Stupid shit Aperture says, #1,392
Sure, Aperture, I’ll get right on that. Will deleting this buggy “Aperture.app” help? [ This happens periodically, randomly. The only solution of which I’m aware is to restart Aperture and try again. ]
Photography
Nikon AF-S 18-105 notes for landscapes
Standard internet disclaimer applies: I have one copy of each of these. The Nikon 50/1.8G performs exactly as everyone says – very, very well. The Nikon 18-105, on the other hand, is possibly a bad copy; lots of people think theirs’ great, I think mine’s crap (not just versus a prime like the 50/1.8 –… Read more
Nikon D5200 firmware bugs
I like my Nikon D5200. But it has some bugs. Serious ones. For example: Hard-hang the entire camera This doesn’t appear to cause any permanent damage, but you will either have to wait a couple of minutes for it to finally recover on its own, or yank the battery to hard reboot it. The only… Read more
Axial chromatic aberration on the Nikon AF-S 80-400
Though I really like the new Nikon AF-S 80-400, and it’s excellent in terms of image quality generally, there is one place where it does fall down. Axial chromatic aberration – blue/purple fringing around bright objects. The image below is a relatively blatant example of this (and is a 100% partial crop to show the… Read more
SanDisk Extreme Pro vs Lexar Professional 600x
Tested on a D5200 in Manual mode with manual focus, ISO 100, 1/100 shutter, f/5.6, RAW. High ISO noise reduction and distortion correction were on. Both cards are 32 GB models. The SanDisk Extreme Pro allows for 21 shots in 10.0s, and takes another 13.8s to finish recording those. The Lexar Professional 600x takes 11.4s for… Read more
Nikon 18-55 vs 18-105
The contenders are: Conclusions Which to get? Neither lens is clearly better than the other, technically. They have similar features and each exceeds the other in at least some areas. But the 18-55 is slightly smaller, significantly lighter, and much more consistent in its performance. Consequently I rate it as better value, given it’s significantly… Read more
Lightroom
I’m worried for Aperture – it’s ageing, slow to get RAW support updates, does some nasty, funky shit with colours in NEFs, and can’t do some fundamental corrections (like geometric distortion). So I finally decided to download Lightroom and give it a shot. Thoughts on this: Adobe requires you make some stupid user account in… Read more