Nikon

Nikon cameras

How Tough is Your Camera?

I'm not sure that I would really want to test how tough is my camera, but some other dudes, at Digital Rev, tested the Canon 7D. Think of it as the “Jackass” movie but for cameras. For me it is much funnier since nobody gets hurt.

Life and Death of Batteries: Flashes

Cameras and flashes are powered by electricity. Most of it comes from batteries. But they use different battery technology. All modern cameras use Lithium-Ion batteries (Li) see: http://www.foto-biz.com/Canon/Life-and-death-of-batteries-part-1 while most modern flashes use Nickel Metal Hybrid (NiMH) based batteries. The reason is that cameras do not have a big and heavy electricity drain, while flash requires huge power for a short period of time. Lithium Ion batteries are lighter but they do not do last long under the heavy power load that the flash requires.

Move Over, I am a Pro

Move over, I am a pro. I have a Nikon D4 and Nikon Pro Services stickers all over my 600mm. Don't come close to me, that's my view. I own it.

Nikon Professional Services

Nikon Professional Services

The guy walked, not only like he owned the place but like everybody was supposed to bow to him.

Life and Death of Batteries: Cameras

This is the part one of a two parts about batteries and it affects us as photographers.

The battery technology is extremely old and hasn't changed much since the 1830s, yes that is 180 years ago. Some chemicals have changed but not the physics of the batteries. And right now, the biggest drag on technology is the battery technology.

MFA: The DOT-Tune Problems

Over the last while, there has been a lot of activities about somebody having find a better and faster way of doing the Micro-Focus Adjustment under 5 minutes. The guy did an 18 minutes youtube video available at: http://youtu.be/7zE50jCUPhM

DotTune: Autofocus Fine Tuning in Under 5 Minutes

The Gymnastics of Photography

They are looking at a large Great Horned Owl, one of the biggest owls around. The owl is perched in the tree on one of the branch 15 ft/5m from the ground. It's around 10:30am and the owl is sleeping. The Great Horned Owl occasionally opens an eye to make sure that everything is safe, he mostly hunts around dusk and dawn. If he sees something worthwhile during the day, he will go on the hunt for it.He is not getting great photos. I know, I spend the next hour taking the same photos. Nice to have but these photos are not photos that will make the cover of National Geographic or any other big magazine… I doubt that these would even make it for a stock photography website.

The Gymnastics of Photography   click on image for gallery

They are looking at a large Great Horned Owl, one of the biggest owl around. The owl is perched on what looks to me a fir tree 15 ft/5m of the ground. It's around 10:30am and the owl is sleeping. The Great Horned Owl occasionally opens an eye to make sure that everything is safe, he mostly hunts around dusk and dawn. If he sees something worthwhile during the day, he will go on the hunt for it.

Micro Focus Adjustments

Most professional and prosumer cameras have the Micro Focus Adjustment (MFA). The MFA allows for the variation between the focusing with focusing module and the focusing at the CMOS sensor. I do my MFA on regular basis:

  • Before a “big” job, just to make sure when I prepare the cameras, just like fully charged batteries for the cameras and the flashes, empty memory cards… It's part of the ritual.
  • Twice a year, usually the end of February and the mid-fall. The temperature extremes can change the MFA settings needed.

The Secret to IS/OS/VR

Every camera manufacturer is has some type of stabilization. For some cameras like Canon and Nikon, the stabilization is built in the lens, for others like Olympus, Pentax and Sony, the stabilization is built into the camera. Some camera manufacturers claims 3EV gain, the newer ones are claiming 4EV and Nikon is now claiming 5EV of stabilization. Most people doubt these claims then they show their photos where they didn't get the 4EV gain. That's because they don't know how to make it work!

Here is a serie of 6 consecutive photos with the IS. 3 consecutive photos where the IS didn't work as expected and 3 consecutive photos where the IS gave me the full 4EV gain.

I'm using Canon, but this is the same for all the camera manufacturers: Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus, Pentax…

These photos are photos of Wile E. Coyote, from the RoadRunner cartoon. BTW, the E stands for Ethelbert.

Raw and Colour Space

Almost all dSLRs (except some of the really, really old dSLRs from the early 2000) provide two colour spaces, the ubiquitous sRGB (standard RGB)1 and aRGB (adobe RGB)2. aRGB was developed by Adobe as a colour space that would cover the full CMYK colour space used by printing presses like magazines…

A raw file has a much larger colour space than either sRGB or aRGB.

  1. sRGB is an 8 bit colour space: 8 bit (256) reds, 8 bit (256) greens and 8 bit (256) blues. ↩

  2. aRGB is a 12 bit colour space: 12 bit (4096) reds, 12 bit (4096) greens and 12 bit (4096) blues. ↩

Weatherproof L Lenses

According to the popular belief L lenses (the professional line) are supposed to sealed and weatherproof. Weatherproof doesn't mean waterproof. My watch is waterproof to 20 atmospheres. This means that my watch can withstand pressures of 280 pounds per square inch! That's a lot. Weatherproof means that under light rain, the water will not go inside the lens.

So back to our L lenses. Some L lenses are weatherproof out of the box, some L lenses need some filter to make them weather resistant and finally some L lenses are not weatherproof at all.

Syndicate content