Heh heh heh...Playing With A New Camera!

[woaface]

Man, I am loving this thing sooo much. Haven't taken any exciting pictures yet, just having fun and learning the buttons so far. But this camera is awesome. It's a Nikon D70, it's digital and SLR. I've also got an old film SLR from my dad I've been toying around with, and it takes great pictures for being 15 or 20 years old.


Man...photography is so much fun! I have a friend at school who is our senator's nephew and he is big into photography and has helped me out a little, and we've discussed some things.

Anyways, I know Barry (Cruuuztaker) has a D70 and that a few of you have taken up the photography hobby. I've got some new books and I'm just all tingly inside!:D

http://www.nikonusa.com/images/products/25214_360.jpg

[Krytin]

Man, I am loving this thing sooo much. Haven't taken any exciting pictures yet, just having fun and learning the buttons so far. But this camera is awesome. It's a Nikon D70, it's digital and SLR. I've also got an old film SLR from my dad I've been toying around with, and it takes great pictures for being 15 or 20 years old.


Man...photography is so much fun! I have a friend at school who is our senator's nephew and he is big into photography and has helped me out a little, and we've discussed some things.

Anyways, I know Barry (Cruuuztaker) has a D70 and that a few of you have taken up the photography hobby. I've got some new books and I'm just all tingly inside!:D

http://www.nikonusa.com/images/products/25214_360.jpg
Nice choise on the digital - will it take lenses from Nikon's 35mm SLRs?

[woaface]

Yes, it will take "non-CPU" lenses as well. It's all in the manual.

[Krytin]

Very nice James - there is a plethora of quality used lenses out there to make it that much more versatal! Good Luck!

[BK_GrandMarquis]

Man, I am loving this thing sooo much. Haven't taken any exciting pictures yet, just having fun and learning the buttons so far. But this camera is awesome. It's a Nikon D70, it's digital and SLR. I've also got an old film SLR from my dad I've been toying around with, and it takes great pictures for being 15 or 20 years old.


Man...photography is so much fun! I have a friend at school who is our senator's nephew and he is big into photography and has helped me out a little, and we've discussed some things.

Anyways, I know Barry (Cruuuztaker) has a D70 and that a few of you have taken up the photography hobby. I've got some new books and I'm just all tingly inside!:D

http://www.nikonusa.com/images/products/25214_360.jpg

Nice!!! :D I personally like the Canon but a digital SLR is the way to go if you got the dough. I have an old Minolta DiMage 7 and I just can't justify a new camera now. Especially with all the money being spent on my car. hehe.

[CRUZTAKER]

I am glad you got one!!!!

I never cease to amaze myself with this camera. It totally rocks.

Avoid the A auto settings and learn to use the manual settings. A 1gb memory card will hold nearly 300 pics in FINE 4000X4000 large pics. The battery holds up for nearly 400 shots and if you use the flash, far fewer. A separate flash is definately needed down the road. Also, if you did not buy the 17mm lense, you will eventually need one as the older 35mm lenses won't give you near the wide angle you are used to. I am holding out for 14mm lense, and an 800mm as well. Big bucks however.

Good luck, and start showing off!

[woaface]

4000x4000? It's not capable of that is it?

Yeah, I got the camera kit with the 17mm...what I really need is a macro lens though...getting that in a few weeks.

I've got a 256 memory card and in fine I can do about 150 Large...Good enough for me!

[TripleTransAm]

Which 17mm did you get, James? Those nighttime shots I took that managed to grab some stars were with the 17-55mm f2.8 DX lens. Very good lens so far, and Barry's right about 17mm lenses suddenly becoming VERY useable on a digital SLR... the field of view when taking a DSLR shot at 17mm is equivalent to a regular 35mm having used a 25.5 mm lens (if one existed). Having blown my budget on the camera itself (+flash, +memory), I settled for a cheapo 28-105mm f3.5-4.5 thinking 28mm would be more than enough... 4 months later I was scouring the Internet looking for a used 18-35mm f3.5-4.5 (couldn't afford the much better 17-35mm f2.8, new OR used) which I eventually sold at a small profit :D to help finance the brand new 17-55mm.

Which brings another point: I cannot stress how much better it is for a beginner to settle for buying USED lenses at first. I am SO glad I cut my teeth on used good lenses after buying one so-so lens (the 28-105mm) brand new ($500-ish Canadian!). I always had my sights on the 70-200mm VR brand new, but I'm glad I got the (most excellent!!!) 80-200mm f2.8 one-ring zoom to experiment on. I just recently sold this one (again, at a slight bit more than what I paid a year and half prior) and got my VR.

Same thing with the 18-35mm... I waited on the much more expensive 17-35mm and learned enough to make the brand new 17-55mm so much more useful.

I'm very curious about the 12-24mm DX that is out, but will wait to find a good deal on one used.

So now my stash consists of:
1. 70-200mm VR f2.8 (new)
2. 17-55mm f2.8 (new)
3. 28-105mm f3.5-4.5 (new, won't sell it, might come in handy because of it's macro)
4. 50mm f1.8 (new) which I bought with the camera because it was cheap (!) and I heard it was legendary sharp (it is!).
5. 24mm f2.8 (used)
6. really old 70-210mm f4.5 Nikkor (used!)

Why #6? I have a certain effect I get when using some Cokin filters and or circular polarizers on lenses with a 52mm barrel diameter, when shooting cars. I don't get that effect as intensely on lenses with 62mm barrels (my 28-105) and especially not the 77mm diameters on most newer Nikkors. My #4, 5 and 6 lenses all have 52mm diameters. I discovered this effect on my old 35mm camera (Yashica) using some cheapo Vivitar and Sigma lenses with barrel diameters of 50-52mm. It really kept the guys in my car club wondering how I got that effect, and some have blowups of my photos of their cars. I'll have to dig up some scans of some of these shots to try and explain it...

So, congrats on a smart purchase. Let's start seeing some photos!

[TripleTransAm]

I don't think the D70 can spit out 4000x4000 images... that works out to 16 000 000 pixels which works out to 15.25 megapixels, and I thought the D70 was somewhere in the 6-ish megapixel range?

I'm with Barry... get a good flash. Lots of good Nikon flashes, Metz, etc. etc.
www.dpreview.com has some great forums that you can just spend DAYS reading. I spent a year soaking up that site before I took the plunge with my Fuji S2 Pro.

In line with my habit of overspending, I got the SB-80 DX back when SB-26 / 28 was the norm. No regrets, but I ended up ordering a SB-800 flash a while back before realizing how to make the most of the SB-80, thinking the SB-80 wasn't cutting it for me. A photographer at a wedding shared some techniques, which resulted in awesome sharp photos (there's a photo of my kid on the dance floor in another thread) without even trying. The SB-800 is supposed to arrive within a few days (even though I bought it last Fall, it was part of an exchange so I asked the shop to hold off on shipping it to me until I got off my a** and shipped them back the stuff I was returning). When I get it, I'm going to test it with my SB-80 to see if the wireless trigger works... if it does, I might just keep both and use one for an indirect fill flash in formal photos (weddings in churches) or artsy auto pics, with one flash firing off the camera, and wirelessly triggering the other one at the same time.

[MM03MOK]

I don't think the D70 can spit out 4000x4000 images... that works out to 16 000 000 pixels which works out to 15.25 megapixels, and I thought the D70 was somewhere in the 6-ish megapixel range?
3008x2000.

[ncmm]

:woohoo:awesome, can't wait to see your new images :woohoo:


:woohoo:

[turbochick]

Hey James! That's a really nice camera you got! I don't know a lot about cameras and types of cameras.....but I LOVE photography. The University that I'm staying at right now offers photography, and I REALLY want to come back here! :D

[LCSO34]

Cool camera, Nikon's are great! I bought a D100 for work right about the time the D70 came out. But if I had to buy one for me it would be the D70. Got three lenses with it 24-80mm, 80-400mm VR, and a 105mm micro (macro), SB-80 flash and a ring flash. If you want to take some night shots get a tripod and a MC-20 remote cord, it helps prevent camera shake i.e. bluriness with long exp times. Congrats

