New Camera's First Light
date: 24 Nov 2009 -- updated: 24 Nov 2009
My current camera, a Nikon D70, has been just about the best camera I ever owned (I've owned Contax in the past). The poor thing has been all over (summit of Mt. Hood to summit of Ben Nevis), gotten wet (never immersed), been dropped (numerous times), been carried hundreds of miles on hiking trips and still takes great pictures. Over the past year or two, however, a few things have started to go downhill--flash synching fails sometimes, files are written with zero bytes, exposure periodically gets a little strange. All of which I can more or less live with. With another winter approaching, though, I don't think I can take another year of cleaning sensor smudges off of my photographs. The camera has gotten very dirty and dusty, and I cannot seem to keep the sensor clean, which means that any shot containing sky, snow, fog or water has a high likelihood of containing a smudge from a dust particle on the sensor.
I've had my eye on the D300 for a long time now, which allegedly can clean its own sensor, but always talked myself out of the $1800 or so it would cost to get one. I can put up with some spots for a few more months, right?. When the D300s was released recently it became harder to resist, especially as my camcorder is about shot as well and the D300s can shoot hi-def video. After reading the review just posted here I finally pulled the trigger. The new body arrived today.
It is a complex device, and I'll have a great deal to learn (especially about focussing), but here are my first few shots, all employing the Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED AF-S VR DX lens. The photos with purple bands along one edge were shot in RAW uncompressed format, and the remainder at the highest quality jpeg setting. The purple band seems to be an artifact created by UFRaw, which is what I use for dealing with RAW images. I'll soon figure out what the issue is and how to avoid it. Perhaps I'll just process RAW images on Sally's computer using the Nikon software.
Ewan is doing poorly just now, down with the flu, but I wanted a flash shot and he was a good sport about it. The second image shows full resolution detail.
As we prepared to go out for a short walk, Lara sat to play the piano. A high-contrast challenge...
My 'old' camera body, which is still lighter and does a good job, so will probably be the body of choice where weight matters. Perhaps I'll send it out for a bit of sprucing up.
My 'new' camera body. I can hardly believe it!
