The D200 shoots compressed as well as uncompressed NEFs and at this point I should walk into the other room and see whether I have it set to uncompressed or not, and whether the compression would account for the difference.

But I am not going to because I trust my memory and I am sure that there is not way the compressed or not, the D200 shoots 100 shots to the GigaByte.

OK, in the cause of scientific enquiry, I went and checked, and I’m right - the D200 shoots 60 shots to the GigaByte, whether the NEFs are compressed or not.

The question is whether the extra NEF compression on the D60 results in lower quality images? i have been using it with two lenses - the 60mm macro G lens, and the 12-24mm. I bought the lens as a kit with the 18-55mm but I don’t like it. It is not that I dislike the range or the build quality or the image quality - I just don’t like the way the central part of the lens peeps out when one turns the focal length either way from its mid point.

Turn it down to 18mm or up to 55mm and the central part of the lens sticks out and seems very fragile. It makes me nervous. Hence, I shall probably put it up for sale. But it is light and small, and given that a normal 50mm lens won’t ‘work’ on the D60 because it is not an AF-S lens, I should try the dinky little 18-55mm more. But before I take it out for an extended run, I have to check that its image quality really will hold up against the other two lenses.

I’ll put the shots up here in a day or two.

I bought the D60 as a back-up to my D200. Since I bought the 70-200mm lens and put it on the D200, I haven’t taken it off. The camera and the lens are wedded to one another and both stare at me suspiciously if I come to near with an ‘I’m going to separate you’ look.

The good and the bad.
I think the dynamic range is less than on the D200 and it is really easy to blow highlights where the D200 would not. Perhaps it is the metering. I have always been very, very impressed with the metering on the D200, and yet I can crank the exposure compensation up into minus 2 with the D60 and still run into problems. So active D lighting is a necessity and it works. And it is easy to set. Just put your forefinger on the button on the top plate that is next to the shutter and just left of the exposure compensation button. And at the same time, turn the rear command dial and it toggles Active D Lighting on/off.

I say ‘rear’ command dial, but there is no front command dial. It’s force of habit from the D200. And that is one tiny niggle, and that is that I forget how to change things sometimes, and I find myself twirling a non existent dial.

ISO is easily changed by pressing the button to the left of the lens mount and turning the rear command dial.

So do I like it? Overall, yes. It’s light and quick to use. And with Active D lighting as a means to conquer blown highlights, it’s capable even in high contrast scenes.

And here is a smaller version of a crop of the above image. Click on it to see it larger.

I like the 16:9 letterbox format. I think, however, that the square format is my favourite format, and the Nikon P5100 offers that as well at 2992×2992 pixels.

And it also offers a 3:2 format at 3984×2656 pixels (10,581,584 pixels), which means I can keep to the same format as my Nikon D200 if I wish.

Ah yes, choice. One of the problems with choice is not remembering to change the settings. Which is what happened today when I took a shot of some furniture.

As it happened, the format probably suited the shot, but it was not until I opened the shot in Photoshop that I noticed the format was not square, nor 4:3, nor 3:2, but the long letterbox shape of 16:9.

I put failure to see the aspect ratio down to the fact that I only had my long distance glasses with me, and could not see the LCD screen clearly. Ah well, any excuse.

Alan Rusbridger talks about the Polaroid PoGo, which prints 3″ x 2″ (76 x 50mm) photos with sticky backs from a machine the size of a pack of cards - 120mm (4.7”) x 72mm (2.8”) x 23.5mm (0.9”) to be precise. And which uses zero ink. Actually, ZINK™ technology.

Polaroid describes the ink technology as follows:

The heart of this new “ZINK” category of printing is the ZINK Paper™. The patented ZINK Paper is an advanced composite material with embedded yellow, magenta and cyan dye crystals, activated with 200 million heat pulses, in 30 seconds, in a single pass. With 100 billion crystals in a 2×3″ print, the paper is 100% inkless. A ZINK-enabled printer uses heat to activate and colorize these crystals. Because there is no ink, every ZINK-enabled device has the unique benefits of being small, simple, elegant, and eco-friendly.

And it prints from a Pictbridge enabled camera. Which led me to wonder whether the Nikon P5100 is Pictbridge enabled - it is.

And while I was looking around the manual, I saw that the camera also takes photographs in square format at 2992 x 2992 pixels. And as with its other formats, it allows you to put a black border (of varying thickness) around the image. And here is a shot of the towels in the bathroom in square format.

Obviously, square format is not the format to choose for printing to the PoGo and an unanswered question is what happens if I print from an image that is not 3:2 aspect ration.

The Nikon does have an option to shoot with a 3:2 aspect ratio at 3984 x 2656 pixels, but as I normally shoot at the maximum image size the camera can produce (4000 x 3000 pixels), which is not 3:2, I can’t really see myself changing image size in order to make prints that will fit the PoGo.

Having said that, I can imagine going on a trip somewhere and using a 3:2 format.

But I would have to be going to a place where I couldn’t get to a local consumer lab. Because if I could get to a lab I could have 6″ x 4″ prints made at lower cost and without the capital outlay.

But if I were going somewhere more remote and I wanted to make a scrapbook on the go, then for that, the PoGo has more appeal.

Click HERE to following a link to the Polaroid PoGo site

Square Towels with Black Border

As I often do in low-light situations, I propped the camera on a part of the structure of the building - whatever is handy - and in that way I avoid camera shake and can choose a low ISO.

For most subjects it jumps into focus as quickly as one would want and expect from as AF-S lens, but in many quite ordinary focusing situations it winds in and out, hunting for focus. It is worse at short camera to subject distances but there are times when it will hunt a little at almost any distance.

I have changed the focusing set up to group dynamic-AF and in Custom Settings I have (a)4 set at ‘Closest Subject’. It may have improved things - I think it has.

I have heard the problem exists with the D300 as well as with the D200, but I only have experience of the latter.

That is not to say that it is terrible, but I wouldn’t use this lens as a street lens, when I wanted fast focus. On the other hand its macro capability is as good as claimed by its specifications, and I am very glad to have it.

Tulip

Iris

Larger version of the Iris
and here is a larger version of the iris - click on the image to see it.

There was a time when I read articles by photographers talking about the large number of shots they had taken on a trip, usually in the context of how much space this took up on their hard drive, and I would wonder how they could possibly have taken that many shots without developing a trigger happy attitude that reduced the photographic value of everything they shot.

Paris is a very attractive city. If you like taking shots of the frontages of old buildings, and I do, then there are gems everywhere. And then there is the river, and the skylines. So I didn’t find it at all difficult to take the shots, and storing jpegs on 2GB cards was no effort at all.

Sorting, stretching, cropping, and cleaning up 900 plus images is a different matter and I have been busy with other things, so there are still many images to go through. So here is a small selection of frontages and other architectural attractions of Paris: