Hmmm. I wonder what my old D80 body would go for…
Man, what a bunch of Ashton Kutcher lovers up in this bizznitch.
Canon 4 lyfe, yo.
ps. Old lenses suck, and this can be especially true when using old 35 mm lenses on cropped sensor digital bodies, so I’m not sure why people get all bent when manufacturers change their mount systems every quarter century or so.
Partly because there are some great prime lenses that are old Nikkors that work great on the D80 and D90. Why would I want to spend the coin to upgrade when I have perfectly good lenses already? Heck, old Pentax primes work great on their bodies.
Took the new camera out on a hike for the first time today. Shot manual/A-preferred/S-preferred the whole day and out of over 100 pics taken, I think only about 30 of them came out decent or better. It was a very gray/overcast day and I had a lot of trouble getting the sky to not overexpose. I’m not sure what adjustments need to be made to get around that.
Here are some of the pics that came out pretty well:
Bee says hello to flower. I really love this one, but I owe a lot of it to luck. It also looks better in full-size.
A little overexposure in the sky, but one of the better landscape shots of the day.
The execution on this pic could have been a little better, but I like the idea. The bluebells are kinda out of focus and maybe I could have sped the shutter speed up just a tad for the water to come out a little clearer.
The easiest thing is to look at the LCD after the shot, and see if it shows the sky blowing out (blown out areas should be flashing – some highlights are normal, but not whole regions of the picture). If it does, use the exposure compensation to shoot a little darker.
If you’re actually not blowing out the sky, and it’s just too bright, you can fix that in Lightroom, by using a graduated filter thing to darken up just the sky in a nice way. (Technically, you can actually put one of these over your lens to allow you to not blow out the sky while still fully exposing the ground, but that always seems like a hassle to me.)
I decided to go with an 18-200 VR first and then a 50mm 1.8 second for initial lenses. Ordered an 8GB extreme III card and reader through amazon. The camera and card will arrive on Wednesday. Then I will use my old 35-85 (I think that’s the range) and check it out.
Why would I use Lightroom over Elements 7? I own Elements 7, just curious about the advantages Lightroom offers. I can purchase an entire CS4/web tools/adobe suite through my University for around $300, but Elements at around $70 fit my budget a little better. Never really considered Lightroom for some reason.
Lightroom is a tool optimized for photographers, and it does things that photographers need to do in ways that photographers think of them. Photoshop is a tool for artists that can also do stuff to/with photographs, and it’s much more awkward to use for photograph management and processing purposes.
Lightroom is awesome, especially if you shoot in RAW, but it will take you a while to realize how awesome it is. It is one of those pieces of software you had no idea you needed until you’ve used it for a while and then you realize you can’t live without it.
Beyond just the tools issue (as mkozlows mentioned, the tools are laser focused on things photographers are going to use while dropping the per-pixel focused drawing bits of Photoshop), Lightroom is mostly about workflow. Every edit you make to a photo in Lightroom is non-destructible, it keeps your old original photo around so you can back out of changes. Edits made with Lightroom’s own tools are just a stack of commands with infinite undo. Occassionally you’ll need to do destructive editing in the form of loading a picture into Photoshop (if you need to do heavy editing like remove a person from an image or something) or by using one of the Lightroom plugins that isn’t non-destructive, but even then Lightroom has a wonderful stack system that allows you to group different versions of a photo together maintaining various old versions in case you ever want to make changes in the future. Obviously this sort of thing eats up more disk space than post-processing images and tossing out the original and temporary versions, but once you get used to this it is so very very great and disk space is super cheap.
Lightroom also has one of the best print engines there is if you have any interest in printing at home. You have to be careful in setting it up (in that you basically have to disable any and all adjustments your printer driver may think are good ideas), but the output is phenomenal if you set it up correctly.
I know I sound like an Adobe shill here, but I highly recommend that anyone who takes photos (especially with DSLRs in RAW mode) should check out Lightroom. Download the demo from Adobe and use it enough that you get past the point where you’re a little frustrated that it changes the way you’ve been doing things, because once you start using Lightroom the way it was meant to be used, you’ll understand why so many people who take photos recommend it so highly.
It’s a consideration, but you can get an adapter ring for a couple bucks.
Nah, get the infrared remote. It will allow you to do both hands-off tripod shots (macro, long exposure) as well as good old fashioned group shots with you in the picture. And it’s tiny.
Yeah, but those suck. They’re fiddly, and prevent you from using your lens hood.
Nah, get the infrared remote. It will allow you to do both hands-off tripod shots (macro, long exposure) as well as good old fashioned group shots with you in the picture. And it’s tiny.
It’s not always ideal, for instance you often have to wrap your hand around to the front of the camera to point the remote right at the photo diode, but it’s still the way I’d go.
I am actually now thinking about getting the 70-200 2.8 Sigma lense and a 1.4x converter. Anybody use this combination or these converters before?
I had a 35-300mm Sigma lens for my old film camera and noticed a definite improvement when I got the Nikon lens with my D80. Especially at full zoom there was noticeable darkening around the corners and the photos just didn’t seem as sharp. Granted it was about $200 instead of $900 for the Nikon, so it’s pretty much a matter of getting what you pay for. But if you have the money, I’d stick with Nikon.
I shoot everything in RAW now just because Lightroom is indeed that awesome. Being able to remove the white balance variable from the equation is reason enough, but the fun doesn’t stop there. It’s pricey for the amateur, but worth it.
The 70-200 Sigma 2.8 is pretty highly praised by everyone, especially given the price difference between it and Nikon’s 2.8 zooms at similar range. The drawback seems to be in focusing speed, but since this will be used for animal/wildlife stuff not sure that will be a huge deal.
For you lightroom users, do you recommend any books or tutorials to get started with it? I am going to install the demo this weekend. I can get it for $99 through academic discount, so I am going to give it a serious look.
Some good stuff here: Adobe Help Center
There was another video series I liked too but I can’t seem to find it atm.
Thanks!
Anecdotal story: I recently picked up a Nikkor-P 105mm lens circa 1969. It’s pre-AI, but the last owner milled a 3cm strip of metal off the lens so that it would be compatible with current Nikon mounts. I’ve never seen a sharper lens in my life; the portraits it takes are absolutely amazing – and it’s 40 years old.
Well, my D80 arrived this evening. Nice looking box, everything packed professionally, except…there is no battery anywhere to be found! I’ve ripped through all of the boxes and can’t find it. Will contact Adorama tomorrow, but in the meantime will need to shell out $60 for a battery to see if my camera works. Sigh.
Can’t really complain because the camera looks as good as new and it cost me $574. Just hope it works.
Spare battery is pretty smart purchase anyhow, so no worries about the extra purchase. :) Hope you enjoy.