Archive for the 'photography' Category

I am looking for an ultra-wide angle lens for my Nikon D60 to complement my current collection of lenses. I currently own the 18-55mm VR kit lens and the 55-200mm VR as well, so I am pretty well covered above 18mm. I also have a collection of old, pre-AI, prime lenses, including a 50mm f/1.4 which is great for low-light situations, despite being fully manual and no metering.

I wouldn’t mind also getting the just announced 35mm f/1.8 AF-S lens. At a list price of $200 (or a little more than 200€) it’s going to be the best choice for D40/D40x/D60 owners wanting a fast prime which auto-focuses on their bodies. I will buy it, eventually, but not now.

What I want now is wide, very wide. I want something that goes much wider than the 18 mm of the kit lens to take some extreme shots meant to totally draw the viewer into the picture. Also, I don’t want a fisheye.

For a while, I was eyeing the venerable Sigma 10-20mm. This has long been the default choice for people looking for an ultra-wide angle zoom to put on their low-range DSLRs. It was until recently the only one going down to 10 mm, it has an internal focusing motor, decent image quality, and an affordable price. Therefore I started saving pennies and planning to buy one as a Christmas or birthday present to myself.

But just when I was about to grab it from a shelf or order it online, there came the Tokina ATX 116 PRO onto my radar. This lens has got some truly excellent reviews. Looks like its sharpness and image quality are top-notch and its maximum aperture is 2.8 all over the range, which is unmatched and great for low-light situations.

Its main drawbacks are the lack of an on-board focusing motor (but depth of field is so large at these focal lengths that this should not be a problem in practice) and its slightly higher price compared to the Sigma. Anyway, after reading reviews like Ken Rockwell’s, the decision was made, but I soon discovered that this lens is very hard to find, unless you are prepared to spend much more than the price it would have if it weren’t in such a demand. To put it bluntly, I don’t want to spend more than 500€ on it and I have a couple of local shops who would sell it to me at less than that…if only they had one in stock!

So, while I am here hoping a Tokina turns up on a nearby shelf soon, I notice a review of the Tamron 10-24mm on dpreview.com. This looks like a sweet lens also, it has a focusing motor, the largest zoom range of them all, a decent price and shouldn’t be hard to procure. The reviewer points out that it’s a bit too soft in the corners and maximum aperture is only f/3.5-4.5, but it’s a step above the Sigma anyway. On the other hand, the luminosity and sharpness of the Tokina still make it my preferred choice, but if I have to wait too much, the pendulum might swing once again.

What would you do, dear readers, if you were me?

Yesterday we went to the annual gymnastics exhibition of my daughter’s school and I took the chance to shoot a few pictures and put the D60 through its paces. My impression is that the camera is a good performer, but the kit lens wasn’t up to the task, given the poor lighting, the fact that subjects were usually moving quickly and I couldn’t get close enough to them most of the time. This is not an indictment of an otherwise fine lens, but you cannot get much light in when the maximum aperture at 55mm is a meager f/5.6. Even at 800 ISO (1600 is still usable, but loses a lot of crispness and what good are sports photos that aren’t crisp?) I couldn’t set my shutter speed faster than 1/20s generally, which is too slow to capture the quick movement of gymansts.

Well, since I am not prepared to spend a grand or so on a fast zoom yet, I dusted off my old 50mm f/1.4 and took a few shots with it. This is a lens from circa 1976, it’s totally manual and pre-AI, which means you get no metering whatsoever, you just have to guess exposure.

As luck would have, even though the lighting of the place is poor, it is pretty uniform. Focus wasn’t much of a problem even at large apertures—the D60 has a good focus indicator in the viewfinder—at least for subjects that weren’t moving towards or away from me.

What really made it hard to get good pictures, however, was the difficulty of finding a good position to shoot from: I had to take most of them from too far away, with the camera wedged between two glass panes and elbowing my way between other parents armed with cameras and camcorders. So I have been able to save just a handful of them worth of uploading to Flickr, like the one below:

David Hobby on USA Today

Originally uploaded by Ugo Cei.

I’ve been traveling too much as of late and it shows, especially when you consider how seldom I have updated my blog. However, one of the joys of traveling to the US is that hotels will typically leave a complimentary copy of USA Today in front of your room every morning for your reading pleasure.

I don’t find USA Today to be a particularly good read, but the other day I was glad to find that their “Money” section carried a long interview with David “Mr. Strobist” Hobby. Kudos to David for having become famous: he certainly deserves it!

Apparently some online stores have started advertising the new Nikon D60 as “in stock”. You can find it at one of Amazon.com’s affiliated stores or pre-order it on Amazon.com itself and wait “1 to 2 months” (though I expect it to be available sooner than that).

Personally I’m not convinced the D60 is worth the extra $250 over a D40. I would just get the D40 with a 55-200mm VR lens and still have money to spare. But in any case I’m waiting for the D40 to decrease a bit in price before ordering it myself.

Ken Rockwell reports that you can get some very good bargains on Nikon DSLR cameras and lenses. You get $100 instant rebates if you buy any of these three cameras:

• D40 with 18-55mm lens
• D40x with 18-55mm lens
• D80 with 18-135mm lens

together with any of these three extra lenses:

• 55-200mm ($73 after $100 instant rebate)
• 55-200mm VR ($112 after $100 instant rebate)
• 70-300mm VR ($353 after $100 instant rebate).

But that is not all, because you can get an even better deal if you buy an extra battery with the D40. The price for the battery is about $40, but if you buy it together with the camera, you get an extra $74 discount, which means the combined price of the two items is less than the cost of the camera alone!

