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
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
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
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
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