Nikon D700

Inside
Here it is, Nikon has just announced its new professional DSLR  the Nikon D700.
This new body is built around the new Nikon FX sensor and will be ready for sale in July.
For me this body is an answer (more than an answer) to the Canon 5D which was the first consumer DSLR with a full frame sensor. The D700 is not really a consumer camera but its french price should be under 3000 euros including VAT and it should be a robust, well designed, pleasant to use and powerfull tool. Just like the D200 and D300...

I didn't switch from the D200 to the D300 because i didn't see any interest in the 2 megapixels upgrade while staying with the DX format.

So, will i switch to the D700 ? I can't say no but that's not sure. Here is what i have in mind about this choice :

• In my work i don't need the high ISO capabilities provided by the FX sensor. I would prefer some low ISO for long exposures without filters.

• D200 images are 3872 pixels large and D700 images will be 4856 pixels large. The difference will be of 984 pixels (3.3 inches when printing at 300 dpi). Of course the FX sensor should produce some very clean files at normal ISO and they should be easily upsized.

• I think that Canon will soon increase the resolution of his entry level full frame DSLR and then Nikon will do the same one year later and things will go on...
  This megapixels race has started with digital photography and it was never a reason for me to wait for the next best one when i needed a camera upgrade. Today things are differents. During the past years, Canon was playing alone with 24x36mm sensors and today Nikon arrives. I think that things will move soon and i'm really not sure that an immediat 2 megapixels upgrade would really increase my printing possibilities.

I'm not ready to buy but... for some years i dream of a large and bright viewfinder. So i think i'll wait a few months to let them correct the first bugs, read some reviews, try a D700 and decide. :)

Interval shooting and HDR photography

First lights on the Mediterranean coast
With springtime, the sun is rising more and more soon every week and shooting seascapes at dawn time is more and more difficult. One day of the past week, i left home at 5am, drove to the Bau Rouge and walked to my favorite place while the sun was just shining. Arrived on the place, i realised that i had left my remote controler at home ...
Remote controler is a nice tool and a good help for long exposures but if you don't have one it can often be replaced by the camera self timer. When you have to shoot serveral long exposures to build a HDR image, the remote controler is really a must : No camera shake means sharp and easy to align images.
So i was very annoyed to have forgotten mine when i remembered that my D200 had an interval shooting function. In this mode, the camera can take n images every x minutes. If you also define a bracketing program, the camera will execute this bracketing program at each interval.
So i put the D200 on the tripod, locked every thing, programmed the camera and ... it perfectly worked : without touching the body, i obtained 7 exposures with 1 IL increment.

With their large bracketing and very fast shooting capabilities, recent Nikon DSLRs are very nice HDR tools. With the interval mode you can perharps save the money of a remote controler and save your day when you left your bed too soon.

SilkyPix a nice raw converter

As said in other posts, i always shoot raw to keep all the data my camera can capture. So the raw converter is a big key of my post processing workflow and choising the good software is very important. For more than one year i process all my raw files with SilkyPix.
It can process the raw files from near all digital cameras and if i'm not wrong from some digital backs. I mostly use some Nikon DSLR but i also have some cameras of other brands and it's nice to be able to use always the same tool for raw conversion.
SilkyPix has near all the functions someone can hope from a raw converter and the resulting files are of a very high quality.

White balance can be set to many predefined options or processed by SilkyPix. In all the cases it can be manually tuned in many ways.

Color rendition can also be tuned by editing color curves and/or use some predefined models. Still about colors, the software has a nice tool to make some selective fine tunings.

Same thing for tone and contrast : you can choose some predefined settings and/or edit it by tuning the tone curve or using some sliders to change contrast, gamma and black level.

SilkyPix also have many options for sharpening and noise reduction and it's not so hard to obtain some very clear and detailed photos.

So, what's wrong :
The highlights recovery tool is not of an easy use. It's better you don't overexpose your photos.
I think it's missing an easy tool to push up the shadows like the DLightening tool of Nikon Capture.
I'd like to be able to compare side by side two versions of the same raw file processed with different parameters.

Sigma 10-20 and Nikon DSLRs

With digital photography and APS sized sensors, it can be difficult to find a nice wide angle zoom lense.
For near one year i use the Sigma 10-20 EX with my Nikon DSLRs.
Around 10 mm i retrieve the framings i loved with my wide angle lenses when i was shooting 24x36 mm films.
Some reviews told this lens was suffering of a strong shading but it's really not an issue on mine. I never noticed this although printing big frames.
Sharpness is good, the lens feels robust and the HSM focusing is very nice.
In my mind the only default is that some landscapes sometimes show a strong distorsion in their upper right angle.

About my Nikon cameras

I have owned (and still own some) many cameras of many brands : Olympus, Minolta, Nikon ...
Today, i almost always use two Nikon DSLRs : Nikon D100 and D200. These cameras seem to be done for fitting my hands, i love their ergonomics where the good thing is always under the good finger. AF is awesome and metering very acurate.

Today for a landscape photographer shooting raw, each camera brand can deliver some very nice files with enough quality to enable very large prints. So my choice is done on ergonomics, reliability and viewfinder. Some people shooting JPEG in low light with high ISO could have other criteria ...