[Mongoose]

Nice choice James. I've had mine about 3 months now and love it. I replaced a tired Nikon FG and was tickled that the non-cpu lenses were still usable. LCSO34 mentioned getting a MC-20 remote cord. That won't work with the D70. However Nikon does make an infrared remote (ML-L3) with about a 16ft. range that is recommended for this camera. Mine cost me about $18. :2thumbs:

[Mike Poore]

Man, I am loving this thing sooo much. ...Anyways, I know Barry (Cruuuztaker) has a D70 and that a few of you have taken up the photography hobby. I've got some new books and I'm just all tingly inside!:D

Way to go, James; it's an excellant choice, and you're gonna have a ball with it. Please remember your friends when it comes time to share your photos:D

[LCSO34]

Didn't know that! Thanks I would rather have wireless my self.

[woaface]

I can also delay the start time for the shutter. I lost my tripod and I'm fairly upset about that...I've been looking for a while now, can't seem to remember where I put it last!

I should also mention that this camera is pretty fast.

And yeah 3008x2000 is the largest, the picture quality is great, and you can zoom in fairly far before it gets pixalized.

Fun fun! I'll star sharing pictures soon.

[Mike Poore]

I can also delay the start time for the shutter. I lost my tripod and I'm fairly upset about that...I've been looking for a while now, can't seem to remember where I put it last!

I should also mention that this camera is pretty fast.

And yeah 3008x2000 is the largest, the picture quality is great, and you can zoom in fairly far before it gets pixalized.

Fun fun! I'll star sharing pictures soon.
James, I guess you "KIDS" never learned about extention tubes. I have both extention tubes, and extension bellows for my old Pentax screw mount, and I've used them with some very fine Schneider and Leica enlarger glass, with spectacular results. With a digital camera, a set of those things would be the cat's a$$. I wish there was a way to adapt mine to a Nikon, I'd send 'em down for you to play with. :high5:

[woaface]

You really know how to make a kid happy...electronic gadgets make me melt.

I've got a 15 or 20 year old Pentax SLR that takes GREAT pictures. It's the ****net.

[TripleTransAm]

That's the thing... extension tubes are ANYTHING but electronic gadgets! :) You have to see them to believe it.

To be honest, I didn't really see myself using the Kenko full-set of tubes I tried for a while, so I returned them. I really tried to see if I could adopt them in the type of photography I'm most interested in doing *myself*, but I didn't see any immediate use for them. So I'm currently trying out a Kenko AFS-compatible 7-element teleconverter and hopefully the price/quality ratio will satisfy me, especially when considering the $$ of the Nikon 2x AF-S teleconverter! I'm uploading photos from my camera as I write this... fingers crossed...

[CRUZTAKER]

Sorry about the misinformation on the pic sizes....you know...everything is larger when one is telling a story for the umteenth time...:P

Still, at 3008x2000 is pretty good. The D100 is better, but VERY pricey.

An SB-800 is on my list before I upgrade lenses. Gotta have one. Jessica bought me a pretty sharp tripod. I guess I need to look into this ML-L3 gadget you folks speak of.

Start posting pics man!!!

We just went to Blues Clues show at our downtown arena. I got some great shots at 200 feet. I'll post a few when I get back home.

[CRUZTAKER]

..... especially when considering the $$ of the Nikon 2x AF-S teleconverter! ...
Is this a 'doubler' as they call it?

I picked up a AF-S Vivitar doubler in St. Thomas for like $85 a few years back. I haven't used it too often, but it seems to add to the zoom of my 70-200 pretty well while sacrifising a bit of light level.

[TripleTransAm]

Is this a 'doubler' as they call it?

I picked up a AF-S Vivitar doubler in St. Thomas for like $85 a few years back. I haven't used it too often, but it seems to add to the zoom of my 70-200 pretty well while sacrifising a bit of light level.

Yep, I don't know when I stopped referring to it as a 'doubler' myself... maybe after spending a year on dpreview.com...
I guess considering there are 1.4x, 1.7x, 2.0x, and now 3.0x teleconverters, calling it a doubler wouldn't be 100% accurate.

