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What got you into Photography?

Mar
21
2010
March 21, 2010
By 25 Comments

Everybody has a story on why they got into photography and what event contributed to purchasing their first film or digital SLR camera. In my case, the decision was based solely on one picture that my wife sent me via Google Talk while I was at work – the picture of Omar in a cradle swing. When Omar was a few months old, Lola decided to take a picture of Omar on a very old Sony point and shoot camera that I had back from 2002. As with any other point and shoot that I had before then, I never knew anything about taking good pictures – I just pointed at a subject and took a picture without worrying about camera settings, ISO, aperture, shutter speed and other photography lingo that I had no clue about.

Here is the picture that started my journey into photography:

Blurry picture of Omar

I remember the day when I received it. Lola said that Omar started to smile and it was her attempt to capture the moment. It drove me nuts that such a beautiful picture turned out to be so blurry and we both agreed that we desperately needed a professional camera to capture those kinds of moments. Little did we know back then that it was the light and our technique, not the camera, that caused the above image to be blurry :)

Long story short, I came home and after a couple of hours of research, bought our first DSLR – Nikon D80 kit with an 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 lens.

So, what is your story and what got you started in photography?

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How to Change Aperture on Nikon D80 and D90

Dec
6
2009
December 6, 2009
By 2 Comments

This is a very quick tip on how to change aperture on Nikon D80 and D90 DSLR cameras.

How to change aperture on Nikon D80 and Nikon D90 cameras

  1. Make sure that your lens aperture can be changed through the camera. If you are using an older lens with an aperture ring, make sure to set the aperture on the lens to the largest number. There should be a lock on the lens to keep it at that number. If you are getting an error on the top screen of the camera with the lens mounted, you should go back and make sure that the aperture ring is set correctly. This is not an issue on most new lenses and the latest generation of the Nikon lenses labeled with a “G” do not have this ring at all. For example, neither the Nikon 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G VR nor the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens have the aperture ring.
  2. Set your camera on “Aperture Priority” mode by rotating the dial on the top of the camera to “A” position. In Aperture Priority mode, you set the lens aperture manually, while the camera picks the right Shutter Speed for you.

    3. Nikon D90 Top

  3. Rotate the front dial of the camera located under the camera shutter release to change aperture. Rotating to the left will decrease the aperture, while rotating to the right will increase the aperture.

When you decrease the aperture, the aperture setting will stop at the maximum aperture the lens allows. For example, on the Nikon 35mm f/1.8G lens, aperture will stop at f/1.8. There is also a limit on minimum aperture on each lens and you cannot go higher than that limit as well. Typical minimum lens apertures are f/16, f/22 and f/36.

Lens apertures work a little differently on zoom lenses and the minimum/maximum aperture depends on what focal length you are using on the lens. For example, if you are using the Nikon 18-55mm f/3.5 lens and you are zoomed out at 18mm, the smallest aperture number you can use is f/3.5. However, if you zoom in to 55mm, the aperture will be limited to f/5.6 and you will not be able to go lower than that. The same principle works on all other variable aperture zoom lenses.

By the way, you can also change the camera to “Manual” or “M” mode on the camera dial to change the lens aperture. However, you will then have to manually choose the camera shutter speed and you will need to have a good understanding on how to photograph in manual mode and how to use the built-in light meter of the camera.

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Sunset from the top of the page

Jan
18
2008
January 18, 2008
By Leave a Comment

In case you are wondering about the sunset picture on the top of the page, here is the original:

Vivid Sunset

Shot with Nikon D80 and 18-200mm VR, ISO 200, f/4.8.

Filed Under: Digital Photography Tagged With: , ,

Nikon D300 vs D80 high ISO noise comparison

Dec
12
2007
December 12, 2007
By 22 Comments

Check out these results. What a difference, simply stunning!

Used Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 lens for this test. Camera default settings, exposure: 2 sec, aperture: f/5.6.

Original picture:
Full Photo

D80 ISO 800 – 100% crop:
D80 ISO-800

D300 ISO 800 – 100% crop:
D300 ISO-800

D80 ISO 1600 – 100% crop:
D80 ISO-1600

D300 ISO 1600 – 100% crop:
D300 ISO-1600

The full review of the D300 can be found here.

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Nikon D300 vs D80

Dec
12
2007
By 15 Comments

Last weekend I had a chance to test the new Nikon D300 DSLR that got released a couple of weeks ago against my D80. After doing a lot of testing with the camera I came to the conclusion that the D300 is a huge upgrade from D80 in many (good) ways.

