Images From Precarious

iPhone App Round Up for Photographers

Anyone who knows me will tell you I am not a fan of Apple computers. Those same people will testify to the fact that I don’t often put down my iPhone. Double standard? A little bit. But there’s a good reason for it and it’s mostly (surprise surprise) to do with photography.

There are a ton of fun and quirky apps out there but for serious photographers of all types there are a few that you really must have and this handful of apps almost single handedly convinced me to continue on with an iPhone when it came time to upgrade a few weeks ago.

I’ll skip the cutsie ones that everyone likes to play with (like Hipstamatic) and give you the four apps that I don’t leave home without.

 

1. Camera+

Easily my most used photo app because I use it to shoot and edit every photo I take with my phone. It’s a big step up from the standard Apple camera app and lets you get the most out of your phones camera. Aside from shooting and editing it also makes sharing photos quick and easy.

 

2. Light Meter

Not much to explain here. It’s an app that essentially slaves the iPhone camera’s built in light meter and give you the exposure information. It’s not a replacement for a real light meter in serious circumstances but as a backup or when you’re shooting for fun it’s one of those ‘good enough’ replacements that will get you in the ball park. It just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to know I always, always have a light meter with me. Now if they would just add a PC jack…

 

3. Viewfinder Pro

Same as before, pretty self-explanatory but incredibly handy. Sure you look less artsy using this app to frame up your shots rather than your fingers in a little square. But then again, you also look like less of a suicide risk.

 

4. PhotoBuddy

This one is a gem. Need to know something? This app can tell you. Sunset? Guide numbers? Bellows and filter factors? Got you covered. My personal favorite feature is the ‘slate’ which gives you a screen with the date, time and location (including GPS coordinates) for easy inclusion in a shot with your colour checker or something. It has a ton of other features as well and is really the definition of indispensable.

 

So there’s the quick and dirty on iPhone apps every photographer can benefit from.

Now some housekeeping. I’ll be posting articles once a week between now and Christmas and if you follow Nikon at all you probably already know there are big things in the works as far as tantalizing (we hope) new gear. So there will probably lots of news, opinions and comments to post as well between now and the New Year.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that summer is kind-of-sort-of-pretty-much over. Back to the grind folks.

 

Cheers,

Trevor Lewis

The Digital Zone System

A recent business portrait. Carefully lit and metered. It also happens to be my Dad.

 

Ansel Adams is dead. So is his spiritual successor, Galen Rowell. What they left behind in prints and negatives is not, in my mind, as significant as the technical endowment that they bestowed upon photography. Both men also left behind impressive legacies as outdoorsmen, authors and conservationists but for the scope of this article we will focus on the technical tool they gave us in the zone system and its relevancy to current digital technologies.

The history of the zone system is long, distinguished and much written about since its creation by Ansel Adams and Fred Archer in 1940. What we need to know is that it was developed as a method for precisely exposing, developing and printing black and white sheet film with the intention of producing a scene in a predictable, controllable way that the photographer could 'visualize' while looking at the scene, days, months or years before a final print might be made.

Today’s photographer, with a fully automated camera, has largely eschewed the zone system as a complicated, archaic, black and white 'film' system. While in reality the zone system is a practical, applicable system that could save digital photographers from themselves (and over-processing) if only they spent a bit of time learning to use it.

There are a few changes that have to be made to the zone system in a digital world. The system has to be reversed; the precedent has been set for this by colour transparency film. The major change that must be made is to expose for the highlights rather than the shadows and to then process/print for the shadows. The technical nuances of the zone system would take a book to explain but by making this simple switch the rest of the zone system is applicable to digital photography and inkjet printing.

The largest hindrance to the use of the zone system currently is the need for careful record-keeping, metering and absolute technical knowledge of the equipment. Careful metering is almost a forgotten art, equipment goes untested and record keeping, while easier than ever thanks to metadata is not something I see photographers doing with digital media. If a photographer does learn to meter, tests their equipment and keeps records of their shooting/processing/printing, the zone system will provide the ultimate in control of digital images just as it did with black and white sheet film (and significantly more than roll film thanks to digital images ability to process each frame individually).

While Ansel Adams and Fred Archer designed the zone system for black and white sheet film, people like Galen Rowell recognized its universal usefulness and used it successfully, along with graduated neutral density filters of his own design, with colour roll film to produce stunning images. Galen was the next Ansel Adams in many ways. We now need someone to bring the zone system and that type of ingenuity to digital. So if Galen was the next Ansel, who will be the next Galen Rowell?

