I’m not going to list of some words of wisdom - a picture is worth a thousand words and I’ve got three here! On the 12th November 2008 the moon was especially close to the Earth - closer than it had been in 15 years, and purely by chance I looked out one of my many windows to see it gleaming in the clear night sky. Immediately I grabbed my Nikon (sans tripod as it was in college at the time) and tried my luck leaning against objects, tightening the strap around my elbows, holding my breath etc. Naturally I had no such luck. The exposure times I needed were just too long, making it impossible to get a sharp image. Also zooming didn’t help! What could have been some really great shots were completely wasted, just look below to convince yourself - I’ve not included larger version since these are merely illustrative. The moral of this lecture is use your tripod whenever possible.
Even though my VR 18-200mm Nikkor lens’ aperture only goes to F5.6 and so doesn’t focus over very long distances, I like the contrast between the sharp blades of grass and fuzzy treeline background.
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All that you see here has been deemed junk. I don’t know exactly how old those computers or monitors are but surely they would find use somewhere? Actually I might just run back and grab a couple now - ciao!
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My Very First Impressions of the Nikon D300
First Nikon D300 Image
UCD Library In The Morning
Blue Sky Swirls
Now this is the natural stance of this tree; there was no wind blowing when I took this shot. It’s a paradox in my opinion - on one hand the trunk is leaning to the right, indicating that the wind blows from the left, but looking at the leaves and branches the situation is reversed! In any case I love the overall shape the tree has - beat that anyone!
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My Very First Impressions of the Nikon D300
First Nikon D300 Image
UCD Library In The Morning
Blue Sky Swirls
I always seem to take wide angle shots of landscapes or general openness / so today I decided for something different. Ivy grows in abundance around my campus but if you don’t look down once in a while you wold never see it. I’m terrible for overlooking the macro shots in nature - here’s some of my few attempts. Not close enough?
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My Very First Impressions of the Nikon D300
First Nikon D300 Image
UCD Library In The Morning
Blue Sky Swirls
This is me again trying to be creative in how I capture a scene. In every picture there are lines but I never really noticed until recently. Here I’ve lined up the horizon diagonal with the picture frame and the pathway bo be aligned vertically with the frame.
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My Very First Impressions of the Nikon D300
First Nikon D300 Image
UCD Library In The Morning
Blue Sky Swirls
I remember taking a shot of this scene once before but was never happy with it (check it out here). So I took another stab at it with my Nikon this time, hoping for something a bit different. I threw in the angle because I was a little bored just shooting straight ahead as per usual. You have to experiment if you’re going to grow as a person. So what do you think? An improvement over the last? Or do you prefer the ultra high temperatures of the original?
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My Very First Impressions of the Nikon D300
First Nikon D300 Image
UCD Library In The Morning
Blue Sky Swirls
For the past few days I’ve walked pasted this row of bikes covered in leaves, and everyday I’ve said to myself; “I have to get a shot of this scene before the leaves are blown away”. Eventually my luck would have run out though and I’d find my procrastination would cost me so I finally got around to it today. I set my equipment on autofocus since I was using a Gorillapod and couldn’t look through the viewfinder as the camera was almost on the ground, but I’m happy enough how it turned out.
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My Very First Impressions of the Nikon D300
First Nikon D300 Image
UCD Library In The Morning
Blue Sky Swirls
Technorati Tags: Gorillapod
The sky was looking particularly cloudy today so I grabbed my D300 and snapped this shot. It turned out rather darker than I expected when I opened it in Photoshop (I’m still experimenting with the camera), so I decided the best thing to do wold be to do away with most of the colour and leave it as a B&W shot. I added the blue swirls in the sky by saturating some highlights because I think they look great. Disagree?
Click for larger resolution image.My Very First Impressions of the Nikon D300
First Nikon D300 Image
UCD Library In The Morning
I’ll write a little about this photo in a few hours - right now I’m in the middle of making Guinness Stew… well that was nice, now on with the show. There’s one rather unique spot on my campus near its library where lights have been installed along rows of plants and on overhead balcony connecting the library to another building. I had to try out my D300 here so I brought it over alog with my gorrilla pod and took a metered shot along with two under- and two overexposed shots (±2EV). Like my first post on using the D300, I did nothing to optimise the settings (excepts setting aperture priority). I’m slowly reading through the D300 manual so over time I should become more familiar with all it’s wonderful abilities but for the immediate future I will continue taking shots in its default settings (or near enough to default) and post them here daily.
Click for larger resolution image.Yesterday I bought a Nikon D300 with the Nikkor 18-200mm VR lens for a rather hefty €2000. Being a bit overwhelmed by the plethora of settings available on it I decided the best thing to do was head out and take some shots with the camera in its default settings. This was just to see how it shoots. I wanted to create some High Dynamic Range pictures so I looked a little into the D300’s auto-bracketing features. Equipped with my new knowledge I headed out this morning at 7am (It was freezing and still pitch dark) to wander around my campus grounds. Below is the one shot I took - five exposures using the D300’s interval timer functions. For this shot I left absolutely everything the way it way when I took it out of the box - I didn’t set any aperture, shutter speed, manual focus, white balance, I didn’t check any histogram, I just wanted to see what the camera would do on the fly. I also left the lens to swirl about and choose its own focal length. I’m currently at a loss as to how the lens aperture is set; the body aperture setting ranges from F3.5 to F22 but the lens is only for F3.5 - F5.6 so I’m not sure what’s going on there yet. Maybe setting the aperture on the body will set the lens aperture also?
Click on image for 1200×797 pixel resolution
I’m pretty happy the way this photo came out - it was very dark when I took these exposures yet the tone mapping is applied quite evenly. I had set the camera to take 14bit uncompressed NEF files, I’ll be experimenting with 12bit uncompressed and 12bit lossless compressed etc to see what difference each one gives. If you want to buy a camera I suggest right now that the D300 should be top of your list!
I’ve just picked up my new Nikon D300 (I’m rather chuffed) and thought I would give some very briefs thoughts on it. I haven’t taken any proper shots so what follows is simply opinions based on the camera itself, not the pictures it can take. First of all, the box it comes in is very nicely designed - huge “D300″ lettering is in raised printing across the side, and is very imposing. Opening the box I found everything nicely partitioned; body, cables, battery, charger, manuals etc. I found the manual before I actually found the D300 body; all 421 pages of it! It’s so large that Nikon include a smaller “Quick Guide” if you want to get started quickly. OK so enough with enough with the superfluous stuff, lets get to the camera. Taking it out, you immediately notice how heavy this beast is! I thought my S9600 was heavy when I first got it - the D300 is easily 50% heavier. The ergonomics feels well designed, the camera is covered in soft grippy rubber in all the right places and the viewfinder it huge! It’s also protected by a transparent plastic cover, a nice touch. As for the lens, I got the NIKKOR 18-200mm VR and it appears very sturdy. There is a bit of zoom creep in it but only if you hold the camera nearly vertically up or down.
Looking quickly through the in camera options, they seem to be endless - this camera is definitely not for the casual snapshots. I’ve been playing a little with the auto-bracketing options, especially the timer settings that allow you to set the camera up to take multiple bracketed exposures on a timer so you don’t have to touch the camera to initiate the shots.
I can’t really say anymore until I do some proper shooting, but the D300 looks and feels fantastic, it has tons of options and from first impressions it is definitely worth considering if you are looking for a pro-level camera at not so insane prices.
Technorati Tags: Nikon, D300, DSLR, NIKKOR, VR, 18-200mm, auto-bracketing
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