Pros:

  1. High ISO pictures on D300 look amazing! I never shoot above ISO 400 on my D80 because anything above requires post-processing with noise-reduction software such as Neat Image. I tried some shots with ISO 800 and 1600 and the results were stunning both in terms of noise and quality of the picture. Typically higher ISO results in noise and softness of objects. Images from D300 were very sharp and the noise was almost non-existent. I will post some image samples later for you to see.
  2. D300 has “live view” mode – feature that allows you to shoot pictures by looking at the LCD screen (like in point and shoot cameras) instead of the viewfinder. The best thing about live view is the ability to focus on a distant object by zooming in (in tripod mode). This is very useful when you shoot something with a tripod and you are not sure if the focus is right or not.
  3. The LCD screen on D300 is bigger and has more resolution – ~922,000 pixels, giving a 640×480 resolution. D80 LCD looks like crap compared to this with its 320×240 resolution!
  4. 20% more pixels (10.74% increase in horizontal resolution and 9.88% increase in vertical*) – D300 is 12 megapixels compared to D80′s 10 megapixel CCD. Small difference, but is noticeable if you are printing large photographs.
  5. D300 has 51 focus points! Compared to 11 focus areas on D80 and D200, this is a crazy upgrade. Some people think it’s an overkill, but I really liked it. Now I can focus on what I need without having to move the camera to match what I need to focus on. The focusing configuration will probably confuse many D80 owners as there are many new features on the camera as well as in camera configuration. I did not mess with the focusing settings that much, but I did enable the 51 area 3D focusing and it seems to work quite well. It loses objects when there is a similar contrast between the foreground and the background, but it is expected and I still love this feature. When you have a baby that constantly moves, being able to focus on its face without having to re-adjust the shutter is simply awesome!
  6. D300 is very solid. Yes, compared to D80, it has a much better build quality and weather sealing. You will also notice that turning the camera on and off is a little harder now and pressing the buttons on the camera leaves a different feeling. This camera is supposed to last longer and can tolerate higher and lower temperatures than D80.
  7. Viewfinder on D300 now shows 100% of the picture! This means that you can shoot with confidence – what you see in the viewfinder is what you are going to get.
  8. Both D300 and D80 use the same batteries, which means that you will be able to re-use your existing batteries and charger. I have two EN-EL3e batteries (one came with D80 and one was purchased later) and they will work perfectly on D300.
  9. Camera flash works much better on D300 compared to D80. For some reason, my indoor pictures with flash on D80 were always under-exposed and produced pictures with wrong color. The flash on D300 produces very good pictures with the right colors.
  10. D300 has a built-in sensor cleaner – a great feature! For those who have more than one lens this feature will be a big plus. It is not very pleasant when your pictures get dark spots because of sensor dirt. I had to clean mine at least 10-15 times before and it is a surgical procedure that requires patience and very good handling. I read many horror stories when people killed their DSLRs by improperly cleaning the sensor. Also, D300 has better protection against dust (D80 has none).
  11. Nikon D300 is twice faster than D80 – 6 FPS versus 3. I don’t really care about this feature that much as it’s useful only for action and sports photographers. I shoot fast when I don’t want to miss a moment, especially when my son does something interesting.
  12. D300 has a much more advanced menu. The camera configuration is quite complex and is a big jump from D80. It allows saving custom settings (4 slots, up to 16 combinations) and perform many more functions. Now each major function has its own sub-menu, whereas everything in D80 screen is stacked up in the same menu.
  13. Same 1.5x crop factor – this means you can use your existing DX lenses without having to worry about replacing them with FX format lenses (like you would with D3).
  14. Finally the ISO now shows up inside the viewfinder! It was painful to change ISO back and forth from the D80 viewfinder to the top screen.

Cons:

  1. D300 requires compact flash cards and your SD cards for D80 won’t do any good. You will have to spend extra cash to get good CF cards such as SanDisk Extreme III/IV series.
  2. D80 has a built-in infrared port which allows using a cheap ML-L3 wireless remote for shooting on a tripod. D300 does not have infrared and you have to buy an expensive external infrared remote that mounts on top of the camera. Other remotes are wired and need to be hooked up to the camera on the side. This is very inconvenient for those that are used to the ML-L3.
  3. The MB-D10 grip for D300 allows up to two batteries, but the first one has to go inside the camera, which means that when both batteries run out you have to remove the grip to get to the battery inside the body. This is very inconvenient compared to the MB-D80 battery grip for D80 where both batteries sit inside the grip. For those who worry about speed though, you can use an expensive pro battery or 8 AA batteries** and get up to 8 frames per second using the MB-D10 on D300. I don’t shoot sports and really don’t care about FPS, so this doesn’t matter for me at all.

Overall, the D300 is a superb product. It is not revolutionary as the D3 is, but considering the picture quality and low noise in high iso – it’s pretty close. I highly recommend this camera for anybody who is thinking about upgrading from older Nikon cameras or buying it as a first DSLR.

I did a full test of ISO performance on both D300 and D80. Such a big difference!

* Thanks to pcspecialist @ nikonians.org for pointing this out.
** Thanks to Luke for pointing this out.

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