At moments like this I wish I had a Nikon D300 and a Nikon 300mm AFS, the Nikon D80 is a wounder full camera, but the focus tracking is really really awful sometimes.

And it finally managed to catch up and focus when the bird landed with the crab...

well the post processing is done and I got lots of very beautiful shots out of it and think Kim is going to be very happy.
It also gave me the chance to test some new methods of post processing

1. overexposed by two stops to archive this classic pin up high contrast look.
   


2. This picture was just beautiful composition wise but totally out of focus, well 15 minutes of work transform it into a classic piece of art :)
   


3. Kim was trying to reach for her daughter (which tried to knock over my light stands) and I really like the dynamic of this composition (sadly the framing is a bit off)
   
   


4. just a beautiful mum and daughter picture
   
   


5. Well I went a little bit nut's with the lightning, contrast and exposure brush but boy it looks cool!
   
   


6. slightly out of focus but after all a very nice composition with some simple post processing
   
   


7. well simple black and white and just looks nice
   
   


8. it feels nice to look sexy
   
   


9. and last but not least, it's always sunny in davis...
   
   

all the post processing was done using only adobe lightroom, which shows the power of this program quite well. And I had a lot of fun :)

The rest of this set can be found under zenfolio

all the pictures where taken using a Nikon D80, available light and a nikon 35mm F/2 or Tamron 70-200mm F/2.8

And really the last picture,

Just using the sun and the shade in some trees without any post processing.

well today I received my new bag pack, which I had to order because my old bag pack is to large as carry on these days and boy it's beautiful in a strange way....

Basically it's an ugly sand colored cotton bag which looks like a 15$ yard sale bag and just needs to get really really dirty and some NRA*,Colt,"Shoot first ask later" stickers to become perfect.

Why?

Because it doesn't look like a camera bag, is very small and has enough space for 2 - 3 lenses, a camera and a tiny laptop in the bag.

For example it fits my travel setup:

1 x Tamron 70-200mm F/2.8 without hood
1 x Nikon D80 with 35mm F/2 attached
1 x IBM X60 Laptop and power supply (no love for the mac book, it's to big)
1 x small Lens X - maybe the sigma 10-20, did not test it yet or a small mono pod at the bottom


That's the one


*NRA = national rifle association

Today my 1.4 TC arrived + monopod and some other goodies. So I happily went outside and started snapping away to see how good it is. Well from 100 pictures not a single picture was usefull and the AF basically does not work anymore (only if you have extreme amount's of light). This seems to be a camera issue + tc + lens issue. And I'm not sure if it's related that the lens and TC are incompatible. Who sponsors me a D300 so I can compare it against another camera?

Anyway so I setup a small bunny with a SB600 to the left and to the right, use iTTL to save work and put the camera in aperature mode. This are the results of the 100% crops, and as we can see this combination is pretty sharp wide open a F/2.8 + 1 Stop and get's much better a F/8 + 1. At F/11 + 1 it get's worth again.

All pictures were shot with a D80, on a tripod at 200mm x 1.4, iso 100

results

F/2.8 + 1

F/4 + 1

F/5.6 + 1

F/8 + 1

F/11 + 1

So guess I have to try to figure out how to get some nice pictures now in nature. If I got enough time, than there is no problem to manual focus on the oject on my choice.

Well I'm saving for the 300mm F/4 anyway and that's why I bought the TC originally.

ok this first images are taken and things too notice

• chipmunks are to fast for me, I can't get close(tc comes on friday I hope, so i can get closer)
  
• !/250 are way to low for this lens, you need at least 1/500 or some kind of support (monopod comes on friday I hope)
• focus works extremely well, I think as good as it gets for my D80. As a reference the chipmunk was the size of the main focus point in the viewfinder

well it seems that my little photo set is more or less complete after 2.5 years and I'm only missing a 300mm prime, like the nikon 300mm F/4 to take wildlife pictures (which won't happen this year)

after my trading frenzy last month I ended with the nearly perfect set which is more or less future proof, since there will be a FX camera for under 1000$ in the next 4 years.

