VNTG Photography» Tech and Toys

Nikon D700 Tests

David — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 05:33:00 +0000

We decided to give the Nikon d700 a test drive over the weekend. Pictures first; impressions at the end.

Impressions? I love the new full-frame format that Nikon introduced with the D3 (and now trickles down to its baby brother, the D700).

Full frame sensors have two attributes that matter to me:

Super shallow depth of field
Incredibly good low-light / high-ISO performance

There’s just something a little bit more magical about the images – it has a different look than images taken with a cropped sensor. Sort of like how 35mm film looks different than medium format film photos. Something you can’t really put your finger one.

If Fuji gets their act together and produces an S5 successor, I’m buying that. In the meantime, I’ll fawn over this.

Hard on our Gear

David — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 16:39:40 +0000

One of the tenants of being a professional photographer is that – as a whole – we’re harder on our equipment than most people. That’s why things cost more for “professional” level gear; they’re built from better materials, using better (usually more complicated) techniques.

We don’t treat our gear with as much care as we should (I’ll leave my lenses uncapped on nearby tables so I can change them faster; Neil will frequently leave his camera on the ground by his feet) all in the name of being ready to get “the shot”.

We also subject them to the same bodily harm as ourselves – climbing trees, fences, inches from the ground in a moving vehicle. Most people wouldn’t dream of doing these things to their cameras but I guess we’re just wired differently.

Also as a professional photographer, you come to rely on various tools to get things done – particular cameras, particular flashes, particular lenses. Photographing weddings differs from regular studio photography both in that you have one chance to capture that defining moment; and, that you have to carry everything with you. Even the back ups.

The cameras that we shoot with are getting harder to come by – it’s a niche market defined almost solely by wedding photographers so Fuji’s not exactly jumping at the chance to make a new one.

So, when we unwrapped one of our replacement cameras for the first time, we wanted to mark the occasion with a ceremonious photograph of the shutter count sitting quietly at zero.

Sorry, little guy, life’s going to be tough from here on out.

ND Grad Test

David — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:38:28 +0000

As a gift, I was given a Lee Filter Foundation holder system. In non-camera-nerd speak, that means it’s a piece that screws into the front of a lens that holds pieces of plastic in front of it. The plastic are called filters and change the light passing through them. The filter could just be coloured, like red or blue, or have special properties like polarization.

The first set of filters I bought for it was an ND Grad filter. It’s a filter where the top part is greyed (like sunglasses) and the bottom half is clear. Why? Because the difference in exposure for the sky and the ground is usually massive – you start to lose the clouds. With an ND Grad filter, you can get you can get dramatic sky pictures like this:

Sky over Brampton Suburb

Prefabricated building construction in the steel beam stage

Driving down the DVP

Pedestrians Downtown Toronto

I’m a happy guy.