With teleconverters, the main issue isn't so much light loss (which is usually along the lines of 4 stops for a 2x teleconverter), it's sharpness. You're adding more layers of glass between your unforgiving CCD pixels and your cherished lens (in my case, apparently 7). With the Vivitar non-AFS doubler I just sold last week along with my 80-200mm f2.8 monster lens (ultra-sharp!), I could see a small loss of sharpness when compared to just using the plain lens, but it was still adequately sharp with this lens. I hope this Kenko AFS unit I got today turns out to be at least as good, I'll have to wait for daylight to get a good feel for it.

Using the 2x on my 80-200mm at long zooms became almost an exercise in futility, though, unless I was on a tripod or very well braced.

With a tripod, though...
http://www.stevepereira.com/photo/sky/DSCF7723a.jpg
(it's all about trade-offs... I'm sure the 2x added a little fuzziness in the surface details, but then again I might not have been able to SEE so many details to begin with, without the 2x!)

[Krytin]

With a tripod, though...
http://www.stevepereira.com/photo/sky/DSCF7723a.jpg
(it's all about trade-offs... I'm sure the 2x added a little fuzziness in the surface details, but then again I might not have been able to SEE so many details to begin with, without the 2x!)
TTA,
On the really long shots, "atmospheric haze" will take away some of the sharpness. Dust, pollution, heat "waves" or distortion amoung other things will all add up if you are looking through it far/long enough! Just my $0.02.

[TripleTransAm]

TTA,
On the really long shots, "atmospheric haze" will take away some of the sharpness. Dust, pollution, heat "waves" or distortion amoung other things will all add up if you are looking through it far/long enough! Just my $0.02.

Good point, I never considered that. But in this case, seeing as how I'd be located at the exact distance from the subject at all times (the moon), trying a shot with and without the teleconverter should take into account the same atmospheric conditions, since I'm traversing the same amount of atmosphere in both cases?

I will try this next time the moon is above my house, both with and without the 2x.

[CRUZTAKER]

Damnit Steve...I could only be so luckey to get a shot like that. I have been trying moon shots for awhile, and so far, no luck. I'll add the 2X to my 200 and give it a whip, but I am thinking that until I break the bank for an 800....I am out of luck.

[TripleTransAm]

Thanks Barry. When I get home tonight, I'll try to dig up the EXIF info to give you an idea of what to start with. How do your moon shots look? My biggest problem at first (which I corrected right away once I started consulting the zoomed-in final image on the LCD screen) was the tendency to want to overexpose. In ANY setting but manual, the camera's assessment of the quantity of light in the image frame was flawed... it naturally wanted to take into account the vast expanse of BLACK in the image frame versus the relatively small circle of bright white light, and hence decided there was much overexposing to be done. The result... still totally pitch black night sky, with a violently blown-out solid white disc in the middle.

In reality, since there's nothing worth exposing in the dark regions (ie. night sky), you'd be surprised at how quick a shutter speed you can use in order to get the good balance of light content between the bright and dark spots on the moon. My first images of the moon (summer '03) were shot with a high ISO, thinking I needed mucho light in the image. By the time I closed the lens up (higher f-number, letting in less light) and sped up the shutter speed to drop the amount of light, I still ended up with a grainier image than I'd have liked, thanks to the noise that creeps in with high-ISO values. Later attempts used much lower ISO numbers (again, can't remember what was used on this link I posted).

(edit: I just saved the image on my HD here at work and looked up the EXIF... ISO was 200 for minimal noise and grain, 1/350 second shutter speed with my lens stopped down to f5.6. Looking back, I could have maybe stopped it further to f8.0 or slightly higher, since this is where I felt my 80-200mm was stellar in sharpness, but too late now... I'll try again one of these days with my 70-200mmVR).


My recommendations? A very sturdy tripod, looking up any reference to recommendations on where your lens' sweet spot is, sharpness wise. Shoot maximum resolution and maximum quality (NEF if possible, although you need the post-processing s/w to convert it to a viewable and distributable JPG or TIFF). This image of mine was a 12 megapixel RAW CCD file (Nikon calls it their NEF format, for Nikon Electronic Format, whereas Fuji saves them as .RAF files for RAw Fujifilm) so I'm sure there was no post-processing done in-camera. I think it was a 100% crop, which means there was no resampling done by any image editor during resizing... it's pixel-for-pixel what the CCD picked up.

