Anthony is a big kid (approaching 3 years 3 months) and can use the toilet to make a pee-pee all by himself. But he's not so big that he's no longer gleeful when he's successful, so it still is somewhat of an “event” that he's generally happy about.
Yet, for some reason (probably because he's a kid) he's often is reluctant to use the toilet. For example, this evening before bed, as I always do, I said “let's make a pee-pee before we sleep” to which he responded (as he always does) “I don't want to”. This is our classic evening dance. He also chimed in with “I don't need to make pee-pee”, although not as defiantly as he is sometimes prone to do.
Well, I have a rule that says he can't have a final glass of milk before bed if he doesn't at least try to make a pee-pee first, so, as always, I said “Well, it's your choice; try to make a pee-pee and then have milk, or just go to bed with no pee-pee and no milk. Which would you like?” As always, he looks down and mutters “make pee-pee”.
We then head off to the toilet, and by the time we get there he's forgotten his angst and is energetic about it. He takes off his pants and underwear (which I check for “しぱい” — shippai, a pee-pee “accident”), climbs up on the toilet and proceeds to make a little tinkle.
At the sound of his tinkle, I make a bright and happy face and say “See, you could do it!”
He said “Don't say 'See'. I don't like you say 'See'!”
Oops, my bad! I guess he took is as an “I told you so!” I apologized profusely.
Later on after his milk, I was brushing his teeth. I was tired and wanted to get him down, and so commented that I was going to brugh his teeth quickly. As I was brushing, the toothbrush slipped off the teeth a bit and tapped his gum or something. It's not the slightest big deal, as it happens all the time, but he latched onto it and said “See, you do it fast and you bump here.”
It took all my power not to smile. From the repremanding tone of his voice, he'd probably just been itching to use “See” and finally had his chance.
Well, I see!
Continuing with my new camera posts...
So, yesterday I went down to the Joshin Denki electric shop with Anthony, to actually look at and handle the Nikon D200 camera I'd pretty much decided on.
Although the shop we went to was the closest of the various branches in Kyoto, it doesn't have parking so it's quite inconvenient unless I go by bike (which I didn't want to do at night, with Anthony, in the cold). I'd called around other Joshins in Kyoto to see if they had the D200 on display, but only this one had. So, after much traffic and a painful search for parking, we walked in to look at the camera.
Prior Expectations
Of course, I'd seen pictures of it, such as this one from Digital Photography Review:
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| Nikon D200 MSRP: $1,700 | Nikon D2x MSRP: $5,000 |
Now, the Nikon D2x there on the right is a true professional's camera. It's huge, and by all accounts it's heavy. It has every feature known to man, and probably some that aren't. It's a 12.4 megapixel monster. By comparison, my D200 seems somewhat elfish, even emaciated. But it's got the functions I want, so I'm still gung-ho for it.
At First Sight
So, we walk into the store and right there is the camera section. I see some of the models I'd been considering earlier, and when I finally find the D200, I'm filled with an overwhelming feeling of “big”. This thing is huge. Words like beefy and husky and manly flow through my thoughts. So do words like heavy and muscle strain and tired. I'm filled with a mix of total “I'm not worthy” awe and “I'm not strong enough” apprehension.
I pick it up and the “too heavy” feelings immediately subside. It feels very solidly built, yes, but is lighter than it looked. I'm sure that I can handle it deftly for long periods of time. On the other hand, upon picking it up the feelings of “beefy” are augmented with words like thick and manly (again). Now, I'm just in awe. Total awe.
Of course, these are just superficial feelings. Yes, it's nice to have a feeling of solid construction, but in the end it either works or it doesn't (as the recent breaking of my feels-very-well-built SD500 attests to).
(Upon reflection, I recoil in horor to contemplate how large the D2x is in real life. I'm not that man a man.)
At First Touch
There was no memory card in it (and darn, I forgot to bring my own), but there was power so I turned it on and gave it a try. I lifted it to my eye (with SLRs, you actually look through the viewfinder instead of looking at the screen on the back) and it felt very nice. The lens on it is the presumably crappy kit lens, different from the one I want, but it still felt very nice.
I played with the autofocus a bit. I don't know how to describe it other than virtually silent and virtually instantaneous.
