One feature I often contemplate is the usefulness of the whole dual-card slots thing, a feature you only find in high-end cameras. Here's one thing to think about:

If you could put TWO CF cards in your camera, which is for now exclusively a D3 feature but not for long I'd assume, ...would you be less paranoid about using larger size cards?

Personally, I'm not comfortable shooting more than ~500 images per memory card. Right now that's a 4 gig card if I'm shooting JPG, or an 8-12 gig card if I'm shooting RAW. I'd be paranoid to have to start using 16 gig cards, for example, if I wanted to never have to change cards. But if I had dual card slots, I'd feel a lot more brave, and I'd probably plunk down for some 16 gig and maybe even 32 gig CF cards! It would be quite an advantage to have to never swap out memory cards, I think. The camera itself would see less wear in the card slot, which would be good, and the memory card would be less likely to get lost or damaged.

Just some food for thought, for those who like to fantasize about really expensive gear...

=Matt=

I don't want to start any vicious rumors, but, ...oh pshh what am I saying, I wanna start a vicious rumor!

Apparently wedding photographer superhero Becker has come *back* to the dark side, now shooting with a Nikon D3. Congrats, dude! The geek inside me is oh-so-jealous...

=Matt=

Shameless plug:

www.thebecker.com

[EDIT] Alright, as you may know if you follow the [b]log, Becker was actually borrowing a friend's D3 for a "test drive", and is now looking for a Canon 1Ds mk3 to test drive too. So he's not officially a D3 owner / shooter, YET. Bets on his final decision, anybody?

=Matt=

Anyone who's ever been in a relationship knows that sending mixed signals will drive the other person nuts. Nikon is doing exactly this with their current lineup.

What made this weird thought and analogy pop into my head? Well I was browsing the newly redesigned Nikon website, browsing through their lenses, and then I hopped on over to the Sigma website to check out some lens specs over there.

I realized something that I've already known subliminally- Sigma has THREE HSM prime lenses made specifically for DSLR's, a 30mm f/1.4 HSM, a 10mm f/2.8 HSM fisheye, and a 4.5mm f/2.8 HSM circular fisheye.

While, on the other hand, Nikon has NO DX prime lenses other than the 10.5 DX fisheye, which is NOT SWM even. In fact none of Nikon's primes shorter (wider) than 100mm are SWM. I take that back, the new 60mm macro is SWM. But Nikon, what about the legendary 85mm f/1.4? The stellar 85mm f/1.8? Not to mention the bread-and-butter 50mm lenses, and the holy grail 28mm f/1.4?

With the death of screw-driver autofocus arriving in the form of DSLR bodies like the D40, D40X and D60, Nikon, you really need to act fast or people are going to start to get confused in this relationship. We need to start seeing SWM prime lenses. (which is AFS for all intents and purposes)

START by coming out with a 50mm f/1.4 AFS, to just barely start catching up with the likes of Sigma and Canon. Then if you want to kick some serious butt, come out with a 50mm f/1.2 AFS that doesn't have the major shortcomings that Canon's version has, and then for some REAL wow factor, make a 50mm f/1.8 VR. That would break new ground for sure, and I'd be the first in line to buy one.

THEN maybe move on to wide angle, and resurrect the mythical 28mm f/1.4, for all the D3 shooting pros out there, and PRETTY PLEASE also make a 16mm or 18mm f/1.4 or f/1.8 AFS DX lens, for ME! I'm dying for this lens!

Sincerely,
=Matt=

Well, it's finally HERE!!! Okay let me clarify. It's not actually on the shelves yet, but it has been listed on Adorama and B&H, so we can finally get a feel for the street price...

(drumroll...) $690.

Nearly seven hundred bucks? Ouch! Dang, Nikon, that is STEEP for an f/3.5-5.6, semi-plastic lens!

We can only hope that this means the one thing that would make up for the price tag- This must be one razor sharp lens!

I'm pretty hopeful, and here's why:

~ The Nikon 18-200 DX VR costs about the same. A lens with WAY less zoom that costs about the same has got to be better SOME how, and image quality is about all that CAN be different.

~ The Nikon 18-135 DX (non VR) costs a few hundred LESS than the 16-85, and is already extremely sharp, even wide open. The 16-85 adds VR, yes, but hopefully image quality is also improved...

~ The Canon 17-85 EF-S IS costs a few hundred less as well, and is again decently sharp. Yet again, the 16-85 is priced AS IF it were a nearly professional grade lens, so one can only assume that it excels.

