Today sees the announcement of Nikon’s most significant camera body this year so far – bringing the D3 in line with the resr of the Nikon range, and improving it with customer feedback and to continue competing in a rapidly developing sector of the market. With headline grabbing ISO performance and D-Movie, the D3s looks set to repeat the success of the original D3…
Category: Uncategorized
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Nikon D3s – evolution of the breed
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Spot the deliberate mistake!
Received today from Nikon:
TOTAL PRODUCTION OF NIKKOR LENSES REACHES FIFTY MILLION
Nikon Corporation is pleased to announce that its production of NIKKOR lenses (interchangeable lenses for Nikon SLR cameras) reached a total of fifty million units last month.
Nikon released the first NIKKOR lens, the NIKKOR-S Auto 5cm f/2 in 1959, along with Nikon’s first digital SLR camera, the Nikon F. In the fifty years since the launch, NIKKOR lenses have been extremely well received by a great number of photo enthusiasts and professional photographers.
Nikon’s current product line-up includes more than sixty NIKKOR lenses for Nikon SLR cameras, from fisheye lenses, super wide-angle to super telephoto lenses and micro lenses.
For more information about the range of lenses and cameras please visit www.nikon.co.uk
(no prizes of 50-year-old digital camera will be offered for correct answers!)
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Nikon D5000 short film with pull focus
Though autofocus is not possible with live video in any current true DSLR (the Panasonic GH1 promises this) it is possible to use pull-focus effects with a little planning. We now have a Nikon D5000 – it won the competition for best fine image detail when comparing results frame by frame with Canon’s nominally higher resolution rival. It was also a very good deal, £629 inc VAT with an 18-55mm VR kit lens and a SanDisk Ultra II 8GB SDHC card plus Crumpler Messenger Boy 2500 bag thrown in free (from Jacobs). You Tube sample –
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Sigma’s DP2 – Camera less obscure
Sigma’s DP1 was launched in 2007 (with production models available in 2008) to great critical acclaim. occupying a unique spot in the marketplace by combining an APS-C format sensor with a compact “point and shoot” style body. There were a few controversial design choices, and the user and reviewer feedback varied greatly with the time and effort people were prepared to put in learning about the camera, yet the verdicts on the optical performance were united – the DP1 was astounding. Now the DP2 has arrived, with production-quality units available from UK retailers.
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Sony 70-400mm vs Minolta 400mm f/4.5
Gustav Kiburg has done an extensive test between these two lenses, posted in a Dyxum.com forum thread:
http://www.dyxum.com/dforum/comparision-test-sony-70-400-vsminolta-400mm-f4_topic46212.html
It’s well worth checking out.
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Kelso Races – D5000 freehand with 70-300mm VR
The wind noise has made filming with the D5000 almost impossible for the last few days, because it has been very windy. Simple as that. So I devised a popshield or wind sock for the tiny microphone by cutting a piece of red nyloop fabric from a pad which once belonged in the bottom of a lens case. Then the 70-300mm lens arrived, so I tried this combination on a race when the light was reasonable and it was not raining.
Technically, it’s not a good idea to pan with action when holding a lens of this size at arms’ length in order to see the framing on a rear screen. However, I had already experimented with a monopod and found that didn’t work – my pans tended to skew the horizon too easily – and for this clip, I did not want to use a tripod. I wanted to see what the VR did, and how well it worked with a fixed focus set on the fence before starting.
– DK
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Canon EOS 500D video test
The clip originally shown here has been replaced by an edited selection, shot in a mixture of 1080 and 720 modes, assembled using iMovie and written as a 720p final project for YouTube. Don’t mean to cause confusion, some visitors may have linked to this post already, and I do not want to add another post. Please feel free to link directly to the YouTube vid or to this page.
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Canon launch full-frame 17mm tilt-shift
Canon today announced the launch of two new tilt and shift lenses, the Ultra-Wide angle
TS-E 17mm f/4L and the TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II, an upgrade to the popular TS-E 24mm f/3.5L.
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Family Portrait Week launched in UK
HRH Princess Michael of Kent, David Cameron MP and The National Portrait Gallery have all got behind a new photographic promotion to raise much-needed funds for the Variety Club of Great Britain, which celebrates its 60th Anniversary this year.
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Colour Confidence expands into Europe
Birmingham, UK, 22nd January 2009 – Colour Confidence, Europe’s leading independent colour management specialist, has today announced the successful completion of a deal to purchase grafipress GmbH – a leading supplier to the graphics market and key Pantone distributor in Germany.