--

Some foood for thought. This was an article I was assigned for school and is exactly 500 words in length. Hopefully I got my point across, if not all the technical details.

 

I'll be back. Later.

Going Back

I'll skip my usual wordy ways and keep it simple: go back and edit old photos, you've probably gotten better at it.

 

Waiting

The Villian

Harsh

 

Sideways Look

 

The Lightroom sharpening articles are still coming. Until next time.

 

 

Cheers,

Sharpening RAW: Part I

He thinks he's in GQ. I'm shooting like a hipster. It sorta almost works.

 

Sharpening is a very misunderstood subject, especially when it comes to RAW files. I suppose this is probably because no one ever really explains it other than to say “it makes your photos sharper”. I suppose this is true, but hardly enough of an explanation. This article is the overview of sharpening using Lightroom 3 and CS5. Good? Good.

There are three types of sharpening, generally accepted as capture, output and creative. In this series we will focus on capture and output sharpening because I have never actually used ‘creative’ sharpening and thus probably shouldn’t be trying to explain it.  I suspect its code for when you over-sharpen and try and pass it off as ‘artistic’.

Capture sharpening is the first step in the sharpening process. With this step you are reintroducing the sharpness that was lost when you took the photo. I generally think of it as the step where you make the sharp things actually sharp instead of just sort of sharp. If you were to shoot Jpeg this step would be done in-camera. Shooting RAW means you have to do this yourself. It also means you have total control over this step, a very good thing. The trouble is that most people (in my experience) either only apply the default sharpening in Lightroom or apply some sort of custom capture sharpening without really having a good idea of quite what is going on.

Output sharpening is almost always ignored (less so now that it is an export option in Lightroom, but still not understood). Output sharpening is specific to (surprise) the type of output that you are using your photo for. The two most common are screen and print. The output sharpening in Lightroom is fairly straightforward and works reasonably well for screen and most print outputs. Where things get dicey is high-end inkjet printing and I’ll be covering the options for that (mostly in CS5 plug-ins).

So there’s the very basic overview.  Check back for the real meat and potatoes stuff sometime in the sort of near future.

 

S'all good.

Simplified Lightroom Workflow

Shot just the other day with my D700 and 16-35 f/4. Edited in Lightroom (of course). Taken at a local lake that is flooding in a big way right now, some of the picnic tables were under water.

I’ve been told I need to slow it down and explain things like I would ‘to a six year old’, at least in relation to my explanation of my Lightroom workflow. So here are a few paragraphs about my Lightroom system in the simplest terms, as requested.

To import photos from a card into Lightroom is the first step. I always set to ‘Copy’ photos as it is the least likely to cause irreparable damage or a mix up that will result in the loss of files. Next I set the ‘organize by date’ option and I am careful to always select the same file naming format (2010/2010-12-17 is an example) so that my photos are organized chronologically. When importing I also apply a Develop Preset called ‘General Basic’, more on that later though. The last important thing to decide on is what sort of previews you’re going to want and in all but a few circumstances I really recommend selecting 1:1 for editing purposes. Hit the import button and we’re ready to move on.

While the photos are importing I am already sorting them using the ‘pick’ and ‘reject’ flag system. A photo I want to keep gets a white ‘pick’ flag (hotkey p in the Library) and one that I am sure I do not want gets a black ‘reject’ flag (hotkey x). The easiest way to do this is to use the Library Filter, select Attribute and then select the grey ‘un-flagged’ flag (slight irony). This will show only the photos that you have not yet flagged in the grid or loupe view and whenever you either pick or reject (p and x hotkeys) a photo it will disappear, leaving only the ‘un-flagged’ photos to view. Using this technique you can really rip through photos, getting rid of those you do not want and selecting those worthy of further consideration. Once I’ve completed that I delete all rejected photos and reset the Library Filter to show all the picked photos. Realistically you don’t need to do this since only picked photos should remain at this point, but I do it anyways just to make sure I didn’t somehow miss a photo somewhere. Now I begin to flick through the photos and rate each one as either a 1 or 2-star photo. 1-star photos are keepers but not ones I plan to spend time editing anytime soon while 2-star photos are the highlights of that particular shoot. Using one hand to rate each photo using the ’1’ and ‘2’ keys on your keyboard (duhh!) and the other hand on the arrow keys to quickly flick back and forth as you make rating decisions this process can be even quicker than the previous pick/reject stage.  Once I have accomplished that I am more or less finished in the Library and the final thing I do is to set a second Library Filter so that only the 2-star photos are visible. Now we can edit.