For comparison, I also tried the autofocus of the Nikon D70 that was right next to it on the display. It was loud (sort of a grinding motor noise), slow (took a second or two to adjust the focus), and was accompanied by physical movement of the focus ring (which was unwelcome since I was trying to hold the camera there). To be fair, the noise and movement were from the lens, which is generally sold separately from the body. If a lens is sold together with a body, it's called a “kit”. Since it's common that a good lens can cost more than a body (people update to new bodies, but collect lenses), any lens included with a body is generally fairly cheap, as likely buyers have no other lens and don't know any better.
Anyway, as for the autofocus speed, well, perhaps the lens on the D200 would have been just as fast on the D70. I don't know.
First Shots
I didn't know whether you could take a picture without a memory card, but I gave it a try. As a habit picked up 20+ years ago, I'm used to squeezing a shutter-release button gingerly so as not to induce shake. The D200's shutter-release button is easy to press, with nice tactile feedback. I gingerly gave it a squeeze and before my finger was back up I'd taken five pictures and had a somewhat startled, somewhat “damn!” look on my face (“damn” in the “wow, this rocks” sense). It all happened so quick that it was over by the time the smile unconsciously crept to my face.
So, you apparently can take a picture without the card. It showed the final shot on the rear screen, and I was able to cycle through them and see them all in a thumbnail display, which is how I know that there were five.
I can scarcely describe the combined feeling of holding the beefy, manly camera while it made such a solid, manly rapid-fire sound. It was nice. (To be serious, I'm exaggerating the “manly” bit for comic effect, but still, it was a very satisfying feeling.)
One thing I didn't like was the manual focus, which I also tried. The lens itself was heavenly to touch — I could just grab the focus ring and move it, and voila, I was in manual focus mode. (With the lens on the D70, I had to move a switch to the manual mode before being able to manually focus, but I'm not sure if that's a function off the camera body, the lens, or both.) But, the split-prism focus I remember from my last SLR (20+ years ago) was missing. The only indication that you were focused well was that the image looked sharp. Well, we had that before, but the split-prism (or whatever it's called) feature allowed a much stronger level of detail. Maybe none of that is needed anymore in the autofocus world....
I played around with it a bit more, and with some of the other models as well. Anthony was being such a good boy just standing there looking around, but was starting to get a bit impatient, so I couldn't indulge myself further.
On Order
Since no one had them in stock, I knew that they had to be ordered. I asked how long it would take, and the guy had no idea. I asked to get a ballpark — is it closer to two days or two months?, but really, he had no idea. They fulfill orders as fast as Nikon sends them, which is apparently not nearly fast enough to keep up with demand.
I explained that I was 99% sure I wanted to get it, and asked what would happen if I placed an order now but decided against it by the time it came in. As expected, he said that it'd be no problem to cancel, since after all, it'd only make the next person in line happy. So, I placed an order for the D200 body and the aforementioned “AF-S DX VR ED18-200mm F3.5-5.6G(IF)” lens.
So, now I have a little piece of paper. I leave my cell phone on all the time, awaiting the call!
Random Comments
A few random thoughts, mostly in response to comments left on the earlier posts....
About other Nikon models: Derek mentioned that he has the original Nikon D1. Dude, that was a five thousand dollar camera! Wow. Looking at the stats now, except for the 2.74 megapixel number, it's still a kickass camera.
While on the topic of $5,000 camera bodies, a friend, I found out today via email, has the above-mentioned D2x professional. The other day at a hockey game, he took sixteen hundred photos. All in raw format. He has a collection of five 4GB memory cards (each in the neighborhood of $500), and apparently has no qualms about using them. Insane.
He strongly recommends Apple's Aperture for photo-processing workflow. I have a Mac, but it predates Anthony (i.e. is old), and not manly (there's that word again) enough for photo processing.
Like JR, I too am “old school” and like to focus on center then reframe the shot. I talked to the D2x-owner friend about it, and he has successfully converted to the modern “select focus point” method. I don't see how that can possibly be quicker than just pointing the lens, but we'll see.
JR, about your dust spec, check your manual to see if your camera has Nikon's “Image Dust Off” feature. In looking at the D200's manual (which I downloaded from Nikon's site — I want to look now, and I want to look in English), I see that they have this feature whereby you take a picture of a white wall under specific conditions, then use the specially-created file with their image-processing program (Nikon Capture) to remove the effects of dust from real photos.