All Nikon needs to do now is DELIVER! Normally I would be first in line for a piece of gear like this, but I spent WAY too much on gear last year so I'm going to try and keep the expenses down in 2008. But we'll find out soon enough! Rest assured I'll post again as soon as I see the first reports of image quality...

Take care,
=Matt=

I see it all the time. Someone posts a blog entry saying "oh my gosh oh my gosh, guess what just came in the mail! I just got my new... (insert your choice of $1000 lens or $2000 camera, etc. etc. here) ...It's so awesome, bwahahaha, I know you're all jealous! I rock!" Okay maybe most people aren't THAT over-the-top, but some are.

Or there's always people who IM you ten times telling you they just got their new toy, and how awesome it is, and the whole saga that was involved with acquiring the item...

Yes, people, today I'd like to talk to you about TACT. Some people may not care, of course, because after all it's THEIR blog, and "If you're jealous then that's YOUR fault, not mine!" But personally, I just know how annoyingly annoying it can be when people continually talk about how amazing their new piece of equipment is.

Maybe I'm a little more heavily subjected to it, because so many people come to me for recommendations and I try to give honest, useful, practical recommendations, with a little bit of THRIFT in mind. You don't need a Macbook Pro if you're just going to surf the web and take notes in class. You don't need an f/1.2 prime lens if you can barely put an f/3.5 kit zoom to good use. And even if you are going to use your computer for imaging, even if you do make pretty stellar images, if you're barely making ends meet then you're probably much better off with a standard Macbook, or an f/1.8 or f/1.4 lens...

Hmm, I didn't even realize I had THAT thought pattern in my head until I wrote it down. But I guess it's right, and what I'm trying to say is- If you're AWESOME at what you do, then it's a lot easier to NOT be annoyed when you brag about getting that 30" LCD monitor etc. etc. Whereas if you stink at what you do, yet go on and on about how the new equipment will help you make amazing images, then maybe it's time to adjust "focus"...

Of course, I must disclaim, there's still nothing wrong with being "average" at your hobby or whatever, and buying expensive toys. If you've earned your keep, if you've worked hard to make money, then by all means you deserve the reward of some expensive toys! As I like to say, money is for spending! Just be sure to consider others when you talk about your new stuff, try to be a little tactful.

I'm almost the opposite of this- I'm so busy that I let my new purchases pile up before I get around to mentioning them on my blog or to friends, it usually ends up being "oh by the way, I got the D300 last week..." or whatever. In fact I regularly get people who are like "What the heck? Since when did you get (insert gear purchased 2-3 months ago here)????"

Being too busy to brag is part of it indeed, but also I like to THINK that I use a little tact, and try to use the overall feel of my blog in general to emphasize the fact that it's not about the equipment, it's about the artist.

Thank you.
=Matt=

Dan (Muzikman03) texts:

"I just cleaned a D3 sensor. I almost had to re-clean it because of all my drool."

ROFL!!! True dat, true dat...

=Matt=

Well, I managed to do it again! I shot an event with my cameras out of sync. I've got two flippin' sweet Nikon DSLRs with a way-cool "world time" menu, and somehow I managed to switch only my D300 to east coast time, while leaving my D200 on pacific time. And I was so proud of myself for getting in the habit of synchronizing my cameras down to the very second once every week or two! As amazingly convenient as it is to shoot with two cameras at once, and as critical as it is to have a backup camera, period, sometimes I loathe having to deal with the drawbacks of multiple bodies...

A 3 hour time discrepancy can be DEVASTATING to your image organization, let me tell you... That'll put your reception photos all jumbled up with your ceremony photos, and you'll want to shoot yourself just THINKING about how long it'll take you to manually organize it all.

Well, with 2,600+ images, I told myself there had to be a better way. So, after hunting around on the internet, I started finding programs that can indeed adjust the "time stamp" in an image file's metadata. Then I discovered that many of them were for Windows only, so I started over searching for Mac compatible programs. After a few programs promised being able to edit the time stamp but could not be recognized by Bridge CS3, I discovered that Lightroom is supposed to be able to do this! Sweet! Well, somehow () my PC's clock is "stuck" in May of '07, so I still have some trial period left. I transferred everything to my PC, "imported" (boo) all my D200 images into Lightroom, transferred them BACK to my Mac and viewed them with Bridge CS3, only to discover that the time stamp had gone totally berserk. Some images were still an hour behind where they should be, some were now an hour ahead. Hmm, I guess the initial beta / trial version of LR had a couple bugs?