One more thing... I can't remember if it was done on this particular shot, but I got into the habit of setting up my camera and then using the timer function. I was thinking some of my prior shots picked up some camera motion simply because of the force of my finger pushing on the shutter release button. I had no remote trigger cable at the time but I figured using my fairly heavy tripod was sufficient to absorb any vibrations I might introduce into the image by my finger movement, but in the end I simply set up the timer for 10 seconds, set up the shutter speed/aperture/iso, manually focused it at infinity (or wherever my camera viewfinder indicated I was in focus), fired the trigger, and stepped back. 10 seconds later, one 1/350 second shot fired off, then I waited for it to write to the card and reviewed it, then adjusted accordingly...

Do you have any shots available online;

Springing for the 800mm seems like a steep investment, although I think it would generate some killer shots. I sold my 80-200mm AF-D ED f2.8 one-ring for around $550 US and it has the reputation of being one of the sharpest of the 80-200mm f2.8 family, with only the latest AF-S model being possibly reputed to be sharper. I'd highly recommend getting that one if you're looking not to break the bank. Although my own used-to-new ratio is dropping, I highly recommend shopping for used lenses, if anything to minimize the depreciation hit in case you ever decide to change lenses or decide a particular lens is not for you.

[TripleTransAm]

Spent the greater part of the morning playing with my newly arrived Kenko 2x teleconverter, tucked neatly between my Fuji S2 and my 70-200mm VR.

I have to be honest... I wasn't expecting much. Like I said, add more glass between your $$ lens and your camera and add the fact that you opted for a cheaper alternative than the well-reknowned Nikon-brand (ie. $$) teleconverter, and you're going to sacrifice sharpness.

The outcome: I'm blown away! This combo TOTALLY blows away the Vivitar I used to use on my 80-200mm. I can't imagine why I'd want to pay more money for the Nikon teleconverter... I was standing cozy in my living room shooting through dirty window panes (sorry Barry! ;) No outdoors for me today) and was having the time of my life. Some examples:

http://www.stevepereira.com/photo/winter/DSCF9618.jpg
My civic address is in the double digits. This is civic address 1, as seen in a 100% crop of a 12 megapixel image at 400mm!

http://www.stevepereira.com/photo/winter/DSCF9623.jpg
My neighbor's work van. A lot of detail was lost in the shrinking of the image, but I figured there isn't much interesting about having a 700 pixel-wide image of a lugnut and nothing but.

And even considering the light loss because of the magnification, it still seemed bright enough to work well at ISO 200 as a portrait setup. (my son is in his SpiderMan phase and loves these PJs, although we refuse to let him wear the 'mask' to bed for obvious reasons)
http://www.stevepereira.com/photo/winter/DSCF9605.jpg

All 40+ shots I took today were hand-held (holding the lens-mounted tripod mount as a firearm so as to avoid putting any dangerous torque on the camera body - this setup is HEAVY!).

I definitely have to recommend the Kenko Teleplus Pro 300 series of teleconverters. Being AF-S compatible, it seems to provide the side benefit of having the camera recognize the new f-stop and focal length (I ended up with a maximum aperture value of f5.6 on my camera, and my EXIF data on my JPGs shows up to 400mm instead of quitting at 200mm as with my old Vivitar and 80-200mm combo).

[Krytin]

Nice pictures and excellent 411!!!
Thanks !

[CRUZTAKER]

It was really clear last night, unussual amount of stars, and I was really tempted to try a few shots...just too damn cold.

Remember those bird shots I took (since removed from my gallery), a few of those were with the t/c. I'll see how the weather is today and perhaps give it another try.

The last time I really used it was on the cruise ship taking shots as we passed cuba. With the old 6006 I had no idea what the pics would turn out until the film came back. They were awfull to be honest.

I am glad to hear you like it.