There really is no workflow in the develop module. There are ways to save time, certainly, but each photographer is going to be so different that I won’t get in-depth about it. One thing I do want to mention is my ‘General Basic’ develop preset that I apply to all of my incoming photos. Creating a preset is quite easy, you do it on the left panel in the develop module; I’ve got dozens of them floating around for different purposes. It’s important for everyone to create a preset that is specifically for import (unless you really love Adobe’s standard settings…). I call mine ‘General Basic’ because I have some other ‘General’ presets that I often use and I’m kind of obsessive so I named them in an orderly fashion. You can name yours however you like and the settings can be whatever you like but I find having a preset specifically for import to be a great time saver. Mine applies some vibrance and clarity, a custom tone curve and some basic sharpening, all things that I find myself doing to most photos anyways and since I apply it at import it makes it easier to accurately sort and rank the photos. However you decide to develop though, eventually we all must move on to the end…

And it all ends with being exported. Maybe I’m just weird but being exported sounds like death to me. At the end of the line you get exported. Alright fine, I’m weird. Moving on. So you have these nicely sorted and developed photos and you want to print them or post them to a website or burn them to a disk or whatever it is people do these days. There are many variations and many reasons you’d do things differently than this but for workflow purposes here’s my standard method. I select the photos I wish to export and push the ‘export’ button. Shocking, yes? Directly after I do that the export dialogue pops up and asks all kinds of questions. The two most important tabs are ‘file location’ and ‘file settings’. File location is exactly what it sounds like, where do you want your exported files to go? I have a folder called ‘exports’ on my hard drive that is totally separate from the rest of my photos and all of my exported files go into that one location. This way I know where they are, can access them easily and they aren’t getting mixed up in with my master files in Lightroom. If you are working off of a single hard drive then the desktop is a good place for that file. Once you’ve got the location figured out then it’s on to the file settings. Let’s assume that these photos are going to stay on computers in some form (internet, e-mail, or just viewing on a computer in general). So you select Jpeg as the file type and sRGB as the colour space. If you do those two things you’re pretty much set. The quality is dependent on the situation but I generally find 60 to be a nice compromise between quality and size, though I often use 40 as well if I’m going to be uploading the files to the web or sending them through e-mail. We’re done except for one last thing, not as important but really simple and worthwhile. The output sharpening in Lightroom 3 is really excellent for most purposes and as long as these files are destined for a computer screen I always select  ‘screen’ and ‘standard’ in the output sharpening tab. And we’re done. Or I am at least. You may want to use some of the other options for different reasons but what I’ve described above is the bare minimum of decision making you’re going to have to go through when exporting. Final paragraph, please.

So here we are. The end of the road. Or is it just beginning? No, no it’s the end. I’m tired and the ice in my vodka is melting. So that is my extra super simplified Lightroom 3 workflow in written form. I’m left feeling that a video would be much more useful for most people and I may consider going in that direction. I’ve been told I have a voice (and a face) for radio so maybe that’ll be my ticket out of this dump. I’m still getting to my storage and backup article and I’ll also cover keywording in Lightroom sometime soon (clearly absent here). That’s all for now folks.

Sayonara.

www.PrecariousPhotography.com

Why Lightroom, When Lightroom and Lightroom 3 Work Flow

No smoke, no fire. Just hard lights. D300 and a prime lens of some sort.

Another of my pet topics and since it’s an integral part of this whole file format, storage and backup binge I’m on I figured it’d be a good time to hit on it. If you don’t know much about Lightroom then this would be a decent place to start. I’m going to assume you have the software and some images and want to know a bit more. If I get some positive feedback I'll go into more detail, consider this a very basic survey. 

Lightroom is usually classified as a DAM (digital asset management) program. It’s really not fair to classify it as such since it’s also a powerful parametric editor (this means that when you edit a file in Lightroom the original file is not actually changed, but a copy is made with your changes applied), a printing pretty decent printing RIP, a serviceable slideshow creator and last, as well as least, a web gallery publisher. We’re going to focus on the first two modules and then finish off by discussing exactly how I make use of Lightroom and a few tips.