After burning a half-day on all that fruitless frustration, I decided to just clutter my Mac with the latest version of LR, and downloaded the 30 day trial. Luckily, it WORKED! I still had to go through a whole bunch of import/export nonsense, but it was totally worth it. Since my D200 and D300 WERE INDEED synchronized down to the very second, and I had simply forgotten to tell my D200 it was on the East Coast, the images fell into perfect place once I added 3 hours.

What a relief!

I'm sure there are some of you out there who already knew that LR could do this. Please don't laugh too hard! Or, even if you do, I'll be okay because I know there are also people out there who haven't even shot with two cameras at once and given any thought to this kind of a problem... Oh, the drama of being a professional photographer! But, my clients pay to have the job done right, and as a professional I need to be able to overcome ANY obstacle, right?

Moral of the story: I guess Lightroom is good for something! I just WISH that Adobe would break down and offer a version of Lightroom that doesn't require importing, or a version of Bridge that has the small features like this, the ability to edit a time stamp. As much as I joke about hating it, LR is a great program with some strong advantages, and I hope that future versions of LR (or BR) bring me closer to workflow nirvana!

Until next time,

=Matt=

PS: Check my main blog (link at the top of the page) for images from this gorgeous Black Rock Mountain (GA) wedding! More coming soon!

Well, here goes nothing! I'm about to do something that all laptop owners ought to do every few years- replace my hard drive! Laptop hard drives take so much abuse, being bumped around and moved all over the place, and nowadays people leave them on for days / weeks on end... My laptop hard drive is a good ~2 years old, and I have really abused it both physically and workload-related...

Some people's philosophy is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!" and there is indeed merit to this- I've obviously proven that my current HD is very reliable, and its a potential risk to replace a "perfectly good" hard drive with a brand new one that COULD be a lemon. However I'm more of the belief that "good things never last", and indeed all hard drives DO fail eventually, it's just a matter of when. So I replace hard drives, just in case they're actually a ticking time bomb and I don't even know it.

Now, all you computer savvy bloggers out there who maybe built your first PC when you were in kindergarden and know WAY more than I do about hard drives and failure rates and statistics etc. might say I'm a little too paranoid. Well, I don't know much about computers, indeed, I just know that my data, especially truly priceless images, are very very important to me. I may have a bit of that apple mentality of "just throw a lot of money at something, and it'll be okay..." but I guess that's the price I pay for simplicity and peace of mind. I'm a camera geek, not a computer geek.

So, the next time I come online and blog, I'll be running on a 120 gig, 7200 RPM / 8MB cache 2.5" drive. I would have gotten the 160 gig but it was $60 more for 40 more gigs, and I was already paying a bit of a premium buying it in-store as opposed to on NewEgg.com.

If this all works out, I guess this means I'm pretty much sticking with my little black Macbook, instead of upgrading to a Macbook Pro like I wanted to. That's okay, I saw the new 24" iMac while I was at the store and oooh, I totally want one of those now!!!

Alright, see you on the other side!
=Matt=

[EDIT] Works great so far! (~5 days) I've been loading lots of data onto the new drive, downloading many gigs of images to it, etc. etc. and it runs fine. Not sure I notice any speed improvement over the previous 5400 RMP versus the new 7200 RPM, but I haven't focused on it, either...

The drive, for those who asked, is a Fujitsu, the exact same brand of drive that came OUT of the macbook, ironically.

Now to see if this drive can stand the test of time!

Okay, everybody knows that most all Nikon DSLR's can command Nikon flashes wirelessly, this is as old news as the ~4 year old D70... And, this control has come a long way, now with the D300 being able to trigger a flash and fire an image with almost no delay, not to mention the ability to control two different groups of wireless flashes separately, in TTL if you want, while dialing in compensation from the camera. Woohoo!

But what you may not know, and what I didn't realize until a few days ago, is that the semi-useless CANON pop-up flashes as well as ANY other camera flash, including point-and-shoot cameras, are all capable of a similar function. All you need is a NIKON SB800 flash!

You see, there is a wireless remote mode / setting on the SB800 called "SU4". I thought that mode required you to attach a little receiver to the hotshoe of the flash to make it compatible with other brand commanders, but actually it works the opposite way- SU4 mode allows the SB800 alone to be wirelessly commanded by ANYTHING. Even when Canon DSLR's do their little autofocus strobe thing, the SB800 blazes away too! (And blinds you if you're not expecting it...)