• 1 x Nikon D80
  
• 2 x SB-600 flashes
• 1 x Nikon 50mm F/1.8
  
• 1 x Nikon 35mm F/2
  
• 1 x Tamron 90mm F/2.8
• 1 x Tamron 80-200mm F/2.8
• 1 x Tamron 1.4 TC
  
• 1 x Sigma 10-20
• 2 x lighstand + umbrella + swivel
• 1 x Bogen Tripod with head
• 1 x Bogen Monopod with head

several bags, filters and other stuff

Stuff which I had, sold, traded

• Nikon 80-200mm F/2.8 push pull
• Nikon 17-55mm F/2.8
• Nikon 70-300mm VR
• Nikon D50
• Nikon 70-300mm NON VR
• Nikon 28-80mm
• Tamron 200-400
• Tokina 19-35mm (still for sale)
• 1 x Nikon MB-D80 battery grip (still up for sale, just barley use it)

Money spend after all this trading and shifting of stuff, 900$ which was 300$ more than I planned too. Yes I really wanted to have the 35m F/2 for my upcoming berlin trip...

Another interesting thing is how many pictures I took with all this stuff and actualy kept

• Nikon D50, 15000 pictures taken
• Nikon D80, 9000 pictures taken

Of these 24000 pictures I kept 2000 pictures on my harddrive, without a backup which I really have to change and uploaded 360 pictures.

If I would have taken these pictures with classical analog film and had it developed (no prints!) it would had been 11000$ developement cost for the negatives.

Now my photo equipment cost roughly 3000$ and has a resale value of ca 2500$ (better than my car!), which translates into 16c per picture, which is not to bad.

why do I do this calculation? To convince myself to stop spending money on camera gear and actually travel more. I'm also really bored right now and sleep deprived.

...but hey I spend 1800$ on beds so far, which have a resale value of maybe 100 - 200$...

Well sometimes people ask me to take a picture of a coworker. This time it was Kirsten who needed a simple picture for a poster.

Well it's nothing to sing about since it's extremely simple and effective. But I noticed something terrible, my little SB-600 had not enough power :(

I had to shoot at ISO200 (and under exposed a stop, by accident) to get this picture done and my flash was already at 1/1 power.

And I'm still not really comfortable to shoot at ISO 400 with my D80, it's getting to noisy.

I also keep noticing that my fast lenses have a problem with precise focusing since the AF fields of my camera are pretty big, compared to the modern models from Nikon, which can analyze a much smaller field.

yes I setup an umbrella in the lab and I'm official a geek, but hey the pictures look so much nicer and it's so much easier and faster to get the right exposure (mostly...) and effect in manual mode.

Sure you could shoot in A mode, but why if you can do so much more in M mode?

Example:

• aperture= effects flash and ambient
  
• shutter speed = effects only ambient light
• iso = effects only ambient light

So the increase in shutter speed equals less ambient light and the decrease means more ambient light.

Someday I will understand how the whole ratio thing works...

...ok I am proud of zero reflection's in the glasses, but some shadow's are off and could have used a second flash or a reflector in front of her.

well currently I'm playing a little bit with manual focus since my macro does beautiful pictures (ok it's the photographer, but well the lens helps a lot) and my eyes can't be to bad, it's just that i have to learn the technique, but so far I have a hit or miss ratio of 50% which is not to bad.

Are I'm going to invest in a manual focus lens? Well I'm not that sure about it yet. But hey used classics are much cheaper than new lenses.

on the other hand since I sold my 70-300mm. Mhm I found out that I like my current collection very much and just miss something in the 35mm range.

anyway the best candid of the night to the left, in B&W since it was shot at iso 1600. Yes the Nikon D80 sucks for low iso compared to modern cameras like the Nikon D3 or D700. But hey in two years you can get them most likley for very nice prices. And I just took 8k pictures so far with my D80 and I'm totally happy with it, except that it's a bit small in my hands.

the more I look at current high end compact cameras the less I understand why people actually buy them.

I mean

• Canon G9 - I don't like the handling and too noisy
  
• Nikon P5100 - no raw function, noisy over iso 400, high CA
  
• Ricoh GDR2 - noisy and too expensive, for 400 - 500 it would be a buy, but 600$+ are to high since I can get the DP-1 which has much better picture quality for 100$ more
  
• Ricoh GX200 - pretty noisy

So the only compact camera which does really nice pictures and which you actually can take with you instead of a D-SLR is the Sigma DP-1

except:

• to slow

This is the only thing which really bugs me. I can live with the awful menu. I mean I want to use it for street photography, so I put it in aperture or shutter priority mode and to iso 100 or 400 dependings on my goal.

Done nothing else todo.

