what to think of this

grass
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

I took it very deliberately. Did a fine job processing it if I say so myself. Stuck in on flickr and it hardly attracts any attention. Is it boring or soothing? I'm not sure yet.

went for a walk in the forest

for a walk in the forest
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

This morning and suddenly I noticed this. Took a quick snapshot and this is what I got. A second or two later the situations had totally changed.

I did push the contrast a bit.

About yesterday's post....

Turns out it's a rather controversial post. OK, first of all, I did not take these shots. Secondly, it's unscientific, it's just two frames taken a few minutes after eachother. There's a difference in lighting and it's tricky light to begin with. Now that doesn't bother me, I know the average dutch livingroom is tricky to shoot.

I've also had a number of reactions in this thread on dpreview. A substantial number of those were predictable. But there were also a number of constructive reactions. Seems that the guy who shot these two frames may have made an error or two when shooting.

What it all comes down to... D300 is an awesome camera but it's not perfect and it's weaknesses are different enough from the D50 that it will take me quite some time to adjust.

I'm planning to get together with at least one D300 owner and do some more testing. I want to see if we can do some more comparative shots and I want to see if someone with a load of D50 experience can make that D300 shine in the first 50 shots.

Comparing the Nikon D50 and D300 in an unscientific way.

I've bought a Nikon D50 in the summer of 2006. Excellent camera back then, I've shot about 24000 pictures with it, had loads of fun and have learned an awful lot more about photography. But, just like anyone who reads the major photo sites, I now and then had the urge to replace that simple D50 by something better. The first camera that really appealed to me was the Nikon D300. It feels great when you pick it up and has features that are really tempting. Things like 51 AF points, AF tracking, metering with Ai lenses, CLS commander and a dedicated button for metering to name a few.

An acquaintance who owns both the Nikon D50 and D300 was kind enough to shoot the same image with his 17-50 2.8 on both cameras. Shots were is01600, A-mode, f8, 1/5 on the D300, 1/2 on the D50. Light came from two compact fluorescent lamps and the window.

All pictures are stored on Flickr with full exif. Click on any to see the full sized version.

Here's the original, just converted to jpg:

D50:


D300:



Hmm... Immediately you notice the difference in dynamic range but also a weird color cast on the D300.
Let's get both in Capture Nx, I'm running 2.0.

First an Auto Whitebalance:

D50:



D300:



Let's see what happens if we brighten the images a bit. I'm applying +1 EV to both.

D50:



D300:



There is still a lot more detail visible trough the window on the D300 shot. In the D50 it's mostly blown.

OK, on with the D300 shot. Picture Control wasn't set to neutral yet, now it is.



And now let's disable active d-lighting:



Finally, for the pixel peepers a crop. To be honest, I didn't expect this level of noise.

D50:



D300:




I don't know, perhaps the test setup was wrong. I do like what I can do with the D300's raw files. There's loads of room there and at +1EV the D300 clearly retains a lot of dynamic range. That color cast I can't seem to get rid of bothers me. There's, obviously more room to crop and a load of dynamic range to play with. Looking at http://www.flickr.com/cameras/nikon/d300/ there's lots of people out there shooting beautiful pictures with this impressive camera.

But why this color cast???

If anyone has any ideas, I'd apprieciate some feedback. I still find the D300 a desireable camera but, based on this, I am a bit disappointed in the image quality.

In case anyone wants to play with them, here are the NEF files:
D50
D300

abstract attempt

abstract attempt (best seen big)
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Or seeing what the Fred Miranda B&W plugin does to an image. I'm sure it's not to everyone's taste. I'm not sure if I will still like it next week but I've tried.

I do like that you can barely see the trees on the horizon. I couldn't when I took the shot but they did appear when I processed the RAW.

skating

DSC_1912
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

For the first time in 13 years enough ice to skate on!

Gotta love ebay!

