Nikon and Minolta equipment, not to mention the TLR Rollieflex).

In Grand Central Terminal I saw a photographer with a medium format camera (not a Hasselblad, but nothing to be scoffed at either) photographing a pair of models dressed as you might see in a fashion magazine (next month, you probably will see them). With all the noise and the hub-ub, I probably would not have noticed them at all, since the photographer was up on a different level than the models and shooting down on them, except that the photographer was setting her camera exactly where I had planned to set my camera to do one of those highly cliché pictures of GCT in black and white with some people blurred and some not due to a long exposure. I can't remember what kind of camera she had, but it got me to thinking (again) that I really would like to have my own medium format camera. I want a Hasselbald though, since that is what I learned with in my lighting class and the glass the lenses are to die for. Can't afford it though.

Then as I was out doing the real work I had set out to do (down in south Manhattan) I passed someone with a Leica. Leica make these really high quality 35mm range finder cameras with incredible optics. I wouldn't mind having one of those either. Can't afford that either though.

The coolest spotting ever was one day I was going to see the Concord with a friend of mine, and we passed by Jesus Christ being photographed by a photographer with a large format view camera. Forget about Jesus for a minute though, that view camera was cool. It's so big and bulky that you carry it around with a large tripod attached because you really can't use it without one it is so big and heavy. I had seen a view camera once before, but not one this big. It probably exposed 8x10 negatives. That's 8 inches by 10 inches. You could easily blow up a neg or slide that size to cover the side of a small building without noticing any grain. Can not even come close to affording that one. Guess you have to choose your economic battles.

About a month later I was looking thorough one of those tasteless men's fashion magazines (which I do sometimes to critique the photographs) and right there was Jesus Christ walking through Manhattan. One of the shots was at the very same location we had seen him at too.

The Twilight Report

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d60

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NYC and Photography