Archives for Gear

The Upgrade

April 1, 2008 by Peter in Photography | 3 Comments

D300 with 18-200mm

 

Finally took the leap, although it didn’t take much convincing.  Picked up a Nikon D300 on the weekend and have been spending as much time with it as possible ever since.

There are many reviews out there, but the general feeling is that this camera is amazing.  From what I know and have seen of it so far, I totally agree.  The things that stand out for me at this point are:

  • Up to 6400 ISO – Clean ISO was almost unheard of in a non-pro camera until this one.  The D300 can go to ISO 3200 (that’s about 10 stops of wiggle room in low light, people!) without overbearing noise, which is amazing.  It can go to ISO 6400 before it looks like most cameras do at ISO 1600, which is completely amazing.
  • Focus system – 3 main modes including single, multiple and dynamic areas.  The focus is pretty quick (apparently not as fast as it could/should be, which might mean a firmware update someday) and is typically bang on.  I can be as selective as 1 of 51 points or as broad as all 51, letting the camera figure out what to focus.  Lots of options in between as well, including face and 3D tracking (which I haven’t experimented with yet).
  • Colour level and saturation – really cranks it up 10 notches from my older camera, I can get eye-popping colour out of it if I want to.  I actually set the camera at Vivid and +1 saturation and had to dial it back, it was so strong.
  • 6fps out of the box.  That’s fast, for me at least.  I can goose it up 2fps more with the optional battery pack as well.  I’m not a frequent rapid-fire shooter, but maybe I’ll become one now.
  • Lossless compression on RAW files.  Since I like to use RAW files, this is great.  Tons of storage requirements, but I’m willing to give that up for the ability to start with what is basically a pure image.

As for image quality, I have one picture that I can share with you right now.  This was taken on the weekend at a Field Hockey tournament.  Conditions were early morning, fairly bright sunlight.  This image was converted from a lossless RAW file and I actually had to dial down the saturation a bit:

Team Photo

Taken with a Nikon 18-200mm VR lens. Should be noted I did photoshop this a bit, but only for cleanup and retouch of a couple of key points (glare on the plaque, coach’s eyes needing fixing, white flecks on grass, etc.).

Can’t wait to see what else this baby can do.  Expect a lot of photos to my Flickr page.

Macbook Air Arrives cont.

February 4, 2008 by Peter in Apple, Computing, Notebook | 1 Comment

Hey look what just showed up:

[flickr]photo:2242257063[/flickr]

Hopefully *just* ahead of John ;).

[flickr]photo:2243049118[/flickr]

[flickr]photo:2243049256[/flickr]

Fairly small, and thin of course.

[flickr]photo:2243049450[/flickr]

And it looks like the underside can act as a coaster – they think of everything :p.

 

Macbook Air Arrives

February 4, 2008 by Peter in Apple, Computing, Notebook | 2 Comments

[flickr]photo:2242083275[/flickr]

Got it – seemed like a while but really it came at least a week before it was supposed to.  John of course jumped on the fact that he got his 3 hours before mine without paying for expedited shipping, so kudos to him for being more “jacked in” to the Apple world.  Me, I’m just glad it’s here.

[flickr]photo:2242877034[/flickr] 

Really thin and light.  Surprisingly sturdy too, which is of course good news.  First boot-up was a bit slow, but I would think that’s normal as it had to config a bunch of stuff.  Once it’s finished charging I’ll give it a spin and see how it goes. 

[flickr]photo:2242877240[/flickr]

[flickr]photo:2242084789[/flickr]

Really looks nice, even compared to the iPhone it’s thin (yes, that’s a dent on my iPhone – dammit!).

So without sounding like a fanboy, so far I’m pretty pleased with this.  At the absolute least I’m not going to tire of it very quickly – and coming from me that’s saying something ;).

All the unboxing pics are on Flickr.