Another idea, if Nikon has a feature which I know Canon does, is to take a long-exposure shot with “hot pixel” detection. When turned on, after a long-exposure shot, another shot is taken but this time with the shutter closed. Ideally, the result should be pure black, but if some of the image sensor's pixels are “hot”, they'll show up. Such pixels are then subtracted/corrected in the original image. So, if you tried this and your dust spec went away, you'd know that it was a physical problem with the image sensor impervious to any cleaning attempts.
By the way, in case anyone cares, “Nikon” in Japanese is “ニコン”, and is pronounced just like the Italian name “Nico” followed by a closing “n” sound. (It's “Knee-coe-n” rather than the American “Neigh-con”)
For a camera bag, I'm going to look for a large, generic fanny pack in which it might fit. I'd think that such a setup would look ultra geeky, yet be functional, but I have Fumie, so I expect it to end up looking quite stylish and functional.
About focusing and zooms, I'm sure of what I remember, but I also know that it's been 20+ years since I've thought about SLR stuff (certainly, I don't recall anything about autofocus back then), so times have certainly changed. I've had only one SLR in my life, a cheap Pentax somethingorother that was old when I got it in the late 70s or early 80s. It didn't have auto-exposure, but did have a built in exposure meter to tell you whether you were on the right track. Unfortunately, it was broken, so I had to guess on every aperture/shutter/film combination I used. By necessity (I was poor and couldn't afford to waste lot of shots and the chemicals to proccess them), I became exceedingly good at it. Such skill is long gone, though. Anyway, I digress....
About image formats: the D200 can save in raw format, or any of nine different JPG versions (three sizes × three quality levels), or a combination of the two (either type of raw + any one of the JPG versions).
It can't save in TIFF, but that's fine. Derek, TIFF is larger than raw, at least for the Nikon D100. See this page where it shows that a TIFF file for such-and-such a size is 17.3 meg, while a raw of the same image size (with much more information) is 9.5 meg, and a compressed raw is about half that. TIFF is about the worst bang-for-byte value you can get.
Note that “raw” is really just a class of file... it's not an acronym, it's just a word (“raw” in the sense of “uncooked” and “unprocessed”) so it shouldn't be written in all caps. Canon's raw format is wholly unrelated to Nikon's, which, by the way, has its own name: “NEF” — Nikon Electronic Format. Even within Nikon's line, the meaning of a NEF file changes from camera to camera; a program that can read a NEF file produced by a D100 can't necessarily read a NEF file produced by a D200 unless it's been specifically upgraded.
I didn't know about Nikon's “compressed NEF” files until this evening (if they can compress them in real time, why aren't they all compressed?). The literature I'm looking at in Japanese seems to say that they tend to run about 50-60% of a normal NEF file. Of course, if I'm concerned about space, I could just shoot in “Basic/Small” mode, and get about 2,200 shots on a 1GB card.
The D200 can take five 21MB pictures in one second, and continue for several seconds. That means that its internal high-speed buffer must be about 300 MB (!), and as such, the write speed of the memory card (to which the buffer data must necessarily be flushed) is an important bottleneck. Thoughts on compact-flash cards that would be appropriate? I see many references to SanDisk Extreme III (it's mentioned even in the D200 manual), but they're about $1,000 for a 4BG card (!). Is anything out there a bit more affordable?
It's almost 2AM.... 'nite.
We've been wondering when it would start, and like a switch it started last week. One day Anthony just started asking “why” at any and every chance.
Here's a representative conversation:
| Anthony: | What are you eating? |
| Daddy: | (some answer) |
| Anthony: | Why? |
| Daddy: | Well, because it's dinner time and I'm hungry. |
| Anthony: | Why? |
| Daddy: | Why is it dinner time or why am I hungry? |
| Anthony: | (thinks for a bit) Why is it dinner time? |
| Daddy: | Earlier we ate lunch, and now it's getting dark, and so now it's dinner time. |
| Anthony: | Why? |
| .... continue ad infinitum ... | |
We're thrilled that he's curious and we try to answer as best we can, but indeed it does get on one's nerves during our weaker moments. I've found that I occasionally resort to the “because I said so” answer (soon, I'm sure, to be shortened to just “because”) when he asks “Why?” to a command. It's one thing to answer a question, but I don't want to get into the habit of justifying parental orders to his satisfaction. (I'm probably being too uptight about it... we'll see).
In any case, he generally actually listens to the answers (he can later recall them), so it's wonderful that the sponge is actively trying to fill itself up. I hope he never loses the desire to understand. I certainly haven't yet.
