vr

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:51:00 GMT

mum

This photo was taken with my Nikkor 18-35mm f/2.8 on my D60. The lens doesn't have image stabilisation (IS in Canon lingo and VR in Nikon lingo). It's a wide angle zoom, and it's fast so you usually don't have to worry about hand holding the camera in low light (camera shake is more of a problem with telephotos and less of a problem with wide angle). It was taken at 17mm f/2.8 at 1/10 of a second. At 17mm it's the same view you'd get on a film camera as about 25mm, so the traditional rule of thumb is that you should shoot it at at least 1/30 of a second (one over focal length).

(more)

d60

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 21:30:00 GMT

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)

The Twilight Report

vr

d60