Thursday 8 January 2015

Nikon D750 Review - still developing

I have gone and bought myself a Nikon D750  http://amzn.to/1tOcirQ  A full frame 24mp 6.5fps 1080 @60p recording Dslr.  In my first video I am doing an unboxing, a quick opinon on its feel, weight, layout and its high iso quality in video and photos.
As of writing this blog in January 2015 is valued at just under £1700 for used via Amazon

and £1750 via Calumet and Jessops for body only.




It is not all great.
The Weight, or the combination of greater unbalance of the weight of a large lens, and the quite sharp hand grip I have quickly found that it is not entirely comfortable to hold.
Lighter cameras are a good thing to have if you are also producing or using it with Lighter Lenses.  If your camera weighed 1kg, and your lens weight 1kg, then you hand was the mid point of balance, but if your camera is now only 755g and your lens is 825g as is the case with the Tamron 24-70, then there is a little bit of a tip towards the lens which can mean a little bit of pressure on your top holding finger. Which I suspect is of no importance if you are just taking a few photos but the thought of a whole wedding 7-10 hours with it.... it could feel like a permanent bruise.

Quiet mode
This is clearly bollox, on the Shutter Release mode dial (the second dial / sub dial on the top left) there are 2 specifically labeled Q settings, Q (for quiet) and Qc (for Quiet continuous) which Neither of which do ANY THING to Dampen the VOLUME of a photo being taken.  I can't figure out if it is the sound of the Big mirror flipping up or the shutter curtain opening and closing but either way it seems like all the movement during an image capture creates a hell of a noise and the Quiet mode is completely pointless.
Who would use it?  I have been told that the point of it is that you press the shutter, it takes the photo, then you can walk to another area to release the shutter....
How in holy is that meant to be of any use?  wild life shooter will have firstly scared away the wild life within a 1k radius, and then the sound of you walking away ... well thats just pointless.
wedding photographers. well firstly the initial noise is still there, and the noise and disruption of walking out of the room for each shot to just shut the shutter... totally ridiculous.
and it is not just me complaining, here was a comment i found on the first video i looked up
Here is my video demonstrating just how bloody noisy it is.


A bit like shouting "I AM WISPERING REALLY REALLY QUIETLY, YOU CAN HARDLY EVEN NOTICE ME" and everyone looking at you like an idiot.

Max shutter 1/4000th
A lot of camera nerds have had a massive period over this. Complaining that it has CRIPPLED the camera...
Its not. But... it is a bit of a WTF? Other cameras such as the Nikon d800, D300, D700 all managed to do 1/8000th. Which is nice and fast, but is there every a situation where a 0.00025th of a second exposure just won't do and you absolutely NEED a 0.000125th of a second exposure...
NO!
however it is a full 1Stops worth difference in exposure... so for the odd occasion where you are shooting in bright daylight on a pristine white ski slope with a fast lens of f/2.8 or faster and you are at your lowest iso of 100, and wanting to keep some form of shallow depth of field. then that may be something that is of almost any importance.
On the other hand restricting the shutter speed potentially lowers the speed requirements of the shutter, potentially meaning lower wear and tear and possibly the main reason is it helps keep price down some how.
But it is a bit duff when you get cameras costing 1/4th the price able to do it.  go figure

1/200th Flash sync
Again many tears have been shed over this but Nikon does provide auto-fp settings so you can go all the way up to 1/4000th of a second with any High Speed Sync flash, aka Nikon sb-900 so for those with the gear have nothing to fear.

NO AF-on button
I was initially on the fence about this, thinking do I ever actually use it.  Then I realise I use it all the time on my canon 5Dmark2 when in liv
e view about to video and need to catch focus.
I also think it is something that is used quite bit by sports shooters.
I also find it odd considering that Nikon decided to have a total of 3 info buttons (one is a simple "?' Combined with White balance and a key sign) another is a lower case 'i' and then there is an 'info' button above the D-pad)

HOWEVER if you dive into the menu settings there is a way where you can programme the AE-L/AF-L button to actually be an AF-on button.


OMG Flare PROBLEM!!!
in the process of suffering this problem - once i have i shall report

(in the end I never witnessed this problem however Nikon did do a recall and free service to all its cameras which I had a massive problem with as shown in this video)


Awesome Things
Astonishing 24.3 Megapixel sensor giving a monster resolution of 6,016 x 4,016
you can also stick on your DX lenses and get a very respectable 10 MP images @ 3,936 x 2,624 

12,600iso Clean images
Ok not totally clean, but with just a smidgeon of Lightroom noise reduction, I am hard pressed to tell the difference between 12thousand ISO on this compared to 400ISO on a Nikon D300 or Panasonic GH4.

Big 3.2 inch LCD screen
nice and big but as mentioned before - overly complicated articulation and not touch screen and in the end only a resolution of 640x480

1080@ 60,50,30,25,24fps
YESSSSSSSSSSS

Audio markers on screen and Stereo on camera mic
the least they should all have

2 SD Card Slots
nice, cheap, fast and readily available.  

WiFi (in camera)
Handy to have but almost totally useless due to the shit app 

Now lets look at the Images we get out of it.




I will 100% confirm that the quality in the images you get all the way up to the max native iso of 12,800 are astonishingly good! The sensor performance in this camera is easily one of the best ever created.
Its ability to keep sharpness and detail at high iso, the ability to push the image in post even at high iso, and the colour accuracy it keeps at high iso is beyond any other camera i have used (including the nikon d800).


Saturday 3 January 2015

New Idea For Storing Photos

I have a new idea for what we should all do with our photos especially the non-important ones we take!

But firstly,

We all should back up our photos! ALL OF THEM!

We should save them on multiple hard drives - and have them in different locations.

No point having the same stuff on 3 hard drives and then them all burning to death in a house fire at the same time.

Ah, but is photography not about having physical copies of your photos? YES!
so Print out all your photos!
Actually print them out multiple times and store them in multiple locations.

In the end you will have boxes and boxes of hard drives and old photos of no interest in multiple locations scattered around the country,  and all for what?

For me there are 2 types of photos

Professional photos and family photos.
Family photos are not just of your family, but of friends, parties, holidays events etc all the things that in the future you may want to look back on and reminisce.
My parents have a big chest of drawers in their house filled with unorganised family photos spanning back decades and all manors of camera types and it is fun going through them once in a while (like 5 years or so). Its important to jog our memories of times past, of fashions changed, and people that were in our lives. But those memories saved as only a few photos can be either misleading or forgotten. or worse, lost, burnt or damaged by water

Modern families take hundreds of photos every year, on their phones, iPads,iPods,dslrs, point and shoots and action cams, yet few of us will ever print them out, fewer will think about saving multiple copies on different hard drives and store them in different locations, or carry out routine disk maintenance on the drives to check their functionality.

So my idea is that for those non-important photos, those photos we took on our little hill walk, or our weekend holiday trip, or the few photos we took of ourselves at our friends wedding, we should so a little video essay of what, where when, who and why we took those photos and upload it to the internet for ourselves and family to enjoy in the future.  Unless the internet dies (which it might due to a giant solar storm) or youtube goes bust (- unlikely) storing that video of the photos you took, will be saved on your computer, on a hard drive and better yet, on the internet via multiple servers thanks to youtube. or vimeo or what ever subscription free video sharing site you wish to use (personally i would advise only doing youtube)


The videos do not have to be interesting or funny, but just a reminder and a insight as to the time and location that they were shot.  If you were to die, or loose your memory this is a handy way to keep those memories alive for your children or surviving relatives.