You have to add the items to your cart and the savings will be deducted as separate line items at checkout. Be sure to select Amazon as the seller, otherwise the deal won’t be there. You also have to be patient, because the D40 and the 55-200 VR won’t be shipping for 1-2 months. However, I just placed an order and got $174 in extra savings for the D40—which is already the cheapest good DSLR out there— together with the 55-200 VR and an extra battery, which makes this pretty much the deal of the century. Hey, I could sell all this stuff separately on eBay for much more than will have payed for it, but I figure I’ll just keep it all.

If you would like to get the same deal, you can either follow the links on this page, or use the ones on Ken’s page, depending on who you would like to get a small percentage of the sale price.

Update: Apparently the $100 instant rebate on the combined purchase of a camera and a lens is gone. I am glad that I placed my order on time.

Update (Feb 20): Just received the following email from Amazon.com:

We regret to inform you that an error caused an incorrect promotional
code to be displayed on our website. We are not offering this
promotion at this time.

In accordance with our posted policies on pricing, we are unable to
offer the item(s) you ordered for the incorrectly posted promotional
price. Therefore, we have cancelled the item(s) from your order.

Argh! I assume the error refers to the incorrect pricing of the extra battery. Well, I suppose I could live without that, but now even the $100 rebate on the extra lens is gone and the only option I’m left with is getting just the camera for just a little less than $500, which is not a bargain at all .

In anticipation of PMA 2008, the big names in digital photography, Canon and Nikon, just announced new additions to their line of DSLRs, with a new entry-level model each: to the 450D (a.k.a. Digital Rebel XSi) announcement from the Canon front, Nikon responded with the D60. Let’s see how they stack up against each other, by comparing specifications in a totally unscientific and subjective way. I will try to focus on the differences that really matter in practice, according to my judgment, brushing away briefly the megapixels issue.

The Canon has a 12 megapixel sensor, the Nikon only has 10. If you think this makes any difference, think again. The difference in linear dimensions is only about 10% (4272 vs. 3872 pixels) and 10MP is already plenty resolution for printing at sizes most people consider reasonable. People who print larger are not going to use an entry-level DSLR anyway.

Both cameras are sold in a kit version that includes a good 18-55mm zoom lens with an anti-shake system. Canon calls its system IS (Image Stabilization), whereas Nikon calls it VR (Vibration Reduction), but it’s just the same thing. This feature alone, combined with high ISO sensitivity, makes it possible to shoot hand-held in situations that would have required the use of a tripod previously. This is also a feature that is entirely implemented inside the lens, so you don’t need a new body to exploit it, just a new lens with IS/VR.

Both cameras have auto-ISO (sensitivity). This is very important, as it allows you to shoot in situations where the lighting is going to change dramatically between shots. Set the camera to P (Program mode) or A (Aperture priority) and auto-ISO and shoot away without adjusting sensitivity when going from brightly lit areas to darker ones. Reportedly, Canon’s auto-ISO setting only covers the 100-400 ISO range, which is somewhat limited. The D60’s sensitivity can also be set as high as 3200 ISO, probably owing to the lesser pixel density. The Canon can only go as far as 1600. It’s hard to say whether this makes any difference in practice, as ISO 3200 might produce images so noisy, or so dull from excessive noise reduction, to make it almost unusable in practice.

The D60 has Active D-Lighting. This is the same feature that is available on the D300 and the D3. As Ken Rockwell says: “This feature automatically identifies highlight areas that will be lost, and does its best to bring them under control. It works, and it works automatically.” If what matters to you, in photography, is getting good tonal rendition and great shadow/highlight balance, then this is the feature that could tilt the balance in Nikon’s favor.

The Canon has Live View, meaning that you can view the image in the rear LCD while composing, just like people are used to be doing with a point&shoot camera. This can be useful in some situations, but it’s hard to say how often this will be used by the amateur who is the typical target market for this range of cameras. The Canon also has a larger (3″ vs. 2.5″) LCD, even though both screens only comprise 230,000 pixels. Too bad the D60 doesn’t sport the gorgeous 920,000 pixels screen of the D300.

The Nikon does not have a focusing motor in the camera body, meaning you can only use newer AF-S (Silent Wave Motor) lenses with it. This is not a big deal if you only have AF-S lenses or are going to buy new ones anyway, since all new Nikon lenses are AF-S, but older AF and AI lenses will have to be focused manually, so watch out.

There are many other elements that could be compared between the two, but these are the most relevant ones, in my opinion. Both are probably very good cameras and you won’t be disappointed with either one. Personally, I would go with the Nikon because of the higher auto-ISO range and the Active D-Lighting, but that’s just me. You might be a big fan of composing and reviewing using the LCD, so the larger screen and the Live View feature of the Canon will certainly appeal to you.

I can’t certainly say more about this comparison without having tried both cameras personally. If you want to help me do this, you can click on this affiliate link and buy some stuff on Amazon.com. They will give me a small percentage of the sale, which I will put away in my small cache dedicated to buying photo gear. Every little cent helps .

Technorati Tags: trevi fountain, fontana di trevi, rome.

My friend Davide just told me that he’s seeing an unusual outburst of traffic coming from Google Images to one of his pages. Apparently there are many people looking for Martin Schoeller on Google Images and a picture he used is hit #3 on the results page.

I have to admit that I hadn’t ever heard of Martin Schoeller before today, so I figured out he must have just passed away, but a brief search for news about him only turned out this page on the New York Post.

My impression is that you have to be very sensitive to think that the reflections in the eyes of the models are meant to evoke the Twin Towers, but I guess if you are a New Yorker, you are quite sensitive when it comes to 9/11.

Anyway, you can find more portraits by Schoeller here and you can judge by yourself whether the effect was intended or not.

Technorati Tags: martin schoeller, twin towers, 9/11, new york post, Marsh.