Interestingly, I don't think I've yet heard this “why” phase yet in Japanese. Maybe because I use mostly English with him, or maybe his “Japanese brain” is in a different mode?
[Update: Fumie tells me that he does in Japanese as well... “なんで、なんで？”]
So, as per my previous post, I'm considering a big full-function SLR to augment my micro-sized point-n-shoot Canon SD500. In the last day or so, my feeling has gone from “considering” to “will buy” to “have ordered”.
To some extent, the decision about what to get is easier with an SLR than with a point-n-shoot; with the latter, the choice for me involves balancing three things (cost, features, size), while with an SLR it's just two (cost and features). Of course, with an SLR there are many, many more features. I don't have a lot of “boy toys” so I'm tending to let myself splurge a bit this time, concentrating more on features than cost...
So, what features do I really care about? Of course, I'd like to have the best blah blah blah, but I don't really need them. In the end, there will be (as JR says in a comment to my previous post) annoyances with whatever I get, so which annoyances do I really want to avoid?
When it came down to it, the one thing I really wanted was an autofocus assist lamp. This is the often dim red light you see with many point-n-shoots just before a shot is taken. The little bit of light helps the autofocus focus before the flash fires to actually take the shot. I also wanted a built-in flash. But here's the kicker: I want the autofocus assist and flash to be different.
As a bit of background, it seems that SLRs that have a built-in flash generally have it as a pop-up like this:
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| (photos from Digital Photography Review) | |
You pop the flash up when you need it, and tuck it away when you don't. However, if the camera doesn't have an autofocus-assist light, it's the flash that needs to provide the light. But if the flash isn't up, it has to pop up automatically on its own (or, if it can't pop up on its own, it has to display a warning of some kind that the autofocus can't work without more light).
Now, this may sound like a small thing, and I'm sure to many people it is, but it would drive me absolutely batty. When this first happened to me while at the store looking at the Canon Digital Rebel XT, the loud kachunk of the flash popping up on its own startled the heck out of me. Once I knew to expect it, it merely annoyed me. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that if I chose that camera, I would regret having chosen it every time that darn flash popped up. If I'm going to drop a big chunk of change on a camera, I don't want to regret it every day.
So I started looking around with a wider perspective, and found that the Nikon line of digital SLRs generally have the autofocus assist light I desire. The main prosumer models are the D70 and the older D100, both of which are 6 megapixel cameras, and look very nice. The newer D70 has a faster shutter, larger image cache, orientation sensor (so that images can be auto-rotated to compensate for shots taken sideways) and a slightly higher better image-postview screen on the back.
Considering, though, that my tiny walk-around SD500 has 7.1 megapixels, it seems somewhat backwards to “move up” to a smaller size. This also concerned me about the Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D that my sister loves so much.
Then I found out about Nikon's just-released (hit stores a week ago!) D200 and wow, it didn't take long before I knew it was the camera for me:
- Strong, professional construction
- 10.0 megapixel, large (1.5 crop) image sensor
- Wide ASA range (100-3200) and fast shutter (to 1/8,000 sec)
- 5 frame/sec continuous shooting (for at least 22 raw images)
- Huge 2.5", 235,000-pixel screen on the back
Frankly, I wish it were 8.0 megapixel instead of 10.0, since I think 8.0 is enough (both in practice, and for my mental comfort). As it is, the D200's 10 megapixel raw images are 16 megabytes each! And that doesn't include an associated JPG you can also have made at the same time. I've never shot with a camera that can save in raw format, but I imagine that if I did, I'd have it save a small- or medium-sized JPG as well. I could use the JPG for easy viewing/sorting/filtering, yet have access to the full-size raw data for those occasional really great shots. Anyway, at 20 meg for each combo, I could get only 50 or so shots on a 1 gig card!
One of the things that really sealed the Nikon decision for me is that Nikon just came out with an 18-200 VR zoom (The VR stands for vibration reduction; the optical image stabilization I mentioned in my previous post). Due to the D200's 1.5x crop, this is equivalent to a 27-300 zoom for a standard 35mm SLR. However you measure it, it's an 11x zoom. Wow.
It's only f/3.5 at the low end and f/5.6 at the high end, so it's a bit slower than I'd like (“slower” means that it doesn't let in as much light as some other lenses might, such as an f/1.4 50mm lens), but considering the D200s sensitivity range (ASA to 3200) and the kind of shots I'll be using it for (family, nature, and about town), the wide zoom range makes it more than worth it. (Anyone even vaguely professional would probably never make this choice, but I'm not a professional photographer and for whatever reason I really hate having to change lenses, so a zoom is the way to go for me.)