You can only use the flash in fully manual M mode, or the ghetto-auto A mode, not TTL. But still, you CAN set as many different remotes as you want, and as long as they're in the infra-red line of sight of the commanding pop-up flash on your Canon, Pentax, Sony, Olympus, etc. camera body, you're going to get some crazy-good lighting! The pop-up flash can be left in TTL mode, where it belongs. It doesn't even know that there are other flashes out there that are about to go off!

I recommend that you get your SB800 from Adorama or B&H, by the way... Or KEH.com if you want used, of course...

Good luck and take care!

=Matt=

Well, if it's not a COMPLETE DEAD GIVE-AWAY, I don't know what is. Sony announced that they're making a 24 megapixel, full-frame sensor. It is a CMOS design, so hopefully it will ride on the back of all this low noise @ high ISO technology that Canon and Nikon have both recently developed. It is also said to be capable of 6.3 images per second output, thanks to a new analog-to-digital conversion method. Also, of course, the claim is that it will have very low noise, but only time will tell HOW low the noise is...

Everybody knows that Nikon usually gets their sensors from Sony, save the case of the D2H series and the D3 which are exclusive Nikon designs. And everybody knows what a theoretical D3X camera body would be, if Nikon were to dream it up: a high-resolution competition to Canon's 1Ds mk3, just like Nikon's "high resolution" D2X whas an attempt at competition to Canon's 1Ds mk2... But this time, if the D3X does indeed release with 24 megapixels and 6 frames per second, in the already killer D3 body, It sure WILL be a competitor to the Canon!

My prediction is that this camera will come within 6-12 months. I'm worried, however, because this COULD mean that Nikon will yet again delay the debut of an AFFORDABLE full-frame DSLR, while Canon is poised to release their one OR TWO replacements to the 5D any day now. Thom Hogan estimates that we may not see an affordable full-frame Nikon until 2009.

Anyone waiting for Canon or Nikon's forthcoming affordable full-frame bodies, it's going to be a long and agonizing spring / summer, indeed. Can't say it really afffects me, though. I'm planning to spend ~$1500 on a second D300 in 6-12 months, rather than $3000-4000 on whatever "affordable" FX DSLR comes out. I'm not saying DX is as god as or better than FX, I'm just saying it's GOOD ENOUGH, and thousands cheaper. And as I have outlined recently, there are indeed actual ADVANTAGES to DX other than just the low price. Advantages that indicate I may stick with DX permanently for almost all of my shooting.

What DOES affect me is Ebay's new, strict, STUPID rules: Sellers can no longer leave negative feedback for buyers, PERIOD, and, buyers have the advantage of a freeze on a percentage of their paypal funds while they have a "reviewing period" in which they can test out the item they've purchased, and effectively do a sort of "charge back" if they're not completely happy.

I know it's with good intentions, but to me it just sounds like an act of desperation to try and drive buyers, even unscrupulous ones, to use Ebay. I don't think I'll ever be selling anyting (expensive) through Ebay again. I guess I can still sell random $10 junk if I need to, but there's no way I'd sell a 3-4 digit price camera or lens...

Ehh I better get back to work...
=Matt=

[EDIT]

I swear I'm never going to get any work done during PMA, what with all these new camera and technology releases!

Sony just announced the A300 and A350, and as usual they look like generic electronic devices, almost ugly if you ask me. Especialy the vertical grip, it just looks WEIRD. And in general, the cameras just look so plastic, like a generic universal remote made in China. Juuuuust putting forth an opinion, that's all!

And the cameras are 3 and 2 frames per second, the 2 FPS being the high-resolution (14 megapixel) model aimed at semi-pros. 2 FPS for semi-pros? I'm sorry, my old D70 did 3 FPS in 2004. So, it looks like for 2008 I'll definitely be recommending the Pentax K200D, with it's weather-sealing and 11-point AF... (with NINE cross-type AF points, that's what the flippin' D2X had!!!)

To Sony's credit, however, the cameras are under $1000, AND they've implemented live view in a REVOLUTIONARY way: They've simply added a 2nd sensor, right up next to the viewfinder, so that you can retain full-speed autofocus and shooting. This pretty much makes ALL live view, from Canon, Nikon and Olympus, seem like a complete joke... For those who actually shoot fast-action in live view mode, that is. Which I don't think I'll ever need to do...

Alright back to work AGAIN...