I have seen a few posts lately about what makes the picture, the camera, or the person taking the picture. It seems a little silly to me. It’s the camera! You point, push a button, and out pops a picture. Oh, you mean a good picture. Well, that seems a little elitist. Lots of people take pretty good pictures, and some get really lucky and take a great picture, by just holding a camera in front of them, and pressing the shutter. David duChemin says that taking pictures is hard. And that we (armatures) expect great pictures by buying expensive gear, and don’t want or expect to put in lots of effort. Matt Brandon talks of his days in a store where some people would buy more expensive cameras than he could afford, when “he” was the real photographer.
Tamron lens update
I finally got lens number three of the 17-50 f/2.8 lens from B&H. Before I put the lens on I cleaned the contacts very carefully with rubbing alcohol, and made sure it was dry before putting the lens back on. It seemed to work well, except once. I got the no lens attached thing again. This time no amount of turning off/on would work. I had to unseat the lens and reattach. It just happened once. I am going to hope that it is just a D40 issue, or just this D40 and keep it. It is really nice to have a faster lens. I found that I had to swap in my 55-200 often though at the Lantern Lighting event. I didn’t always need the upper end, but 50 was just too short most of the time for an event like this. The 55-200 works fine in the middle of the day. I like it a lot, it is just too slow as evening come on. Oh well. Can’t get everything with one lens.
Japanese Lantern Lighting
Went to the Japanese Lanturn Lighting at Como park yesterday. I thought I was going to meet several other people from the Twin Cities flickr group there, but I couldn’t find them. I went around asking everyone else I saw with a big lens or a tripod, but no luck. There are a lot of photographers in this city! It was pretty good. I was told no tripods, so I am not sure if any of my evening shots will turn out.
Edit: here is a picture from the event.
See flickr set for more.
The Rocket Blower
My summer vacation had just started when I noticed that I had dust on my sensor. Not something I wanted to deal with in South Dakota. So, I have had to photoshop out the dust spots on pictures that had small apertures, or didn’t happen to have darker areas right where the dust was.
When I got back I went and picked up a $10 rocket blower from National Camera. (amazon link) I thought I would give it a try. Cheaper than getting it cleaned, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to try the kits where you try to wipe the sensor (actually the filter in front of the sensor).
It turned out to work for me. Others claim it just blows the dust around and you get spots on other places in you pictures. For me, it just worked.
New gear I could maybe afford
David du Chemin has a post up about the hyperdrive he bought. Sounds like something you add to your car to get you 400 miles in 4 minutes (I wish) but it is a on site backup device. I have wanted one of these, not that I would really use it that much, but they still come in handy. Would have been great on my summer vacation. Epson makes the P-5000 that will store 80 gigs for OVER $600. Yikes. I am buying a lens before that. Amazon lists the 40 gig model for $279 and the 100 gig for $319. Much more reasonable. Not as big a screen, but getting approachable in price.
The new gear I can’t afford
Scott Kelby put up his review of the new Nikon D700. He calls it more of a field guide, as it is less technical than say dpreview, but more, this is what I like/don’t like. This camera at $3000 body only is way off the charts on my radar. The other thing that has people excited about the camera, but makes it an absolute no (as if it wasn’t already) is that it is a full frame camera. The Nikon D3 (also a full frame) goes for $5000. The cheapo lenses that I try to buy are made for the DX crop sensor, and don’t really work with the full frame cameras. They work, but the 12 Mpixel camera becomes a 5 Mpixel one. You would need to shell out for the “real” Nikon lenses in the $1500+ category. This just gets me more excited about the (hopefully soon) upcoming D90. Come on new camera!
Don’t take photos here
This has me a little freaked out. A local Minnesotan was out taking pictures at Lamberts Landing in St. Paul and was taken aside, cuffed, given a citation, and told he couldn’t come near the area for a year! This is MNkiteman’s picture on flickr. That’s nuts. Oh yea, they deleted some of his pictures too. This discussion on flickr started out with a different story about paranoid security officers, but MNkiteman chimed in with more of his story as well. I am sure that this is all about increased security concerns over the republican national convention in early September, even more than what seems to be typical post 9/11 paranoia. It’s getting tiring, and a little scary.
I run by this location when I run at lunch. There is sometimes a tug parked there, and it looks like it could make for some interesting pictures. I keep thinking I need to check back with my camera. Maybe not.
Nikon at the Olympics
Gizmodo has a picture up of 23 photographers firing away at the Olympics. They figure that is a quarter of a million dollars of equipment in one image. What I think is interesting is that I see only 6 of the grey L glass Canon lenses. I don’t follow the high end gear to know for sure if Canon has some of the 400/500/600 lenses in black, but it sure looks like an awful lot of Nikon shooters in that bunch. Sports used to be dominated by Canon, so this is quite interesting.
D90 Rumors
It now seem quite likely that we will see a D90 in September. There is an author that writes field guides that has a post on Amazon about the D90. He claims to know a price, and has a whole page devoted to specs for the new camera. These specs are what I have seen other places, so I don’t know who posted first. They are appealing though. 12 Mpixel, Live View, Video???, Larger LCD (over D80), 4.5 fps, GPS and HDMI ports. Sounds cool. I am starting to print some things larger, so I would like some more pixel room for cropping. Live View would be cool, and 4.5 fps would be a big improvement over what I have with the D40. I guess we wait and see what the real deal is…
MN State Fair and Tripods
I figured that the State fair would turn away people with tripods, but I wanted to find out for sure. I buzzed around the site and found Press Room link that had a link to Photography and Videography Guidelines (pdf). It makes no mention of tripods. So I called the marketing department number at the bottom of the page. What I got was the most honest and realistic, and potentially frustrating policy yet. “It depends.” What I was told was that you have to be able to carry everything. So no light stands and such. Tripods are OK if they are used in areas that have lower traffic (find one of those at the fair!) and you may be asked to move along if set up in a spot that is busy. This sounds like a fair compromise if it works. But it does leave the discretion to the roving staff at the fair. I think I will try to go one week night this year by myself to take pictures. I will let you know how it goes.