Montly archives
There's a new sheriff in town
Time for your monthly update and this time it's not about music or gaming. I know right?! Don't worry, I tried my darndest to think of something equally geeky to talk about and luckily I didn't have to think too hard ... because just today it occurred to me that I bought a new camera over a month ago and haven't even talked about it.
LOOK AT ALL MY SELF CONTROL!
So yeah, I bought a new camera. If you've been paying attention you'll see that the Officially Official Sopheava Camera Of Choice™ has upgraded from the Nikon D70 to the Nikon D300. It sounds better if you imagine a big, booming god-like voice announcing "DEEEEEE-THReeeeeeEE-HUNNNNDRED" every time you say it. Or at least it does in my head, and frankly that's enough to make me feel a little better for dropping a metric fuckton of money on this pile of camera.
In the interest of keeping this short-ish and sweet, the goods and bads ...
THE GOODS:
- The. Color. Is. Amazing. For the first time I'm capturing the fullness of color just the way I see it.
- This goes for white balance too. VASTLY improved. Like, a whole different universe of sweet, sweet different.
- Sharper photos, just cuz they are.
- Active D-Lighting. Why it has such a fancy-schmancy name I don't know ... but the gist is that the camera handles the dark/light highlights of shadows MUCH better. I should really try to take some example pix of this ... but I guess for now you'll just have to take my word that it's uberdelicious.
- I upgraded the core glass in my collection with this purchase as well. Moved up from the D70 kit lens (18-70mm) to the 18-200mm VR glass. Image stabilization for all you Canonites ftw! Sharper pix and god it's hard to take off the stupid thing because it works too well in almost any situation. Except in low light when you're going to need something fast anyway. I kept the 50mm f/1.4 just for that and am not even thinking about selling, bitches.
- And cuz I'm a sucker I got the 70-300mm VR, too. It's reaaaaal pretty, AND BIG!
- Since we're on the topic of size, larger images too: 4288 x 2848.
- Annnnnnd let's not forget the gynormous 3" LCD screen too. Yummy.
- The controls are almost identical to the D200, and if you're not familiar with the changes they made in the D200 let me try to summarize: ISO and all that other sh*t you might adjust on the fly is managed between 1 dial on the left and the 2 adjustment dials on the right you still know and love. All the corresponding data is displayed INSIDE the viewfinder so you're not constantly pulling the camera away from your face to change, oh I don't know, say the ISO. Handy.
- Live-view on the LCD for all you noobs. You know how the handheld cams display the live image preview on the back? Yeah. That.
THE WHAT THE F*Ks?
- Any camera over $2k should be full frame imho. You won't change my mind on this but let's be honest. Do you really NEEEEED a full frame camera at $2k? Prolly not. Weak.
- Pricepoint. Yeah it's a lotta money but you might as well just file "pricepoint" under the "GOODS" too since you're gettin' some pretty snappy features.
- ... that's all I got. For now.
Oops, and one last category. The OOPS, THINGS I WASN'T PREPARED FOR *smacksforehead*:
- Make sure you update your Vista NEF codec or viewing thumbnails will crash Explorer and you won't know why. Might as well do it now anyway and get it over with.
- Get ready to haul out the kizzash for Photoshop CS3. Adobe decided not to support the D300 in CS2 so you have no choice but to upgrade. You're fine if you're running Lightroom, the updates there are free. But you might as well go ahead and download the Lightroom update now too while you're at it.
- So I knew that image file sizes would increase dramatically, as moving from 6.1MP to 12.3MP tends to do that ... but yeah. You can never have too much memory. Might as well stop buying 1 and 2GB storage cards and head straight for the 8GB section. You're only going to need more in the long run ... trust me.
- The Crumpler 7 Million Dollar Home is startin' to get a little cramped. Either I need a bigger bag or I need to sit down and start to do some thinking that's based in reality for a change. Down to 4 core lenses and going to keep it there for a while. Problem solved, the bag is fine (and still my mostest favoritest).
- And lastly, I wasn't prepared for HOW MUCH IT'S CHANGED MY LIFE! Honestly, it was such a huge jump over the D70 I can't even imagine picking up that beautiful, but sad, D70 anymore. It sure was good to me but I'm a spoiled brat and really, REALLY love the new gear. Everything is bigger, better, faster, easier, clearer, prettier shinier etc. etc.
You'll be finding (and already have been!) photos from the D300 all over the photoblog. Lots more to come, clearly, which I suppose means I'll be photoblogging again for the forseeable future. Lucky you!