That the lens has F/4 which is sad, but I don't know how to put a faster lens into such a compact camera. And again for street photographie it should be fast enough. But to wait 7 seconds between pictures is a damn long time. Specially at this price tag.

But it looks at iso 800 better than my D80...

I mean these pictures look nice

But one thing is sure If I'm going to buy a compact camera it's going to be soon.

Tonigth we had the splendid idea to shoot some pic's of the aggie stadium around midnight. Which mean high iso, long exposure, large aperatures. Which also means, I want my D50 back. The nikon D80 is so bad at long exposures. I'm pretty disappointed how noisy the pictures are. I mean it should be at least as good as a D50, better model, more function, yada yada ya...

At least the best 5 shots are attached and the first time I noticed that my flash has not enough power, which was pretty sad.

After it started raining today for the first time I used the possibility to snap some pictures of clouds. it was the late afternoon and the rain just stopped.

Now I just can't decide which picture I like more. Both are taken with 1 -2 minute of each other and I used different developments for them.

Nachdem es heute begann zu regnen dachte ich es ist zeit mal wieder ein paar Landschaftsbilder zu schießen. Drum fahre ich doch mal schnell durch die Gegend und suche ein paar schöne objektive. Nun die einzigen guten Bilder waren diese beiden. Auf allen anderem waren zu viele Regentropfen zu sehen. Spricht ich muss eine Möglichkeit finden diese zu vermeiden. Nun welches der beiden Bilder ist besser gelungen?

Sigma 10-20, Nikon D80

today I got the possibility to play with a canon 40D and I have to say I'm impressed. It can do 2 things I miss on my Nikon D80

• 6 FPS
• liveview

The 6 FPS is nice to have but not the big deal. The lifeview on the other hand is wounder full and I would love to have it. Its to 95% of my work useless but in case of macros its just wounder full for focusing and so much easier than to use the viewfinder. Specially that you can zoom in and adjust the focus in micro steps.

The reason? With the viewfinder the alignment of your eye counts to 100%, if you shift your eye, it seems that the focus shifts. You don't have the problem with an LCD display, because the angle of view is constant.

Now if you compare the price of the 40D (1200$) to the D80 (900$), if nikon would had such a camera at this time, I would had bought it instead. The newly released D300 has the same features like the 40D, but also cost 1700$ which is way to much.

I also got another rejection of istockphoto, my picture was not in focus...

I finally got the time to shoot some pictures in the lab and like always I'm surprised how much I like my macro lens and my ultra wide angle.

For example the picture on the left was shot at 10mm with a SB-600 Flash + Blue Gel from the left and the onboard flash to highlight the microscope.

The second picture is a part of an Agilent auto sampler and uses an orange filter in front of the SB-600.

To say it short I really start to make progress with my flash photographies since I got the D80, it's just wonderful to have a wireless flash.


Tonight we are going to go out for sushi, again, to celebrate the good bye of Mercedeh, which is leaving tomorrow.

By the way both pictures are more or less straight out of the camera. I just applied some curve management.

ok I finally hit the problem every photographer has, my stuff gets to heavy and my lenses are not long enough. For example the attached picture is a 100% crop of a picture I shot with my D80 and my 70-300mm VR zoom and as we can see I was not able to get close enough to the bird, which was flying above me.

Current identification says that's a red tail hawk, but I'm not 100% sure about this. Anyway after playing since 1 week with the D80 i finally archived correct exposures and my keeper rate is around 60-70%. At least exposure wise. So I think it was the right choice to buy it and time to save money for the next couple of month till we see a new toy which I need to have...

at least ducks tend to be very cooperative and don't run away, as we can see in the second picture.

-----

Nachdem ich seit einer Woche mit der neuen Kamera herumgespielt habe, kam ich zu zwei Erkenntnissen

1. ich bin glücklich mit der Kamera und muss jetzt mal wieder bissel sparen
2. wie immer ist das Teleobjektiv nicht lang genug

leider ist es auch so das man als Amateur sich grenzen setzen muss, und so sieht es aus das ich keine Falken fotografieren kann oder halt damit leben muss das sie sehr klein sind. Alternativ kann man ja auch probieren mal in den Bergen wandern zu gehen und erwischt sie da.