The library module in Lightroom is the DAM portion of the software. This is a Bridge like space where your files are stored. The difference is that Lightroom is a catalogueue system, which admittedly has some drawbacks but if you’re like me and have many thousands of images to keep sorted, keyworded, rated and just generally organized it’s a heck of a system. It allows you to quickly and efficiently import and organize large groups of images. Bridge, a program that is touted as an alternative to Lightroom for DAM, is certainly usable in that capacity but not as efficient. This is because Bridge is meant to be a multimedia project builder more than anything else (hence the name ‘Bridge’, it’s literally a bridge for mixed media types). So if you can get in the habit of using Lightroom it will lead to a quicker, more efficient workflow when managing your ‘assets’ (I just call them pictures). The largest drawback has to do with the logistics of a catalogueue system and the fact that if something happens to that catalogue you are up %&# creek without a paddle. All your hard work keywording, editing and other non-permanent changes that were stored in that catalogue (file previews as well) will vanish. Easy way to fix this? Backup your catalogueue to at least one totally separate location, just like you do (or should do) with your photos. Problem solved. Next paragraph please.

The development module is really where the fun starts, I don’t have time (well I do, but I’d like to eat dinner sometime before midnight if that’s alright with you) to go deep into detail about exactly what you can do in each and every setting but I’ll cover some of the highlights. The biggest highlight for me is that it’s literally a single hotkey to take an image from the Library to Develop and back again. No other programs have to open, no minimizing of windows, just clean and seamless transitions. When you’re editing 200+ (after culling down from 500+ in the Library) photos from an event this is a real time saver/simplifier. You can also do basic corrections to a file or a group of files while still in the Library which can be handy now and again. The single most powerful tool in all of Lightroom 3 is, in my opinion, the sharpening/noise reduction feature (the two are linked). For me this tool has replaced a pair of $200 Photoshop plug-ins for 90% of my sharpening and noise reduction means, for most people its good enough for 100% of their needs. Sure you also get that with Camera RAW as well but it’s not seamlessly integrated with a DAM and printing RIP. Another neat feature of Develop is the ability to do lens corrections either through supplied lens profiles as well as manually. This can have a very clear impact on the quality of a photo, especially if your particular lens has distortion or vignetting issues.

So here’s how I use Lightroom to manage my 20,000 images. Step one is to take pictures. Step two is to import the photos directly from the card via a card reader into Lightroom using a date based file system (thus all of my photos are chronologically organized). While the files are importing I am already keywording, culling out substandard images based on a quick visual inspection (any badly missed exposures usually die right here) and maybe even doing some light (ha) editing, by the time the files are finished importing I usually have all the major keywords done and many of the misfit photos culled out. Next I continue to cull and sort files using the flag system. Every photo either gets a ‘pick’ (white flag) or a ‘reject’ (black flag); I delete all rejected photos after this step. For the final culling stage I rate each remaining photo a one star or two star. One and two star files are always unedited files in my personal system (once I edit a file I give it a rating of three, four or five stars). With that finished I begin to edit whichever files I need, usually that’s some or all of the two stars; generally one star files are things that I keep ‘just in case’ or because I think I may use them later for some other purpose, they are not the cream of the crop but I also do not feel they deserve to be deleted just yet (that is the ultimate fate of many, sadly).

Beyond what is listed above it can go in many directions, but most often I edit and do a final export without ever leaving Lightroom. If I am printing I still export to CS to use soft proofing and sometimes a sharpening plug-in. If a file is going to undergo heavy editing, the sort of thing only CS can do then it’s a simple click of Ctrl+e and you’re off to the races, but it always comes back to Lightroom eventually. It’s just the circle of life for my photos. Minus the Narniaesque talking lions, Nazi hyenas, creepy baboons and fucked up Disney sexual messaging.

Cheers mates.

www.PrecariousPhotography.com

The RAW Facts And Why Jpeg Is (Probably) A Better Bet

 One of my first photos with the D700. It took a while to get use to the ultra-shallow depth-of-field.

I’ve tried to explain the RAW file format so many times (even here on this blog in a three part series) that I am fairly certain I could do it in my sleep. What I have never done is take a look at the sort of person who doesn’t shoot Raw and isn’t going to start (and doesn’t need to).

