New Camera
I got the Nikon D70 last week, and have had time to play around with the controls, as well as getting the necessary protective kit, like a UV filter for the lens and a basic bag for the camera itself. I spent last week getting used to the thing: the controls are just very different from the fully manual camera I had before. How does one set aperture and shutter speed? How does one use the exposure meter? What’s this “white balance” thing? How does one vary a bit from the default exposure? Lots of shots down my empty apartment while fiddling with the buttons and dials (one hallmark of DSLRs as opposed to digital P&Ss is the ease at which you can change settings, rather than drilling down half-a-dozen menus to change the aperture setting). But no matter: the marginal cost for each of these pictures is practically zero, which can’t be said for film.
Here’s a few shots from my first “real” set, walking up West Side Highway and Hudson River for a little bit:
The bunch in the middle (DSC_0017 through DSC_0023) was one of those experiments that require a bit too much discipline for me with my film camera: I was adjusting nudging the EV from a stop below to a stop above the camera-determined optimal exposure in 1/3-stop increments. With the film camera, there’s no instant feedback, and there’d be a cost in doing this (albeit a couple of bucks for film and processing).
There’s some aliasing in the sky with a number of these shots, but I think this is an artifact of (Canon-oriented) BreezeBrowser’s NEF to JPEG conversion than anything else: I don’t see the aliasing when looking at the NEFs in BreezeBrower’s “high quality” view. I probably will wind up getting the Nikon Capture 4 software sooner rather than later, since NEF processing is that NC4 is meant to do. NC4 will also alow control of the camera through the USB cable, as well as loading in custom curves that may give slightly better in-camera JPEG output than Nikon’s defaults.
The camera itself isn’t particularly heavy. It’s a bit bulkier than my manual, but that might be cause I’m using a heavier lens right now, before I get the 50mm f/1.8D. I feel like I’m actually photographing things with this camera, unlike the P&S Sony I had been using (I never got perfectly comfortable with looking a the LCD at arms distance to see the shot).
In the meantime, I’m learning what I can. The dpreview.com D70 forum has been very helpful, though the photos people post tend to get too many oohs-and-ahs as opposed to proper criticism, and a bit too much focus on weird minutiae. Besides the forum, there’s Thom Hogan’s guide to the D70 and this apparently more general book on digital photography. There’s also the Nikonians forum.
In terms of settings that I can set without the aid of NC4, there are these that can be changed or at least considered. Some things I should do also is set the in-camera to “none” and do any sharpening in post-processing.
Apparently, there’s much to figure out. It’s a nice camera. I’ll be using it in August, being a tourist in my home town before heading out to Cleveland for good.