Well, sometimes at least. I was looking for some Pratchett books. My collection of hardbacks was 3 issues behind. In a dutch bookshop a single book can easily set you back 30 euros. Even at bol.com you're lucky to pay 20 euro for one. Via ebay and thanks to the current pound-euro rate I got Thud, making money and wintersmith for only 33 euros including delivery. And all of them with Paul Kidby's excellent artwork.

another bull

another bull
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

We went for a walk in the Amsterdamse Waterleidingduinen today. Heard some bulls bellowing. After a quick walk of the well known paths we discovered three bulls bellowing for supremacy over a dozen cows. Impressive sound and sight.

caught reading

caught reading
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Or, less than perfect. Noticed his expression, quickly grabbed my camera and was faced with a technical dillema. Either up the iso to 1600 or go for a very marginal shutter speed. I know my colored couch gets noisy easily so I went for iso 800 and 1/30.

It's not quite as sharp as it should have been, both because of the 1/30 and the slight focus error. For me the expression makes up for it.

fishing contest in B/W

DSC_1295_bw
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Trying dxo optics on a shot I took this morning. Like it even though the whole series is not exactly getting great reviews.

quite proud of this one

Kal boeing 747
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Went planespotting for an hour this afternoon. After almost the complete F70 fleet the KLM owns this big brute came in.

landscape

landscape
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Went to one of the local farmers for potatoes. Followed the dog, noticed this and just had to take the shot. For me this embodies the Haarlemmermeer. The mixture of agriculture and modern architecture.

Stormy day at the beach

And his wife
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

I decided to go for a late afternoon walk at Zandvoort. Noticed a beginning kitesurfer and this lady a bit further along the beach. Short chat, she was his wife shooting a few pics of her husband in action. (on a day where it wasn't warm to begin with and the windchill made it freezing).
Normally I wouldn't publish a pic of another person. In this case the person isn't recognizable and I really like the composition here.

Visit to fryslan

Frysian cottage2
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Was visiting friends there. took a walk with the dogs and of course I brought my camera. Took a snap of this little cottage. It's probably at least 50 years old and likely just in use for vacations.

fallow buck

fallow buck
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Spotted this one on a walk trough the waterleidingduinen in really rotten weather. Look at it closely and you'll see noise and even some camera shake. look at it in this size and it's a lovely picture.

rough times for me

romantic bridge
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

New job, pending reorg at the office and now my mother may have a very serious illness.. Sometimes it's all a bit much. The past weekend I've had 2 anxiety attacks which were very scare. I've got a doctor's appointment on friday, last thing I want to do is end up with a burnout.
In the mean time I decided to grab an extended lunch break and go for a walk in Groenendaal park. Had my camera with me and shot this.

Autumn is here!

whooo!
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

My favorite season of the year! Leaves falling, chill in the air, peace and quiet in my neighborhood... love it!

new goodies
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

I picked up the 24-85 AF-S today. A shop at the other side of the country was going out of business and had this left in their used section. There's a black rim just outside the front element which has a tiny nick. Otherwise it's in fine condition. Physical aspects of the lens are very nice. There's no motion whatsoever in the front element wether you zoom or focus. "real" af-s is nice too. First results are encouraging but it's a bit early to tell if this will succeed my beloved 28-105.

Below it are 4 vapex batteries. A relatively new brand, supposedly just as good or even better as the famous eneloops but at half the price.

geotagging my pictures.

Train in motion
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

After reading something about it here: http://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/list_messages/1266438 I decided to try it myself. I already own a PDA, an old rx3715 with a bluetooth gps receiver which I use for Tomtom navigation.

I loaded outdoor gps or odgps which I found here: http://www.outdoor-gps.de/ on my pocketpc. Connect to the gps receiver (com6, 38400 baud) and let it get a fix. In the cockpit view it shows the current gps time. It's wise to synchronize your camera's clock as well as you can.

I then ticket the option "CollectData" and went shooting. When I got back I installed http://www.geosetter.de/en/ geosetter. This program recognizes Nikon's Nef files and the gpx file that odgps created. Then it's a matter of simply merging, saving and continueing with your normal workflow.

Only thing I haven't figured out yet is how to make flickr automatically place my images on a map but that's probably somewhere in the options.

Trying to get the hang of dizzler. Sounds good 3 million free tracks to listen to but for some reason it won't play.


Get Disturbed MP3s at dizzler.com