Woo-hoo, as the rumor mill has been buzzing about for the last two weeks, Nikon officially announced the "D700" professional SLR today, just 10 months after announcing the D3 and D300 followups to the D200 that I have.

Last year, I got to play with the D3 & D300 before they went on sale, and despite lusting after "shiny & new" and the benefits over my D200, I decided to not upgrade.

This time might be different.

I didn't believe the rumors first started, not least of which because the name – D700 – makes absolutely no sense in light [...]
View full post »

The photo below, of pizza at a cafe, appeared on my previous post. It was taken with a polarizing filter on the lens adjusted to block glare from the window in the background. Mouseover the "Without Polarizer" button below for the same scene two seconds later, without the filter...

With Polarizer   -   Without Polarizer mouseover button to see that image

The difference is striking.

Without the filter, the reflections on the pizzas, table, and glasses of water just destroy the scene. I'm glad I happened to have brought the my polarization filter that day. In the "Without Polarizer" [...]

View full post »

11 months after being announced, Sigma's 200-500mm f/2.8, 35-pound monster is finally available for purchase. When it was announced almost a year ago, I naïvely speculated that it might run $6,000, so it was a shock when I found it at a retailer in Japan for about 2.6 million yen (US $25,000). I haven't seen it in a US retailer yet, but I doubt it'll be substantially less.

I wouldn't have gotten one at $6,000, but at $25,000, all I can say is "wow", and note that my birthday is coming up....

View full post »

I reported a couple of months ago about a Black Frame Syndrome affecting my D200, whereby the raw image data was fine, but the embedded jpg previews were all black. (A NEF file has two embedded JPGs.)

Because I shoot raw, the only practical effect for me is that I get a black frame when I try to review the images on the camera LCD, but someone shooting in JPG mode would find all their images completely blank. Yikes!

This happened to me for the second time yesterday, but this time I believe I've figured it out.

It turns out [...]
View full post »

Zak kindly offered to loan me his Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 for a while, so I took a walk down to the Starbucks on Sanjo (eastern Kyoto, Japan) for the pickup.

f/1.2 is an extremely big aperture. I've written about the shallow depth of field you get at large apertures (small "f" numbers), such as on this Sigma 30mm f/1.4 post, but this f/1.2 aperture is a new experience for me. Focusing on anything relatively near with the aperture at f/1.2 results in a paper-thin field that's in focus, but even then, the focus is "soft" due to spherical aberration and [...]

View full post »