Wenigstens sind Enten dem fotografieren nicht abgeneigt, aber nachdem ich so ca 200 Fotos von Enten in allen möglichen Kombinationen habe sind sie nicht mehr so beeindruckend. Vielleicht komme ich ja mal näher an die Reiher oder Truthaene an ohne gleich angegriffen zu werden

the power of photoshop, currently I'm playing with the photoshop CS3 demo and I have to say I really like the new version. For an example the pictures we see are the basic 3 steps in my workflow, the color picture is straight out of the camera, the first B&W is after some adjustements and a B&W conversion in lightroom and the last B&W is after post processing in CS3. The main goal was to remove the stuff in the background from the picture. In total I spend maybe 35 minutes on this picture and it's far from perfect, but it's a start and I'm satisfied so far.

I'm also getting more and more comfortable with the D80 and finally start to get pictures where I'm happy with the results. Also the ISO 3200 speed proved to be very usefull. For example the picture bellow was shot at ISO 3200, mainly as a test and it works very well for B&W.

Die letzten Tage verbringe ich ueberwiegend damit mich in Photoshop CS3 einzuarbeiten oder wie ich denn die D80 benutzten kann. Zum beispiel die Serie am oberen ende dieses "Post" ist ein beispiel fuer meinen momentanen Arbeitsablauf. Als erstes werden die Bilder mittels "Adobe Lightroom" importiert und belichtungs fehler korrigiert und in schwarz/weiss konvertiert. Anschliessend benutzte ich meine PS CS3 Demo um stoerende elemente aus dem Hintergrund zu entfernen, oder kleinere optische Korrekturen vorzunehmen. Anschliesend werden die Bilder exportiert und landen je nach verwendungszweck bei picassa for blogs oder bei zenfolio fuer online Betrachtungen.

for some reasons I had nothing todo today and did not feel like working on a saturday. So I went outside and watch one of the regularly softball games and snapped some pictures.

And i'm really amazed about the speed of the camera, except that I needed to switch sd cards so often and really need to get some sandisk Ultra III 4 GB cards for the future.

...the wishlist gets longer and longer. Sadly the D80 has also the problem that the high iso noise is pretty bad. I was really spoiled with the D50.

So the rest of the day I will spending at the pool, reading and working on a new backup program and hopefully get my database up and running...

The rest of these pictures you can find at:

http://berlinguyinca.zenfolio.com/p296703648

still trying to figure out if I want zenfolio or not. SmugSmug would offer me the possibility to sell pictures. Basically of each picture print you can define how much goes in your wallet. But i'm not paying 130$ a year for this service,not if i don't sell pictures for this amount of money.

for some reason I have a lot of time, prob related that every try to restore my database takes 4 hours, so I decided to grab my new toy and try to create some dramatic pictures on the cemetry near by.

90 minutes later i figured that the D80 is pretty difficult to use and I will take a while till I can use the metering on the camera. So far I have no way to predict the outcome, which kinda sucks. Also the noise is pretty damn bad over iso 400. I got 3 keepers out of 100 shots, which is pretty sad...

The best shot was the picture to the left. Which I don't know if I'm happy with it or not.

I also got an email from paypal that they are very sorry and will reimburse me for my trouble. Seems like we are making progress with this problem. I'm still waiting for feedback from the victoria insurance and my attempt to cancel the policy.

So what else,

i spent some time with my neighbors, or in other words tyler and I played a car racing game and kim was going nuts with my camera.

addicted to coffee,

since 20 hours I'm sitting here and trying to fix the database. It sadly lost alot of data after a bug in my software occured and for some reasons oracle does not like the thing i want;

please restore the backup from tuesday night...

nope its not happening...

To the left, I taking a break and playing with the D80 and filtered flashs, quite nice for out of camera with minor adjustments.

the smile of this little fellow represnts my current look,

my D80 arrived and I'm very happy that I got it instead of the D200. I really can use all functions over buttons and the integrated wireless commander mode is just wonderful. Not I just need to find a way to sync my Vivitar with it

Now I just need to learn how to use it.


...btw the picture needs a second a flash on the other side to highlight the nose shadow. But a friend of mine got my second flash so not much I could do.

so i just got of work and went to the camera store to compare the D40 with the D80 with the D200 and the D200 feels so right...

The D80 is so slow compared to it and just feels to small in my hands. I never thought there would be much off a difference, but certainly there is a huge difference between these 2 bodies. Is it worth 700$ difference?


Ok I gave in and did the smart choice, I ordered a Nikon D80 which is more than enough camera for myself and have to accept that it wont shoot at 5 fps. The Nikon D200 was just to much money.