Posts tagged nikon
Spindle by Dustin Shuler (1989)
Jul 16th
Artist Dustin Shuler’s “Spindle” located in the parking lot of a Berwyn, IL strip mall in the Western suburbs of Chicago may be removed permanently and replaced by a Walgreens according to a story published by the GateHouse News Service.
“The ‘Spindle’ may or may not be maintained,” said Michael Flight, president of the management company. “The current ownership would have to spend a tremendous amount of money if they relocated it. The current ownership is not sure what they would like to do with it at this point.”
Back in February, I was heading into the western suburbs of Chicago from the city when I saw the sculpture off to my left and I slammed on the brakes, did a u-turn and shot a few photos.
To be replaced by Walgreens. Hrm…
Ice Man
Jan 21st
Ice Man, (Photo by BillBlevins)
One lens at a time, I’m rebuilding my camera bag! Here is a shot with my 70-200 f/2.8 that just arrived.
I also noticed that the Flickr to Blogger Beta crops the images, so you’ll have to pop over to my photo gallery to see the full frame.
I really hate my Nikon Coolpix S9
Dec 28th
Ok, I’ve given my new Nikon Coolpix S9 digital camera a month of constant use and I’ve decided that I really don’t like it. I’ve had a lot of cameras over the past 20 years since I first began a career as a photojournalist. A Nikon fan since my first FM (which I still own and it still works), this model doesn’t cut it.
Here’s a picture shot in “Auto”. It was the third in the sequence of six blurry shots.
Sad. That was a funny moment.
(If you have to know, my wife and I traded photos of our Christmas presents instead of the gifts because we were visiting in Alabama and traveling by air. I photographed and gave pictures of the wrapped gifts instead of the unwrapped gifts. After the laughter wore off, I gave her the pictures of the unwrapped presents.)
Here is a photo taken on “Auto” outside at about 3 p.m. in the afternoon. I was standing still. The little sailboat was moving, but not that much!
I’m going to keep the camera because it is very small – my top feature at the time I bought the camera – and based on confidence in my experience, in cases where I absolutely need a good photo, I’m pretty sure that I can adjust the settings and hold still enough to make a usable image. However, I wouldn’t recommend this camera to anyone.
When I want a digital image and it counts, I’ll stick to my Nikon D200 or my wife’s old Canon Elph.
Popular cameras used with Flickr
Nov 29th
Use the Camera Finder on Flickr to see which cameras are being used to post to the popular photo sharing site. The Nikon D200 is starting to get some traction. The Nikon S9 is really taking off. Christmas season may put it at the top of the Nikon list!
Nikon Coolpix S9 Sub-Compact Camera
Nov 19th
I bought a Nikon Coolpix S9 on Friday. I wanted a very small camera to carry in my pocket. Though the camera has impressive features, I’m not sure I’m happy with the purchase. Here are a few notes…
First off, the battery only lasted for about 25 shots. Now, in the spirit of disclosure, this it is a new camera for me and I was playing with the menu features quite a bit. I had fully charged the battery on Saturday morning and was conscious throughout the day that I was trying to conserve the battery for a party that night. There was no indication the battery was going low until the display showed the low battery symbol with about 25% remaining. (I can’t imagine why anyone would bother buying a 2 Gb SD card because simply shooting without viewing and editing I couldn’t imagine getting off more than 250 shots. The 2 gig card holds over 2500 full shots.)
Second… SD cards formatted in the camera don’t work in my card reader that I use for all of my memory cards and plugged into Mac’s OS X 10.4.8. Other SD cards (from my Canon Elf and my Canon Elura) do work in the same reader. The Nikon SD formatted card did work when attached directly to the computer inside the camera.
CAN YOU SAY RED EYE? Every single indoor shot had the problem. I don’t want to be spending my editing time after every indoor shoot fixing red eyes. I know sub-compacts have this problem and I understand all of the science of why this happens however my old Canon Elf isn’t that much larger and it does not have the problem.
Fourth – Even in a well lit room, photographing a friend opening presents from a distance of about 12 feet, the pics were horribly lit. Using no flash, the shutter speed was so slow that everything blurred.
Finally, if you hold the camera with one hand, the surface of the camera is so smooth, you almost pinch it out of your finger grip when pressing the button. Holding it with two hands, you need to be very, very careful to not get your left hand in front of the lens because of where it is located on the top front corner of the camera.
It takes video. On my card, it could record almost 2 hours of video and sound.
There is an option for using it as a digital audio recorder too. You can annotate your photos with a voice caption too. (I did not try that).
Overall, and after one full day of use I am not impressed.
On a positive note, it sure it a compact camera! The menus are easy to understand and adjust. It doesn’t have many options, so it isn’t hard to understand. One feature I’d like is to be able to reset to “default” every time you turn it off and back on. It seemed easy to set options and then forget they are on or where to go to change them.
My parents just bought the Nikon Coolpix S7 which is about a half-inch larger and noticeably heavier. I may wait to see how their snaps turn out after their trip to France later this week and consider that upgraded model.
Sample video clip:
A bag full of digital goodies
Nov 1st
Yesterday was Halloween and I didn’t get any candy, but UPS delivered an early birthday package from my wife. The box came from B&H Photo Video and contained a wide-angle Nikon zoom lens. Wow! This gift is now the highest priced item in my arsenal of photo equipment!
My last camera was a Holga and I bought it for $22. I’ve been told, and I’ve been repeating, that back in the 1940’s Holgas sold for $2 at five and dime stores as toy cameras.
I decided last year I wanted to move up from the plastic camera, and get away from dealing with loading medium format film and dealing with electrical tape in the dark. (The tape is used to stop the light leaks). It was time to go digital.
My digital camera bag is filling up one piece at a time. It now includes:
Nikon D200
Nikon AF-S NIKKOR ED-IF 17-35mm 1:28D lens
Nikon AF ED NIKKOR 50mm 1.8 lens
Nikon SB 800 speedlight (wireless flash)
Nikon MB-D200 Multi Power Battery Pack (vertical grip)
I’ve been posting photos to flickr.com but I’ve slowed down a little since I started using Apple’s Aperture because I still have two books to finish reading on what I’m doing. Adobe Photoshop and Apple’s iPhoto were working just fine before. (The recent photos all look desaturated and flat coming out of the new program).
I’m also recording RAW files, because I heard that is what Sports Illustrated does and figure they know what they are doing. Right? The RAW files on this camera are 15 Mb each, so my little 2 Gb card only holds 120 images at a time now.
I have two more items on my camera wish list. I would like to save up for a Nikon 105 mm f/1.8 micro, a Nikon 400 mm f/2.8 and a Nikon 70-200 mm f/2.8 VR zoom lens. Oops, that was three things!
Now that I think about it, while I’m at it, I may need an extra body to hold one of those new pieces of glass and probably a mono-pod!