Ken Rockwell has a somewhat nutty, over-exuberant review of this lens. I saw somewhere someone saying something along the lines of “when I read Ken's review of the D200 I thought he was a bit nuts, and when I read his review of the new lens, I thought he was really nuts, but having now seen the camera/lens for myself, I realize that he's right”). If you read around forums and such, you'll find that a lot of people think Ken's a bit of character. I don't have an opinion one way or the other, but the exuberance he's able to communicate in his review makes for a very fun read.
Anyway, I've basically decided on the D200 with the new lens. I went to a store yesterday to see the camera, and placed a non-binding order for one. They're quite popular and on back order, and the store has no idea how long it might take (two days or two months; no idea). If I get time, I'll write about the trip to the store and my first impressions of the actual camera, as that's a story in itself.
I really like my little Canon SD500, or, as it's called here in Japan, the Canon IXY Digital 600 (what is it with cameras and silly names here?). It takes great shots (see my archive of pretty-photos blog posts, and nice photos gallery), and have no plans to replace it any time soon.
Still, it's fun to daydream about a big hefty SLR with a large image sensor, fast shutter, good lenses, and features like shutter- and aperture- priority (which are basic, but point-n-click cameras generally don't have).
So, lately I've been browsing the most-excellent Digital Photo Review site, dreaming about what I'd get if I got something. Yesterday, I was reading about such-and-such a feature on a Canon camera, and I wondered if my current Canon had that feature, so I grabbed it and turned it on, but instead of turning on smoothly (lens sliding out), it made a nasty grinding/clicking noise and displayed “E18” on the monitor. Uh-oh.
It was definitely not working, other than making un-camera-like grinding noises. And gee, I was only looking at other cameras!
It's still under warranty, so I brought it in today and the guy at the store guestimated that I might get it back toward the end of the month. Sigh.
Well, since I was at the store I checked out two cameras I'd been looking at online. One is the Canon EOS 350D “Digital Rebel XT” — in Japan called, I kid you not, the EOS Kiss DIGITAL N (What is it with Japanese camera names?). Digital Photo Review has a 31-page review of it.
The other was the Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D — in Japan called α-7 DIGITAL (which is a much better name than its little brother, the α SWEET DIGITAL — What is it with Japanese camera names???). It turns out that I ended up actually looking at the latter (α SWEET) by mistake, although I didn't realize it until I got home.
In any case, I didn't really care for either. Both happened to have zoom lenses attached at the store, and neither could apparently focus well. I'd zoom out, focus on something, than zoom in only to find that it was woefully out of focus. I have a hard time believing that modern zoom lenses don't hold focus across the zoom, so I tried taking a picture and then reviewing the shot on the camera display, zooming up visually on the central part of the pic. They were out of focus.
These cameras were heading toward $1,000 (they list for $1,500, but since they've been out for a while their price has come down) and they were woefully disappointing. I hope it's just because they were floor models. They seemed cheap, had flashes that popped surprisingly up when the auto-focus needed them, and had thumbwheels (for changing options) that were rough and hard to use. Ugh.
My sister has the Maxxum 7D and loves it, and a friend who is a fantastic photographer recommended the predecessor to the Canon 350D. I don't know what to do.
Can you recommend a good Digital SLR (where the definition of “good” is partially defined by this wishlist:
- Large image sensor (crop of 1.6 or less, none of those 1/1.8" micro types)
- Auto-focus that does not need support from the flash
- Built-in flash would be nice (a decidedly un-pro request, I know)
- 8 megapixels or so
- All “everyday” controls accessible directly, without the need for menu surfing
- Ability to take 2+ or 3+ photos per second, at least for a few seconds
- Optical image stabilization (either in body, like the Maxxum 7D, or available in the lenses)
- A really killer “walk around” lens that has a nice 5x+ zoom range (it's probably the case that you can get a nice lens, or a nice zoom range, but not both )-:
- Ability to save raw data
Despite the break-down of my current camera, I really like Canon and wish my experience checking out the Kiss DIGITAL N (silly name!) today had been better. Perhaps I should look at the next step up, the EOS 20D. (The next step above that costs $4,000, which is by far more than I'm willing to spend).
What to do....?