I used my new monopod properly for the first time last weekend, wandering along the cliff-tops of Santa Cruz and so forth, and two things caught me by surprise: It doesn’t really yield better results than hand-holding (at up to 300mm, or 450mm in 35-equiv.). Apparently I can already hand-hold steady enough, in concert with… Read more
I went in to the camera store speculatively looking for an old, $50-or-so AI-s lens for star photography, and walked out with a way more expensive lens (Nikon 10-24) and a new camera entirely. I suck at this. My first impression is that the lens is fun, and I’ve been grumpy at work because I… Read more
After my prior investigation into SD card performance, I wondered if shooting JPEG instead of RAW would make a meaningful difference on both “buffer capacity” and write rates. What I found was rather interesting, for many reasons. All the following use “JPEG Fine” except where otherwise stated. At ISO 100, with noise reduction & distortion… Read more
SanDisk Ultra 32 GB vs Lexar Professional 600x 32 GB. On paper the Lexar is at least twice as fast for writes, thrice as fast for reads. Test setup: Nikon 55-300 @ 55/4.5 switched to manual focus (and slightly out of focus), VR on, in Program mode in a dimly lit room, framed roughly the… Read more
In the J3 & S1‘s favour: In the V1‘s favour: Other notes of interest: These new additions are odd, to me. No flash. At all. That’s just weird. Compact cameras live and die on the quality of their night photos, and it’s hard to see where else Nikon is going with the Nikon 1 line… Read more
In the D5200‘s favour (in roughly decreasing order of importance): In the D3200‘s favour: In neither’s favour: Other notes of interest: What’s not known yet: Update: Nikon have stated it’s an “all new” sensor, from Toshiba (as opposed to the Sony sensor in the D3200). So it could be interesting. There’s no particular reason to believe it’s… Read more
I’ve had a circular polarising filter on my 55-300 since I got it, since it came with one. It also came with a UV filter, which I’ve never used. I also bought a circular polarising filter for my 18-55, on the assumption that the filter made everything unequivocally better. But then I started to pay… Read more