Just thought I’d share what my AF calibration settings are, at least initially, for the Sigma 18-35/1.8 on a Nikon D5200. And some comments on the process. As you can see, on my particular D5200 it has an overall tendency to back-focus (negative adjustment values mean “the subject was closer than AF thought”). It took a… Read more
I’ve been looking forward to trying Mac OS X 10.9’s “advanced” (i.e. not-transmitting-my-life-story-to-Apple) dictation, as a potential competitor to Dragon Dictate. Unfortunately, it’s – against all odds – even more embarrassing than Siri. For example: This test, of the coolest names built-in dictation.) Nope, not important. If you’re..Reasonably built night, That was true Samaritan and… Read more
I like circular polarising filters. I hate glare, and I like strong – but natural – contrast. So until recently I used them a lot. The only downside, I figured, was the loss of light. Sometimes my photos using the filter seemed a bit soft, but I assumed that was because of the slower shutter… 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
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