So let’s look at everyone who owns a camera with interchangeable lenses, not just DSLR owners but you EVIL people too. Now let’s eliminate a huge chunk of people right away. If you have ever or would ever like to be paid for your photography you need to know what RAW is, how to use it and how to store it. A second large group are the high fidelity nerds (that’d be me), a lot of wildlife chasers, birders and landscapers fall into this category; we all need to be using RAW. A third group that should be using RAW are the serious hobbyists. If you have a D90/50D, D300s/7D or (god forbid) a D700/5D Mk II and more than $2000 invested in glass then you should be using RAW (if you’re not then some sleazy salesman sold you way to much &^%$ you do not need). After eliminating those three groups we are left with… the majority of the photography world. The soccer parents, casual snapshot artists, that guy that hangs around the front of Starbucks taking photos of discarded cups and plastic bags for no… apparent… reason. These people spend between $1000 and $2000 on their entire camera system and generally do not buy any extra software above and beyond whatever may come in the box. These people, these are the ones I want to talk to. Everyone else, go grab a coffee, this next paragraph isn’t for you (come back after though, we’re not done).

Alright people, here’s the deal. You make up a huge portion of the camera geeks out there, the majority actually. What no one is telling you is that you need help. An intervention. First I have to admit something though, I’m not proud of it but I tricked you into reading this with a title that made it sound all happy, like you didn’t need to know about all that nasty RAW business. What I neglected to mention is that you do need to know about the Jpeg business. Pencils out, I’m gonna learn you good. Ready, begin. When shooting Jpeg you must: always use the highest quality setting your camera has, nail the exposure and white balance (or get it as close as your skills allow) and finally, but most importantly, avoid editing as much as humanly possible. When I say “must” I mean you must if you take pride in your photos, if you really want to make use of that relatively expensive camera you bought and most importantly (in my mind) if you want to have good quality photographs of your family, friends and personal experiences for years to come. All of these “must do” things stem from one fact of Jpeg that can really ruin your day (and your precious, precious memories). Jpeg is a compressed format. What that means is that every time you re-save a Jpeg file you are compressing an already compressed file. You lose quality every time you do it and eventually (as quickly as two or three saves) you will just end up with mush, your photo will cease to exist and you will have a gross, watercolour effect with pixels the size of Kentucky (without the bourbon, sadly). The only other thing you have to do is remember to never overwrite your original Jpeg files, keep those neatly organized and unedited somewhere far away from your edited copies. So, in summation, get it right in camera and everything will be tops.

Everyone else come back now. No one brought me a coffee, did they? Jerks. Anyhow, moving right along, I brought you all back to tell you that I’ll write another article just for all of you that I said do need to know all about RAW. Possibly more than one as I think I really need to dedicate a few hundred words to storage and backup. Which leads me to yet another thing I’d like to discuss one of these days which is Iceberg Theory (curious yet? It’s not even my phrase, I’m borrowing it).

Until next time.

www.PrecariousPhotography.com

D7000 Official Announcment

Let's make this easy. It's exactly what it was suppose to be (see previous post) except it only records mono sound :( BUT it has a an audio input jack for a stereo mic. Win.

Price is set at about $1,200 to pre-order on amazon (American dollars).

Electronic Viewfinder Explained

Hand held with the 60mm VR on my D700 (I think?). That was a very rewarding hour of lying in wet grass.
 

We’re getting very close to a pair of big Nikon announcements (at least), one we know almost for certain is the D7000, which, while exciting, isn’t quite earth shattering. It will be a DSLR just like all of the other DSLRs, an upgrade rather than an entirely new product. The second announcement however could be quite a bit more exciting if the long-rumoured Nikon EVIL (Electronic Viewfinder, Interchangeable Lens) is finally announced. My money is on this type of camera being announced sometime this month, but it’s far from a sure thing (Nikon has cited historical precedents as the reason for their slow response to consumer demand for EVIL cameras, they’ve seen new camera concepts fail before). There have also been scattered rumours of a similar type of camera from Canon and Sony has already released two EVIL models that are selling like dolphin meat (to soon?) in Japan. Smaller players like Panasonic and Olympus have also had EVIL cameras out for quite some time now.

Sounds exciting, yah? Now if only the general public knew what the hell an EVIL camera was. So here’s the deal, I’m going to explain it to you and you are going to explain it to everyone you know between the ages of nine and ninety and we’ll see if it catches on. Deal? Deal.

There are actually two new classes of camera involved here because an EVIL camera is essentially a compromise between a point-and-shoot and a DSLR. First we’ll cover the stripped down DSLR models and then move on to the glorified P&S types, possibly finishing off with some wild speculation, incredibly inaccurate hearsay and a chaser of innuendo. Enough small talk, lets get to it.

So I’ll assume you know the basics of how a DSLR works: there’s a mirror and one of those sensor things and an optical viewfinder with that prism that flips everything right side up so you can see what’s going on without becoming disorienting and dying in an embarrassing manner.  The DSLR-style EVIL concept is really quite easy to grasp since the IL (Interchangeable Lens) part of the equation stays the same. The EV (Electronic Viewfinder) is what we have to get our collective minds around. Essentially what has happened is the removal of the entire mirror and prism assembly. They have replaced it with an electronic viewfinder, essentially a tiny live-view LCD inside of the camera, which allows you to focus and frame your photos in a traditional manner. The Panasonic GH1 is a great example of this and you can clearly see the benefits of such a design; you get the look and feel of a traditional SLR camera in a much, much smaller package. The GH1 is significantly more compact and lighter than a Nikon D90 or Canon 50D yet you still have the ability to change lenses, focus and frame in a manner you’re use too and best of all, you get a real sensor. In the case of the GH1 it’s a four thirds system, so it is a bit (roughly 33% in area) smaller than a Nikon or Canon DX/EF-S sensor, but it’s a heck of a step up from your camera phone or compact. Next paragraph, please.

The second class of EVIL camera is literally just a giant P&S that you can swap out the lenses on. If you gave Red Green a roll of duct tape, a compact camera, some old SLR lenses and a few minutes of alone time he could produce a reasonable approximation. These cameras (Olympus EP-1 for reference) have much larger sensors than your average compact and the ability to change lenses but other than those two things they are really no different than your typical point-and-shoot. Sure they have a few more high-end software features (re: marketing gags) that most compact cameras won’t have but they also have a much higher price point, not even taking into account the extra lenses a user may or may not purchase. All in all these are just big, bad, compact cameras that don’t suck. That pretty much sums up the compact EVIL side of things, so if at this point you are wondering what this all means… keep reading.

There are clear benefits and drawbacks to both of these new styles of camera. On the plus side, compared to a DSLR, is lower weight and mass which leads to better portability and the not to be overlooked advantage of cheaper lenses. On the downside we have lower image quality and less resilience (these things won’t take the pounding a D300s, or even a D90 or 50D will). Compared to compacts everything just turns around and goes in the opposite direction. Better image quality and much better toughness are the upside, while the downside becomes the size, weight and portability of the cameras along with cost and the fact that you even have to purchase lenses. So that’s the deal, everyone is clear? Let’s hurry up and get into the wild speculation portion of this shindig.

I speculate that EVIL cameras are the new point-and-shoots! There, I said it. That really is my honest, totally unprofessional, opinion. Traditional (ha, as if) compact digital cameras are under attack from not only these new compact EVIL cameras at the top but also from phone cameras in a huge way at the bottom of the giant camera food chain. With new technology like backside-illuminated sensors pushing camera phones into the 6 MP range, with totally decent ISO performance too boot, I really can’t see a niche for the pocket sized cameras anymore. I’m not sure they will cease to exist entirely anytime soon but the massive portion of the market they have occupied is under attack and the prognosis is not good. The average consumer who has a cell phone camera (most new cell phone cameras are in the 4 to 6 MP range) and wants something more out of his photographic experience is going to leap right over the compact camera market and head straight for an EVIL camera, especially as prices fall after this initial status-seeking ends and the EVIL cameras aren’t the new kid on the block anymore.

So there it is, everything you ever needed to know about this EVIL revolution. Now let’s just hope some of this actually comes to fruition, for my ego’s sake, at least. Oh and I’m sorry I never got to the innuendo, but it’s just so hard to fit it all in there when the subject is such a mouthful all by itself.  That’s what she said…

Later.

www.PrecariousPhotography.com

D7000 and SB-700 Are Here

It won't be *official* for another two or three hours but it's pretty much a done deal. Nikon is announcing the D7000, a new 'prosumer' camera that is slotted in between the D300s and the D90. Interesting projected features include:

• Magnesium-alloy Body (Like the D300s and other pro bodies)
• 100% viewfinder (wish my D700 had that...)
• Totally new 39 point AF system
• 1080p video at 24p (other video resolution and frame rate specs hazy)
• 20 minute video clips
• Stereo mic input (it's like Nikon read my mind)
• 6 fps
• Dual SD card slots
• A bunch of other stuff...

The SB-700 is just a baby SB-900. Nice but not mind blowing. Expect another post as soon as all of the official info is up for grabs (like prices perhaps).

I'll brb.

www.PrecariousPhotography.com